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581. Translating Economics into Politics in Cold War Germany

Author:
James C. Van Hook
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
Economics and economic history have a fundamental role to play in our understanding of Cold War Germany. Yet, it is still difficult to establish concrete links between economic phenomena and the most important questions facing post 1945 historians. Obviously, one may evaluate West Germany's “economic miracle,” the success of western European integration, or the end of communism in 1989 from a purely economic point of view. To achieve a deeper understanding of Cold War Germany, however, one must evaluate whether the social market economy represented an adequate response to Nazism, if memory and perspective provided the decisive impulse for European integration, or if the Cold War ended in Europe because of changes in western nuclear strategy. Economic history operates in relation to politics, culture, and historical memory. The parameters for economic action are often as determined by the given political culture of the moment, as they are by the feasibility of alternative economic philosophies.
Topic:
Cold War, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, and West Germany

582. On the Road to a German “Postnationalism”? Athletic Competition between the Two German States in the Era of Konrad Adenauer

Author:
Martin H. Geyer
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
Sports have always been used to promote the nation state and the invention of national traditions with national symbols such as flags and national hymns playing an important role. This article looks at the peculiar situation of the post-war period when two Germanys established themselves also in the field of sports, yet cooperated in some athletic disciplines, and, most important of all, at the Olympic Games until 1968. This raised a great number of delicate political questions, particularly the politics of the nonrecognition of the GDR which strove hard to establish itself internationally by way of the international sports movement. Konrad Adenauer and the German Sports Organization clashed on this issue which brought to the fore the question of a German and an emerging West-German identity. In order to describe this negotiation of the nation state in the realm of sports, this article tries to make fruitful use of the term postnationalism in order to understand the ambiguities of identity of Germans towards their nation state. It also takes a brief look at the Olympic Games of 1972, which epitomizes more than anything else the peculiar postnationalism of the Federal Republic.
Topic:
Politics and War
Political Geography:
Germany

583. Representation without Emulation: German Cultural Diplomacy in Search of Integration and Self-Assurance during the Adenauer Era

Author:
Johannes Paulmann
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
The article investigates an essential characteristic of the Federal Republic of Germany's search for self-assurance in foreign cultural representations after World War II. A normative behavioral pattern, described here as an “attitude of restraint,” emerged during the Adenauer era, resulting in representations without emulation. The article focuses on German participation in world fairs—an example that reveals the multi-layered mechanisms linking diplomacy with culture, political attitudes with individual experiences and memories, and foreign relations with social conditions. The formation of an attitude of restraint constituted part of the long-term process of West German self-education and shaped cultural identities in the Federal Republic. The self-assurance re-found during the Adenauer era is placed in the context of political debates about the break with the Nazi past, defense against communist East Germany, and the selective turn toward an international modernity. Furthermore, the article offers an explanation regarding the diffusion of certain behavioral norms through everyday experience and practice.
Topic:
Politics and Culture
Political Geography:
Germany

584. Don't Think Twice, It's Alright: SPD-Left Party/PDS Coalitions in the Eastern German Länder

Author:
Jonathan Olsen and Dan Hough
Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
During the run-up to the 1998 federal election, there was intense speculation on how—should it be elected—Germany's first ever redgreen national administration would fare. Once the votes had been cast and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Greens had indeed come out on top, some argued that the experiences of red-green coalitions at the Land-level could be useful in mapping out both prospective and likely success stories for a red-green coalition at the federal level. Taking to heart Lawrence Dodd's famous proposition that “provincial or state parliaments could provide an experimental setting in which party coalitions could be attempted … with the intermediate provincial experience making national-level coalitions more possible than they would be without the provincial experience,” political scientists and journalists alike attempted to delineate the elements of successful and unsuccessful red-green coalitions at the Land level in order to understand more about the formation and maintenance of this first national SPD-Green government. One of the most well known of these subsequent attempts is Charles Lees's book The Red-Green Coalition in Germany. Lees outlines a red-green “model” of government based on the experiences of red-green coalitions at the Land level, attempting to illustrate how the formation of red-green at the federal level followed the same basic pattern.
Political Geography:
Germany

585. "The Whole World Is In Uproar": Discourses of Fear, Instability, and Global Change in West German Media, 1977-1980

Author:
Maria Stehle
Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
After presenting a brief summary of the events leading up to the German Autumn, this article offers a close analysis of media responses in major German newspapers and magazines in the months following these violent and confusing political developments. It compares these responses to reports in January 1980, where the events of the late 1970s serve as a catalyst for fears of global change. Media articulate these fears about the stability and identity of the West German nation state in increasingly vague and generalized terms and relate them to a global situation that is “out of control.” The discussions in this article suggest that these expressed fears reveal tensions, interruptions, and gaps in the conservative fantasy of the secure and prosperous Western nation state.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
Germany

586. British-German Relations and Collective Memory

Author:
Ruth Wittlinger
Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
British-German relations have undergone a considerable transformation since 1945 with both countries having to adapt to significant changes in their own status, as well as a very different international environment. Germany's status as a morally and militarily defeated and occupied power in 1945 is in stark contrast to the confident role it is playing at the beginning of the new millennium when—sixty years after the end of World War II—the German chancellor for the first time took part in the VE-Day celebrations of the victors. This article analyzes recent dynamics of collective memory in both countries and examine if and to what extent their collective memories play a role in British-German relations.
Political Geography:
Germany

587. Spying on Terrorists: Germany in Comparative Perspective

Author:
A. James McAdams
Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
Intelligence and law enforcement agencies in western democracies are turning increasingly to electronic surveillance tools in their efforts to identify and combat new terrorist threats. But this does not mean that they are equally equipped to undertake these measures. As the author shows by comparing surveillance activities in three countries—Great Britain, the United States, and Germany—the Federal Republic's more restrictive legal norms and institutions provide its government with much less freedom of maneuver than its allies.
Topic:
Government, Intelligence, and Law
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, and Germany

588. Germany's Involvement in Extraordinary Renditions and Its Responsibility under International Law

Author:
Laura Tate Kagel
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
As investigative journalists and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) increasingly uncover the nature and scope of a U.S. government program known for transferring terrorist suspects outside of normal legal and administrative channels, the role of European states has come under scrutiny. To a large degree, these states have erected a “wall of fog,” as a report from the German Institute of Human Rights describes it, blocking access to information that would allow for independent assessments of the human rights implications of the counterterrorism practice known as “extraordinary rendition.”
Topic:
International Law and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Germany, and Egypt

589. Entertaining Auteurism: Popular Filmmakers Think About Germany

Author:
Margaret McCarthy
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
German popular filmmakers who participated in the Denk ich an Deutschland series brought a range of conflicting impulses to their meditations on Germany, including the universalizing tendencies of popular culture, together with the personal and political strains often present in documentary films. With varying degrees of success, each director agitates national identity via an idiosyncratic selfhood, a process which in turn expands our notions of Germany beyond generic convention. The best of the five films discussed in this essay—directed by Doris Dörrie, Fatih Akin, Katja von Garnier, Sherry Hormann, and Klaus Lemke—feature their creators' struggle to box themselves out of a larger collective identity. By modeling their own existential Bildung, they chip away at an otherwise implacable German identity and provide a psychic service for Germans potentially more salutary than the way Hollywood films sustain American identity.
Topic:
Civil Society and Arts
Political Geography:
Germany

590. The Denk ich an Deutschland Films of the Two Andreases from the East: Kleinert's Bewildering Berlin and Dresen's Stagnating Uckermark

Author:
Margit Sinka
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
Launched in 1998 on the eve of the eighth Day of German Unity, the Denk ich an Deutschland television film series was intended to reframe discourses on national identity formation in a positive light through documentaries focused on the present rather than on the dark German past. While Andreas Kleinert's Niemandsland (No Man's Land, 1998) and Andreas Dresen's Herr Wichmann von der CDU (Vote for Henryk!, 2003), the first and last films televised, do center on the present, they highlight dissonances between personal and national concerns. Still, Kleinert deconstructs the dissonances and artificial syntheses he himself invents in order to reveal them as constructs to be reconfigured by viewers. By showing the inability of politicians to bridge the gap between personal and national concerns due to the erosion of their private identities, Dresen also appeals to viewers to initiate needed societal changes themselves.
Topic:
Civil Society, Nationalism, and Arts
Political Geography:
Germany and Berlin