German Politics and Society

Identity and memory have been contentious topics in many societies,

particularly for those undergoing major change. Nowhere is

this more the case than in the current Germany, where history and

its interpretation matter more than ever precisely because many

ingredients of contemporary German politics and society are in flux.

This open issue of German Politics and Society features four articles

that address some of the major topics that are at the core of Germany’s

debates concerning identity and memory.

The collapse of communism did not follow any single path in east

central Europe. In Hungary and Poland, the transition was marked

by early negotiations between opposition elites and the ruling Communist

party. In East Germany and Czechoslovakia, the regimes fell

victim to a sudden and quick implosion. In Romania and Bulgaria,

internal coups replaced the ruling communist elite with other members

of the nomenklatura. The transitions away from communist rule

diverged from each other in timing, manner, and degree.

On 5 May 1996 the plebiscite to reunite the city-state of Berlin with its

surrounding Brandenburg province was sharply defeated. What went

wrong? Why was this move that seemed so natural to so many rejected?

The study of historical memory in its various forms is a burgeoning

area of inquiry among historians. The debate over public, official,

government-supported memory and private individual memories

reveals a complex dynamic among myth, memory, and history,

which as Michel Foucault and others have argued, is simply the dominant

form of memory in a society at a given time.1 Some of the most

revealing instances of the intersection between public and private

memory are commemorations and memorial sites where personal

memories are created and sustained within the context of the official

representation of the event and those involved. The constant need to

locate memories within a larger social frame of reference ensures

that supporters of different memories of the same event will directly

and forcefully link images from the present with their memories of

the past, no matter how incongruous these images may appear.

There has been much debate recently on the role of cognition in

determining national interest and thus indirectly foreign policy. The

argument has been made by many poststructuralists that interestbased

arguments are static in that they do not allow for change in

the determination of national interest. These arguments allegedly fail

to take into account the powerful role of social norms and culture in

influencing what “states make of anarchy.”

Robert C. Holub

The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche edited by Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M. Higgins

Peter Jelavich

The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape by Brian Ladd

Andrea Wuerth

A German Women’s Movement: Class and Gender in Hanover, 1880-1933 by Nancy R. Reagin

Anton Pelinka

Nazism and the Working Class in Austria: Industrial Unrest and Political Dissent in the “National Community” by Timothy Kirk

Ben Meredith

Mitteleuropa and German Politics 1848 to the Present by Jörg Brechtefeld

Thomas Welskopp

Society, Culture, and the State in Germany 1870–1930 edited by Geoff Eley