Beyond the Swastika

Peter O'Brien

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415138512
• eBook ISBN: 9781134773251
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

O'Brien argues convincingly that fears of a resurgent German nationalism are exaggerated. He highlights the `technocratic liberalism' of the elite which, paradoxically, hinders full rights of political participation for minorities.

1
GERMANY BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND LIBERALISM

We seek not a German Europe, rather a European Germany.

(Helmut Kohl)

INTRODUCTION

The Chancellor’s paraphrase of Thomas Mann’s statement tellingly reveals the nagging question surrounding united Germany. The renunciation of a ‘German Europe’ is plainly designed to allay ubiquitous fears of resurgent German nationalism—of a Germany now proud, strong, and bossy enough to dominate Europe again. The pledge to a ‘European Germany,’ by contrast, is meant as a warranty of unswerving German liberalism—of a democratic, dependable, conciliatory Germany dedicated to European integration. No one, least the Germans, doubts that united Germany will lead Europe in the future. But Angst abounds over whether Germany will lead the Continent backwards to the Europe of yesteryear, ravished by destructive nationalism, or forwards to a harmonious Europe of tomorrow which finally realizes the best of its lofty liberal tradition.

This grave concern over the tension between nationalist and liberal trends is hardly unique to the newly united Germany. Since the Second World War, it has been common to read all of modern German political history as a profound and protracted struggle between the opposing forces of German nationalism and Western liberalism. The years before 1945 are typically depicted as a victory for the former and its nasty bedfellows. Despite the liberal heritage of the Aufklärung as well as sporadic flirtations with the ideas and institutions of Western liberalism, in Germany authority ultimately triumphed over liberty, obscurantism over enlightenment, utopianism over pragmatism, militarism over diplomacy, barbarity over humanity. Whether in the authoritarian Second Empire, troubled Weimar Republic, or murderous Third Reich, German nationalism always wound up smothering the faint breaths of liberalism in the land.

It was National Socialism, paradoxically, which discredited German nationalism. Defeat in and division after the war made the unity of nation and state a practical impossibility. On a deeper ethical level, the base deeds of the Nazis laid bare the moral depravity inherent in nationalist thinking. At the same time, the ignominy borne by the German people as a result of the Holocaust left them disenchanted with their own nation. In this vein Karl Jaspers wrote after the war:

The history of the German nation-state is at an end. What we as a great nation can give ourselves and the world is insight into the situation of the world today: that nationalism today is the ruin of Europe and all other continents. While nationalism is today the paramount destructive force on earth, we can begin to grasp its roots and remove it.¹

Thus the very liberalism the Germans so perilously eschewed before the war became their sole salvation after it. Only liberalism’s respect for the dignity of the individual, it was believed, could prevent a revival of prejudice and persecution. Only its democratic political institutions could stave off the return to dictatorship. Only its penchant for rationality, compromise, and civility could insure against the hedonistic, reckless, and offensive policies which had ignited two world wars in three decades. And we have grown accustomed to understanding the history of the Federal Republic, with its anchored civil liberties, stable democracy, and amicable foreign policy, as a largely successful transformation of an entire polity and people from a nationalist to liberal orientation. Following the war, liberalism took root and blossomed in West Germany, leaving nationalism to wither in its shadow.

Still, the bitter memory of Weimar refuses to fade altogether. Then, liberal democracy succumbed to the seductive allure of nationalism. Consequently, a pall of anxiety has hung over the Federal Republic since its inception. Many Germans as well as non-Germans feel compelled to keep vigilant watch for the slightest traces of nationalist revival. In Germany, events which would appear trivial or tangential in most liberal democracies (marginal support for a xenophobic party or personality, construction of a national museum, destruction of a synagogue) can and do trigger national debates over the security and sincerity of liberal democracy in the land. German nationalism, it is feared, lies dormant, waiting to erupt and bury the liberal advancements made since the war.

It should come as no surprise, then, that concern over resurgent German nationalism has swelled in the wake of Unification. East and west Germans are again united in one state. Saddled with the burdensome economic, political, social, and cultural tasks of welding two societies, the Germans often appear self-absorbed, more disposed perhaps to neglect or ignore commitments and responsibilities to neighboring states. Furthermore, Unification, coupled with the collapse of the Soviet empire, has made Germany the strongest power in Europe, surely able, if not (yet) willing, to bully its neighbors. We witness rising sympathy in the land for the idea that the new Germany should first and foremost concern itself with the welfare of Germans and German national interests. If that were not enough cause foralarm, neo-Nazi parties and gangs have re-entered the scene. In cities like Rostock, Hoyerswerda, and Solingen, non-German minorities must daily fear for their physical safety. At times, citizens and officials seem indifferent to this cruelty in ways reminiscent if not identical to the 1930s. No level-headed observer seriously thinks Nazism or anything like it could return to menace Germany and Europe.² Yet, many cannot help but wonder if the scales, long tipped in favor of liberalism, may not be tipping back toward nationalism.³ That troubling ‘German Question’ will not go away.

This book both explores and challenges this customary reading of postwar German politics. Borrowing a time-honored strategy from German philosophy, I set out to turn the accepted interpretation on its head. I contend that we need not so anxiously fear resurgent German nationalism because entrenched German liberalism holds it in check. On the contrary, we ought to be wary of liberalism itself. A deceptive normative bias inheres in the perceived tension between nationalism and liberalism in Germany. We automatically value all signs of liberal practices and principles, especially when they come at the expense of nationalist ones, as ethical advancements. I want to cast doubt on the presumed innocence of German liberalism.

Moreover, I want to justify this charge in that most sensitive of German political issues: minority affairs. In the postwar era, minority relations chiefly involve the issue of migration. Here it has become the norm to downplay the success of liberalism, spotlighting and condemning anti-migrant legislation as evidence of enduring German nationalism.⁴ Meanwhile, the tiniest steps toward a more open and liberal approach (easier visa requirements, social assistance for migrants) have been heralded as salutary, if admittedly inadequate.⁵ I claim that these steps have been larger and more harmful than conventionally assumed. Put differently, this book suggests that the constant search, however noble or necessary, for the wickedness of the covert neo-Nazi has blinded us to the pernicious underside of the reformed German liberal.

LIBERALISM AND NATIONALISM DEFINED

It makes sense at this point to clarify how I define and use the concepts of liberalism and nationalism. Both have specific meanings in the German context which differ from more general definitions of the terms common elsewhere. In the broadest sense, liberalism refers to the worldview, predominant in the West, which understands itself as the legitimate offspring and heir of the European Enlightenment.Liberalism rests on three constitutive beliefs: in the freedom of all humans to determine their own destiny; in human reason as the proper arbiter of profane affairs; and in progress or self-improvement. Several institutions have since the Enlightenment become associated with liberal societies. These include among others: democratically and freely elected governments limited, however, by the guarantee of an array of civil liberties for citizens; free markets subject, however, to governmental regulation designed to prevent or lighten certain disagreeable human exigencies; legal systems, national and international, based on the rational adjudication of human disputes; and free public education open to all citizens some time during their lifetime. Finally, liberalism sustains itself through the conviction of its own earthly superiority, that is, through the belief that free, rational agents will prefer liberalism to its competitors.

In Germany, liberalism has a further meaning flavored by the land’s history. Liberalism is understood as the political ideology which failed to predominate in Germany from the time of the Enlightenment until the end of the Second World War. Consequently, present-day liberalism in Germany also means the conspicuous absence of a host of social, political, and personal traits common to prewar Germany. These I discuss at length in Chapter 2, where I treat the development of liberalism in West Germany after the war. For now, suffice it to say that the notion of change, indeed radical change or transformation, represents a critical dimension of the meaning of liberalism in Germany. Liberalism today is very much what Germany was not yesterday.

Moreover, what Germany was is well captured by the concept ‘nationalism.’ Although Fritz Stern’s popular epithet ‘illiberalism’⁶ is probably the most precise label (from a liberal perspective) for the political culture of prewar Germany, it is nevertheless true that German nationalism is generally considered to be the single greatest source of illiberalism in Germany. As a result, German nationalism has taken on a meaning which pits it against liberalism. Nationalism in Germany (and in this book) therefore has nothing to do with, say, the theory of ‘liberal nationalism’ espoused by many Middle Easterners who wish to encourage their country to move or remain in a liberal direction. Nor has it anything in common with pride in one’s country, as the adjective ‘nationalistic’ conveys in, say, the USA or France.

It is precisely for this reason that Germany’s foremost liberal, Jürgen Habermas, devised the clever term ‘Verfassungs-patriotismus’ to connote the feeling of pride in the government of the Federal Republic of Germany. Habermas offered the term, literally ‘constitution patriotism,’ to those who feel pride in and loyalty to not the German nation or people, but rather the government and society constituted by and since the Basic

Law of 1949. In Germany, nationalism has never meant solely pride in one’s government. It has meant pride in and support for the German nation (Volk). Moreover, it is because this nation has never been unified under one government that the term has not come to be synonymous, as in France or the USA, with a political entity. For the same reason, nationalism in Germany is at heart racism. Without a single political source of identity, ‘Germans’ have been defined not only as a people who share a common language and culture (the notion behind the popular German term Kulturnation ) but also common blood or lineage (in German, Abstammung ). In fact, the Basic Law defines das Volk in accordance with the legal concept of jus sanguinis (citizenship by blood lineage), which includes as members of the nation millions of ethnic Germans who live outside the borders of the Federal Republic.

One other crucial dimension of nationalism and liberalism in Germany deserves note. The German nation is also that group of people who collectively and historically bears responsibility for the Holocaust. Moreover, the experience of the Holocaust profoundly shapes the understanding of nationalism and liberalism. For the Germans’ reckless embrace of nationalism at the expense of liberalism, it is believed, ultimately culminated in the Holocaust. Relatedly, the triumph of liberalism today is understood as the greatest safeguard against repeating the Holocaust. Resurgent nationalism causes such great alarm, then, because it is seen (and remembered) as the enemy of liberalism and the harbinger of one form of illiberalism or the other.

The pivotal position of the Holocaust in contemporary German identity makes the issue of migration particularly sensitive. Germany, of course, is no longer home to a large Jewish community. Nevertheless, like other industrial nations in Europe, it has since the 1960s attracted a sizable and seemingly permanent migrant population. By last count, resident aliens comprised 8.5 per cent of Germany’s population, 6.3 per cent of France’s, and 4.3 per cent of Britain’s.⁷ Moreover, Muslim migrants number well over 2 million in Germany, giving the land once again a significant non-Christian minority. How Germany treats its nearly 7 million non-Germans naturally is seen as a test of how well Germans have learned the lessons of the Holocaust.

As already intimated, by current popular per...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• 1 GERMANY BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND LIBERALISM
• 2 ESCAPING THE PAST
• 3 LIBERALIZING AUSLÄNDERPOLITIK 1969–1982
• 4 CONSERVATIVE LIBERALISM 1982–1990
• 5 UNITED GERMANY: BUNDESREPUBLIK OR DEUTSCHLAND?
• BIBLIOGRAPHY