Kohl Era Research Articles

Context matters: Professionalization of campaign posters from Adenauer to Merkel

Abstract This study examines the professionalization of political communication by focusing on changes to campaign posters for Bundestag elections over the course of five eras of German post-war history. We conducted a quantitative content analysis of both visual and textual elements of campaign posters (N = 1,857) in the period from 1949 to 2017 with regard to personalization, de-ideologization, and negative campaigning. The study revealed differences related to the five eras. Following the early conservative governments (1949–1969), high levels of personalization and ideologization first became defining features of election campaigns during the social-liberal era (1969–1982). After the Kohl era (1982–1998), these trends have occurred again since the Schröder era (1998–2005) and have been reinforced in the Merkel era (2005–2017). Furthermore, we found neither a clear upward nor a downward trend for negative campaigning. Overall, our study demonstrated that political parties adapt their communication strategies to the context of the respective election.

“Learning the Hard Way”

In the spring of 1985, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl addressed his party’s federal committee about the upcoming visit of American President Ronald Reagan to a cemetery containing the remains of Nazi soldiers outside the provincial town of Bitburg. Reagan and Kohl remained determined that the trip should proceed, despite significant public opposition in both countries. After sharing that he found the protests of American Jewish groups “irrational,” Kohl went on to blame his West German predecessors for the current sorry state of affairs, criticizing the “abysmal politics of representing the new Germany in America, the complete lack for 30 years of a representation of what the Federal Republic is really like.” He went on to assure his countrymen that “I am steadfastly determined—I want to tell you clearly—to change that” (65). In his important new book, Holocaust Angst, Jacob Eder shows how Kohl was true to his word. Working with like-minded colleagues, Kohl set about remaking the Federal Republic’s engagement with its own past within its most important ally. Set against the backdrop of the growing body of literature on Holocaust memory in the United States, Eder’s book sheds light on efforts by the Kohl government to shape American understanding of Germany and the Holocaust. In so doing, his book mines new Federal Republic records to demonstrate an assertive German public diplomacy in the United States during the Kohl era, detailing the intervention of German officials in initiatives ranging from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to the German Historical Institute.

„Keine Wende“?

Abstract This article examines financial aid for companies and the guidelines of subsidy policy in East Germany after 1989 in the context of German structural policy in the “Helmut Kohl era” (1982-1998). It comes to the conclusion that – after a short period of fast structural change in East Germany – efforts increased to rescue existing businesses and industrial sites, as well as the jobs they provided after the end of 1992, primarily through the initiative of regional actors. Financial aid for companies – particularly for funding industrial investments in modernisation and new plants – played a key role in the rescuing and restructuring process. At the same time, structural policy gradually converged with the patterns that had been formed during the political management of structural change in the “former” Federal Republic. Only the short period of the postreunification years 1991 and 1992 was characterised by the steering of structural change and the redefinition of East German industry by the markets as well as by a renunciation of subsidies for the preservation of existing jobs. The temporary retreat of the state from structural policy was partly a result of the experience of the 1980s, when structural policy was criticized for slowing down German economic growth and impeding structural change.

Die Ära Kohl im Gespräch: Eine Zwischenbilanz (review)

Reviewed by: Die Ära Kohl im Gespräch: Eine Zwischenbilanz Helga A. Welsh Die Ära Kohl im Gespräch: Eine Zwischenbilanz. Edited by Günter Buchstab, Hans-Otto Kleinmann, and Hanns Jürgen Küsters. Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2010. Pp. ix + 588. €49.90. ISBN 978-3412205928. Foundations (Stiftungen) affiliated with the major political parties are an interesting feature of the German political landscape. Supported by public funds, these hybrid organizations—which are neither governmental nor entirely nongovernmental—perform a variety of functions. They act as think tanks and civic education agencies, and as depositories for political party records; offices abroad offer political education and party development assistance in many countries around the world. The book reviewed here is the result of a series of conferences organized by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS). Starting in 2001, the conference proceedings appeared in its journal Historisch-Politische Mitteilungen. The journal editors, members of the research department of the KAS, also serve as the book editors. The 2010 publication date was timely, for it coincided with Helmut Kohl’s eightieth birthday. The idea for the conference series originated in 2000, during the heyday of the party finance scandal [End Page 455] that threatened to cast a permanent shadow on Helmut Kohl’s achievements as party leader and chancellor of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The aim of the conferences was, in the words of the organizers and editors, to initiate “first steps toward the historiography of Kohl’s chancellorship and to stimulate questions, perspectives and analyses” (XIII). Title and subtitle reinforce the preliminary character of the findings. Scholarly analyses find themselves here together with firsthand political accounts. The book’s chapters vary widely in length and style. Scholarly contributions are detailed and supported by academic references, while commentaries by politicians, policy experts, and journalists are shorter reflections on topics as diverse as finance and media. Its contributors include former high-ranking CDU and Christian Social Union (CSU) politicians and one member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Klaus von Dohnanyi. Research on Helmut Kohl, the longest reigning chancellor in the history of the Federal Republic, has tended to focus on his leadership style as head of the CDU and as chancellor, or on his policy record and his legacy in politics and policy. This edited volume falls into the second category. Leaving aside his crucial role in German unification, his record may be strongest in foreign affairs, in particular in shaping Germany’s relations with the United States and France and, most important, in deepening European integration. If foreign policy was his métier, what about domestic policy? What was the relationship between continuity and change? How important was the caesura of 1990, the year of German unification, in the pursuit of policy initiatives? Did the much-hailed reform gridlock (Reformstau) in the 1990s result from the preoccupation with unification? Or was it the outcome of (continued) missed opportunities? For readers interested in answers to these questions, the various chapters provide valuable starting points for discussion. The book casts its net widely as a range of public policy areas is covered: economics and finance; media; European integration; family, women, and youth affairs; cultural affairs; environmental policy; transatlantic relations; and social policy, as well as German-German relations. Yet academics looking for in-depth and up-to-date coverage of Kohl’s leadership should look elsewhere. Since the articles were reprinted in their original form, new and important research published in recent years is not included. In addition, many of the authors have already elaborated on their topics in much greater detail elsewhere. A prime example among many is Gerhard A. Ritter’s insightful chapter on social policy and German unification. His findings have been published as a book, which is also available in English translation (Der Preis der deutschen Einheit: Die Wiedervereinigung und die Krise des Sozialstaats [Munich, 2006]; The Price of German Unity: Reunification and the Crisis of the Welfare State [Oxford, 2011]). The Kohl era is often divided into two major phases: the years from 1982 to 1989 and from 1990 to 1998. In this edited volume, the 1980s are given privileged treatment. Yet the most profound changes...

Who's Afraid of Angela Merkel?

Many believe Angela Merkel's political masterpiece to be a surprisingly short article that appeared on 22 December 1999 in the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung. This article was to pave her way to the top of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a right-of-centre party, and eventually to the German chancellorship. Yet, at the turn of the 21st century the CDU had to cope with the deepest crisis since its founding in 1945. A few days before Merkel's article was published the former chancellor, Helmut Kohl, who had led and dominated the CDU between 1973 and 1998, had publicly confessed to have illegally accepted financial donations. To make things worse, he refused-and still refuses-to reveal the name (or names) of the donator(s), stating that he had given his word of honour never to do so. Kohl's confession threw the party into turmoil. The CDU not only had to fear legal consequences (it was later fined to more than euro40 million), but it was on the brink of losing an essential asset of a party: its credibility. Some thought the very existence of the CDU in jeopardy.The party was thrown into shock. Neither the then-party leader, Wolfgang Schauble, who used to be one of Kohl's closest allies, nor other party heavyweights could convincingly symbolize a new beginning. They all had been part of the so-called Kohl system. It was only Angela Merkel, a maverick from East Germany and the then-general secretary of the CDU, who dared to make the inevitable break and envisage a way of the dilemma. After consulting a few people she trusted, Merkel decided to publish the aforementioned article without informing her chairman beforehand. In the article she harshly criticized Kohl, the man most responsible for her political ascent since 1990. Yet in 1999 Merkel demanded that the Kohl era end and urged the CDU to move on. Shortly after the article was published, Wolfgang Schauble was also accused of having accepted money and abstained from running for reelection as chairman of the CDU. Merkel succeeded him in April 2000 when she received 96 percent of the votes at the party convention. She was the first woman ever to lead the CDU, the first from East Germany, the first with a degree in the natural sciences, the first who was divorced-but not the first protestant. Her predecessor was a protestant, too.The story highlights some of the most important political qualities of Angela Merkel. She has a strong-some claim an absolute-will to power and is a most adept political strategist. She learns quickly, never repeats a mistake, and is able to adjust easily to new circumstances. On numerous occasions she has shown that she knows when to take risks and how to keep her cool under pressure. And the risks were high at the time. In 1999 Merkel could neither rely on a significant power base in her party, nor was she integrated into the political network of the established West German party elite of the CDU. As a divorced protestant woman with no children (remarried in 1998), she did not at all fit into the party culture of the CDU in the first place. The party is still dominated by catholic male politicians with strong family values. Hence, neither her personal background nor her political past destined Merkel for a leading role in the CDU. On the contrary, in 1990 she seemed the least likely of all to become the first female chancellor of Germany. This might be one reason why she still is regarded as a sort of sphinx or enigma.'ANGELA MERKEL BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONBorn 17 July 1954 in Hamburg, West Germany, Angela Merkel grew up as the oldest daughter of a protestant pastor in East Germany (she has two siblings, a brother and a sister). Three weeks after her birth her mother, Herlind Kasner, followed her father out of love to the GDR, first to Quitzow and in 1957 to the small town of Templin some 90 km north of Berlin. Her father, Horst Kasner, believed the East Germans to be in greater need of pastors than the West Germans. …

The Role of the Modell Deutschland in the Enlarged European Union

Germany’s influence in Europe since the end of the Second World War has strongly depended on its economic performance. The success of the West German socio-economic model of a social market economy, often characterised as Rhineland capitalism, contributed immensely to Germany’s leading position within the emerging integrated European framework. Under the restrictions enforced by the Allied Powers over ‘‘Germany as a whole’’, West Germany’s strong economic performance helped make up for its limited national sovereignty over its internal and external affairs. 1 The Modell Deutschland enabled Germany to exercise what Simon Bulmer calls ‘‘unintentional power’’ (75). This refers to its ability to exercise profound influence in the European Union (EU) through its economic strength and a rigid policy of monetary stability exercised by the Bundesbank. Until the end of the Kohl era in 1998, Germany was able to take a leading role in shaping the direction of the political and economic integration of Europe by combining the ‘‘soft power’’ approach in the EU with the unintentional, but still tolerated ‘‘hard power’’. The resources of German influence in Europe were consequently based on a combination of the ‘‘soft’’ power of Germany’s paymaster role as the biggest contributor to the EU budget, and the ‘‘hard power’’ Bundesbank stability policy. The latter strongly influenced the direction of economic integration in Europe, especially on European Monetary Union (Bulmer, Jeffery and Paterson 41). The combination of ‘‘budgetary power’’ and ‘‘institutionalised monetarism’’ (Paterson 208–9) allowed Germany to exercise ‘‘economic primacy’’ over the rest of Europe (Cole 92). On the basis of its role as

Lexikon der Christlichen Demokratie in Deutschland (review)

Lexikon der Christlichen Demokratie in Deutschland. Edited by Winfried Becker, Gunter Buchstab, Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, and Rudolf Morsey. (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoningh. 2002. Pp. 809.) At first glance, scholars might be skeptical of this work's scholarly value and integrity, as it is an encyclopedia that largely deals with the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) of Germany and its Bavarian partner, the Social Union (CSU), and is published on behalf of the CDU's own Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, with financial support of the German government. Many of the shorter entries stem from the foundation's staff. One finds, however, a useful reference tool that, by and large, is more accurate and fair than flattering and hagiographie. The encyclopedia contains a discussion of the term Christian Democracy, followed by several brief historical essays on the history of politics in Germany, and an extensive timeline.The two largest sections are one of brief biographical sketches of leading German politicians and one of short essays on items relevant to politics. Finally, there are about a hundred pages of tables and lists with statistical data as well as an extended bibliography. all of the authors of the historical essays are renowned German scholars. The CDU is seen as the necessary culmination of a process by which Germany's Democrats overcame their confessional differences in order to provide a truly viable alternative to both political liberalism and socialism. At times, difficult internal debates, such as the vehement disagreements of the late forties between those who sought to create a party modeled on the British Labour Party, such as Jakob Kaiser, and the more conservative wing under Konrad Adenauer, or the revolt against Helmut Kohl in the late 1990's, are left largely unexplained. (Heiner Geisler's attempt to elect a new party chair is characterized either as a fronde or aputscb.) Similarly, Adenauer's immediate rejection of the Stalin-Note of 1952 is not even mentioned. On the whole, however, the authors are objective in their assessments of the three phases of Democratic development: the Adenauer era, the party's re-orientation in the sixties and seventies, and the Kohl era. Interestingly enough, no parallels are drawn between observations that Adenauer's delayed exit from politics may have done his party more harm than good and the final years of the Kohl cabinet. While Adenauer's failure to develop the party's internal decision-making mechanisms is criticized, Kohl's centralization of power in the chancery office is welcomed as a necessary step in refocusing the energies of Democrats after a decade of internal debates. …

Book Review: German Policy-Making and the Eastern Enlargement of the EU during the Kohl Era – Managing the Agenda, by Stephen D. Collins. (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002)

Book Review: <i>German Policy-Making and the Eastern Enlargement of the EU during the Kohl Era – Managing the Agenda</i>, by Stephen D. Collins. (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002)

Partisan Politics, Party Competition and Veto Players: German Economic Policy in the Kohl Era

The article explains economic policy in Germany with a model that takes partisan theory as its starting point, but supplements it with the impact of party competition and veto players. During the 1980s the low internal cohesion of the Christian democrats along with a positive economic performance kept the coalition from introducing coherent reforms. With the loss of the majority in the second chamber, compromises with the opposition were necessary which further diluted reforms with few exceptions. When the government faced worsening economic conditions which put its re-election at risk, it introduced more radical reforms. Because of an opposition majority in the second chamber, however, those reforms ran the risk of failing. In sum, Tsebelis' veto player theory is corroborated with some qualifications, the most important of which is that it must also take into account strategic orientations of actors.

The German Election of 1998 and the Transformation of the German Left

David P. Conradt, Gerald R. Kleinfeld, and Christian Søe, Power Shift in Germany: The 1998 Election and the End of the Kohl Era (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000)Charles Lees, The Red-Green Coalition in Germany: Politics, Personalities, and Power (New York: Manchester University Press, 2001)

Power in Helmut Kohl's Republic: The Two Faces of German Democracy

Even as the tenth anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall was being celebrated, a scandal was beginning that seems destined to bring the Kohl era, however it is defined, to a close. My purpose in this article is to propose a framework for thinking about the broader political meaning and possible impact of the CDU’s difficulties. In this instance as in many others, I will argue, events in the Federal Republic are best understood if approached simultaneously from two angles. On the one hand, Germany remains bound to, if not necessarily by, its multiple experiences of dictatorship. Viewed in this context, events acquire meaning and significance as part of an ongoing process of democratization, or of an effort to “master” a past to some degree enduringly unmasterable. On the other hand, a half-century after its creation, the Federal Republic is an established democracy with a remarkable record of success and a predictable roster of problems. From this perspective, developments in Germany illustrate dilemmas and dysfunctions common across the advanced industrial democracies.

The 1998 German Federal Election

The federal election held in Germany on 27 September 1998 marked the end of the Kohl era. It was one of the closest-fought postwar elections, which made the result difficult to predict and the election evening extremely exciting. In the event the ruling Christian Democrats recorded their worst result since 1949, a sitting federal chancellor, Helmut Kohl, was voted out of office for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic and the main opposition party, Germany's Social Democrats, became the largest party in parliament for only the second time since the war.

The checks and balances of party federalism: German federal government in a divided legislature

Abstract In this study, we assess the potential for policy change of the German government of Helmut Kohl after unification combining party positions with formal bicameral settings in a spatial model of legislative action. We distinguish between two policy areas and two types of legislation, mandatory and non–mandatory legislation imposing either a symmetric or asymmetric power distribution between both German chambers. In order to identify German legislators’ party positions in different policy areas, we use data from ECPR Party Manifesto research covering the period from German unification in 1990 to the end of the government of Helmut Kohl in 1998. We find that the federal government of Helmut Kohl had a policy leadership position until April 1991 with no procedural differences, but the gridlock danger for governmental proposals was higher on the societal than the economic dimension. Afterwards, the government's potential for policy change was considerably determined by the type of legislation, independently from the policy dimension. At the end of the Kohl era, the governmental policy leadership position was limited to policies that left even the opposition majority of German states better off. The procedural settings mattered greatly on the economic dimension, and the danger of gridlock on societal policy was smaller only for non–mandatory legislation.

Distribution policy in the kohl era. The impact of neo‐liberalism on wealth and poverty in Germany

(1999). Distribution policy in the kohl era. The impact of neo‐liberalism on wealth and poverty in Germany. Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 39-55.

Opposition in the Kohl era: The SPD and the left

This article examines the parliamentary role of the opposition parties in the Kohl era. In the Bundestag, from 1983 on, the SPD and the Greens ‐ joined by the PDS after 1990 ‐challenged, with little expectation of success, those domestic and foreign policies of the government with which they disagreed. When the SPD and its coalition partners in the Lander gained control of the Bundesrat in the 1990s, they were able to delay or block legislation affecting the Lander. Yet no general stalemate ensued because the Kohl governing coalition and the SPD, not far apart ideologically, reached inter‐party accords on numerous bills.