West German Democracy Research Articles

Democratic Illusions: The Protestant Campaign for Conscientious Objection in the Early Federal Republic of Germany

AbstractDuring the early-Cold-War controversy over West German rearmament, the Protestant Church emerged as a center of activism for the right of conscientious objection to military service, departing from decades of precedent. This article uses the dramatic about-face of the Protestant Church to throw new light on how West Germans reimagined democratic politics after Nazism. Building on recent challenges to paradigms of postwar liberalization, it argues that illusory narratives of the Nazi past played a key role in West Germany's transition to democracy. Protestant activists for the right of conscientious objection drew on an imagined legacy of anti-Nazi resistance to reframe the idea of “conscience,” long associated with patriotic loyalties, as a uniquely Protestant contribution to democratic culture. In doing so, they came to identify their church as a pillar of West German democracy, even as they ensconced tendentious accounts of the Nazi past in postwar law and politics.

Paradoxes of democratization: social-liberal reformism, education and citizenship in West Germany after 1968

ABSTRACT Historians largely agree that the social-liberal reforms in the Federal Republic of Germany constituted a major contribution to transforming the country into a more participatory democracy around 1970. Responding to the demands of protesting youth, so this narrative goes, the coalition between the Social Democratic Party and the Free Democratic Party engaged in a flurry of reforms all aimed at equalizing access to an active and engaged democratic citizenship. By taking a closer look at how these social-liberal reformers addressed young people through school reforms, this article instead emphasizes the paradoxical legacy of these reforms, which has thus far been neglected in the historiography. This article thus probes the connection among the federal, regional and local initiatives to use schools to engage young people in the democratic process, with a particular focus on the markedly different reforms in the West German state of North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) and in West Berlin. Through these reforms, policymakers and experts not only attempted to offer youth more opportunities for active participation, but also to control carefully how they made use of their citizenship. Moreover, these educational reforms exposed the fissures inherent in a class-based and multi-ethnic West German democracy. Although social-liberal reformers intended to equalize access to democratic citizenship, they nonetheless also reified cultural and political hierarchies between the middle and lower classes, as well as between ethnic Germans and immigrant children. Ultimately, these endeavours shaped West German democracy largely through their unintended consequences. While in NRW, these reforms contributed to the rise of a liberal-conservative opposition, in West Berlin, these policies gave rise to a Left-alternative movement that each defined democratic citizenship in their own ways.

Law in West German Democracy: Seventy Years of History as Seen through German Courts. By Hugh Ridley. Studies in Central European Histories. Edited by David M. Luebke and Celia Applegate. Boston: Brill, 2019. Pp. xiv+328. $126.00 (cloth or e-book).

<i>Law in West German Democracy: Seventy Years of History as Seen through German Courts</i>. By Hugh Ridley. Studies in Central European Histories. Edited by David M. Luebke and Celia Applegate. Boston: Brill, 2019. Pp. xiv+328. $126.00 (cloth or e-book).

На пути развития демократии: ФРГ и «Европа граждан»

At a first glance, the article is treating a private issue, namely that of the feasibility of the concept of a “Europe of citizens” in the Federal Republic of Germany. However, while discussing it we have to analyze at least three fundamental issues. 1). What is the West German democracy? 2). How democracy and Western/European integration are interlinked? 3). To what extent the concept of a “Europe of citizens” is able to lead both integration and democracy from the currently difficult situation in which are these two main components of the contemporary Western civilization?

Structuring German postwar ideologies: review of A. Dirk Moses, German intellectuals and the Nazi past

It is not only because much of the ideological landscape of postwar West Germany remains to borrow one historian's metaphor uncharted intellectual territory that German Intellectuals and the Nazi Past comes as such a key contribution to the historiography of twentieth-century thought. To be sure, while certain canonized figures, such as Jurgen Habermas, Gunter Grass, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Karl Jaspers, and even the psychoanalysts Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich have received adequate attention in Anglophone scholarship, we have precious few studies in English on many of the thinkers examined here by Moses. These are the lesser-known postwar historians, philosophers, sociologists, political scientists, and educationalists (p. 10) who served on government advisory committees, became ministers of culture and education, or in other ways decisively shaped the political discourse of the Federal Republic. For that reason alone Moses was guaranteed to cover new ground. But it is ultimately the innovative way in which he has mapped his subject matter that makes this work stand out, not only as an indispensable guide to early debates about Nazism and West German democracy, but more generally as a distinctively original model for writing about intellectuals and their ideas. This book is not a conventional intellectual history, we are told in the introduction (p. 10). Part of what makes that statement true is the attention Moses pays to fields that is all too often terra incognita for intellectual historians namely, structural anthropology and the voluminous but neglected literature on German social psychology. His case for integrating research on family life, transgenerational transmission, and the like into a history of intellectuals rests on the deceptively profound insight that political ideas and ideologies, arguably nowhere more so than in postwar Germany, often possess existential significance for their articulators. Drawing on Erving Goffman's theories of social drama, Moses presents the political

The Bonn Republic: West German Democracy, 1945-1990

Prologue: the impact of defeat. The legacy of the occupation, 1945-9 the embryonic party system economic crisis, 1947-8 the Bonn Republic is founded the 1950s - economic success and social consolidation West Germany achieves sovereignty Adenauer's democracy and the beginnings of change, 1955-1963 growing pains - Erhard, Kiesinger and Brandt, 1963-69 Brandt and the era of reform, 1969-1974 affluence and compromise - Schmidt as chancellor Helmut Kohl and the unification of Germany.

Restoration and Renewal? West Germany since 1945

A. J. Nicholls, The Bonn Republic: West German Democracy, 1945–1990 (London: Longman, 1997), 341 pp. ISBN 0–582–49230–0 PPR; 0582–4931–9 CSD. Hb £44. Pb £14.99.Gerhard A. Ritter, Über Deutschland: Die Bundesrepublik in der deutschen Geschichte (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 1998), 303 pp., DM 39 80, ISBN 3–406–44039–8.Rebecca L. Boehling, A Question of Priorities: Democratic Reforms and Economic Recovery in Postwar Germany, Monographs in German History 2 (Providence RI and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1996). 301 pp., IBSN 1–571–81035–8.Anne Sa'adah, Germany's Second Chance: Trust, Justice, and Democraticization (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). 352 pp., £24.95, ISBN 0–674–35111–8.Volker Hentschel, Ludwig Erhard, die ‘Soziale Marktwirtschaft’ und das Wirtschaftswunder: Histo-risches Lehrstück oder Mythos. (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1998), 95 pp., IBSN 3–416–02761–2.Robert G. Moeller, ed., West Germany under Construction: Politics, Society, and Culture in the Adenauer Era (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997). 462 pp., IBSN 0–472–09648–6 (hb), 0–472–06648–X (pb.). Peter James, ed., Modern Germany (London &amp; New York: Routledge, 1998), 220 pp., IBSN 0–415–15034–5.For those who for whatever reason acquire an interest, the study of Germany since 1945 has to begin somewhere. It is hard to conceive of a more elementary introduction than that edited by Peter James and comprising the contributions of colleagues in the Department of German at the University of Northumbria plus his own. Although ‘aimed at all those who have an interest in life and society in modern Germany’, it is basically an introductory text for first-year students of German Studies. According to the editor of the slim volume, ‘Clearly the text is not intended to be exhaustive’; although one of the contributions, according to the blurb, claims to provide an ‘in-depth treatment of Germany's coming to terms with its past’ - within sixteen pages!

The Bonn republic: West German democracy, 1945-1990

The Bonn republic: West German democracy, 1945-1990

A United Germany Preparing for the 1994 Elections

The Unification of Germany — not as a Confederation as most DDR intellectuals and many West German leftists and Greenish citizens had hoped for but by means of the Anschluss of the GDR — was a daring venture: would the East Germans accept the new national state? The Anschluss by the ‘unconditional surrender’ of the East Germans entailed enormous costs. Destabilization of West German democracy and non-acceptance of democracy by the East Germans was always a latent danger.

Politics of Resentment: Right-Wing Radicalism in West Germany

During the past several years, a number of West European countries have expenenced a serious challenge from right-wing populist parties. The French National Front, the Vlaams Blok in Belgium, the Swiss Vigilants, Action National, and the Autopartei, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), and the various progressive parties in Scandinavia are among the most prominent examples of a rising tide of often radical right-wing populism which has raised concern among politicians and political commentators alike.' Referring to themselves as national-conservative or right-conservative parties they pursue a range of similar objectives: a tightening of strict law and order to combat rising crime rates associated with drugs; a return to traditional moral values in the face of a growing number of abortions and the AIDS threat; and, most important of all, the protection of national and cultural identity allegedly threatened by third world immigrants, foreign workers, and refugees. The latest addition to the list of right-wing parties has been the West German Republikaner. Founded in 1983 by Franz Sch6nhuber and disgruntled former members of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), the Republikaner became the focus of attention in the wake of the 1989 elections in West Berlin, where they came literally out of nowhere to gain more than 90,000 votes (7.5 percent of the vote) and eleven seats in the city parliament. Despite attempts by political observers to play down the extent of support for the radical right, the Republikaner repeated their earlier local success on the federal level in the European elections in June 1989: capturing 7.1 percent of the popular vote, they were the main cause for the painful losses of the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and particularly their Bavarian sister party, the CSU. In addition, the German People's Party (DVU), an extremist neo-Nazi party, received 1.6 percent of the vote, increasing the total vote for the far right to 9 percent. Successes in subsequent local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Wiirttemberg in the fall and a respectable 3.3 percent in the state elections in the Saarland in the spring of 1990 against a highly popular minister president, Oskar Lafontaine (Social Democratic Party, SPD), who embarked on a populist course of his own, were indications that the Republikaner might stand a chance to overcome the five percent hurdle in the federal elections at the end of the year. The fact that a right-wing party could rise almost over night to command national and international attention points to serious deficits in West German democracy. After the establishment of the left-libertarian Greens in the early 1980s the gains of radical parties on both sides of the political spectrum largely at the expense of the established catch-all parties expose above all the declining ability of the large parties to bind their respective electorates. As in other West European countries, the number of floating voters has increased considerably during the last decade, from 24 percent in 1980 to more than a third in 1989.2

Cohorts, Regimes, and the Legitimation of Democracy: West Germany Since 1945

Though researchers have begun to prefer cohort and period-cohort accounts of generational differences to life-cycle accounts, clear and unambiguous empirical support for either has been rare. Mannheim's theory of generations suggests that this failure may result from seeking cohort or period-cohort effects where the historical events that generate them do not have sufficient impact. Therefore, the aftermath of a revolutionary event is investigated-Nazism in Germany. Cohort and period-cohort effects without life-cycle effects were found in opinions on democracy and Nazism in West Germany in the decades following World War II. The Nazi generation lagged initially in embracing the new West German democracy, but its views subsequently converged with those of other cohorts. Transitions to democracy in several other countries are discussed briefly.

Does West German democracy have an ‘efficient secret'?

Does West German democracy have an ‘efficient secret'?

West German Democracy: Not Weimar But Not Ideal

West German Democracy: Not Weimar But Not Ideal

Vers une nouvelle culture politique en RFA ?

Is the alternative movement and the Bürgerinitiativen leading to the development of a new political culture in the Federal Republic ? Do the “green reds” represent a new chance for West German democracy by challenging how it today functions ?