German Debate Research Articles

Österreichs Rentenpolitik: Vom Nachbarn lernen?

Abstract In the German debate on retirement pensions, Austria’s policy is often referenced. The considerably higher statutory pensions in the neighbouring country arouse interest. How does Austria finance these higher pensions? How does the Austrian pension system in general differ from the German one, especially against the background of the latest pension reforms and inflation in Austria? What reform options can applied to Germany?

Moral value conflicts in the German debate about genetically engineered foods

Moral value conflicts in the German debate about genetically engineered foods

Berlin in English: The German capital in recent Anglophone fiction

This article examines the representation of Berlin in a cluster of recent English-language novels by writers including Amit Chaudhuri, Adrian Duncan, Helon Habila, Hari Kunzru, Lauren Oyler, Chris Power, Bea Setton and Matthew Sperling. Showing how the use of English in Berlin has been at the centre of contemporary German debates about migration and cultural identity and explaining how the image of Berlin in English literature has often been balanced between pulp and literary fiction, it asks if this body of contemporary Anglophone writing amounts to something more than literary tourism. Examining its representation of Berlin as both a mnemonic and touristic space, the acuity of its depiction of the city three decades after reunification, and the ways in which it represents different forms of migration to the city, the article contends that these novels do have valuable things to say, particularly concerning the ways in which an urban literary imaginary is being reconfigured for a digital age.

Pastoral Power and Revolution: Beyond Secularization and Political Theology

When stressing how ‘Christian pastoral power’ defined the specificity of ‘governmental power’, Foucault never explicitly acknowledged the German debate on modernity or theological-political issues. My hypothesis is that – whatever the actual reasons for this omission might be – this oversight is symptomatic of Foucault’s unique interpretation of the role of Christianity in Western culture and of his different approach to the theme of power. After analysing the positions of two of the leading exponents of the German debate, Karl Löwith and Carl Schmitt, the essay substantiates this hypothesis by looking at Foucault’s investigations of pastoral power. In particular, the essay aims to demonstrate how the latter’s apparent omissions are linked to Foucault’s challenge to two central questions in the 20th-century debate on modernity, namely: (1) the possibility of interpreting modern political revolutions as expressions of a linear and secularized vision of history; and (2) the centrality of the category of sovereignty in the definition of Western power.

The rhetoric of political science in parliament. A study of Westminster debates after the Second World War

ABSTRACT A parliamentary perspective on the politics of the academic political science connects my former interest in the history of the discipline with parliamentary studies. This article continues the discussion in a previous article of mine on the German Bundestag. The conceptual point lies in a mutual suspicion between parliamentarians and academics regarding politics. In this present study I analyse Westminster debates on the concept of ‘political science’. Possible similarities between British and (West-)German debates appear in how this applies to academic authorities, in the increasing number of parliamentarians having studied political science at university, as well as in the distance towards academic political scientists. However, in the Bundestag political science is understood in academic and disciplinary terms and references to it serve for the members’ politicking. In Westminster a concept of political science frequently refers to a intellectual tradition persisting also in the late twentieth century and it emphasizes analysing political changes as challenged to political science.

Aufweichen, abbremsen, abschirmen – Wirtschaftsmetaphern zwischen politischer Abgrenzung und diskursiven Allgemeinplätzen

Abstract This study examines the use of metaphors in the German debate on European monetary and fiscal policy. Though the debates in this policy area garnered considerable interest among linguists, so far there is a gap concerning interdisciplinary comparative studies that examine metaphorical expressions in regard to their divergent political use. This study addresses said gap by posing two explorative research questions: Which metaphors shape the German political debate on European monetary and fiscal policy? And is there a relationship between the use of metaphors and the political perspective of the people using them? To examine these questions, we developed an innovative methodological triangulation that combines qualitative, hermeneutic metaphorical analyses with quantitative, data-driven approaches of corpus linguistics. By analyzing the communication of eleven political actors during three debates on Eurozone policy, we identify the most salient metaphors and compare their political usage. Our results show four types of metaphorical expressions which can be distinguished by their relative openness regarding political perspective and their respective referent. Thereby, this study firstly provides an important guide to understanding the debate at hand; secondly, sharpens the theoretical underpinnings of the comprehension of political metaphors as a whole; and thirdly, is a valuable contribution to the methodical study of metaphorical expressions in the field of applied linguistics.

‘Old Testament’ as the origin of the patriarchy

This article explores and compares two similar debates in Germany and Sweden during the 1980s, in which feminists blamed the Hebrew Bible, or ‘Old Testament’, for being the origin of the patriarchy. In Germany, the psychologist and pedagogue Gerda Weiler articulated the discourse in several writings, which led to a scholarly debate on anti-Jewish tendencies within Christian femi­nist theology. In Sweden, the debate mainly became a media event, initiated by the author Birgitta Onsell. Instead of criticising the discourse, as in the German debate, other actors reinforced it, for example by highlighting Jesus as a feminist and a contrast to the Old Testament religion. The article further examines ideological consequences of the discourse, including the interdiscursive link to the notion of Judaism as responsible for the patriarchal moral that enabled the Holocaust, also expressed in the public sphere in Germany and Sweden.

Much Ado about nothing.R.G. Collingwood versus Martin Heidegger on the status of metaphysics

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the completely neglected relation between Collingwood and Heidegger's concepts of metaphysics by highlighting their respective reactions to Alfred J. Ayer and Rudolf Carnap. In his article “The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language” from 1931, Carnap exposed the metaphysical statements, used by Heidegger in his inaugural lecture What is Metaphysics?, as pseudo-statements. Three years later, Ayer published the article “Demonstration of the Impossibility of Metaphysics”. In the late 1930s, Ayer's position was attacked by Collingwood in An Essay on Metaphysics. In the British debate, the tables of the German debate were thus turned. Whereas the analytic philosopher Carnap reacted against the metaphysician Heidegger, the metaphysician Collingwood reacted against the analytic philosopher Ayer. Accordingly, a correct understanding and evaluation of the relation between Collingwood's and Heidegger's concepts of metaphysics are dependent on knowledge of their respective reactions to Ayer and Carnap. Three steps are taken. First, the discussion between Carnap and Heidegger is presented. Second, the friction between Ayer and Collingwood is outlined. In the final section, the similarities and differences between Collingwood and Heidegger's concepts of metaphysics are explored and situated within their divergent views on the Western history of philosophy.

Communication and urban air quality governance in Germany: Discursive framing by selected national environmental NGOs and the Automotive Industry Association (VDA) and its potential impacts

AbstractIt is presented and contrasted through a framing analysis how selected environmental NGOs and the German Automotive Industry Association (VDA) engaged in the national German debate on urban air quality governance during the height of the emission scandal between 2015 and mid‐2019. For this, frames of communication applied to communicate organizational priorities and conceptualizations of air quality governance to the public are discussed and their potential impact on public perception of different approaches to air quality governance assessed. It is shown that the presented frames provide opposing and competing conceptualizations of air quality impacts and related governance propositions, including health, environmental, economic, and regulatory issues. They align with the interests of the communicating actor groups and are supported by selected scientific knowledge. This, it is argued, can be linked to an interest group led capturing of public debate as identified for other politically charged topics, and structurally resembles a public negotiation on urban air quality governance. Such an approach to public discourse, it is argued, can have negative impacts on public engagement and openness to embrace sustainability led governance reforms, as it can reinforce existing attitudes and create opposition to governance change.

Evidence-related framing in the German debate on sugar taxation: a qualitative framing analysis and international comparison

Background:Taxation of sugar and sugar-sweetened beverages is considered a key policy for improving population-level nutrition. Implementation is influenced by the way evidence is used and framed in public debates. At this time, no sugar tax has been implemented in Germany. Aims and objectives:This study aims to deepen the understanding of the political dynamics that influence the adoption of sugar taxes by analysing the use of evidence in the German media debate on sugar taxation and comparing its findings with analyses from other countries. Methods:In 114 German newspaper articles, published between 01/2018 and 03/2019, we analysed the use and framing of evidence with an abductive thematic analysis approach. We compared our findings with analyses on the framing around sugar taxation from Mexico, the US and the UK. Findings:Evidence was a salient component of the German debate. As in the comparison countries, evidence was used by both tax proponents and opponents but framed differently, for example, regarding problem definitions. However, the German debate relied more strongly on examples from other countries and less on economic arguments. Discussion and conclusions:Our findings suggest that German tax proponents should proactively consider economic arguments and counter spurious arguments made by tax opponents. Researchers should be aware of their work’s potential international spillover effects, and public health advocates should correct expectations regarding the evidence on, and health effects of, isolated measures against obesity. To deepen the understanding of the German policy process, further research should involve social media, public documents and stakeholder networks.

“Reconstructionism”: A Strategy to Improve Outdated Attempts of Modernist Post-War Planning?

Recently, Germany has seen a series of inner-city projects that tend to reconstruct pre-war buildings or ensembles lost in the Second World War after demolishing earlier attempts to redefine the place in which they had been located with the means of modernist architecture. While those modernist buildings are often seen as “eyesores” by ordinary citizens advocating their demolition, the newer reconstructionist projects are criticized heavily by architects and planners not only because they often bring along revisionist political attitudes but also lack a profound examination of the achievements of their predecessors and do without the creative possibilities new designs may offer. The article discusses the trend in its historical context starting in the early 1980s and flourishing after the German reunification by presenting four major types of reconstructionism and related case studies, and debates that accompany them. This allows an interpretation of the current trend and places it in the wider German debates about post-modern planning and urban design. It shows that beyond the most prominent examples of reconstructionism such as the reconstructed Frauenkirche church in Dresden and the Palace in the center of Berlin, there are certain parameters that loosely determine the trend. The article ends with recommendations for the ongoing debates on future reconstructions of bombed cities.

Readers' Comments: The End of Disarmament? Making Sense of the German Debates (Rejoinder to A. Sørensen)

Readers' Comments: The End of Disarmament? Making Sense of the German Debates (Rejoinder to A. Sørensen)

Wir müssen reden

Abstract Whereas debating societies look back at a long tradition in Great Britain, in Germany rhetorical training was mostly absent from schools and universities until the early 2000 s. Over the last 20 years, however, a young debating scene has developed from this vacuum of rhetorical practice. In universities, the Verband der Debattierclubs an Hochschulen (VDCH) has been established as the umbrella organization for student debating societies, and a lively tournament scene has emerged. At school level, a format called Jugend debattiert was created, which provides a debating-curriculum for German lessons. Also, an all-German debating-competition among students is organized every year. Time to take stock after all those years: How has the German debate scene developed? What are the expectations of young people when they join debating clubs? And are their expectations met?

Temporal Displacement in Ulrike Ottinger’s Films

Whether campy adventure films set in exotic locales, explorations of Berlin subcultures, or experimental travelogs in Asia, the work of German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger is permeated with a sense of being out of synch with the flow of time. Contextualizing her depictions of temporal displacement within German debates about “the synchronicity of the non-synchronous,” I argue that Ottinger resists linking temporal displacement to particular minority groups, portraying it instead as a condition of modernity itself. I use this reflection as an occasion to question the potential essentialism in discussions of queer temporality.

Antisemitismus in der Migrationsgesellschaft. Theoretische Überlegungen, Empirische Fallbeispiele, Pädagogische Praxis - Nikolaus Hagen and Tobias Neuburger

Reviewed by: Antisemitismus in der Migrationsgesellschaft. Theoretische Überlegungen, Empirische Fallbeispiele, Pädagogische Praxis ed. by Nikolaus Hagen and Tobias Neuburger Sina Arnold Antisemitismus in der Migrationsgesellschaft. Theoretische Überlegungen, Empirische Fallbeispiele, Pädagogische Praxis. Edited by Nikolaus Hagen and Tobias Neuburger. Innsbruck: Innsbruck University Press, 2020. 219 pages. Open Access. The German debates about a "new antisemitism" in Europe have focused on anti-Jewish actions and attitudes that have been influenced by migration, most of it from Muslim-majority countries. Some of the antisemitic slogans and violence at recent demonstrations against the latest Israel-Gaza war were created and perpetrated by Arab/Muslim migrants or descendants of migrants. These debates were energized by the 2015–2016 refugee movement from Arab countries and have been particularly prominent in German-speaking countries. Research has shown that while many of the newcomers do harbor antisemitic attitudes, it is not merely an "imported" antisemitism that constitutes the main threat to Jews in Germany. Jews are faced with a dangerous mélange of continuous antisemitism among "old" as well as "new" Germans (see Sina Arnold and Jana König, "'One Million Antisemites?' Attitudes Toward Jews, The Holocaust, and Israel: An Anthropological Study [End Page 441] of Refugees in Contemporary Germany," Antisemitism Studies Vol. 3, no. 1 [2019]: 4–45). Some of these antisemitic attitudes and subsequent actions have rather different sources and motivations, like right-wing extremism, Islamism, and left-wing anti-Zionism. Meanwhile, opinion polls point to continuously high agreements with antisemitic statements amongst the general population (see Oliver Decker and Elmar Brähler, eds., Autoritäre Dynamiken: Alte Ressentiments—neue Radikalität. Leipziger Autoritarismus-Studie 2020 [Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag, 2020]). Given all of this, some researchers have increasingly focused less on specific immigrant groups and more on Germany as an actual "migration society" (and to a lesser extent, also on Austria). While the country was shaped by labor migration for many decades, it held on to an ethnic völkisch notion of belonging until at least the beginning of the twenty-first century and only recently has acknowledged its own multiculturalism. As the "new antisemitism" debates show, this has not come without difficulties. The volume published by Nikolaus Hagen and Tobias Neuburger, aptly titled "Antisemitism in the Migration Society," is an explicit response to these challenging times. In their introduction, the editors point to the continuation of anti-Jewish violence in Austria and Germany after the Holocaust, calling into question the myth of Western liberal democracies as free of antisemitism. Regarding current examples, they also mention the danger of "externalization," whereby public debates around an "imported antisemitism" from migrants and refugees can have the effect of denying the continuation of antisemitic attitudes in wider parts of the population. A second mechanism they identify is "universalization," whereby antisemitic acts are freed of their specific anti-Jewish content and instead portrayed as an attack "on all of us." In pointing to the recent threat of global right-wing terrorism, Hagen and Neuburger make clear that contemporary antisemitism has many sources: the extreme Right, Islamism, the Left, but also the so-called "middle of society." As the volume's subtitle suggests, the essays look at theoretical considerations and underpinnings, empirical case studies, and the [End Page 442] implications for educational and pedagogical work. The 12 Austrian and German authors—the combination is one the strengths of this anthology—come from various disciplines, among them political science, sociology, cultural science, French studies, and history. Many of them also have practical experience—they work as teachers in schools for vocational training, as political educators for adults and youngsters, or are employees of political think tanks. The essays originate from two conferences for junior scholars at the University of Innsbruck in 2015 and 2016 that focused on antisemitism in contemporary societies. Most contributions address the nexus of antisemitism, migration, and Islam, with references to Austria or Germany and yet provide a wider outlook on the European or global situation. Others tackle progressive or left-wing antisemitism. A third strand is focused on Islamist antisemitism. And intertwining them, a couple of essays look at contemporary alliances between Islamist and Left movements. All contributions thus refer back to the key topics...

Health in the postpandemic city: Contested spatializations and biopolitical implications

Health and disease have been conceived as problems of urban space throughout history, and public health interventions have repeatedly been employed as spatial strategies. Critical perspectives have already utilized this special relation: Urban health is often a showcase for modes of biopolitics. We follow this example, investigating the current rearticulation of public health in the aftermath of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. We draw together the German debate on health in the post-pandemic city, both in the general media and in planning literature, using a discourse-analytical method and find that two contrasting narratives emerge. The urban is considered either as the expression of pathogenic spatial density or as the site of healthy social interactions. While each narrative prefigures a very different mode of intervention, both encourage a spatialization of health, with powerful implications. Distinguishing the competing rationales thus allows better decisions on ways to promote health in the city.

The Influence and Impact of Bernadette Brooten Not Only on LGBTIQ+ People in Germany

The Influence and Impact of Bernadette Brooten Not Only on LGBTIQ+ People in Germany Angela Standhartinger (bio) As we all know, Bernadette Brooten is an impressively polyglot person. She knows Norwegian, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, French, and of course German. Actually, she is the best non-native German speaker I have ever met in my life. In preparation for this contribution, I solved the riddle of Brooten's facility: she started her career with a maxima cum laude BA in German from the University of Portland, Oregon, including one year of study in Salzburg in Austria. Immediately after, she studied theology for another two years at Tübingen in Germany before entering the PhD program at Harvard, which included a year at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.1 At Tübingen she became involved in the critical discussion, at that time, of the recently closed Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church and its failure, among other reforms, to begin ordaining women as priests. So her famous rediscovery of the female apostle Junia was published in the volume Women Priests: A Catholic Commentary on the Vatican Declaration, edited by Leonard and Arlene Swidler.2 The following year, the Junia article was published in one of the premiere German publications on feminist theology, the book Frauenbefreiung (women's emancipation), edited by Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel.3 With Moltmann-Wendel and Hans Küng, Brooten developed a research project, "Women and Christianity," part of which resulted in her famous paper "Early Christian Women and Their [End Page 183] Cultural Context: Issues of Method in Historical Reconstruction."4 The German Volkswagen Foundation funded the Women and Christianity project, under the category "unconventional ideas," with 732,000 DM. From 1982 to 1984 Brooten held an academic research position at the University of Tübingen to publish in the area of "Sexualität, Ehe und Alternativen zur Ehe in den ersten vier Jarhunderten christlicher Geschichte" (sexuality, marriage, and alternatives to marriage in the first four Christian centuries). However, when she decided to focus on "Frauen, Macht und Sexualität: Röm 1,26 im Kontext" (women, power, and sexuality: Rom 1:26 in context), Hans Küng, the only chair holder in the group, saw this as a fundamental thematic change of topic. Because of this academic freedom dispute, Bernadette Brooten left Tübingen and moved to Harvard and later to Brandeis. Yet she had already initiated two political movements in Germany. One movement was the discussion of anti-Jewish patterns in Christian feminist theology. Brooten's engagement in this debate was triggered by the 1981 issue of Concilium, the international journal dedicated to critical Catholicism and perhaps the first mainline journal in Germany to publish on feminist theology.5 That same year, Brooten responded to the initial volume her paper "Jüdinnen zur Zeit Jesus" (Jewish women at the time of Jesus).6 She openly criticized the anti-Jewish stereotyping involved in constructing a feminist Jesus through a contrast with the (other) alleged patriarchal Jewish teachers and the accompanying tendentious selections of Jewish sources, in order to rescue early Christianity from patriarchy. The next year she republished most of the Concilium articles in her coedited book Women in a Men's Church, in which she included her own article and two from Jewish feminists Naomi R. Goldenberg and Judith Plaskow as well as one from Jacquelyn Grant entitled "Black Theology and Black Women."7 In so doing, [End Page 184] Brooten wrote in the foreword, she hoped to initiate a dialogue between Jewish and Christian feminists in Germany—a goal the book accomplished.8 While the German debate on anti-Judaism in feminist theology reached its high point in 1986–87, Brooten's 1981 article is still remembered as the starting point.9 One typical apologetic argument of that time was that Jesus rescued women from the patriarchal arbitrariness of Jewish men through his general prohibition of divorce. Brooten countered with extensive source work in "Konnten Frauen im Alten Judentum die Scheidung betreiben? Überlegungen zu Mk 10,11–12 and 1 Kor 7,10–11" (Did Jewish women divorce themselves from their husbands? Considerations on Mark 10:11–12 and 1 Cor 7:10–11).10...

Becoming Queer In/Human in Sasha Marianna Salzmann’s Außer sich (2017)

This article examines the way in which Sasha Marianna Salzmann’s novel Außer sich (2017) blurs the boundaries between the human and the inhuman to challenge normative notions of humanity as clearly gendered. Focusing primarily on the protagonist’s transgender body, I analyze the textual instances in which inhuman entities (animals, parasites, objects) disrupt ambiguously gendered anatomies, materializing their dehumanized position under normativity. Drawing on the theorizations of queer inhumanism by Dana Luciano, Mel Y. Chen, and Eunjung Kim, I show how the novel turns the inhuman into an instrument of resistance against the coercive logics of the human through what I term “becoming queer in/human.” By letting the inhuman suspend the prerogatives of human morphologies, “becoming queer in/human” allows for alternative ontologies beyond the binary to become possible. In activating the productive potential of confusion, the narrative opens up the human and its genders to rearticulation, contributing to contemporary German debates in envisioning a different future for the transgender subject.

Review: Schlüsselbegriffe der Public History, by Christine Gundermann et al.

Review: <i>Schlüsselbegriffe der Public History</i>, by Christine Gundermann et al.

“The High Mass of Democracy” —Why Germany Remains Aloof to the Idea of Electronic Voting

Despite the increase in citizens' use of absentee voting and examples from other countries, so far Germany remains aloof to the idea of introducing electronic voting as another form of convenience voting to its political elections. Apart from intra-party elections, no changes in the direction of electronic voting are considered in the current debate about an electoral reform. What are the reasons for the German aloofness toward electronic voting? In this article, we focus on party positions and institutional, as well as legal considerations, to provide a comprehensive answer to this question. From a normative point of view, the question of electronic voting is inextricably linked to the concept of electoral integrity, as the latter is pivotal to determine a democratic mode to select trusted representatives. Therefore, this paper first discusses the opportunities and risks for electoral integrity associated with electronic voting. Based on these considerations, we then explore reasons for the hesitancy of German legislators. To this end, we conducted expert interviews with German MPs and considered open-source documents related to the German debate about electronic voting. Our paper contributes to research on party positions on electronic voting, by relating the topic to questions about electoral integrity and considering political parties' reasoning, as well as legal and institutional constraints in the German context. We find that the main reasons provided by party representatives circle around concerns about transparency, security, accuracy, and the value of the voting act itself.