Letter from Germany: Reflections Occasioned by the First East-West German Political Philosophy Meeting

Abstract

ON THE SAME WEEKEND AS EAST GERMANS OFFICIALLY exchanged East Marx for real Marks, another kind of exchange took place between East and West German professors at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Bielefeld. The recently established Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des politischen Denkens, in the person of Volker Gerhardt (Cologne), had invited some sixty senior philosophers, political theorists and political scientists from both sides of the inner-German border to discuss basic questions in political philosophy. The meeting was not a conference. The organizer, recognising the absence of any shared traditions of inquiry and debate, had issued invitations to a mere meeting. It was the first such meeting since the collapse of the East German Communist regime. In fact, it offered the first opportunity after almost six decades of dictatorships in the East for academics from the former front-lines, as it were, to reflect openly together on their subject, on their academic pasts and on their possible academic futures. Initially, the atmosphere was very tense. But, amazingly, the tensions soon evaporated. A strange sort of civility came to characterize the discussions both inside and outside the conference rooms. Conflicts were largely avoided, to the obvious relief of most participants. From an inner- German perspective, the meeting was a great success. At the end, Ernst Vollrath (Cologne) summed up a general view: ‘We have begun to see that we can learn from one another.’ But this reciprocity was not evident in the academic discussions. Something else was involved apart from the surface issue of Marxism-Leninism versus the rest of the world. It is worth reflecting on the development of the meeting and on what this something else was.