The Oxford Handbook of German Politics 9780198817307, 0198817304

Table of contents :
Cover
The Oxford Handbook of German Politics
Copyright
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables
List of Contributors
Introduction
PART I: LEADING SCHOLARS AND THEIR INTERPRETATIONS OF GERMAN HISTORY FROM WORLD WAR II TO THE PRESENT
1. Encounters with Modernity: The German Search for Alternatives in the Twentieth Century
2. From Post-​National Democracy to Post-​Classical Nation-​State
3. Emotional Styles in Post-​War German Politics
4. The Development of Germany After 1945
PART II: GERMANY DURING THE COLD WAR ERA
5. Atlantic Integration and ‘Ever Closer Union’: West Germany, the US, and European Unity during the Cold War
6. Germany and the Soviet Union during the Cold War Era
7. The Governmental System and Political History of the GDR
8. The End of the Cold War and the Process of German Unification
PART III: GERMANY SINCE 1990
9. The Executive: The German Government and Civil Service
10. The German Bundestag: Core Institution in a Parliamentary Democracy
11. The Federal System and the Länder
12. The German Legal System and Courts
13. The ‘Old Five’: The Bonn Parties in the Berlin Republic
14. Germany’s Political Parties—​the Newcomers
Political Economy and Policy-​Making
15. The German Economic Model: From Germany’s Social Market Economy to Neo-​liberalism?
16. Germany’s Trading System and Export-​Driven Economy
17. Germany’s Banking and Financial System
18. The German Welfare State
19. The Immigration System and the Rule of Law
20. The Merkel Era: Environmental Politics and the ‘Energiewende’ (Energy Transition)
Culture and Society
21. Demographics and Generational Transition and Politics
22. Religion and the Churches
23. Jewish Life and Politics in Post-​War Germany
24. Identity and Diversity in Post-​Unification Germany
25. German Literature, Theatre, and Film since 1990
26. German Art After 1990
PART IV: GERMANY IN GLOBAL AFFAIRS
27. German Foreign Policy: Roots, Reasonings, and Repercussions
28. Franco-​German Relations and the European Integration Process since 1990
29. Germany and EU Foreign Policy
30. Germany in the EU: An Assertive Status Quo Power?
Germany and the World Beyond Europe
31. German Multilateralism After the Cold War
32. Germany and NATO
33. German-​American Relations from 1945 to the Present
34. Three Chancellors and Russia: German-​Russian Relations since 1990
35. A Quarter Century of German Relations with the Indo-​Pacific
PART V: LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD
36. Angela Merkel in Power: How Influential Was the Merkel Era?
37. Leaders in Partnership: Germany in the Biden Era
Index

Citation preview

T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f

GERMAN P OL I T IC S

The Oxford Handbook of

GERMAN POLITICS Edited by

KLAUS LARRES, HOLGER MOROFF, and RUTH WITTLINGER

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2022 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2022 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2022935145 ISBN 978–​0–​19–​881730–​7 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198817307.001.0001 Printed and bound in the UK by TJ Books Limited Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

In Memory of Prof. Ruth Wittlinger

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables  List of Contributors  Introduction  Klaus Larres, Holger Moroff, and Ruth Wittlinger

xi xiii 1

PA RT I :   L E A DI N G S C HOL A R S A N D T H E I R I N T E R P R E TAT ION S OF G E R M A N H I S TORY F ROM WOR L D WA R I I TO T H E P R E SE N T 1. Encounters with Modernity: The German Search for Alternatives in the Twentieth Century  Konrad H. Jarausch

7

2. From Post-​National Democracy to Post-​Classical Nation-​State  Heinrich August Winkler

24

3. Emotional Styles in Post-​War German Politics  Ute Frevert

33

4. The Development of Germany After 1945  Klaus von Beyme

45

PA RT I I :   G E R M A N Y DU R I N G T H E C OL D WA R E R A 5. Atlantic Integration and ‘Ever Closer Union’: West Germany, the US, and European Unity during the Cold War  Klaus Larres 6. Germany and the Soviet Union during the Cold War Era  Peter Ruggenthaler

59 82

viii   Table of Contents

7. The Governmental System and Political History of the GDR  Gert-​Joachim Glaessner

103

8. The End of the Cold War and the Process of German Unification  Larissa R. Stiglich

119

PA RT I I I :   G E R M A N Y SI N C E 1 9 90 P OL I T IC A L I N ST I T U T ION S A N D C ON ST I T U T IONA L DE SIG N 9. The Executive: The German Government and Civil Service  Ray Hebestreit and Karl-​Rudolf Korte

139

10. The German Bundestag: Core Institution in a Parliamentary Democracy  Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer and Sven T. Siefken

161

11. The Federal System and the Länder  Arthur Benz

179

12. The German Legal System and Courts  Russell A. Miller

196

13. The ‘Old Five’: The Bonn Parties in the Berlin Republic  David F. Patton

216

14. Germany’s Political Parties—​the Newcomers  Hartwig Pautz

234

P OL I T IC A L E C ON OM Y A N D P OL IC Y- M ​ AKING 15. The German Economic Model: From Germany’s Social Market Economy to Neo-​liberalism?  Christian Schweiger

251

16. Germany’s Trading System and Export-​Driven Economy  Andreas Busch

265

17. Germany’s Banking and Financial System  Janine Jacob

285

Table of Contents    ix

18. The German Welfare State  Peter Starke

304

19. The Immigration System and the Rule of Law  Dietrich Thränhardt

323

20. The Merkel Era: Environmental Politics and the ‘Energiewende’ (Energy Transition)  Carl Lankowski

339

C U LT U R E A N D S O C I E T Y 21. Demographics and Generational Transition and Politics  Reinhold Sackmann

367

22. Religion and the Churches  Detlef Pollack and Olaf Müller

381

23. Jewish Life and Politics in Post-​War Germany  Joseph Cronin

396

24. Identity and Diversity in Post-​Unification Germany  Priscilla Layne

416

25. German Literature, Theatre, and Film since 1990  Michael Braun

432

26. German Art After 1990  Marion Deshmukh

450

PA RT I V:   G E R M A N Y I N G L OBA L A F FA I R S G E R M A N Y A N D E U ROP E 27. German Foreign Policy: Roots, Reasonings, and Repercussions  Holger Moroff 28. Franco-​German Relations and the European Integration Process since 1990  Carine Germond

469

491

x   Table of Contents

29. Germany and EU Foreign Policy  Sebastian Harnisch

509

30. Germany in the EU: An Assertive Status Quo Power?  Patricia Daehnhardt

529

G E R M A N Y A N D T H E WOR L D B E YON D E U ROP E 31. German Multilateralism After the Cold War  James Sperling

561

32. Germany and NATO  Markus Kaim

589

33. German-​American Relations from 1945 to the Present  Klaus Schwabe

606

34. Three Chancellors and Russia: German-​Russian Relations since 1990  626 Stephen F. Szabo 35. A Quarter Century of German Relations with the Indo-​Pacific  Volker Stanzel

639

PA RT V:   L O OK I N G BAC K WA R D A N D F ORWA R D 36. Angela Merkel in Power: How Influential Was the Merkel Era?  Stefan Kornelius

659

37. Leaders in Partnership: Germany in the Biden Era  Jackson Janes

672

Index

687

List of Figures and Tables

Figures Figure 9.1 Basic structure of a Federal Ministry

156

Figure 10.1 Bills in the Bundestag 1949–​2021 (per electoral period)

170

Figure 10.2 Small interpellations in the Bundestag 1949–​2021 (per electoral period) 172 Figure 10.3 The iceberg model of parliamentary control by the Bundestag 174 Figure 11.1 Cooperative federalism and intergovernmental relations

189

Figure 16.1 Current account in per cent of GDP, 1990–​2016

276

Figure 17.1 Major income items for all German banking groups as percentage of operating income

294

Figure 18.1 Social spending as a percentage of GDP, 2019 or latest, 32 OECD countries 306 Figure 18.2 Total social (employer +​employee) contributions as a percentage of the gross wage, 1970–​2020

309

Figure 18.3 Annual harmonized unemployment rates, 1990–​2017

310

Figure 19.1 Aussiedler immigration since 1950 by country of origin

329

Figure 29.1 EU foreign policy process: changing patterns of EU-​member state interaction 511 Figure 29.2 Eurobarometer—data on Germans’ support for the CFSP relative to the EU average

516

Tables Table 4.1

Dominant actors and aims in the transformation of East Germany

49

Table 4.2

Comparison of the years 2000 and 2016 (Finanzbericht, 2016, pp. 402ff)

53

Table 9.1

Chancellors of the Federal Government of Germany since 1949

141

xii    List of Figures and Tables Table 9.2

Ministries and Ministers in the Scholz government (as of January 2022)

143

Table 9.3

Coalitions since 1949

147

Table 11.1

Division of powers between federal and Länder level under the German Basic Law

185

Table 17.1

Number of German reporting credit institutions

287

Table 17.2

Savings deposits market shares by bank category

289

Table 17.3

German banks’ foreign exposure

295

Table 18.1

Composition of public social spending, spending on different branches in per cent of GDP and in per cent of total social spending (in brackets), 2017

306

Table 18.2 Net replacement rates (net benefits as a percentage of an average production worker’s net wage), selected benefits, 2010 (sickness and pensions) and 2019 or latest (unemployment)

307

Table 19.1

334

‘Migration background’ statistics in 2019

Table 19.2 People with migration background in labour market sectors (per cent, 2019) Table 21.1

Total fertility rate, life expectancy at birth, net migration balance, population growth, and median age in Germany and the UK (1990–​2019)

Table 22.1 Adherents of churches/​religious communities in Germany

336

369 388

Table 22.2 Churchliness and religiosity in West and East Germany, 1990–​2017/​18 389 Table 31.1

Multilateral aid, 1990–​2019

565

Table 31.2

Expenditures on international public health, including Covid

567

Table 31.3

Institutional and regional aid contributions

570

Table 31.4 Personnel contributions to OSCE missions and UN peace-​keeping operations (2012–​20)

577

Table 31.5

578

NATO operations: participation and risk, 1996–​2014

Table 31.6 NATO operations, 2015–​18

579

Table 31.7

580

NATO exercises, 2015

List of Contributors

BENZ, Arthur—​is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Politics and German Government at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. His publications on federalism and multi-​ level governance include Policy Change and Innovation in Multilevel Governance (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021); Föderale Demokratie (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2020) and Constitutional Change in Multilevel Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). BEYME, Klaus von (1934-2021)—was Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Heidelberg. He received many awards and held many Chairs and visiting professorships, including at Tübingen, Frankfurt, Paris, Stanford, the European University Institute in Florence, Melbourne, Moscow. His recent publications include Rightwing Populism: An Element of Neodemocracy (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2019); Berlin. Von der Hauptstadtsuche zur Hauptstadtfindung (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2019); Migrationspolitik. Über Erfolge und Misserfolge (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2020). BRAUN, Michael—​is Professor of German Literature at the University of Cologne, and serves as head of the literary section at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin. His publications include Wem gehört die Geschichte? Erinnerungskultur in Literatur und Film (Müüenster and Freiburg, Aschendorff Verlag, 2013); Probebohrungen im Himmel. Zum religiösen Trend in der Gegenwartsliteratur (Freiburg: Herder Verlag, 2018); ‘Inventing the Present. Time Codes in Post-​War Lyric Poetry’, in Germanistik in Ireland 15 (2020), pp. 95–​112. BUSCH, Andreas—​is Professor of Comparative Politics and Political Economy at the University of Göttingen. Previously he was Reader in European Politics at the University of Oxford and John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. His main research interests focus on institution-​centred analyses, especially regulatory and public policy as well as comparative analysis of political systems and network policy. His publications include Banking Regulation and Globalization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) and Netzpolitik. Ein einführender edited with Tobias Jakobi and Yana Breindl (Wiesbaden: Springer Überblick, co-​ VS, 2018). CRONIN, Joseph—​is a Lecturer in Modern German History at Queen Mary University of London. His research focuses on Jewish life in Germany after the Holocaust, including Holocaust memory culture and the history of anti-​Semitism. His first book is

xiv   List of Contributors Russian-​speaking Jews in Germany’s Jewish communities: 1990–​2005 (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). DAEHNHARDT, Patricia—​is a Senior Researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations of NOVA University, Lisbon, and guest professor at the same university. She is also Adviser at the National Defense Institute (IDN) in Lisbon, Portugal. Her publications include ‘Tectonic Shifts in the Party Landscape? Mapping Germany’s Party System Changes’, in Marco Lisi (ed.), Party System Change, the European Crisis and the State of Democracy (London: Routledge, 2019); ‘German Foreign Policy, the Ukraine Crisis, and the Euro-​Atlantic Order: Assessing the Dynamics of Change’, German Politics (2018); ‘Germany, the EU and a Transforming Domestic Political Arena’, in Charlotte Bretherton and Michael Mannin (eds), The Europeanization of European Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). DESHMUKH, Marion F.  (1945–​2019)—​was the Robert T. Hawkes Professor Emerita of History at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, and long-​standing Chair of the Department of History and Art History. Her publications include Max Liebermann: Modern Art and Modern Germany (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016); Max Liebermann and International Modernism: An Artist’s Career from Empire to Third edited with Françoise Forster-​ Hahn and Barbara Gaehtgens (Oxford: Reich, co-​ Berghahn, 2011); co-​curator with Irene Guenther of the exhibition, Postcards from the Trenches: Germans and Americans Visualize the Great War (The Printing Museum, Houston, TX, 2014-​15). FREVERT, Ute—​is Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, where she founded the Center for the History of Emotions in 2008. Prior to that, she was Professor of German History at Yale University. Her publications include Men of Honour: A Social and Cultural History of the Duel (London: Polity, 1995), A Nation in Barracks: Modern Germany, Military Conscription and Civil Society (Oxford: Berg, 2004), and The Politics of Humiliation: A Modern History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). GERMOND, Carine S.—​is Professor of European Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim. Her publications include Partenaires de raison? Le couple France-​Allemagne et l’unification de l’Europe, 1963–​1969 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2014); Luciano Bardi, Wojciech Gagatek, Carine Germond, Karl Magnus Johansson, Wolfram Kaiser (2020), The European Ambition. The Group of the European People’s Party and European Integration (Baden Baden: Nomos) in Luciano Bardi et al. The European Ambition: The Group of the European People’s Party and European Integration (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2020); ‘An Emerging Anti-​Reform Green Front? Farm Interest Groups Fighting the “Agriculture 1980” Project, 1958–​1972’, European Review of History (2015) 22(2), pp. 433–​50. GLAESSNER, Gert-​Joachim—​is Professor Emeritus at the Social Science Institute of the Humboldt Universität Berlin. His main research fields are the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the German political system, and the connection between freedom

List of Contributors    xv and security in democratic societies. His publications include Freiheit und Sicherheit. Eine Ortsbestimmung (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2016); German Democracy. From Post World War II to the Present Day (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2006); Sicherheit in Freiheit. Die Schutzfunktion des demokratischen Staates und die Freiheit der Bürger (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 2003). HARNISCH, Sebastian—​is Professor of International Relations and Foreign Policy at the University of Heidelberg. His publications include The Politics of Resilience and Transatlantic Order: Enduring Crisis? co-​edited with Gordon Friedrichs and Cameron Thies (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019); Foreign Policy as Public Policy? Premises and Pitfalls (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2019); The Oxford Encyclopedia of Foreign Policy Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). HEBESTREIT, Ray—​is Research Coordinator at the NRW School of Governance and Program Coordinator at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Duisburg-​ Essen. His publications include Partizipation in der Wissensgesellschaft. Funktion und Bedeutung diskursiver Beteiligungsverfahren (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2013); ‘Partizipation und politisches Entscheiden. Politische Beteiligung im Kontext aktueller Entscheidungszumutungen in der Politik’, with Karl-​Rudolf Korte, in Lothar Harles and Dirk Lange (eds), Zeitalter der Partizipation. Paradigmenwechsel in Politik und politischer Bildung? (Schwalbach: Wochenschau Verlag. 2015), pp. 22–​38; ‘Das Institutionengefüge des bundesdeutschen Regierungssystems’, with Karl-​ Rudolf Korte, in Andres Kost, Peter Massing, and Marion Reiser (eds), Handbuch Demokratie (Frankfurt: Wochenschau Verlag. 2020), pp.157–​74. JACOB, JANINE—​works as an adviser for Ralph Brinkhaus, member of the German Federal Parliament since 2009 and the chairman of the CDU/​CSU parliamentary group from 2018 to 2022. She previously worked as a business consultant to a financial consulting firm in the area of finance and risk management. She received her PhD in 2015 from the Hertie School of Governance. Her published dissertation is entitled Hybrid System: A Political Science Perspective on the Transformation Process of the German Financial System During the 2000s (Berlin: Hertie School of Government, 2015): https://​www.econ​biz.de/​Rec​ord/​from-​bank-​based-​hyb​rid-​sys​tem-​politi​cal-​scie​ nce-​pers​pect​ive-​the-​tra​nsfo​rmat​ion-​proc​ess-​the-​ger​man-​financ​ial-​sys​tem-​dur​ing-​ the-​2000s-​jacob-​jan​ine/​1001​1416​668. JANES, Jackson—​is Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington DC. He was President of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) at Johns Hopkins University/​SAIS in Washington, DC, from 1994 to 2018. His most recent publications include ‘Transatlantic Relations Under President Joe Biden’ (Zeitschrift für Aussen-​und Sicherheitspolitik, March 2021); ‘Biden’s Grosse Herausforderung’ (Sirius: Zeitschrift für Strategische Analysen, March 2021); ‘Die USA und Deutschland,‘ in Länderbericht USA (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, June 2021).

xvi   List of Contributors JARAUSCH, Konrad H.—​ is the Lucy Professor of European Civilization at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 1998 to 2006 he was the director of the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam (ZZF). He has authored and edited more than forty books on modern German and European history. His publications include Embattled Europe: A Progressive Alternative (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021); Broken Lives: How Ordinary Germans Experienced the 20th Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press); Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015). KAIM, Markus—​is a Senior Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. He is also an adjunct lecturer at the University of Zurich, at the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, and at Bucerius Law School, Hamburg, and was a Helmut Schmidt Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington DC 2019–​ 2020. His publications include In Search of a New Relationship: Canada, Germany and the United States, with Ursual Lehmkuhl (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2005); Die Europäische Sicherheits-​und Verteidigungspolitik: Präferenzbildungs-​und Aushandlungsprozesse in der Europäischen Union, 1990–​2005 (Baden-​Baden: Nomos, 2007); Great Power and Regional Order: The United States and the Persian Gulf (London: Routledge, 2016). KORNELIUS, Stefan—​is Political Editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of Germany’s leading daily newspapers. In his reporting career, he has covered Germany’s Christian Democratic Party (CDU), the chancellorships of Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel, and defence issues in Europe. From 1996 to 1999, he served as the paper’s Washington correspondent. His publications include a foreign policy biography of Angela Merkel, entitled Angela Merkel: The Chancellor and Her World (London: Alma Books, 2013), which has been translated into thirteen languages. KORTE, Karl-​Rudolf—​is Professor of Political Science and holds the Chair for the Political System of the Federal Republic of Germany and Modern State Theories at the University of Duisburg-​Essen. He is also Director of the NRW School of Governance at the University of Duisburg-​Essen. His publications include Gesichter der Macht. Über die Gestaltungspotenziale der Bundespräsidenten (Frankfurt/​New York: Campus, 2019); Coronakratie. Demokratisches Regieren in Ausnahmezeiten, co-​ edited with Martin Florack and Julia Schwanholz (Frankfurt/​New York: Campus, 2021); Handbuch Regierungsforschung, co-​edited with Martin Florack (2nd edn, Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2022). LANKOWSKI, Carl—​retired as director of European area studies from the US Foreign Service Institute in Washington, DC, in 2020. He served as research director at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) and was a faculty member at American University prior to that. His publications include Europe’s Ambiguous Unity: Conflict and Consensus in Post-​Maastricht Europe, co-​edited with Alan Cafruny (Boulder: Lynn Riener Publishers, 1997); Germany and the European

List of Contributors    xvii Community: Beyond Containment and Hegemony (ed.) (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993); Germany’s Difficult Passage to Modernity: Breakdown, Breakup, Breakthrough (ed.) (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001). LARRES, Klaus—​is the Richard M. Krasno Distinguished Professor of History and International Affairs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Previously he held professorships at Johns Hopkins University/​SAIS, Yale, London University, and Queen’s University Belfast in the UK, and served as Counselor and Senior Policy Adviser at the German embassy in Beijing, China. His publications include Churchill’s Cold War: The Politics of Personal Diplomacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); Dictators and Autocrats: Securing Power Across Global Politics (London: Routledge, 2021); Uncertain Allies: Nixon, Kissinger and the Threat of a United Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022). LAYNE, Priscilla—​is Associate Professor of German at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Adjunct Professor of African and Afro-​American Studies at UNC. Her publications include the book White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018); and articles such ‘Halbstarke and Rowdys: Consumerism, Youth Rebellion, and Gender in the Postwar Cinema of the Two Germanys’, Central European History (2018) 53(2), pp. 432–​52; and ‘Regulating and Transgressing the Borders of the Berlin Republic in Doris Dörrie’s Die Friseuse (2010)’, Women in German Yearbook (2015) 31, pp.147–​73. MILLER, Russell A.—​is J.B. Stombock Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. He is the co-​founder of the German Law Journal, former Head of the Max Planck Law Network, and inter alia has won a Humboldt Research Prize in recognition of his years of scholarly engagement with German law. His publications include The Constitutional Jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany (with Donald Kommers) (3rd edn, Durham: Duke University Press, 2021); Privacy and Power: A Transatlantic Dialogue After the NSA-​Affair (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019); Transboundary Harm in International Law: Lessons from the Trail Smelter Arbitration (with Rebecca Bratspies) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). MOROFF, Holger—​is Visiting Professor of Strategic Studies at the National Defense University and an adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Previously he taught international and comparative politics at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and at Leibniz University Hannover. His research focuses on security theories, comparative political corruption, and the internationalization of anti-​corruption regimes. His publications include European Soft Security Policies: The Northern Dimension (ed.) (Kauhava: The Finish Institute of International Affairs, 2002); Fighting Corruption in Eastern Europe: A Multilevel Perspective, co-​edited with Diana Schmidt-​Pfister (London/​New York: Routledge, 2017); he has also published numerous articles in scholarly journals and edited volumes.

xviii   List of Contributors MÜLLER, Olaf—​is a Researcher at the Institute of Sociology and Project Leader at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’ at the University of Münster. His research focuses on the sociology of religion, social change, and political culture. His publications include articles in the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, and Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe. He has also co-​edited (with Detlef Pollack, Volkhard Krech and Markus Hero) the Handbuch Religionssoziologie (Handbook of the Sociology of Religion) (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2018). PATTON, David F.—​is Joanne Toor Cummings’ 50 Professor of Government and International Relations at Connecticut College in New London, CT, where he teaches classes on comparative and European politics. He has published books and articles on German party politics, reunification, and German foreign policy. His publications include ‘Party-​Political Responses to the Alternative for Germany in Comparative Perspective’, German Politics and Society (2020) 38(1), 77–​104; Out of the East: From PDS to Left Party in Unified Germany (Albany, NY: Suny Press, 2011); and Cold War Politics in Postwar Germany (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999). PAUTZ, Hartwig—​is Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences at the University of the West of Scotland. He has published widely on the relationship between policy, politics, and expertise, in particular with regard to the role of think tanks in policy-​making, as well as on e-​democracy, the modernization of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and German party politics more generally. His publications include ‘Germany’, in Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa (eds), Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe (London: Routledge, 2020); ‘The German New Right and Its Think Tanks,’ German Politics and Society (December 2020) 38(4), pp. 51–​7 1; Think Tanks, Social Democracy and Social Policy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). POLLACK, Detlef—​is Professor of Sociology of Religion at the University of Münster. He is also deputy speaker of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’ at the University of Münster. His research focuses on the sociology of religion, political culture, democratization in Eastern Europe, new social movements, and systems theory. His publications include articles in journals such as Sociology of Religion, Social Compass, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, European Sociological Review, and many others as well as the recent book, Religion and Modernity: An International Comparison, co-​authored with Gergely Rosta (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). RUGGENTHALER, Peter—​is Deputy Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on War Consequences in Graz, Austria. Since 2008 he has been a member of the Russian-​Austrian Historians’ Commission. His publications include The Concept of Neutrality in Stalin’s Foreign Policy, 1945–​53 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015); Soviet Occupation of Romania, Hungary, and Austria, 1944/​45–​1948/​ 49, co-​edited with Csaba Békés and Laszlo Bochi (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2015); The Soviet Union and Cold War Neutrality and Nonalignment in Europe. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021).

List of Contributors    xix SACKMANN, Reinhold—​is Professor of Sociology at the Martin-​ Luther-​ University Halle-​Wittenberg. He has held visiting professorships at the University of Saarbrücken and the Free University of Berlin. His publications include Handbuch Bevölkerungssozioloige, co-​edited with Yasemin Niephaus and Michaela Kreyenfeld (Berlin: Springer, 2016); Coping with Demographic Change: A Comparative View on Education and Local Government in Germany and Poland, (Berlin, Springer, 2015); Lebenslaufanalyse und Biografieforschung: Eine Einführung (2nd edn, Springer, 2013). SCHUETTEMEYER, Suzanne S.—​is Professor Emeritus of Government and Policy Research at the Martin-​Luther-​University, Halle-​Wittenberg, editor-​in-​chief of the Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen (ZParl) and founding director of the Institute for Parliamentary Research (IParl) in Berlin. She is a member of the Kommission für die Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien (KGParl) and laureate of the Wissenschaftspreis des Deutschen Bundestages. Her publications include Der Wert der parlamentarischen Repräsentation: Entwicklungslinien und Perspektiven edited with Edzard Schmidt-​ Jortzig (Badender Abgeordnetenentschädigung, co-​ Baden: Nomos, 2013); Political Representation in France and Germany: Attitudes and Activities of Citizens and MPs, co-​edited with Oscar W. Gabriel and Eric Kerrouche (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). SCHWABE, Klaus—​is Professor Emeritus of Contemporary History at the University of Technology (RWTH) in Aachen. He has published widely on twentieth-​century international and US history, in particular on German-​American relations and European integration. His publications include Woodrow Wilson, Revolutionary Germany, and Peacemaking 1918–​1919 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1985); Weltmacht und Weltordnung. Amerikanische Außenpolitik von 1898 bis zur Gegenwart (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2005); Jean Monnet. Frankreich, Deutschland und die Einigung Europas (Baden-​Baden: Nomos, 2016); Versailles. Das Wagnis eines demokratischen Friedens (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2019). SCHWEIGER, Christian—​is Visiting Professor of Comparative European Governance Systems in the Institute for Political Science at Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany. Since 2019 he has also been a Guest Lecturer in Social Policy and Law at the Duale Hochschule Gera-​Eisenach. His publications include Exploring the EU’s Legitimacy Crisis: The Dark Heart of Europe (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2016); Central and Eastern Europe in the EU: Challenges and Perspectives under Crisis Conditions, co-​ edited with Anna Visvizi (Abingdon” Routledge, 2018); ‘The Global and Financial Crisis and the Euro Crisis as Contentious Issues in German-​American Relations’, German Politics (2018) 27(2), pp. 214–​29. SIEFKEN, Sven T.—​is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Parliamentary Research (IParl) in Berlin, Visiting Professor at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, USA, and Privatdozent at Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He is a member of the editorial board of the Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen and vice chair of the Research Committee of Legislative Specialists (RC08) of the International Political

xx   List of Contributors Science Association. His recent publications include Parliamentary Committees in the Policy Process, edited with Hilmar Rommetvedt (London: Routledge, 2022); Wahlkreisarbeit von Bundestagsabgeordneten. Parlamentarische Repräsentation in der Corona-​Krise (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2021); and Parlamentarische Kontrolle im Wandel: Theorie und Praxis des Deutschen Bundestages (Baden-​Baden: Nomos, 2018). SPERLING, James—​is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Akron. He is co-​author (with Martin Smith and Mark Webber) of What’s Wrong with NATO and How to Fix it (London: Polity Press, 2021); co-​editor (with Sonia Lucarelli and Mark Webber) of The European Union, Security Governance and Collective Securitisation’, a special issue of West European Politics (1999) 42(2), pp. 228–​436; and co-​author (with Mark Webber) of ‘Trump’s Foreign Policy and NATO: Exit and Voice’, Review of International Studies (2019) 45(3), pp. 511–​26. STANZEL, Volker—​is Senior Distinguished Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) and teaches at the Hertie School, both in Berlin. Formerly a member of the German Foreign Service, he was the German ambassador to both China and Japan. His recent publications include Diplomacy and Artificial Intelligence: Reflections on Practical Assistance for Diplomatic Negotiations (SWP Research Paper, 2022, with Daniel Voelsen); New Realities of Foreign Affairs: Diplomacy in the 21st Century (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2019); Clueless Foreign Policy and Why It Needs the Backing of Society (in German; Berlin: Dietz, 2019). STARKE, Peter—​is Professor with Special Responsibilities (WSR) at the University of Southern Denmark. Based at the Danish Centre for Welfare Studies (DaWS), he specializes in comparative welfare state research and political economy. His publications include Warfare and Welfare, co-​edited with Klaus Petersen and Herbert Obinger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Radical Welfare State Retrenchment (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007); and ‘Dualization as Destiny? The Political Economy of the German Minimum Wage Reform’, with Paul Marx (Politics & Society, 2017). STIGLICH, Larissa R.—​is Assistant Professor of History at Young Harris College in Young Harris, Georgia. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is currently revising her manuscript about the former East German model city, Eisenhüttenstadt for publication. It is provisionally entitled After Socialism: Navigating German Unification in a Former Socialist Model City, 1971 to the Present. SZABO, Stephen F.—​is currently a Senior Fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) and Adjunct Professor at the BMW Center for German and European Studies, Georgetown University. He served as the Executive Director of the Transatlantic Academy and Interim Dean and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University. His publications include The Diplomacy of German Unification (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993); Parting Ways: The Crisis in the German-​American Relationship (Washington DC: Brookings

List of Contributors    xxi Institution Press, 2004); and Germany, Russia and the Rise of Geo-​Economics (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). THRAENHARDT, Dietrich—​is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the Westphalian University Münster. He has published more than forty books and 250 articles. His publications include recent essays on asylum politics in Germany and its neighbouring countries and, for instance, Integration: Begriffe—​Prozesse—​Institutionen (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2021); SelbstHilfe: Wie Migranten Netzwerke knüpfen und soziales Kapital schaffen, with Karin Weiss (Freiburg: Lambertus Verlag, 2005); Europe—​A New Immigration Continent: Policies and Politics in Comparative Perspective (Münster: LIT-​Verlag, 1992/​1996). WINKLER, Heinrich August—​is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at Humboldt University Berlin. He has held multiple fellowships and visiting distinguished professorships. His publications include Germany: The Long Road West. Vol. 1: 1789–​1933 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Germany: The Long Road West. Vol. 2: 1933–​ 1990 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007); Wie wir wurden, was wir sind: Eine kurze Geschichte der Deutschen (Munich, C.H. Beck, 2020). WITTLINGER, Ruth (1961–2020)—was a Professor in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University, UK, and the Lady Davis Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She published extensively on memory and identity in post-​unification Germany and Europe and her work appeared in journals such as West European Politics, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, German Politics and German Politics and Society. Her publications include German National Identity in the Twenty-​First Century: A Different Republic After All? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, American Relations in the 21st Century: A Fragile Friendship, co-​ 2010); German-​ edited with Klaus Larres (London/​New York: Routledge, 2019); Understanding Global Politics: Actors and Themes in International Affairs, co-​ed. with Klaus Larres (London/​ New York: Routledge, 2020).

I n t rodu ction Klaus Larres, Holger Moroff, and Ruth Wittlinger

Few countries have caused or experienced more calamities in the twentieth century than Germany. The country emerged from the Cold War as a newly united and sovereign state, eventually becoming Europe’s indispensable partner for all major domestic and foreign policy initiatives. As such it is not surprising that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was named ‘person of the year 2015’ by Time Magazine as she played pivotal roles in resolving various European and global crises. In fact the post-​war Federal Republic has been fortunate with its leaders and coalition governments. The first (West) German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, was rightly praised for his successful though at first heavily criticized policy of Western integration. Willy Brandt received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 for his initially even more controversial rapprochement with the East and the acceptance of Germany’s post-​war borders as decided by the Second World War victors at Yalta and Potsdam. Helmut Schmidt obtained much praise for his strategic and financial leadership and Helmut Kohl skilfully grasped the tremendous window of opportunity to steer Germany towards unification in 1989/​90. Gerhard Schröder was courageous enough not only to reform the country’s economic and social policies but also to cautiously steer the united country towards a more active foreign policy, together with his Green coalition partner, by getting involved in the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Schröder, however, fell out seriously with the US over the invasion of Iraq. He also provided governmental respectability to the Green party and may thus have hastened the popular appeal and decline of his own Social-​Democratic party. Schröder’s successor, Angela Merkel became the longest-​serving modern Chancellor after Kohl. While her sixteen years in power have ended only comparatively recently, it is clear that she was confronted with uniquely challenging issues and addressed them in a way that may well prove to have a lasting impact on modern German politics. Among the issues she had to grapple with were the sovereign debt crises of 2008–​12, which threatened the continued existence of the Euro, and the 2014 Ukraine and Crimean annexation crisis, which undermined the inviolability of the post-​Second World War borders in Europe. There also was the 2015–​16 refugee crisis threatening social cohesion

2    Klaus Larres, Holger Moroff, and Ruth Wittlinger and solidarity in the European Union (EU) as well as the UK leaving the EU in January 2020. And from 2020 to 2022 the Covid-​19 pandemic caused the greatest post-​war recession and global health crisis so far. These external shocks and the responses they triggered from policy-​makers within the EU and elsewhere were complemented by forward-​looking and sometimes visionary policy initiatives coming from Germany itself. For instance, the country abandoned atomic power in an attempt to decouple economic growth from nuclear and fossil-​fuel consumption, and emphasized data and privacy protection in the face of unprecedented spying and surveillance revelations. The German Chancellor also became a target of pervasive disapproval by US President Trump, who attempted to turn Merkel into the butt of constant ridicule and criticism. He represented the opposite of her in political style and value-​based policy content. For much of the world, however, Merkel became the stalwart defender of liberal Western values and democratic convictions. This was both recognized and commemorated when Trump’s successor President Joe Biden invited the outgoing Chancellor to a state visit to the White House a couple of months before her voluntary retirement in December 2021. Her Finance Minister, the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, succeeded her, leading a “traffic-​light-​coalition” with the Green Party and the Free Democrats. The new governments foreign policy resolve and acumen was immediately tested by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand to halt any further expansion of NATO and Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. As in 1998, it is a Green Party foreign minister that will have to help lead Germany in cooperation with its transatlantic allies into uncharted territory of security and military challenges in Europe in the aftermath of Russia’s ruthless war in Ukraine. Still, all of Scholz’s and his predecessors’ policies have come at a price to German consumers and taxpayers. That they seem able and willing to pay it has as much to do with Germany’s history as with more recent economic and political dynamics. To name just a few issues, Germany kept Europe’s common currency viable during protracted sovereign debt crises, helped to deescalate the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in 2014/15, and invented a new ‘welcoming culture’ in Europe’s refugee crisis, in the process wielding it like a weapon. Two World Wars and various transformations of its welfare state, party system, citizenship, and immigration laws, and of its export driven economy have informed Germany’s domestic democratic culture and the country’s thoroughly multilateral foreign policy as well as its reluctant leadership in global affairs and international organizations. This self-​assertion through self-​restriction also applies to the role of politics in society at large. The experience of both fascist and communist versions of totalitarianism instilled a large degree of both scepticism of autocracy and democratic convictions in the German people. This Oxford Handbook of German Politics provides a comprehensive overview of some of the major issues of German domestic politics, economics, foreign policy, and culture by leading experts in their respective fields. This book serves primarily as a reference work on Germany for scholars and an interested public, but through this broader lens it also provides a magnifying glass on global developments, which

Introduction   3 are challenging and transforming the modern state. The growing importance of Germany as a political actor and economic and security-military partner makes this endeavour all the more timely and pertinent from both a German and European but also from a global perspective. This Handbook has assembled a large number of eminent scholars and outstanding younger experts on Germany. They are based in Germany, on the European continent and Scandinavia, the UK, as well as North America and have explored and analysed developments in German politics from 1945 to the present, with a particular focus on the years since 1990. Within the thirty-​seven chapters of this book the contributors and the three editors have done their best to look at Germany from both the outside and from within, providing a well-​balanced picture of the most crucial developments in German politics over the last few decades. This book starts with four eminent scholars’ divergent historical interpretations of the developments in Germany in the post-​1945 world, reflecting upon a great number of important aspects that have influenced wider European and global views of modern societies at large. The second part of the book focuses on Cold War Germany. The authors analyse West and East Germany’s domestic, economic, social, and external relations during the Cold War and Germany’s embeddedness in both the Atlantic and the European policy structures. The final chapter of this part of the book deals with the domestic and external dimensions of German unification as well as with the economic and social legacies of this momentous event. Part III of the Handbook is dedicated to Germany since 1990—​the domestic dimension. The first section considers Germany’s formal and informal political institutions, focusing on its parliamentary democracy and federal structure. The subsequent section explores how the policy-​making process has shaped its welfare state as well as its energy, environmental, immigration, and gender policies. The following section deals with the role of culture and society while the final section looks at the structure of Germany’s political economy with a special emphasis on its model of a coordinated social market and export-​driven economy. The fourth part of the book focuses on the external dimension of German politics since 1990. The first section deals with Germany’s role in the EU. It explores monetary relations and the Euro crisis, Justice and Home affairs, as well as Germany’s importance in the EU’s common foreign and defence policy. The subsequent section deals with Germany’s role in global affairs since unification. The respective authors analyse Germany’s relationships with some of the major powers such as the US, China, and Russia. The fifth and final part of the handbook consists of two chapters. The authors reflect on the lasting importance of the Merkel era and analyse the development of German politics in the post-​Merkel era. While in the US, President Joe Biden has returned to a more traditional Western policy, in China and Russia, the other two global powers of great importance to Germany, the autocratic leaderships of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are continuing. With the end of the Merkel era and Olaf Scholz’s transformational

4    Klaus Larres, Holger Moroff, and Ruth Wittlinger chancellorship, an important turning point has occurred in German politics with momentous consequences for German domestic, economic/​environmental, and external affairs. This handbook is dedicated to our co-​editor Professor Ruth Wittlinger of the University of Durham in the UK. After a grave illness Ruth passed away much too early and was unable to see the completion of this book. We are immensely grateful for her hard work and dedication to this Handbook and to the study of German politics, history, and culture in general. Ruth was a wonderful person with a very pleasant and unique personality and a great sense of humour. We miss her tremendously as do all her many friends and family. We also would like to thank all our many contributors for their hard work, dedication, and patience, and of course for their insightful and well-​written essays. All this is greatly appreciated. Oxford University Press senior editor, Dominic Byatt, accompanied this book from the beginning with much helpful advice and guidance for which we are also most grateful. Chapel Hill, NC, February 2022 Klaus Larres and Holger Moroff

PA RT I

L E A DI N G S C HOL A R S AND THEIR I N T E R P R E TAT ION S OF G E R M A N H I STORY F ROM WOR L D WA R I I TO T H E P R E SE N T

CHAPTER 1

ENC OUNTERS W I T H MODERN I T Y The German Search for Alternatives in the Twentieth Century Konrad H. Jarausch

In March 1915 the sociologist Torstein Veblen published a treatise that attributed German bellicosity in the First World War to a deficit in political modernity. Like other critics, he was struck by the contradiction between the rapid development of industrialization and the tenacious survival of an authoritarian dynastic state. ‘This united German community, at the same time, took over from their (industrially) more advanced neighbors the latest and highly efficient state of the industrial arts’, allowing the Second Empire ‘to grow to formidable dimensions’. But simultaneously ‘Germany carried over from a recent and retarded past a state of the dynastic order, with a scheme of detail institutions and a popular habit of mind suitable to a coercive, centralized and irresponsible control and to the pursuit of dynastic dominion’ (Veblen, 1915). In contrast to Great Britain which had pioneered both industrialization and parliamentary government, Germany, he argued, excelled at the former without embracing the latter. In contrast, the novelist Thomas Mann at the end of the war published a massive volume in defence of Germany’s special cultural achievements. Rejecting his older brother Heinrich’s cosmopolitan call for democracy as deeply un-​German, he insisted on his country’s middle position between Western individualism and Eastern autocracy, which he brilliantly explicated in The Magic Mountain a few years later. ‘The difference between spirit and politics contains [a distinction] between culture and civilization, soul and society, freedom and right to vote, art and literature.’ For Mann, ‘Germanness meant culture, soul, freedom, art and not civilization, society, right to vote, literature’. Provoked by the universalism of the post-​Enlightenment claims of democracy, the writer defended the German ‘authoritarian state’, since ‘his heart belonged to Germany’ (Mann, 1918, p. xxxiii). Instead of considering the Prusso-​German system as backward,

8   Konrad H. Jarausch Mann defended its distinctive combination of economic prowess and political authoritarianism as culturally superior. After the Third Reich, self-​critical West German historians returned to this Sonderweg thesis as a negative deviation from Western development. From a macro-​sociological perspective, it seemed indeed that Germany had chosen a historical path that differed from the Anglo-​American model, enshrined in the textbook notion of Western civilization. This viewpoint inverted Thomas Mann’s claim of cultural superiority and revived Veblen’s approach of using Great Britain as the yardstick by which Germany failed in disastrous ways. Led by the theoretically minded and fiercely partisan Hans-​Ulrich Wehler, scholars clustered around the new university of Bielefeld elevated this interpretation to a general thesis of ‘partial’ or ‘defensive’ modernization from above that would explain German responsibility for the World Wars and the Holocaust (Wehler, 1975; Wehler, 1973; Wehler, 1987; Nolte, 2015). However, hermeneutic traditionalists such as Thomas Nipperdey attacked such conclusions as overly generalized, while leftist historians such as Geoff Eley and David Blackbourn disputed the suitability of Britain as a positive model. Moreover, Michael Geyer and I questioned the appropriateness of the national master narrative in general (Jarausch and Geyer, 2003, pp. 1–​33). Though the ‘special path’ interpretation has lost much of its explanatory power, it posed the central question of Germany’s relation to modernity. That elusive concept, defined variously as a description of a historical period, a claim to constant progress, and a projection screen for blueprints of the future came into general use around the turn of the twentieth century. Initially sociologists employed a simplistic normative understanding of modernization, based on Anglo-​American experiences (Gerschenkron, 1943; Moore, 1966), but more recently the theoretical discussion has moved towards a plural conception of competing modernities. Based on my interpretation of twentieth-​ century European history in Out of Ashes, I argue that the German story no longer needs to be read as incomplete Westernization but rather as a set of failed attempts at creating alternate authoritarian, organic, or socialist forms of modernity, different from the Western liberal-​democratic pattern (Eisenstadt, 2000, pp. 1–​29; Jarausch 2018a, pp. 21–​ 38). The following remarks attempt to sketch out some of the implications of such a more nuanced understanding.

Authoritarian Modernization Surprisingly enough, a group of distinguished American visitors during the pre-​First World War years ‘studied the Wilhelmine empire as a fellow—​statist—​pioneer of modernity’. For instance, the writer Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, was impressed by the bustling capital of Berlin: ‘It is a new city: It is the newest I have ever seen.’ As a dynamic country, united only in 1871, Imperial Germany attracted such distinguished observers as Theodore Dreiser or William Jennings Bryan as well as Booker T. Washington who commented on their positive impressions in their writings. Ignoring the medieval

ENCOUNTERS WITH MODERNITY    9 castles and patrician townhouses, these travellers were impressed by the speed and intensity of the transformation of what had been a sleepy set of dynastic territories. What fascinated them most was ‘this work of modern improvement, especially in public appointments’ led by the government, which was a product of ‘the scientific spirit and method’ (Krause, 2017, pp. 25–​52). For many observers, the Reich was not backward but rather a paragon of progress. One particular area that stood out was the excellence of science and technology, since in the late nineteenth century German universities were considered the best in the world. Out of neo-​humanist philology, these institutions had developed a ‘research imperative’ as a secular calling of scholarship which centred on the production of new knowledge rather than on the transmission of received truths. This innovative ethos attracted more than 10,000 American students who brought the new spirit as well as institutional arrangements such as the doctoral degree, the seminar, and the research institute to the US on their return. The renown of scientific discoveries in fields like medicine is evident in the disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes which German scholars gathered during the first decades of the twentieth century. Equally prominent were the technical institutions which turned theoretical innovations in chemistry or physics into practical applications that produced entire new branches of industry (McClelland, 2017; Jarausch, 1988, pp. 181–​206). Another area that struck foreign visitors was the rapid industrialization of Imperial Germany which transformed the country into an industrial powerhouse. On the eve of the Great War, the Wilhelmine Empire was catching up to British leadership in areas like coal and steel production, also increasing its share of international trade at great speed. In contrast to the Anglo-​American model of laissez-​faire, much of this dynamism was due to state intervention, shielding infant industries with tariffs and supporting the development of businesses such as the Krupp steelworks with subsidies. Especially in technology-​based areas typical of the second phase of the industrial revolution, such as chemistry and electricity, the public support of research made it possible to carry innovation over into production companies such as Bayer, BASF, Siemens, or AEG. The style of this modernization has sometimes been called ‘organized capitalism’ in order to stress the cooperation between government, academe, and monopolistic industry (Lee, 2017; Winkler, 1974). A final aspect of Imperial Germany that impressed many observers as a sign of progress was systematic state intervention to foster modernity. In contrast to the corruption of some American officials, the Prussian bureaucracy seemed to be a model of incorruptibility and efficiency in the solution of problems. Also the development of a transportation infrastructure of roads, canals, and railroads appeared to be better organized than the market-​driven expansion in the US. Progressives especially travelled to Germany in order to study its pathbreaking efforts at urban reform by fostering public health through water and sewer-​line construction, building of streetcars and subways, moving away from tenements to housing with green spaces, the provision of allotment garden plots (Schrebergärten), and the like. Finally, foreigners were fascinated by Bismarck’s insurance scheme for pension, disability, and accident that was designed to

10   Konrad H. Jarausch wean the workers away from socialism by offering an incipient welfare state (Rodgers, 2000; Mauch and Patel, 2010). In the iron test of the First World War, the German version of authoritarian modernity nonetheless failed disastrously, since the democracies were better able to sustain its strains. Already before the conflict many commentators had wondered about the persistence of the Kaiser’s ‘personal rule’ and the lack of parliamentary control in spite of universal male suffrage in the Reichstag. Moreover, the rapid growth of the labour movement with its powerful trade unions and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as the largest party indicated an unresolved conflict. During the war, the power of the military, represented by the quasi-​dictatorship of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, seemed to guarantee efficient decision-​making by suppressing dissent. But in the long run the suspension of politics in the Burgfrieden failed to resolve such vital problems as the rationing of food (Jarausch, 1973; Leonhard, 2014). In the competition of different versions of progress, the particularism of the German Kultur proved unable to compete with the universalism of Western democracy.

Weimar Modernism The ill-​fated Weimar Republic was in many ways an effort to rejoin Western civilization by establishing a German variant of liberal-​democratic modernity. The Supreme Command’s defeat in battle and collapse of nerve discredited the prestige of the military, while the grassroots revolution of the sailors and soldiers in November 1918 overthrew the Kaiser’s authoritarian rule by forcing William II to abdicate and flee to Holland. This double rupture offered a chance to end the discrepancy between socio-​economic modernity and political backwardness by changing the political system from the Empire to a Republic. As a result, some historians like Detlev Peukert have labelled the Weimar Republic as apogee of ‘classical modernity’ which inspired innovation in many areas of society and culture (Peukert, 1993; Machtan, 2018). But the very radicalism of these departures prohibited a stable synthesis, inaugurating instead a massive backlash that denounced modernism as a ‘crisis’ that had to be remedied by a neo-​conservative return to older traditions. Among the three major ideological blueprints for modernity that issued from the First World War, the Weimar Republic represented the Wilsonian, liberal-​democratic version. The Fourteen Points proposed by the American president seemed to offer a less onerous peace treaty than the vindictive demands of the Anglo-​French statesmen. Moreover, the transfer of government responsibility to the largest Reichstag party, the SPD, offered a gradual transition that facilitated the drafting of a Republican constitution. The compromise between the trade unions, led by Carl Legien, and the employers’ associations, represented by Hugo Stinnes, created a chance for orderly bargaining for wage increases. And the deal struck between President Friedrich Ebert and war minister,

ENCOUNTERS WITH MODERNITY    11 Wilhelm Groener signified that the Reichswehr would at least tolerate the Republic. In the chaos of defeat and revolution, these agreements represented an evolutionary attempt to fashion a truly democratic form of political modernity (Winkler, 1993). The calling of a constitutional convention also meant that the new government would reject the Soviet example of modernization that was based upon grassroots councils. During the Revolution numerous workers and soldiers had spontaneously elected such Räte which understood themselves as carriers of revolutionary legitimacy, demanding the end of the war, the creation of a socialist Republic, and the socialization of industry. In Berlin members of the socialist Left wing, called Spartacists, in January 1919 staged a general strike and rose up in order to seize power. The moderate SPD leader Gustav Noske thereupon used Free Corps, made up of veterans and students, to put down such rebellions in Berlin and other cities. The radical Right killed the leaders of the revolt, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, irretrievably splitting the labour movement (Schütrumpf, 2018). The victory of the moderates stabilized the Republic and inaugurated a whole series of modernizing reforms such as green-​belt housing for the working class. In cultural terms, Weimar proved to be a hothouse of modernist innovation and experimentation, since the institutional supports of tradition had broken down. An explosion of creativity by avant-​garde groups like DADA sought to provoke the staid burgers of the middle class. A flood of new visual styles, ranging from expressionism to cubism rejected the traditional standards of representation, while twelve-​tone music began to reflect the dissonances of urban life. At the same time radio and film opened up popular worlds of mass entertainment, often geared to the lowest common denominator. Advertisements for the ‘new woman’, with slim shifts and bobbed hair threatened conventions of maternalism with androgynous sexuality. In building and design, daring Bauhaus architects attempted to marry form with function, irrespective of cultural baggage from the past. Challenging traditional ways in virtually all avenues of human endeavour, Weimar culture exuded a hothouse atmosphere of excitement, daring, and conflict (Gay, 1970; Weitz, 2007). This shock of rapid modernization created an angry backlash against cultural modernism which inspired the formation of a new, neo-​conservative Right. Many religious leaders denounced the abandonment of bourgeois conventions of morality as decadent and sinful; nationalist commentators criticized the cosmopolitanism of the innovators, many of which hailed from outside of Germany; a fanatical band of biological racists also accused the Jews of destroying the core of culture; and many elitists blamed the lowering of standards on ‘the rise of the masses’ and their entertainment by popular culture. Like Moeller van den Bruck, this motley group of neo-​conservatives did not want to go back to the Second Empire but rather longed for the foundation of a new, anti-​modern Third Reich that would lead Germany to a national rebirth. Unfortunately, many leftist intellectuals, such as Kurt Tucholsky, found the Republic too mundane or capitalist and therefore failed to rally to the defense of its democratic modernity (Peukert, 1993, p. 281; Weitz, 2007, p. 330; Woods, 1996).

12   Konrad H. Jarausch

Organic Modernity Ever since the establishment of the Third Reich, commentators have debated the paradoxical relationship between National Socialism and modernity. Though contemporary leftists denounced the NSDAP as a reactionary movement, some later analysts have stressed its unwitting modernizing effects. But trying to reaffirm the Enlightenment tradition of liberty and equality, most progressive scholars have vigorously denounced the racist repression of the Third Reich as nefarious and backward-​looking. Unconvinced, some other, more moderate social historians have pointed to modern features of the Nazi system in its embrace of technology, efforts at biological social engineering, and the like. According to Peter Fritzsche, ‘the Nazis were modernists because they made the acknowledgement of the radical instability of twentieth century life the premise of relentless experimentation’. Seeking to reconcile such contradictions, Jeffrey Herf has coined a concept that addressed both dimensions by calling it ‘reactionary modernism’ (Fritzsche, 1996, pp. 1–​22; Herf, 1984). Many aspects of Nazi ideology and practice that rejected modernity suggest that the Third Reich was, indeed, a reactionary system. On the negative side, Hitler and his followers hated the experiments of Weimar modernism, railing against ‘degenerate art’; they promoted a racial anti-​Semitism, denouncing Jews both as capitalists and socialists; and they vigorously fought against the revolutionary egalitarianism of communism, accusing it of cosmopolitan treason to the nation. On the positive side, the Nazis embraced a romantic agrarianism, praising the healthy farm life of ‘blood and soil’; they similarly promoted Nordic mythology as an invigorating martial creed, superior to pacifist Christianity; and they fostered a medieval belief in a strong leader, the charismatic Führer who would restore the country to greatness (Jäckel, 1981; Link, 2014). Though much of the iconography was also reactionary, the Nazis were less interested in the real past than in an imagined earlier age that would solve all the problems of the present. Numerous other indicators, however, imply that National Socialism was itself an outgrowth of the very modernity it claimed to combat. Holding a permanent pass to the Deutsche Museum in Munich, Hitler was not alone in his infatuation with technology such as driving in fast cars, flying in airplanes, and the like. The sophisticated propaganda apparatus of Joseph Goebbels also used modern devices from loudspeakers to radio receivers, from newsreels to feature films. Moreover, the Wehrmacht drew on innovative engineering to develop the first jet-​fighter planes and the infamous V-​2 rockets. On a more general level, the Third Reich was a mass dictatorship that differed from traditional authoritarian regimes in the radicalism of its methods and ideology. To Aryan citizens the regime offered attractive incentives such as the subsidized vacations of the Kraft durch Freude (strength through joy, KdF) and the ‘people’s cars’ of Volkswagen (VW), but towards its opponents the Gestapo and SS used ruthless repression (Prinz

ENCOUNTERS WITH MODERNITY    13 and Zitelmann, 1994; Allen, 1996). In spite of its neo-​conservative claims, the mass mobilization of the Third Reich was a quite modern form of dictatorship. Thoroughly modern too was the gigantic Nazi project of social engineering in order to strengthen the body of the nation for Darwinist competition. The positive measures of such a eugenics programme consisted of efforts to reverse the decline of the birthrate, which had been dropping due to the population transition, by fostering motherhood and improving children’s health. The negative sides of this racial approach to public health involved the prohibition of reproduction with Jews so as to prevent the ‘pollution of Aryan blood’ as well as the weeding out of the hereditary ill through sterilization or even euthanasia. Part of this biopolitical crusade was also the reaffirmation of traditional gender distinctions between a ‘martial masculinity’, ready to defend the fatherland against external enemies, and a ‘volkish femininity’, providing children for the perpetuation of the Aryan race. This partly supportive and partly murderous effort to remake the Volkskörper speaks of an astounding ambition that can only be called modern (Dickinson, 2004, pp. 1–​48; Burleigh and Wippermann, 1991). The Nazi project of creating an alternate ‘organic modernity’, however, failed even more disastrously than the earlier authoritarian effort. While the Third Reich’s rhetoric stressed the inclusive character of building a true people’s community, the exclusions of political enemies and ‘racial inferiors’ turned the NS-​Volksgemeinschaft into a licence for mass murder. The attempt to seize ‘living space’ in the East triggered an orgy of violence during the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the mostly Slavic inhabitants of these territories. The anti-​Semitic project of eliminating an entire people such as the Jews unleashed a systematic genocide of unprecedented proportions in the Holocaust. As long as the ‘lightning warfare’ of the Wehrmacht produced victories, the Aryan majority was willing to support Hitler’s aims, but when the radio announced one defeat after another, it began to understand that the war would come to Germany itself. In spite of their ideological differences the Grand Alliance powers ultimately combined to defeat the National Socialist challenger (Jarausch, 2018b, pp. 33–​46; Jarausch, 2015, p. 393).

Conservative Modernization The second, even more total defeat discredited the fascist alternative and offered a choice between the liberal-​democratic and the Soviet-​communist versions of modernity, represented by the US and the USSR. The allied occupation ended German sovereignty in June 1945 and dissolved the military, putting all power into the Allied Control Council meetings in Berlin. Opinions clashed as to whether the Germans were such ingrained militarists that they ought to be suppressed with force or whether Nazism had merely been a disease which could be cured with the right policies. The

14   Konrad H. Jarausch compromise, agreed upon at Potsdam, stipulated ‘demilitarization, denazification, and decartelization’ in order to prevent a Third World War (Hönicke-​Moore, 2014; Jarausch, 2006). Only after the Wehrmacht had been dissolved, the Nazi members dismissed, and the cartels broken up would there be a chance for democratic rehabilitation. But since the four victorious powers interpreted these principles differently, the occupation zones gradually drifted apart, dividing the remnant of the country in the Cold War. In Western Germany, the popular desire for a return to ‘normality’ inspired a paradoxical form of conservative modernization. Symbolized by the first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, a septuagenarian affectionally called ‘the old one’, many people longed for a return to the ‘good old days’ of the Empire before the catastrophes of the World Wars. The quest for reestablishing public order created a restoration climate in which individuals and groups sought to salvage traditions from the rubble of the Third Reich which might still be viable for the future. In the search for spiritual values the pews of the churches began to fill again, even if many pastors and priests had collaborated with the Nazi regime. In personal life, the traditional bourgeois standards of hard work, thrift, discipline, punctuality, and cleanliness made a surprising recovery as the foundation for social civility. Most apolitical people who had survived the fighting, bombardment, or flight, just wanted to get on with their private lives, find a job, start a family, and the like (Schildt and Sywottek, 1998; Jarausch, 2018c). At the same time many inhabitants of the three Western zones came to embrace the liberal and capitalist modernity of the West. With lectures, films, and magazines, America Houses propagated an alluring image of peace and progress that was reinforced by positive experiences of hundreds of exchange students and business travellers. As the dominant Western power, the US came to symbolize innovation and prosperity, represented by its huge automobiles and comfortable homes with all sorts of domestic technology such as refrigerators and washing machines. As a government system, parliamentary democracy wooed the sceptics by allowing space for rebuilding personal lives and the free expression of individual opinions. Konrad Adenauer’s strategy of Westbindung, tying the nascent Federal Republic to the Western camp, therefore proved more attractive than Kurt Schumacher’s neutralist nationalism (Schwarz, 1995; Doering-​Manteuffel, 1999). And finally, the establishment of a communist dictatorship in the East validated the turn to the West. By creating a consumer democracy, the so-​called ‘economic miracle’ gave modernity a positive connotation during the post-​war era. The surprising success of Ludwig Erhard’s gamble of returning to market competition through the ‘currency reform’ in 1948 ended the state control that had resulted in stagnation. After a slow start, the West German economy grew an average of between 5 and 10 per cent annually until the mid-​1970s, only interrupted by a small recession in 1966. Once the shopwindows filled again and the Deutschmark (DM) could actually buy something worthwhile, consumers started a shopping spree by acquiring household implements, home entertainment gadgets, automobiles, and the like. Commentators talk about consumption ‘waves’ of indulging in food and alcohol, followed by buying new clothing, furniture, and travel, with culture coming in last. Since trade unions succeeded in raising wages, shortening working

ENCOUNTERS WITH MODERNITY    15 hours, and lengthening vacations, many of these technological advances became available to ordinary people (König, 2000; Carter, 1997). Although some traditionalists remained sceptical, the majority of the West Germans accepted modernity as a benign development during the post-​war era. No doubt the proliferation of rock ’n’ roll music and shallow Hollywood movies seemed to members of the elite as a loss of cultural standards. But when efforts to save youths from such American influences generally failed, Cold War conservatives learned to live with the arrival of popular culture as a passing phase in the process of growing up that did not fundamentally threaten Western civilization. Similarly, many traditionalists who found Western styles strange were never completely sure of the reliability of NATO or the advantages of integration in the Common Market. But during the various Cold War crises in 1948, 1953, 1958, 1961, 1968, and so forth, it was clear that the Federal Republic needed the American nuclear umbrella in order to retain its independence (Poiger, 2000; Granieri, 2003). Since the liberal version of modernity was associated with positive experiences, it finally carried the day.

Socialist Modernity In East Germany it was the communist version of modernity, represented by the Soviet Union, that ultimately seized control. Many intellectuals proudly believed that they were carrying on the Enlightenment project of creating a more equal society according to rational standards. Moreover, apparatchiks could claim that they finally had a chance to implement the progressive reforms long advocated by the labour movement in order to free workers and peasants from want. Drawing a positive lesson from the Nazi debacle, many activists also greeted the merger between the Social Democratic and Communist parties in the Socialist Unity Party (SED) during the spring of 1946 as an overdue step that would finally give the proletariat the majority in elections. At the same time Communist party members were able to draw on the prestige of having been the only consistent anti-​fascists in the resistance against the Third Reich. With this moral capital the Eastern leaders could claim to be building a better and more modern Germany (Ross, 2002; Hillaker, 2020). In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Soviet Union provided the positive blueprint according to which a new socialist society ought to be built. The smashing victory of the Red Army over the Nazi Wehrmacht showed even to bourgeois sceptics who resented the accompanying atrocities that Russia must have done something right. Moreover, the revolutionary transformation of a still somewhat backward country into one of the superpowers, equipped with nuclear weapons and sending satellites into space, also impressed many Germans. Since the GDR lacked heavy industry, the strategy of labour-​intensive ‘smokestack industrialization’ appeared plausible, even if it came at the expense of providing consumer goods. One of the clichés regarding ‘the friends’ was therefore ‘to learn from the Soviet Union is to learn how to be victorious’.

16   Konrad H. Jarausch But unfortunately Soviet collectivization and industrialization proved only moderately attractive, since in many areas the GDR was already further developed than its big brother (Schroeder, 2013; Fulbrook, 2005). The politics of the East German ‘people’s democracy’ established a modern ‘welfare dictatorship’, forcing the population to become communist for its own good. Initially, the revived political parties agreed on the priority of erasing the traces of National Socialism and therefore cooperated in a ‘national bloc’. But when the SED was trounced in Berlin and failed to win elections in the provinces, the distribution of seats was agreed upon beforehand, assuring the dominance of the ‘leading party’. At the same time the establishment of the Stasi, the state security service, systematically persecuted churchgoing Christians, pro-​Western politicians, and dissident intellectuals. Eventually the SED shifted more to incentives, using the trade unions and other mass organizations to offer privileges and rewards to conformist citizens. But in the tradition of Rousseau, the GDR was a Stalinist dictatorship for the people rather than a government by them. As Ulbricht quipped: ‘It must look democratic, but we have to control everything’ (Klessmann, 2007; Jarausch, 1999). In spite of its social services, socialist modernity lost out to the capitalist form of consumer society in the East-​West competition. A key reason was the planned economy which eliminated the vagaries of the competitive market by setting bureaucratic targets for production. The fixed but unrealistic price system failed to allocate resources according to their actual costs, thereby ignoring what it took to produce a given item. In East Germany the free education and medical care as well as the subsidies for basic food, housing, and transportation made it possible to get by with a modest salary. But the planning system also led to low productivity because workers were not paid by how they performed but rather by other socio-​political priorities. As a result, the GDR economy was also unresponsive to consumer demands, making bathing suits when it rained and umbrellas when the sun shone (Steiner, 2010; Wolle, 1998). Compared with their prosperous Western relatives, East Germans often felt disadvantaged and resented coming in second best. The ‘peaceful revolution’ of 1989 was therefore a repudiation of socialist modernity and a vote for liberal-​democratic modernization. The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 signified that the SED had to use force to keep its populace in, leading to an unstoppable demand for travel and emigration. Moreover, the mass protests in Leipzig and other East German cities called for the actual practice of those human rights which were promised in the 1973 constitution. Confronted with such demands from its own citizens, the party lost its credibility as representative of workers and peasants. The last-​ditch effort of the Round Table to democratize but retain the GDR by pursuing a Third Way failed to convince the majority of citizens who voted for accession to the Federal Republic as the quickest way to gain political freedom and material prosperity. Because ‘real existing socialism’ had failed to live up to its own billing, the magnetic attraction of the larger, freer, and wealthier West had proven irresistible (Jarausch, 1994; Maier 1997).

ENCOUNTERS WITH MODERNITY    17

The European Model With the overthrow of communism in the East, the Berlin Republic finally arrived in the West, defined as liberal-​democratic modernity. According to many criteria united Germany had become a fairly ‘normal’ nation-​state like most of its neighbours: In contrast to Weimar’s crises, it was a parliamentary democracy whose government proved to be an anchor of stability in Europe. Its export-​oriented economy was the largest on the continent, making the Euro, the European common currency introduced in 1999, a coveted currency and racking up large foreign trade surpluses. Though somewhat pruned by the Schroeder government’s Agenda 2010, its welfare state was still one of the most elaborate, offering ample benefits. Its intellectual life no longer sought to distinguish itself from Western civilization, but rather embraced its fashions with a vengeance. And finally, its foreign policy was peaceful and multilateral, embedded in the European Union (EU) and NATO. Only in memory culture did Germans still carry the double burden of the Nazi (NS) and SED dictatorships (Winkler, 2006; Jarausch, 2013). Ironically, just when it seemed that Germany had given up its special path, this reconciliation was threatened from an unlikely quarter—​the Right-​wing turn of the US. From the ‘Reagan Revolution’ onwards, many Republican politicians had veered in a neo-​conservative direction that reinterpreted the common values of liberal modernity in light of American exceptionalism. In the economy this shift meant the ascendancy of neo-​liberalism, trying to throw off regulatory restraints on competition and other economic constraints and liberating the market for the sake of private gain. In foreign policy this turn signified an embrace of unilateralism and neo-​imperialism, especially after the 9/​11 terrorist attacks. In military affairs this attitude sponsored two wars in Iraq and an invasion of Afghanistan, both of which were successful on the battlefield but failed in subsequent peace-​making. In a whole host of issues like welfare support or gun control, an increasing gap opened up between the unbridled individualism of the US and the preference for solidarity and collectivism on the European continent (Kurthen et al., 2006; Ther, 2016). Somewhat unwittingly, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) found itself in the thankless role of defending the European model of modernity against this neo-​liberal American variant. In practice that meant holding onto the compromise of the ‘social market economy’ that tried to combine competition with solidarity. In the transatlantic debate about a reform of the welfare state, Germany was only willing to accept modest cut-​backs coupled with an effort to retrain rather than to coddle the unemployed. Regarding environmental protection it dared to shut down nuclear power-​plants and shift over to renewable energies such as wind or solar power. And in the highly charged migration question, Berlin was willing to open its gates at least temporarily. Only in the sovereign debt crisis did Germany insist on austerity in order to restore the global competitiveness of the heavily indebted southern European PIIGS countries (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain) that were clamouring for soft money (Ash, 2004; Jarausch, 2021,

18   Konrad H. Jarausch pp. 3–​5, 271–​82). After a century of failed searches for alternatives, the Germans had now become a key defender of the embattled European way. Due to these different interpretations of modernity, maintaining a liberal world order against a nationalist US has become a difficult challenge for Germany. Because of its historic burden and limited military, the FRG had developed a foreign policy ‘culture of restraint’, preferring soft power to armed force. Pushed by the international community, Berlin had gradually accepted more international responsibility, even allowing the Bundeswehr to participate in combat missions justified as peace-​keeping in the Kosovo and Afghanistan. But the Kohl and the Schroeder governments refused to participate in the Iraq wars, the former because of concurrent reunification, the latter because it condemned the invasion as a preemptive war. The Federal Republic is therefore faced with a fundamental foreign policy dilemma: On the one hand, Berlin wants to maintain its friendship with the US for reasons of defence and trade, but on the other it feels more and more compelled to assert its own and European interests (Sommer, 2018). The victory of liberal modernity in the ideological competition of the past century has had the unexpected consequence of splitting it into an American and a European variant. As the ‘seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century’, the First World War had produced three competing blueprints of modernity: the Bolshevik social revolution of the Soviet Union; the Wilsonian promise of capitalist democracy; and the fascist attempt at a radical nationalism, first enunciated by Mussolini and then adopted by Hitler. In the bloody competition between these modernizing visions, the unlikely alliance between democracy and communism first defeated National Socialism, while Cold War competition then vanquished ‘real existing socialism’ as well. But instead of ushering in a post-​historical age of liberal capitalism, the victorious democratic ideology has begun to fracture into American and European variants, confronted by a post-​communist Chinese challenge. Surprisingly enough, it was a chastened Germany which became the chief champion of the continental model (Jarausch, 2015). One can only hope that with the reforms of the Biden administration, the transatlantic gap will start to narrow once again

German Transformations The German encounters with modernity in the twentieth century were therefore tortuous affairs, full of contradictions and dead ends. In many areas, such as science and technology or urbanization and economic growth, the inhabitants of Central Europe were at the forefront, due to government support for their innovations. But in other more affective domains such as identity, values, and mores, their intellectuals often clung to a bygone era of seemingly stable rural or small town life which was slipping away. The authoritarian modernity of the Second Empire was therefore an ingenious effort to combine rapid development with political tradition which failed due to a self-​ centred focus on Kultur that lacked a universal appeal. The second, more radical project

ENCOUNTERS WITH MODERNITY    19 of the Third Reich, to fashion an ‘organic modernity’, was another attempt to reconcile cutting-​edge advances with a protective ‘peoples’ community’. But by excluding other peoples and ideologies, the Volksgemeinschaft deteriorated into ethnic cleansing and hegemonic genocide (Herbert, 2014; Jarausch, 2018a, p. 21). Though starting with the bonus of anti-​fascist resistance, the socialist version of modernization was not any more successful either. To be true, it could appeal to the Marxist heritage of the labour movement, which sought to create a more equal and just society, inspiring radicals from Bebel to Luxemburg. But it was established on the bayonets of the Red Army that had shed too much blood during the Nazi defeat in order to be accepted by the ‘liberated’ populace. Even after the fusion of the Social Democratic and Communist parties, the project of social revolution by forced industrialization and collectivization appealed only to a minority of the East German populace, compelling the party to establish a Leftist dictatorship. While the effort to create ‘a better Germany’ initially appealed to intellectuals like Berthold Brecht or Victor Klemperer, in the long run even socialist idealists were disenchanted with ‘real existing socialism’ (Jarausch and Sabrow, 1999; Fulbrook, 1995). The GDR experiment therefore failed for multiple economic, cultural, and political reasons. Yet it took two attempts in order for the majority of Germans to accept the liberal-​ democratic and capitalist form of modernity associated with the West. Born in defeat and revolution, the Weimar Republic, supported by democratic, Catholic, and social-​ democratic parties, sought to replace the discredited authoritarianism of Imperial Germany. But its pathbreaking constitution, social reforms, and vibrant culture were denigrated by anti-​democratic forces of the Left and the Right (Hett, 2018). In contrast, the ‘donated democracy’ after the second, even more complete defeat, gained more popular support, since all the other alternatives had proven even less attractive. No doubt, the Cold War confrontation with the dictatorial East and the material success of the economic miracle made democracy look better by comparison. Nonetheless, it took at least an entire generation until the majority of the West Germans internalized democratic norms sufficiently in order to be sure that ‘Bonn [was] not Weimar’ (Strote, 2018; Wolfrum, 2006). The history of twentieth-​century Germany can therefore be read as a search for convincing answers to the mounting pressures of modernization. The sociologist Thorstein Veblen had already identified the underlying problem of a discrepancy between technical or economic advances and obstacles to political development. Thomas Mann’s defence of the philosophical depth and musical creativity of German Kultur therefore failed to persuade critics like his brother Heinrich. It took the collapse of the Empire to make the former a ‘Republican by reason’ whose tepid support of the Weimar Republic was insufficient to prevent the Nazi takeover. Only during the second murderous war would Mann commit fully to the defence of democracy in his radio addresses from exile. As the human rights engagement of later intellectuals like Jürgen Habermas shows, Germany has become a stable, Western-​oriented country in the end. But this century-​long learning process has come at a terrible cost in broken lives (Jarausch, 2018c).

20   Konrad H. Jarausch

Further Reading Herbert, Ulrich, Geschichte Deutschlands im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2014). Jarausch, Konrad H., Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015). Kershaw, Ian, To Hell and Back, 1914–​1950 and Rollercoaster Europe, 1950–​2017 (London: Allen Lane, 2016, 2018). Walser Smith, Helmut, Germany: A Nation in its Time, 1500–​2000 (New York: Norton, 2020). Wolfrum, Edgar, Die geglückte Demokratie: Geschichte der Bundesrepubik Deutschland von ihren Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Klett-​Cotta, 2006).

Bibliography Allen, Michael (1996), ‘The Puzzle of Nazi Modernism: Modern Technology and Ideological Consensus in an SS Factory at Auschwitz’, Technology and Culture 37, pp. 527–​7 1. Ash, Timothy Garton (2004), Free World: America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West (New York: Random House). Burleigh, Michael and Wolfgang Wippermann (1991), The Racial State, 1933–​1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Carter, Erica (1997), How German Is She?: Postwar West German Reconstruction and the Consuming Woman (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Dickinson, Edward Ross (2004), ‘Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on our Discourse about “Modernity” ’, Central European History 37, pp. 1–​48. Doering-​Manteuffel, Anselm (1999), Wie westlich sind die Deutschen?: Amerikanisierung und Westernisierung im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). Eisenstadt, Shmuel (2000), ‘Multiple Modernities’, Daedalus 129 (Winter), pp. 1–​29. Fritzsche, Peter (1996), ‘Nazi Modern’, Modernism/​Modernity 3, pp. 1–​22. Fulbrook, Mary (1995), Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949–​1989 (London: Oxford University Press). Fulbrook, Mary (2005), The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven: Yale University Press). Gay, Peter (1970), Weimar Culture: The Insider as Outsider (New York: Harper & Row). Gerschenkron, Alexander (1943), Bread and Democracy in Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press). Granieri, Ronald J. (2003), The Ambivalent Alliance: Konrad Adenauer, the CDU/​CSU, and the West, 1949–​1966 (New York: Berghahn). Herbert, Ulrich (2014), Geschichte Deutschlands im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: C.H. Beck). Herf, Jeffrey (1984), Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hett, Benjamin Carter (2018), The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic (New York: Henry Holt). Hillaker, Lorn (2020), ‘Representing a Better Germany: Competing Images of State and Society in the Early Cultural Diplomacy of the FRG and GDR’, Central European History 53(2), pp. 372–​92. Hönicke-​Moore, Michaela (2014), Know Your Enemy: The American Debate on Nazism, 1933–​1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

ENCOUNTERS WITH MODERNITY    21 Jäckel, Eberhard (1981), Hitler’s World View: A Blueprint for Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Jarausch, Konrad H. (1973), The Enigmatic Chancellor: Bethmann Hollweg and the Hubris of Imperial Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press). Jarausch, Konrad H. (1988), ‘The Wilhelmian Universities: An American View’, in Jack Dukes et al. (eds), Wilhelmian Germany: The Other Side (Boulder: Westview Press), pp. 181–​206. Jarausch, Konrad H. (1994), The Rush to German Unity (New York: Oxford University Press). Jarausch, Konrad H. (ed.) (1999), Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-​Cultural History of the GDR (New York: Berghahn). Jarausch, Konrad H. (2006), After Hitler: Recivilizing Germans, 1945–​1995 (New York: Oxford University Press). Jarausch, Konrad H. (ed.) (2013), United Germany: Debating Processes and Prospects (New York: Berghahn). Jarausch, Konrad H. (2015), Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Jarausch, Konrad H. (2018a), ‘Rivalen der Moderne: Amerika und Deutschland im 20. Jahrhundert’, in Volker Benkert (ed.), Feinde, Freunde, Fremde? Deutsche Perspektiven auf die USA (Baden-​Baden: Nomos), pp. 21–​38. Jarausch, Konrad H. (2018b), ‘Organic Modernity: National Socialism as Alternative Modernism’, in Shelley Baranowski, Armin Nolzen, and Claus-​Christian W. Szejnmann (eds), A Companion to Nazi Germany (London: Wiley & Sons), pp. 33–​46. Jarausch, Konrad H. (2018c), Broken Lives: How Ordinary Germans Experienced the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Jarausch, Konrad H. (2021), Embattled Europe: A Progressive Alternative (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Jarausch, Konrad H. and Michael Geyer (2003), Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Jarausch, Konrad H. and Martin Sabrow (eds) (1999), Weg in den Untergang: Der innere Zerfall der DDR (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). Klessmann, Christoph (2007), Arbeiter im ‘Arbeiterstaat’ DDR: Deutsche Traditionen, sowjetisches Modell, westdeutsches Magnetfeld, 1945–​1971 (Bonn: Dietz). König, Wolfgang (2000), Geschichte der Konsumgesellschaft (Stuttgart: F. Steiner). Krause, Scott H. (2017), ‘A Modern Reich? American Perceptions of Wilhelmine Germany, 1890–​1914’, in Konrad H. Jarausch et al. (eds), Different Germans: Many Germanies: New Transatlantic Perspectives (New York: Berghahn), pp. 25–​52. Kurthen, Hermann et al. (eds) (2006), Safeguarding German-​American Relations in the New Century: Understanding and Accepting Mutual Differences (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books). Lee, Robert (ed.) (2017), German Industry and German Industrialization: Essays in German Economic and Business History in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Taylor and Francis). Leonhard, Jörn (2014), Die Büchse der Pandora: Geschichte des Ersten Weltkrieges (Munich: C.H. Beck). Link, Fabian (2014), Burgen und Burgenforschung im Nationalsozialismus: Wissenschaft und Weltanschauung, 1933–​1945 (Cologne: Böhlau). Machtan, Lothar (2018), Der Kaisersturz: Vom Scheitern im Herzen der Macht (Darmstadt: Konrad Theiss).

22   Konrad H. Jarausch Maier, Charles S. (1997), Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Mann, Thomas (1918), Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (Berlin: Fischer). Mauch, Christof and Kiran Klaus Patel (eds) (2010), The United States and Germany during the Twentieth Century: Competition and Convergence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). McClelland, Charles (2017), Berlin: The Mother of All Research Universities (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books). Moore, Barrington (1966), Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Penguin). Nolte, Paul (2015), Hans-​Ulrich Wehler: Historiker und Zeitgenosse (Munich: C.H. Beck). Peukert, Detlev J. (1993), The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity (New York: Hill and Wang). Poiger, Uta (2000), Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press). Prinz, Michael and Rainer Zitelmann (eds) (1994), Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft). Rodgers, Daniel T. (2000), Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press). Ross, Corey (2002), The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of the GDR (London: Oxford University Press). Schildt, Axel and Arnold Sywottek (eds) (1998), Modernisierung im Wiederaufbau: Die westdeutsche Gesellschaft der fünfziger Jahre (Bonn: Dietz). Schütrumpf, Jörn (ed.) (2018), Spartakusaufstand: Der unterschlagene Bericht des Untersuchungsausschusses der verfassungsgebenden Preußischen Landesversammlung über die Januar-​Unruhen 1919 in Berlin (Berlin: Dietz). Schroeder, Klaus (2013), Der SED-​Staat: Geschichte und Strukturen der DDR, 1949–​1990 (Cologne: Böhlau). Schwarz, Hans-​Peter (1995), Konrad Adenauer: A German Politician and Statesman in a Period of War, Revolution, and Reconstruction (Providence: Berghahn). Sommer, Theo (2018), ‘Spurring to Action: America’s Retreat and Donald Trump’s Refusal to Lead Are Putting the Trans-​Atlantic Alliance at Risk’, German Times (October). Steiner, Andre (2010), The Plans that Failed: An Economic History of the GDR (New York: Berghahn). Strote, Noah (2018), Lions and Lambs: Conflict in Weimar and the Creation of Post-​Nazi Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press). Ther, Philipp (2016), Europe Since 1989: A History (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Veblen, Thorstein (1915), Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (New York: Macmillan). Wehler, Hans Ulrich (1973), Das deutsche Kaiserreich, 1871–​1918 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). Wehler, Hans Ulrich (1975), Modernisierungstheorie und Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). Wehler, Hans Ulrich (1987), Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Bd.. I: Vom Feudalismus des Alten Reiches bis zur Defensiven Modernisierung der Reformära, 1700–​1815 (Munich: C.H. Beck). Weitz, Eric D. (2007), Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

ENCOUNTERS WITH MODERNITY    23 Winkler, Heinrich-​ August (ed.) (1974), Organisierter Kapitalismus: Voraussetzungen und Anfänge (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). Winkler, Heinrich-​August (1993), Weimar, 1918–​1933: Die Geschichte der ersten deutschen Demokratie (Munich: C.H. Beck). Winkler, Heinrich-​ August (2006), Germany: The Long Road West (New York: Oxford University Press). Wolfrum, Edgar (2006), Die geglückte Demokratie: Geschichte der Bundesrepubik Deutschland von ihren Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Klett-​Cotta). Wolle, Stefan (1998), Die heile Welt der Diktatur: Alltag und Herrschaft in der DDR, 1971–​1989 (Berlin: Ch. Links). Woods, Roger (1996), The Conservative Revolution in the Weimar Republic (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

CHAPTER 2

F ROM P OST-​NAT I ONA L DEMO CRAC Y TO P OST-​CL AS SI C A L NATION-​STAT E Heinrich August Winkler

8 May 1945 was undoubtedly the most extreme caesura that Germany experienced during the twentieth century. Unlike what happened after their defeat at the end of the First World War, the German Reich lost its national sovereignty after the end of the Second World War: it de facto ceased to exist. While land east of the Oder and Neiße Rivers came under Polish or Soviet control, the four victorious allied powers occupied the rest of Germany’s territory. During the first four years of the post-​war era this territory was split into two parts that henceforth belonged to two opposed ideological and military blocs. The separation of the Eastern region and the ‘land reform’ in the Soviet Occupation Zone were extreme interventions into the structure of German society. The confiscation of land that once belonged to the East Elben Junkers eliminated the section of the German elite that had done more than any other group to contribute to the destruction of the Weimar Republic and the transfer of power to Hitler in 1933. Property belonging to industrial magnates, another sector of the economic elite whose intransigence had contributed to the dissolution of the first German Republic, as well as all other forms of industry were transformed into ‘people’s property’ in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). On the other side of the Iron Curtain, industry was effectively placed under the collaborative control of employers and unions. The difference between Germans’ reactions to defeat in the First and Second World Wars was equally drastic. After 1918, Germans avoided any serious debate about the degree to which their government had contributed to the outbreak of the First World War. After 1945, only a minority dared to deny that National Socialist Germany had unleashed the Second World War.

FROM POST-NATIONAL DEMOCRACY TO POST-CLASSICAL NATION-STATE     25 The constitutional lessons that the Western half of Germany learned from the collapse of the Weimar Republic were of fundamental importance during the immediate post-​ war era. When the Parliamentary Council came together in Bonn in September 1948, representatives of West German state parliaments developed a Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany that differed dramatically in form from the Weimar Republic’s constitution of August 1919. Never again would it be possible for a parliamentary majority to legally vote to abolish democracy. The so-​called ‘Ewigkeitsklausel’ in the third paragraph of Article 79 included a list of inalienable human rights, proclaimed the democratic and social character of the Federal Republic, and the division of the country into different states (Länder) that would work together in the Bundesrat to create laws for the entire Republic. The Federal Constitutional Court could ban political parties that were hostile to the existence of the Republic. Unlike the Reichstag, the Bundestag should only be able to replace a chancellor by electing a successor. In contrast to the Reichspräsident, the Bundespräsident is not elected directly by the people. Instead, an assembly comprised of members of the Bundestag and an equal number of representatives from state parliaments meet in the Bundesversammlung to elect the head of state. Most of the duties of the Bundespräsident is ceremonial and he or she doesn’t have the special executive powers once possessed by the Reichspräsident. While the Western part of Germany looked at the past and saw a need for ‘anti-​totalitarian’ action, the Eastern part developed its own ‘anti-​fascist’ conclusions. The Federal Republic became a functional and representative democracy in the Western mold. The GDR followed the Soviet model of a communist dictatorship. Over the course of the Cold War, both German states became close allies of their former occupiers. Thanks to the ‘Wirtschaftswunder’, citizens of the Federal Republic came to see democracy as a form of rule that allowed for greater prosperity and could successfully navigate political and economic crises. The Federal Republic also successfully integrated refugees from the former eastern provinces of the Reich as well as from other parts of East Central and South-​Eastern Europe. In May 1955, ten years after the unconditional surrender of the German Reich, the Federal Republic became a sovereign state, with the caveat of a saving clause that preserved certain rights of the western allies concerning the divided Berlin and Germany as a whole. In 1956, the Swiss journalist Fritz René Allemann published the book Bonn ist nicht Weimar. At this time, the title’s thesis was not merely a bromide; it was an original and courageous statement. One of the author’s most important observations was that the German political Left and Right had changed roles. During the Weimar Republic, parties on the Left were internationalist and parties on the Right were nationalist. The exact opposite was true in the early years of West Germany. While the ‘bürgerliche’ coalition led by Konrad Adenauer’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) developed politics of supranational integration, the Social Democrats (SPD)—​under the leadership of Kurt Schumacher and his successor Erich Ollenhauer—​distinguished themselves as a national party by focusing more on German reunification than on rearmament and the Western European integration of the Federal Republic (Alleman, 1956, p. 274).

26   Heinrich August Winkler Adenauer’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) were interdenominational Christian parties: another contrast to the former political landscape of Weimar. These two parties quickly developed into Volksparteien that had great success winning over voters from different segments of the west society. Only much later did the Social Democrats divorce themselves from their traditional role as a Marxist party for the working classes. They used their Godesberg Program in November 1959 to portray themselves as a party of social reform for all who shared their goals. Another important sign of the SPD’s willingness to become a governing party took place on 30 June 1960. Speaking in front of the Bundestag, Herbert Wehner, the Deputy Head of the SPD, declared his support for Adenauer’s treaties with Western countries. This laid the foundation for the Social Democrats to take part in the first ‘Grand Coalition’ with the CDU at the federal level in 1966. It also paved the way for the first ever transfer of political power in the history of the Federal Republic in 1969. It was then that the Social Democrat Willy Brandt—​at the head of a coalition with the liberal Free Democratic Party—​began to implement a system of ‘Ostpolitik’ that expanded upon Adenauer’s earlier politics of Western European and transatlantic integration (Winkler, 2007, p. 184). The election of Willy Brandt, a ‘remigrant’, as Chancellor was also a sign of the Federal Republic’s increasingly self-​critical relationship to the German past. The philosopher Hermann Lübbe defined the 1950s as an era of ‘communicative silencing’: politicians and a majority of the West German public did not deny the crimes of the ‘Third Reich’, but they generally did not talk about their own guilt or the guilt of ‘ordinary’ Germans (Lübbe, 1983, pp. 329–​49). For a long time, there was no systematic academic or legal reckoning with the worst of all crimes against humanity: the genocide of European Jews. This first began to take place with the Ulm Einsatzgruppen trial in 1958 and continued apace during the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials between 1963 and 1965 as well as the Dusseldorf Treblinka trial of 1964–​65. It took the Historikerstreit during the mid-​1980s about the singularity of the Nazi genocide of the Jews to convince the West German public that the Holocaust was the central event of German history during the twentieth century. In the course of this controversy, the philosopher Jürgen Habermas delivered a polemic, which made him the founding father of a post-​Adenauer Left: The unconditional opening of the Federal Republic to the political culture of the West is the greatest intellectual accomplishment of our postwar era; my generation should be especially proud of this . . . The only patriotism which will not estrange us from the West is a constitutional patriotism. Unfortunately, it took Auschwitz to make possible to the old culture nation of the Germans binding universalist constitutional principles anchored in conviction. Those who want to drive the shame about this fact out of us with phrases such as ‘obsession with guilt’, those who desire to call the Germans back to conventional forms of their national identity, are destroying the only reliable foundation of our ties to the West” (Habermas, 1993, pp. 43–​4).

FROM POST-NATIONAL DEMOCRACY TO POST-CLASSICAL NATION-STATE     27

Towards and Away from a Post-​ National State On 20 October 1948, seven months before the Basic Law was passed, the CDU parliamentarian Adolf Süsterhenn declared in the Parliamentary Council that the ‘Bismarck Reich, the Weimar Republic—​I will not speak at all about the “Third Reich” ’—​ misinterpreted the term “Reich”. For 1,000 years of German history the term “Reich” referred to an international, a European entity,’ Süsterhenn continued. ‘It was a sign of the Christian West. And if I could translate the term “Reich” into the modern language of contemporary politics I would say that it . . . refers to either a European union or European federation’ (Werner, 1996, p. 190). At first, only Catholic conservatives like Süsterhenn talked about a particularly European programme for the Federal Republic during the 1940s and 1950s. Over the course of decades, this idea gradually migrated from the Right, to the Centre, and then to the Left. In 1976, the contemporary historian and political scientist Karl Dietrich Bracher was the first to call the Federal Republic ‘a post-​national democracy amongst nation-​states’. When he repeated the term ten years later in the fifth volume of his Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the term ‘post-​national’ began its transformation into a political slogan (Bracher, 1979, pp. 285–​406; Bracher, 1986, p. 406). In his 1988 book The Society of the Future, Oskar Lafontaine, the Governor of the Saarland and Deputy Head of the SPD, called for an end to the nation-​state because it had outlived the ‘rationality of its own idea’. Lafontaine believed there was one particular reason why Germany should take this to heart: ‘Because we Germans are denied our national unity and will continue to be denied it for the foreseeable future. Because we Germans caused the most horrible events through a perverted form of nationalism. Because of this it should be easier for us to renounce the nation-​state than other countries who were and are still able to tie the creation of their nation-​states to the development of a democratic society. In light of their recent history, the Germans are predestined to take on the leading role in the process of a supra-​national unification of Europe’ (Lafontaine, 1990, p. 188). This cognitive leap from German perversion to German predestination could hardly have found much resonance outside of the Federal Republic. The compensatory motive of this new German mission was too explicit. Many neighbouring countries remembered all too well times when Germans had denied their right to national identity and sovereignty for much different reasons. Thus, the desire to understand and drive forward the European community as a ‘post-​national’ project generally remained a West German idiosyncrasy. The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989, one year after Lafontaine’s book appeared. On 3 October 1990, the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany based upon Article 23 of the Basic Law. Reunified Germany no longer fit Bracher’s formula of a ‘post-​national democracy amongst nation-​states’. It was not

28   Heinrich August Winkler a sovereign nation-​state in the classic sense, like the German Reich. Instead, like all member states of the European Union (EU), it was a post-​classical nation-​state: these states collectively exercise some of their sovereign rights and have transferred others to supranational institutions. Reunification solved a centuries-​old problem that had occupied Europe, albeit not consistently, since the Holy Roman Empire dissolved itself under Napoleon’s pressure in 1806: the German question. More specifically, this consisted of three questions. The first was a question of territory and borders. Reunification ended this through the legally binding and final recognition of the Oder-​Neiße line as the German-​Polish border. This simultaneously put an end to another centuries-​old problem: the Polish question. Second, the German question had always touched upon the relationship between unity and freedom. Reunification solved this double demand, which had overwhelmed German Liberals and Democrats during the revolution of 1848–​49. It resulted in both peace and freedom. Third, the German question was a problem for European security. The solution to this was unified Germany’s membership in NATO as well as its duties as a member of the EU. In his speech at the ceremony marking reunification, at the Berlin Philharmonic on 3 October 1990, Bundespräsident Richard von Weizsäcker captured the historical meaning of the day in one sentence: ‘The day has come when, for the first time in history, all of Germany has found its permanent place in the circle of Western Democracies’ (Texte zur Deutschlandpolitik, 1991, p. 718).

Becoming a ‘Reluctant Hegemon’? Whether or not reunification truly resulted in a final answer to the German question has been debated time and again since 1990. Ironically, one such occasion for this debate was the European project that François Mitterrand, the French President from 1981 until 1995, pushed in order to prevent German hegemony: a European currency union. Up until the end of 1989, Chancellor Helmut Kohl believed that creating a European currency union and a political union were two sides of the same coin; that there was an unbreakable link between these two goals. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mitterrand pressured Kohl to put more emphasis on the currency union than the political union of Western Europe. This was because Mitterrand wanted to prevent a reunified Germany, supported by the strong Deutschmark, from becoming the uncontested hegemon of Europe. In order not to burden German unity with a Franco-​German rift, Kohl gave in. Several conventions on the monetary and political union of Europe produced the Maastricht Treaty. While the treaty established a currency union that was very much in line with Germany’s vision, it offered far less than Bonn wanted regarding a political union (Rödder, 2009, p. 264). Critics at the time who argued that a shared currency presupposed a shared budgetary culture and even a fiscal union of participating states

FROM POST-NATIONAL DEMOCRACY TO POST-CLASSICAL NATION-STATE     29 went unheard. Only after the start of the global financial and European debt crisis in 2008 did it gradually become clear that the European currency union had grave structural flaws. Since then, a new thesis has become popular in countries with high levels of debt, above all those in the Mediterranean region: that an economically and financially powerful Germany has driven weaker states into high levels of unemployment and poverty through its obsession with regulations that produced a rigid politics of fiscal austerity. Reacting to this, the billionaire George Soros stated that Germany seemingly desired an economic recovery plan that would create ‘a German empire with the periphery as the hinterland’ (Soros, 2012). Several British academics offered more nuanced views. In 2011, the political scientist William E. Paterson called Germany a ‘reluctant hegemon’ (Paterson, 2011, pp. 57–​75). The historian and journalist Timothy Garton Ash wrote of a ‘new German question’ (Ash, 2013). The political scientist Hans Kundnani spoke of ‘Germany’s global economic half hegemony’ and a return of the German question in a geo-​economic form: a strange mixture of economic power and an abstinence from military force defines Germany’s present-​day power. Germany, according to Kundnani, is increasingly assertive in Europe, but tends to restrict itself to economic interests outside of Europe, often without paying attention to normative considerations such as human rights (Kundnani, 2014, pp. 8, 14, 107). Nevertheless, the term ‘hegemon’ does not quite match up with either the idea or the present reality of Germany’s place within the EU. The transfer of sovereign rights to supranational institutions like the EU Commission, the European Court of Justice, and the European Central Bank (ECB) has substantially reduced the sovereignty of all EU member states including Germany. It is not rare for the Governing Council of the ECB to overrule the President of the German Bundesbank. The EU’s most financially stable member states, of which Germany is one, also lost their blocking minority on the Council of the European Union after the UK left the EU in January 2021. In regards to security, France is the only one of the twenty-​seven EU member states that has atomic weapons and a permanent seat as well as veto powers on the Security Council of the United Nations (UN). Given all this, the term ‘half hegemony’, which the historian Ludwig Dehio coined in 1951 to describe the position of Bismarck’s Reich in Europe, is inappropriate because it overstates the actual power of reunified Germany (Dehio, 1955, p. 15). Despite its economic dominance, Germany has shown little desire to play a consistently dominant role in the Eurozone. Since 2014, the EU Commission, which increasingly views itself as a ‘political commission’, has taken a fairly liberal line towards weakening the Maastricht Treaty’s criteria related to levels of state debt and deficits. Acceptance of the Euro as well as the EU would dramatically drop in member states with the strongest economies should Germany and other countries with relatively high levels of fiscal discipline back down from the treaty’s contractual stability criteria. Thus, a conjunction of pro-​growth structural reforms and long-​term consolidation of state finances is not a sign of hegemonic aspirations on the part of Germany. Rather, it is the only realistic way to keep afloat and further the development of the European currency union.

30   Heinrich August Winkler It is much harder to refute accusations that Germany has deliberately held back its capabilities in the realm of international security. Germany is influenced not only by the memory of its militarist past before 1945, but also by the fact that both post-​war German states were only partially sovereign until 1990. During emergencies their ‘allies’ had the final say, not them. The allies’ jurisdiction over Berlin and Germany as a whole disappeared as a part of reunification, but the Germans have continued to have reservations about taking part in military engagements for matters other than national defence or commitments to their allies. On 12 July 1994 the German Constitutional Court ruled that the Bundeswehr could engage in humanitarian and military campaigns outside of NATO territory so long as the German government received the ‘constitutional approval of the Bundestag’. Ten days later, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel declared that this was a ‘clear political rejection of a German Sonderweg’. But the ‘tried and true culture of restraint’ in military matters still remained in place after the verdict. ‘We will not race to the front’ (Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 1994, pp. 21165–​9). In other words, this did not dispel reservations about ‘out of area’ engagements for the Bundeswehr. Günter Verheugen, the Bundesgeschäftsführer of the SPD, noted the following in the party’s magazine, Vorwärts, when most of the SPD members of the Bundestag voted against a UN-​mandated campaign to protect civilians in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995: even after the great Wende of 1989–​90, Germany could ‘not become a “normal country” ’ because of its anomalous history. ‘Whoever doubts this should ask themselves about the meaning of the recently opened Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC’ (Verheugen, 1995). It was not the last time that German politicians used the murder of European Jewry as an argument to support a political decision. In 1999, two members of Gerhard Schröder’s red-​green coalition—​the Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Social Democratic Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping—​referenced the crimes of National Socialism, concentration camps, and Auschwitz when Germany debated whether or not to join NATO forces during the conflict in Kosovo. This time, however, they did so to justify, rather than to avoid deploying the Bundeswehr because of an obligation to provide humanitarian aid and prevent new crimes against humanity (Winkler, 2015, p. 179). More often, though, references are made to pacifist lessons from the German past which tend to point to a special kind of German morality. This instrumentalization of the ‘Third Reich’ manifests itself not only in debates about military engagements, but much more commonly in regards to Germany’s behaviour towards regimes that violate human rights and international law. There is a striking convergence of rightist and leftist parties in relation to the actions of Putin’s Russia. Some politicians of the Right point to the tradition of an allegedly special German-​Russian relationship that has existed since the era of Bismarck. In contrast, intellectuals and politicians on the left speak of a lasting German responsibility stemming from Nazi Germany’s crimes in the war against the Soviet Union. Both reach the same conclusion: Germany would do best to avoid any confrontation with Russia (Winkler, 2014).

FROM POST-NATIONAL DEMOCRACY TO POST-CLASSICAL NATION-STATE     31 It has become second nature for many Germans to engage in the moral idealization of some positions. At the height of the migration crisis in 2015, the most important decisions undertaken by the German government and the willingness of most of the population to help was accompanied by political and journalistic commentary which, not without some egotism, put Germany forward as the moral compass of Europe. Speaking in front of the Bundestag on 9 September 2015, the Green Party Co-​Chair Katrin Göring-​ Eckardt called Germany the ‘World Champion of Hilfsbereitschaft and Menschenliebe’ (Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 2015, p. 11614). Accusations that Eastern and Western European neighbours were not acting with a sense of solidarity ended up isolating Germany in ongoing debates over asylum and refugees. Rarely have the limits of Germany’s power in Europe been as visible as they were during this crisis. At a time when there are numerous threats to the cohesion of the EU and the Transatlantic West, much will depend upon how Germany decides to utilize its economic and political weight. Since 1945, Germany’s growing self-​critical engagement with its own history has won recognition from others and enabled a new sense of national self-​esteem. However, recent years have also shown that self-​criticism can easily veer into self-​rightheousness. It is a danger Germany would be well advised to keep permanently in mind.1

Further Reading: Allemann, Fritz René (1956), Bonn ist nicht Weimar (Cologne: Kiepenheuer und Witsch). Bracher, Karl Dietrich (1979), Die deutsche Diktatur. Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus 5. Auflage (Frankfurt: Ullstein). Kundnani, Hans (2014), The Paradox of German Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Sinn, Hans-​Werner (2016), Der Schwarze Juni: Brexit, Flüchtlingswelle, Euro-​Desaster—​Wie die Neugründung Europas gelingt (Freiburg: Verlag Herder). Komplex. Das Scheitern der ersten deutschen Ullrich, Sebastian (2009), Der Weimar-​ Demokratie und die politische Kultur der frühen Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Wallstein). Winkler, Heinrich August (2007), Germany: The Long Road West. Volume 2: 1933–​1990, trans. Alexander J. Sager (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Winkler, Heinrich August (2015), The Age of Catastrophe, A History of the West 1914–​1945, trans. Stewart Spencer (New Haven CT: Yale University Press).

Bibliography Allemann, Fritz René (1956), Bonn ist nicht Weimar (Cologne: Kiepenheuer und Witsch). Ash, Timothy Garton (2013), ‘The New German Question’, The New York Review of Books, August 15, 2013. Bracher, Karl Dietrich (1979), Die deutsche Diktatur. Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus 5. Auflage (Frankfurt: Ullstein).

1 

This essay has been translated from German by Max Lazar.

32   Heinrich August Winkler Bracher, Karl Dietrich (1986), ‘Politik und Zeitgeist. Tendenzen der siebziger Jahre’, in Karl Dietrich Bracher, Wolfgang Jäger, und Werner Link (eds), Republik im Wandel 1969-​1974. Die Ära Brandt (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-​Anstalt), pp. 285–​406. Dehio, Ludwig (1955), Deutschland und die Weltpolitik im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag). German Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages. Stenographischer Bericht, 12. Wahlperiode 22.7.1994 (Berlin: Deutscher Bundestag), https://​dip21.bundes​tag.de/​dip21/​btp/​ 12/​12240.pdf (accessed 27 April 2021). German Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages. Stenographischer Bericht, 18. Wahlperiode. 15.10.2015 (Berlin: Deutscher Bundestag), https://​dip21.bundes​tag.de/​dip21/​ btp/​18/​18130.pdf (accessed 27 April 2021). Habermas, Jürgen (1993), ‘A Kind of Settlement of Damages: The Apologetic Tendencies in German History Writing’, in Forever in the Shadow of Hitler? Original Documents of the Historikerstreit, the Controversy Concerning the Singularity of the Holocaust, trans. James Knowlton and Arnett Cates (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press), pp. 34–​44. Kundnani, Hans (2014), The Paradox of German Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Lafontaine, Oskar (1990), Die Gesellschaft der Zukunft. Reformpolitik in einer veränderten Welt (Munich: Heyne). Lübbe, Hermann (1983), ‘Der Nationalsozialismus im politischen Bewusstsein der Gegenwart’, in Martin Broszat et al. (eds), Deutschlands Weg in die Diktatur. Internationale Konferenz zur nationalsozialistischen Machtübernahme im Reichstagsgebäude in Berlin. Referate und Diskussionen. Ein Protokoll (Berlin: Siedler), pp. 329–​49. Paterson, William E. (2011), ‘The Reluctant Hegemon? Germany Moves Center State in the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies 49, pp. 57–​75. Rödder, Andreas (2009), Deutschland einig Vaterland. Die Geschichte der Wiedervereinigung (Munich: C.H. Beck). Soros, George, Remarks at the Festival of Economics, Trento, 2 June 2012. https://​www.geor​ geso​ros.com/​2012/​06/​02/​remarks_​at_​the_​festiva​l_​of​_​eco​nomi​cs_​t​rent​o_​it​aly/​. Texte zur Deutschlandpolitik, Reihe III, Band 8b (1991) Bundesministerium für innerdeutsche Beziehungen, (Bonn: Deutscher Bundes-​Verlag). Verheugen, Günter (1995), ‘Politik nicht auf Bundeswehreinsätze reduzieren’, Vorwärts no. 8, August 1995. Werner, Wolfram (ed.) (1996), Der Parlamentarische Rat 1948–​1949. Akten und Protokolle, Band 9: Plenum (Munich: Oldenbourg). Winkler, Heinrich August (2007), Germany: The Long Road West. Volume 2: 1933–​1990, trans. Alexander J. Sager (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Winkler, Heinrich August (2014), ‘Die Spuren schrecken. Putins deutsche Verteidiger wissen nicht, in welcher Tradition sie stehen’, Der Spiegel no. 16 (14 April), pp. 28–​29. Winkler, Heinrich August (2015), Geschichte des Westens, Band 4: Die Zeit der Gegenwart (Munich: C.H. Beck).

CHAPTER 3

E MOTIONAL ST YL E S I N P OST-​WAR G E RMA N P OLITI C S Ute Frevert

Since the start of the new millennium, European political cultures have been undergoing a notable process of emotionalization, at least according to many contemporary observers. Political scientists speak of a de-​substantiation of politics; politicians, they claim, no longer aim to negotiate complex solutions to complicated issues. Instead, they leave those to so-​called market forces, become self-​reflexive and focus on how to gain and sustain their own power. In this endeavour, they are supported by myriad spin doctors and pollsters, who creatively work on inventing new power techniques for a post-​democratic era. Such techniques privilege strategies of personalization and sentimentalization rather than strengthening rational debate and informed controversy (Streeck, 2017). Thus, they not only assist the process of stripping politics of content and criticism, but they also pave the way for populism, predominantly right-​wing populism, which is thriving across Europe. In Germany in particular, the emergence of the extreme right after 2015 has sent shock waves through the political class and public media. The latter fear for the stability of a political system with parties that agree to form coalition governments and guard the consensus of civilized restraint and mutual respect. The new party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), is thought to undermine this consensus and perform ‘anti-​politics’ in that they reject democratic procedures and break the norms of decent, non-​violent behaviour (Diehl, 2017; Amann, 2017). At the same time, they epitomize the trend towards the emotionalization of politics by introducing and condoning hate speech, expressive rage, and a sharp distinction between foes (to be persecuted) and friends (to be trusted) (Frevert, 2016; Jensen, 2017). The passionate reaction to right-​wingers in Germany has to be considered against the historical background of a post-​war era that saw continuous efforts to ‘come to terms’ with the country’s National Socialist past. As this chapter argues, a part of these efforts

34   Ute Frevert has revolved around scandalizing the passionate politics and emotional demagogy that allegedly defined the ‘Third Reich’ and should, therefore, have no place in the new state(s) created after the downfall of Nazism. Finding a particular emotional style was a major component of state-​building in both West and East Germany. How such a style emerged and developed can reveal a great deal regarding political cultures and can also help to explain the discourse on emotionalization and sentimentalization in the twenty-​ first century.

Reason and Emotion In 1943, the US government commissioned and funded four short films produced by Walt Disney. One was called Reason and Emotion, and it received an Oscar nomination a year later (Platthaus, 2001, pp. 184–​5). Its first part introduced the audience to contemporary perceptions of what an emotion was and how it related to reason. Every man and woman, so the story went, must resist the temptations of emotion, personified for men by a primitive, uncultured caveman, and for women by a voluptuous, pleasure-​seeking sybarite. Reason, in contrast, was depicted as a male egg-​head and a spinster governess. Even though all four types of gendered personification were largely unappealing, reason should, as the film claimed, maintain the upper hand. Putting emotions in the driver’s seat would harm society and endanger civilization. Since one could not live without them, however, rational reflection was needed to keep them in check. The film’s second half adapted this lesson to contemporary politics. In Nazi Germany, the audience was told, emotion had taken over, fuelled by constant propaganda and a monstrous leader who knew no bounds on his path to destruction. Under the threat of Germany’s obliterating power, Americans should not lose their heads (and courage), but continue to fight back. The film ended on an optimistic note, with the reasonable egg-​head steering a fighter jet. Yet he was not alone in the plane: his co-​pilot turned out to be the good-​natured caveman, who provided emotional energy and offered moral support to the just cause. Together, they led the nation to ultimate victory. The propaganda film highlighted a widespread concern regarding the appropriate relationship between reason and emotion, not only but particularly in politics. Preceded by developments in the arts, where a ‘new sobriety’ (neue Sachlichkeit) had succeeded Expressionism, the interwar period had witnessed multifold attempts to keep political emotions at bay. In his Inaugural Address of March 1933, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to garner support for his New Deal politics by shielding citizens against the abounding emotion of fear—​‘The only thing we have to fear is fear’. Fear was aptly defined as ‘nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance’ (Roosevelt, 1933). At that time, Germany was already in the firm grip of National Socialism, which propelled and enlisted a host of other ‘unreasoning’ emotions, from national honour and pride to feelings of racial superiority and anti-​Semitic disgust (Jensen and Schüler-​Springorum, 2013). As the Disney movie

EMOTIONAL STYLES IN POST-WAR GERMAN POLITICS     35 portrayed it ten years later, in the midst of a new World War, pride had taken the lead, transforming the German people into fanatics and mobilizing them against a world of perceived enemies, democratic and undemocratic, in the East and the West. It would be misleading, though, to identify democratic regimes with emotional styles that favoured sobriety and restraint, and undemocratic regimes with politics of emotional overwhelm and excess. In the modern age of mass participation, politicians across different parties and systems deliberately appealed to people’s emotions in order to market their politics and win support. They did so in times of peace, but even more so in times of war, or when preparing for military conflict. They practised emotional politics, and they reflected on whether this was good or bad, helpful or harmful, successful or flawed. They also observed closely what competitors did, and, as the Disney film shows, they tried to learn from each other, whether through imitation or negation. As Hitler himself claimed, he had learnt from the Allies and what he considered to be their propagandistic advantage during the First World War. He became an expert in reading and manipulating emotions, and he managed, as stated in Mein Kampf, to ‘find the appropriate psychological form’ that would ‘arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses’. Those masses were held to be ‘so feminine’ that their ‘thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning’. Consequently, politics ‘must appeal to the feelings of the public rather than to their reasoning powers’ (Hitler, 1925–​26/​2016, pp. 499, 501, 507). There were numerous such appeals, which initially kindled the desire to avenge the ‘shame’ that the Versailles Treaty had allegedly inflicted on the German nation. Promising to restore national honour, National Socialism demanded unconditional loyalty, absolute trust, and passionate love. Love focused not so much on the fatherland but on the ‘Führer’, who was thought to embody the ‘Volk’ in all its greatness and unlimited potential. Such messages were not simply conveyed by rhetoric: speeches (and there were many) were accompanied by a strong visual component through posters, banners, and the new medium of film. Above all, they were comprehensively practiced and continuously experienced, in schools and youth organizations (with compulsory membership) as well as in frequent mass rallies and festivals with seas of flags, singing, marching columns, and captivating spectacles of light (Reichel, 1991; Frevert, 2015). Although events were carefully staged to produce awe and enthusiasm, the regime additionally paid close attention to people’s sentiments and opinions. Starting in 1938, the Security Service of the SS regularly reported on the ‘mood’ and ‘thoughts and desires’ of the public, with special concern for people’s ‘emotional attitude towards enemies’ and their ‘confidence in the Führer’ (Boberach, 1984, pp. 69–​72). Expertise in the observation of the national disposition had first been developed in the US, with Gallup polls starting in 1935. Two years later, the UK followed suit, conducting ‘mass observations’ on a grand scale. Gathering information about people’s feelings and inclinations turned out to be of great value, both for politics (ahead of elections) and for economic players (PR, marketing). The more companies, parties, and government agencies knew about what citizen-​consumers desired and abhorred, or feared and loved, the better they could customize and sell their goods, services, and politics.

36   Ute Frevert Such interest was by no means restricted to the interwar or war periods. The triumph of polling opinions, attitudes, and feelings continued after 1945, easily crossing political and ideological borders. While the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) mostly relied on private organizations to conduct large-​scale surveys, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) drew on an increasingly dense spy network to report on whether and how state socialism was succeeding in conquering the hearts and minds of the East German population. The lesson had been learnt: mass politics had to appeal to people’s emotions, and these emotions need to be acutely monitored and worked upon.

Collective Pathos Against Sobriety Yet one cannot help noticing the tone of unease that often went along with acknowledging this lesson. To many political activists and observers, the relationship between reason and emotion was highly ambiguous. Not everyone believed in the power and legitimacy of charisma, and more than a few distrusted the appeal to people’s feelings (which was often tantamount to actively shaping and moulding those feelings). Even Hitler’s description of the ‘feminine’ masses who could only be reached by emotional communication bore traces of condescension and contempt. The ‘feminine’, as it was constructed in contemporary gender discourses, encompassed both lustful seduction on the one hand, and threats of emasculation on the other. Emotional politics thus contained promises, but could also prove dangerous to ‘the reasoning powers’ on which male privileges and prerogatives had come to rely since the Enlightenment. National Socialism had taken great pains to ensure that these masculine powers did not succumb to feminine emotionality. All positions of political power were filled by men, and, unlike the Weimar Republic, there were no female representatives in the (largely ineffective) parliament. At the same time, visual media eagerly published photographs of women cheering for the Führer, ecstatically waving at him, and blowing kisses when he passed through their hometowns. This generated the long-​lived myth of women as Hitler’s most passionate supporters and idolizers (Bloch, 1937/​1972; as to the post-​war rehearsal of that myth: Schmidt and Dietz, 1983, pp. 7–​8). After the war, a similar but gender-​neutral narrative was added to the legend about women having been charmed by Hitler’s charisma and falling under his erotic spell. Now it was the entire nation that was supposed to have been conquered and seduced, misled and betrayed. While some blamed the regime at large and tried to exculpate its main figure, others held Hitler alone responsible, emphasizing their own innocence and helplessness. As Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich observed in the 1960s, many Germans chose to forget their ardent love for the Führer in order to avoid guilt and shame. Becoming ‘apolitically conservative’, they lost any interest in creating, organizing, and structuring politics. Instead, they dedicated their energy to producing and consuming, thus realizing the German economic miracle. The only emotional continuity between pre-​and post-​1945, at least in West Germany, was the massive fear and

EMOTIONAL STYLES IN POST-WAR GERMAN POLITICS     37 hatred of communism (Mitscherlich and Mitscherlich, 1975, pp. 3–​68; Nolte, 2008; as a critique Parkinson, 2015). Not surprisingly, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) election posters of 1949 and 1953 used similar images to those popularized by the Nazis to demonize the ‘red peril’ (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2013). In addition to such direct emotional manipulation, the FRG’s political culture turned out to be remarkably unemotional. Sobriety characterized the style of Bonn’s first political representatives, Konrad Adenauer and Theodor Heuss. Both shied away from big words and heroic gestures; both preferred factual arguments to passionate and overwhelming speeches. Even though in his 1949 inaugural address President Heuss called for ‘a new national feeling’, he quickly added that this feeling should be marked by modesty, devoid of any ‘haughty hubris’ (Sternberger, 1979, pp. 5–​10, quote 10). When Chancellor and Foreign Minister Adenauer decided in favour of a West German national anthem in 1952, he did not act with a view to possible emotional effects, but with consideration for ‘foreign policy pragmatism’: after all, the embassies abroad needed a hymn to be able to pay their respects to guests (Heuss and Adenauer, 1989, pp. 109–​14, quote 112). At home, Adenauer used a paternal tone and spoke in a flat, unemotional voice, as in this typical New Year’s interview: ‘In 1961 we want to work hard, to be diligent, conscientious, and loyal as ever’ (Wolfrum, 2004, p. 184). Sobriety instead of emotionally charged pathos: perhaps unknowingly, Adenauer followed the advice of sociologist Theodor Geiger, who had fled to Denmark during the Nazi period. In 1950, Geiger wrote the preface for a collection of essays aimed at rethinking democracy as a ‘sober’ and ‘rational’ project. Deeply averse towards any ideologies that enlisted ‘collective pathos’ and ‘community emotionalism’, he considered such inherently aggressive and belligerent pathos—​be it for the cause of nation, class, or church—​a ‘public menace’. Referring to fascism and communism, but also to religious fanaticism, Geiger put his faith in democratic education to protect citizens from any ‘cult of emotionality’ and teach them ‘to leave their feelings at home when they move into the sphere of public life’. What was needed was ‘a shift of emphasis in favor of the intellectual powers, a systematic intellectualization of the individual and his training in emotional asceticism . . . The homo intellectualis must be led to victory over the homo sentimentalis.’ (Geiger, 1969, pp. 187–​8, 217, 222, 236). Geiger knew very well that the word ‘intellectualization’ would probably ‘make many readers shy away. They sense the threat of a crippling of the emotions, an inner impoverishment, a kind of barbarization’. And he was quick to point out that he did not mean that a person should ‘be weaned away from his emotions’. Emotions found their legitimate place in private life among friends and family. The public sphere, however, should be kept free of ‘emotions and irrational ideas’ (Geiger, 1969, p. 92). Even if they had not read him, Geiger spoke the language of many West German politicians who considered emotions thoroughly private affairs that should not mingle with politics. Conservatives, liberals, and social democrats were on a par here. When the Federal President Gustav Heinemann, who took office in 1969, was asked if he loved his state, his answer was short and crisp: ‘I do not love states, I love my wife’ (Schreiber, p. 1969). Such sobriety was mirrored in state architecture, too. While Adenauer

38   Ute Frevert continued to live in his private home, his successor, Ludwig Erhard, commissioned a proper residence—​but one that defied all ‘hubris’. The Kanzlerbungalow of 1964 was a transparent flat roof construction in the style of classical modernism, designed by Sep Ruf. The new Karlsruhe building for the Federal Constitutional Court, inaugurated in 1969, was equally modernist, restrained, and unobtrusive, combining functional design and multiple glass features in the dedicated absence of ornamental glory and pride (Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland and Wüstenrot-​ Stiftung, 2009; Kühne, 1969; Nielsen, 2019).

Countercurrents, Countercultures Yet there were countercurrents to such openness, transparency, and ‘cool’ rationality. Erhard’s successor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, found the residence uncomfortable and re-​ decorated it with cosy furnishings. In contrast to Adenauer, whom the New York Times referred to as the ‘wooden chancellor’, in 1960 Social Democrat Carlo Schmid warned against an overdose of ‘rational thinking’ that might make people ‘wither and become wooden’. Excessive ‘practicality’ thus threatened to overwhelm the ‘powers of the soul’ (Schmid, 1980, pp. 12–​13). Such critical reflections resonated with what the Mitscherlichs stated about the eagerness of the West Germans to rebuild the economy while indulging in ‘psychic immobilism’ and ‘political apathy’ (Mitscherlich and Mitscherlich, 1975, pp. 8, 27). They also bore resemblance to what philosopher Herbert Marcuse, another German emigré, wrote and preached in the US to a growing international audience of young students. As a preeminent theorist of the New Left, Marcuse criticized advanced capitalist societies for their alienating and objectifying tendencies. As mere extensions of commodities, people ‘find their soul in their automobile, hi-​fi set, split-​level home, kitchen equipment’ (Marcuse, 1964, p. 9). Philosophers, sociologists, and, above all, psychoanalysts, who enjoyed a good reputation during the 1960s, untiringly warned against the emotional and political costs of such commodification. In addition to emptying and depoliticizing the public sphere, it put a high psychological burden on each individual, generating new, structurally embedded pathologies. Against this background, Marcuse could partly understand why students seemed to be constantly obsessed with their personal problems and fought ‘against the evils of repression and the need for being oneself ’. Yet the goal of ‘self-​actualization’ could also be repressive, since such ‘private and personal rebellion’ weakened the ‘power of the intellect’ to engage in a ‘more authentic’ opposition (Marcuse, 1965, pp. 113–​15). The 1968ers who studied and found inspiration in Marcuse’s texts, however, did not only put their trust in brainpower. They also considered themselves a part of what sociologist Talcott Parsons referred to as an ‘expressive revolution’ against the dominance of rationality and discipline (Parsons, 1974, pp. 221–​2). Emotions were no longer outlawed and frowned upon, but ennobled as incubators and resources of subversive

EMOTIONAL STYLES IN POST-WAR GERMAN POLITICS     39 action. While the Easter March movement against nuclear weapons and rearmament had privileged rational argument and information, the APO (extra-​parliamentary opposition) of the late 1960s invented and propagated a different emotional style. Anger, outrage, hatred, and fear were openly addressed and staged (Nehring, 2009; Davis, 2003; Biess, 2008). Such passionate rhetoric found its home in a counterculture that owed as much to earlier life reform movements as to the hippies and flower power groups of their own times. To many young leftists, Marcuse’s warning against the allegedly apolitical credo of self-​actualization missed the point. Joining self-​awareness groups, listening to and understanding one’s own feelings and those of others was meant to raise the level of empathy, solidarity, and commitment to the political struggle (Reichardt, 2014, pp. 99–​ 222). Emotions were granted a new dignity and valence as a sign of subjectivity, authenticity, and Betroffenheit (concern, personal dismay), but also as a means to include and encourage supporters through expressive action (Maasen et al., 2011; Illouz, 2008). While older political generations were shocked and appalled by the new emotional style, it quickly spread beyond student and counterculture milieus. Strengthened by the growing wave of psychotherapy, new political actors, from feminists to the environmental and peace movements, embraced it. They found their own reasons to cast doubt on the alleged rationality—​or rather reasonability—​of socio-​economic developments and political decision-​making. The women’s movement not only unmasked rationality as a technique of patriarchal domination, but also invented the slogan ‘the personal is political’, thus helping emotions to spread from the private sphere into politics. Environmentalists attacked the inherent contradictions of economic rationality that ruthlessly exploited natural resources and ultimately destroyed the conditions of human life. Anti-​nuclear movement activists emphasized the long-​term effects of nuclear waste, whose threat was deliberately downplayed by the nuclear industry and its political lobby. Furthermore, the peace movement condemned the flawed rationality of the Cold War and the monstrously destructive capacities that the two major power blocs had created and that threatened to set the world on fire. Such rationality seemed hardly compatible with what Enlightenment thinkers had once praised as the advantages of reason over superstition (Erickson, 2013). Distrusting the crippled politics of contemporary rationality went along with revaluing emotional sincerity, affective solidarity, and moral sensibilities. Ridiculed and discarded by traditional political players, such sensibilities were favoured among new political groups that formed in the late 1970s, first locally and then, since 1980, institutionalized in a proper party, Die Grünen (the Greens). Entering the federal parliament in 1983, they carried sunflowers (symbolizing a healthy and happy future) and marred fir twigs in order to draw attention to what was widely perceived as a looming ecological crisis. Such expressiveness was met with open contempt. But even if the Greens could not change the parliament’s procedures and protocols, they did represent a new current on the political stage. And instead of quickly trailing off and breaking apart, as many had predicted, the new party not only survived but also managed to gain respect and recognition for its unorthodox agenda and manners (including long hairstyles, beards, and hand-​knitted sweaters) (Mende, 2011).

40   Ute Frevert

The ‘Emotional Element’ in GDR and Post-​1989 Political Culture As much as West Germany’s political class was initially irritated by the emergence of groups that called themselves bunt (colourful), alternative, or green, the GDR regime found it particularly difficult to make sense of the political newcomers. Yet it could not overlook the fact that similar trends were developing east of the river Elbe. Intellectuals, academics, and artists, often shielded by the Protestant Church, increasingly challenged official politics from the 1970s onwards. The message sounded remarkably familiar: as ‘rational management’ had failed to solve contemporary conflicts and problems at home and abroad, people sought to retrieve ‘the emotional element’ and emphasize human vulnerability, sensibility, and subjectivity (Pollow, 1985, pp. 57–​9). Such emotional subjectivity was not what the regime had hitherto counted on. Instead, they had put their faith in the manipulative power of mass rallies, marches, festivals, flags, and collective singing—​practices that drew on traditions of the socialist labour movement, as well as on long-​established Soviet strategies of securing public approval. Emotional appeals and enlistment abounded. Time and again, the authorities stressed citizens’ ‘unshakable trust’ in the state and its representatives. Equally important was the declaration of ‘indissoluble friendship’ with socialist ‘sister countries’, especially with the Soviet Union (Heym, 1993, p. 95). Stalin was hailed as ‘the best friend of the German people’; opulent celebrations took place to mark his seventieth birthday in 1949. When he died four years later, the poet and future Minister of Culture, Johannes R. Becher, published a pompous ode to the ‘Eternal Survivor’ who had guaranteed the world ‘never-​ending happiness’ (Becher, 1953). Bertolt Brecht’s reaction to Stalin’s death proved to be somewhat more reserved, although he, too, joined the official chorus of mourners. Still, the famous author and theatre director was well aware that this chorus did not represent the general opinion. The continuous stream of people who left for West Germany served as proof that trust in the East German state was indeed far from unshakable. Brecht’s recommendation was that the government be sensitive to the citizens’ ‘mood’ and ‘worries’. At the same time, the state should improve and professionalize its public ‘appeal’ through popular media programmes and festive events, with particular emphasis on ‘choral and individual singing, lectures, and political speeches’ (Brecht, 1967, pp. 325, 330–​1). Two days before his death in 1956, Brecht told his colleague Erwin Strittmatter: ‘You know I have to say one thing. We have neglected emotions’. Strittmatter’s response: ‘This from someone who always provoked the audience with sentences such as: “Don’t stare so romantically!” ’ (Strittmatter, 1992). While, in his epic plays, the younger Brecht had fully subscribed to the mantra of distance, restraint, and reflection, the older Brecht warmed to the idea that people’s emotions needed to be properly addressed and directed towards a common political cause. Nevertheless, despite the GDR government’s significant effort to emotionally

EMOTIONAL STYLES IN POST-WAR GERMAN POLITICS     41 integrate and mobilize citizens, the result was far from convincing. To many the slogans sounded empty and repetitive, and the constant marching and flag-​waving felt tedious and artificial. Even the generational shift from GDR leader Walter Ulbricht to the younger Erich Honecker in 1971 did not change the protocol of publicly voiced enthusiasm and private frustration. GDR politics increasingly appeared stale, dogmatic, and frozen in time. This became particularly obvious when Perestroika, represented by the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, opened the door to more dynamic developments in the Eastern Bloc. For the young dissidents who had focused, as in the Federal Republic, on topics such as environmental pollution or disarmament and peace, the perceived rupture between a liberalizing Soviet Union and a toughening regime in East Berlin deepened the political distrust. When the government was found to have rigged local election results in 1989 this distrust grew into a wave of protests that finally brought the regime down. 9 November 1989 was undoubtedly the most emotional moment in contemporary German history. The opening of the hermetically closed and militarily guarded wall for East Berliners came as a huge surprise that nobody had anticipated. The following months brought an intensely creative atmosphere of both wishful thinking and strategic planning. All hopes to keep the failed state alive and reform it from within came to an end in March 1990, when GDR citizens voted against further experiments and for a swift reunification of the two Germanies. Political culture has changed considerably since 1990. The party system has diversified, first with the formation of a leftist party that attracted many former GDR citizens, then, more recently, with the success of a right-​wing movement that has supporters in the former East as well as in the West. While mainstream parties have moved closer to each other on issues like European integration, economic globalization, welfare, and migration, left and right populism became the choices of those who felt left behind or estranged by what they perceived as denationalization: according to an election poll from September 2017, 95 per cent of AfD voters claimed to feel very worried that they were ‘experiencing a loss of German culture’, presumably due to both the overall trend of anglicization and the arrival of migrants (Infratest dimap, 2017). Consequently, election campaigns gathered emotional steam, with outbursts of resentment and accusations not previously experienced in the Federal Republic, where Sachlichkeit (combined with fairness) had been the dominant feature since 1949, in clear contrast to National Socialism. (Mergel, 2010). Right-​wingers, however, are not the only ones appealing to and manipulating voters’ emotions. In fact, emotionalization has become a recurrent and habitual feature of liberal democracy. As Max Weber stated already a century ago, politics could not work without politicians who paired ‘cool’ judgement and a ‘realistic’ sense of responsibility with ‘hot’ passion (Weber, 1919/​1946, pp. 36, 47–​8). Public demand for such (controlled) passion increased greatly with the growing dominance of the media. The emergence and proliferation of visual media not only influenced the trend towards personalized and personalizing politics, but also emphasized the element of entertainment and, consequently, the quest for emotional profiling. Nowadays, PR agencies advise politicians

42   Ute Frevert on how to improve their ‘image’ and enhance their ‘sympathy’ ratings. Politicians are systematically trained in communication skills, with particular focus on emotion management and ‘authentic’ performance. Although most citizens reportedly privilege ‘rational’, fact-​based debates and sober argumentation, they also cherish heated controversies and passionate speech. At the same time, citizens expect their feelings, fears, and desires for themselves and the nation at large to be acknowledged and respected. Although this request is most powerfully voiced by right-​wingers, by no means does it concern them exclusively. Emotionalizing trends, as first identified in the 1970s, prevail in all parts and at all levels of contemporary society, and politics is no exception. But even if emotional communication (understood as communication through and about emotions) has taken centre stage in today’s political culture, it does not dominate it. Rather, it can be regarded as part of the continuing negotiation of different emotional styles and the extent to which they either express or repress subjectivity, personal Betroffenheit, and moral/​social emotions.

Further Reading Biess, Frank (2020), German Angst: Fear and Democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Brauer, Juliane (2020), Zeitgefühle: Wie die DDR ihre Zukunft besang: Eine Emotionsgeschichte (Bielefeld: transcript). Frevert, Ute (2022), Powerful Emotions in Twentieth-​Century Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Mergel, Thomas (2010), Propaganda nach Hitler: Eine Kulturgeschichte des Wahlkampfs in der Bundesrepublik 1949–​1990 (Göttingen: Wallstein). Reichardt, Sven (2014), Authentizität und Gemeinschaft: Linksalternatives Leben in den siebziger und frühen achtziger Jahren (Berlin: Suhrkamp).

Bibliography Amann, Melanie (2017), Angst für Deutschland (Munich: Droemer). Becher, Johannes R. (1953), ‘Dem Ewig-​Lebenden’, Neues Deutschland (7 March), p. 4. Biess, Frank (2008), ‘Die Sensibilisierung des Subjekt: Angst und “Neue Subjektivität” in den 1970er Jahren’, WerkstattGeschichte 49, pp. 51–​7 1. Bloch, Ernst (1937/​1972), ‘Die Frau im Dritten Reich (1937)’, in Ernst Bloch, Vom Hasard zur Katastrophe: Politische Aufsätze 1934–​1939 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp), pp. 129–​36. Boberach, Heinz (ed.) (1984), Meldungen aus dem Reich 1938–​1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS, vol. 1 (Herrsching: Pawlak). Brecht, Brecht (1967), Schriften zur Politik und Gesellschaft, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 20 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (2013), ‘Wahlplakate aus den Jahren 1949–​1998’, http://​ www.bpb.de/​ler​nen/​grafs​tat/​150​415/​wahl​plak​ate-​1949-​1998 (Accessed 6 December 2017). Davis, Belinda (2003), ‘Provokation als Emanzipation: 1968 und die Emotionen’, Vorgänge 42(4), pp. 41–​9.

EMOTIONAL STYLES IN POST-WAR GERMAN POLITICS     43 Diehl, Paula (2017), ‘Antipolitik und postmoderne Ringkampf-​Unterhaltung’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 67(44/​45), pp. 25–​30. Erickson, Paul et al. (2013), How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality (Chicago: Chicago University Press). Frevert, Ute (2015), ‘Faith, Love, Hate: The National Socialist Politics of Emotions’, in Winfried Nerdinger and Hans Günter Hockerts (eds), Munich and National Socialism (Munich: C.H. Beck), pp. 479–​86, 588–​9. Frevert, Ute (2016), ‘Wenn Mäßigung nicht mehr kultiviert wird’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (16 December) https://​www.nzz.ch/​feu​ille​ton/​hass-​ein-​poli​tisc​her-​kampf​begr​iff-​wenn-​mae​ ssig​ung-​nicht-​mehr-​kul​tivi​ert-​wird-​ld.135​019 ( Accessed 19 December 2017). Geiger, Theodor (1969), On Social Order and Mass Society, ed. Renate Mayntz (Chicago: Chicago University Press). Heuss, Theodor and Konrad Adenauer (1989), Unserem Vaterlande zugute: Der Briefwechsel 1948–​1963 (Berlin: Siedler). Heym, Stefan (1993), ‘Je voller der Mund, desto leerer die Sprüche—​Leben mit der Aktuellen Kamera’, in Edith Spielhagen (ed.), So durften wir glauben zu kämpfen . . . -​Erfahrungen mit DDR-​Medien (Berlin: Vistas), pp. 93–​100. Hitler, Adolf (1925–​26/​2016), Mein Kampf: eine kritische Edition, ed. Christian Hartmann et al. (Munich: Institut für Zeitgeschichte). Illouz, Eva (2008) Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions and the Culture of Self-​Help (Berkeley: University of California Press). Infratest dimap (2017), ‘Umfragen zu AfD’, http://​wahl.tag​essc​hau.de/​wah​len/​2017-​09-​24-​BT-​ DE/​umfr​age-​afd.shtml (Accessed 11 December 2017). Jensen, Uffa (2017), Zornpolitik (Berlin: Suhrkamp). Jensen, Uffa and Stefanie Schüler-​Springorum (eds) (2013), ‘Gefühle gegen Juden [Special issue]’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 39(4). [Kühne, Günther] (1969), ‘Bundesverfassungsgericht in Karlsruhe’, Bauwelt 48, pp. 1714–​22. Maasen, Sabine et al. (eds) (2011), Das beratene Selbst: Zur Genealogie der Therapeutisierung in den “langen” Siebzigern (Bielefeld: transcript). Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-​Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (London: Routledge). Marcuse, Herbert (1965), ‘Repressive Tolerance’, in Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, and Herbert Marcuse (eds), A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press), pp. 81–​117. Mende, Silke (2011), ‘Nichts rechts, nicht links, sondern vorn:’ Eine Geschichte der Gründungsgrünen (Munich: Oldenbourg). Mergel, Thomas (2010), Propaganda nach Hitler: Eine Kulturgeschichte des Wahlkampfs in der Bundesrepublik 1949–​1990 (Göttingen: Wallstein). Mitscherlich, Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich (1975), The Inability to Mourn: Principles of Collective Behavior, trans. Beverley R. Placzek (New York: Grove Press). Nehring, Holger (2009), ‘Angst, Gewalterfahrungen und das Ende des Pazifismus: Die britischen und westdeutschen Proteste gegen Atomwaffen, 1957–​1964’, in Bernd Greiner Christian Th. Müller and Dierk Walter (eds), Angst im Kalten Krieg (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition), pp. 436–​64. Nielsen, Philipp (2019), ‘Building Bonn: Affects, Politics, and Architecture in Postwar West Germany’, in Till Großmann and Philipp Nielsen (eds), Architecture, Democracy, and Emotions: The Politics of Feeling since 1945 (London: Routledge), pp. 39–​57.

44   Ute Frevert Nolte, Paul (2008), ‘Von der Gesellschaftsstruktur zur Seelenverfassung: Die Psychologisierung der Sozialdiagnose in den sechziger Jahren’, in Tobias Freimüller (ed.), Psychoanalyse und Protest: Alexander Mitscherlich und die ‘Achtundsechziger’ (Göttingen: Wallstein), pp. 70–​94. Parkinson, Anna M. (2015), An Emotional State: The Politics of Emotion in Postwar West German Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Parsons, Talcott (1974), ‘Religion in Postindustrial America: The Problem of Secularization’, Social Research 41(2), pp. 193–​225. Platthaus, Andreas (2001), Die Welt des Walt Disney (Berlin: Henschel). Pollow, Helmut (1985), ‘Zu einigen Problemen der Klassik-​Aneignung im gegenwärtigen DDR-​Theater’, in Schiller auf den Bühnen sozialistischer Länder, ed. Verband der Theaterschaffenden der DDR (Weimar: VT), pp. 47–​60. Reichardt, Sven (2014), Authentizität und Gemeinschaft: Linksalternatives Leben in den siebziger und frühen achtziger Jahren (Berlin: Suhrkamp). Reichel, Peter (1991), Der schöne Schein des Dritten Reiches: Faszination und Gewalt des Faschismus (Munich: Hanser). Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1933), ‘The First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1933’, https://​www.archi​ ves.gov/​educat​ion/​less​ons/​fdr-​inaugu​ral (Accessed 19 December 2017). Schmid, Carlo (1980), ‘Der Mensch im Staat von morgen’, in Carlo Schmid, Politik muß menschlich sein (Bern: Scherz), pp. 9–​30. Schmidt, Maruta and Gabi Dietz (eds) (1983), Frauen unterm Hakenkreuz (Berlin: Elefanten Press). Schreiber, Hermann (1969), ‘Nichts anstelle vom lieben Gott’, Der Spiegel (12 January)(3), pp. 27–​34. Sternberger, Dolf (ed.) (1979), Reden der deutschen Bundespräsidenten Heuss/​ Lübke/​ Heinemann/​Scheel (Munich: Hanser). Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland and Wüstenrot-​Stiftung (eds) (2009), Kanzlerbungalow (Munich: Prestel). Streeck, Wolfgang (2017), ‘Merkel: Ein Rückblick’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (16 November), p. 11. Strittmatter, Erwin (1992), ‘Die Masse schrie “hurra”!’, Der Spiegel (2 November)(45), p. 279. Weber, Max (1919/​1946), Politics as a Vocation (1919) (New York: Oxford University Press). Wolfrum, Edgar (2004), ‘Konrad Adenauer: Politik und Vertrauen’, in Frank Möller (ed.), Charismatische Führer der deutschen Nation (Munich: Oldenbourg), pp. 171–​91.

CHAPTER 4

T HE DEVEL OPME NT OF GERMANY AF T E R 194 5 Klaus von Beyme

The development of Germany after the Second World War is unique in the history of a power which, full of guilt, lost a terrible war. There are striking differences with other countries which also lost the war, such as Japan. •​ Germany lost almost one quarter of its territory and had to accommodate in a heavily destroyed Western part more than 12 million refugees from the East, the territories which were handed over to Poland and the Soviet Union. •​​ Germany benefitted from the division of the former victors, especially the animosities between the US and the Soviet Union. West Germany under Adenauer was exclusively oriented towards the West, which was unique in German history. Only East Germany in the form of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and small numbers of West German communists were oriented towards Moscow and the East. Small circles of intellectuals under leaders such as Gustav Heinemann tried to keep a certain balance in the contacts between East and West—​which later made possible the double orientation towards West and East in the politics of Chancellor Willy Brandt. •​​ The economic development of West Germany was stellar. Already by 1960 the refugees from the former Eastern territories came close to the income of the Western population, which made possible their quick integration into society. This successful experience was never repeated again when looking at the later migration of non-​German-​speaking groups into Germany. •​​ The solid democratization of West Germany was unique though Adenauer once joked that ‘he was basically authoritarian but firmly democratic in practice’. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, some East European countries which had been strongholds of a certain type of liberalism under communist rule such as Poland and Hungary, did not follow this reliable German path, though they benefitted from the European Community, as Germany once benefitted from American economic support.

46   Klaus von Beyme One explanation for the German success after 1949 was the long rule of law (Rechtsstaat) tradition, which Germany developed already in pre-​democratic times. Conflict between Catholics and Protestants had lasted for a long time. However, after the 30-​Years War, the Westphalian Peace strengthened the legal order. This example might perhaps serve as a model for the conflicts between Shiites and Sunnis in the Islamic countries of the Middle East. In this legal tradition the Adenauer regime was well advised to create a ‘Basic Law’ which was not called ‘Constitution’, because a German constitution should only be created after a reunification of the two Germanys. The Basic Law was also meant to be applicable to those living in the East, who could not participate. The later recognition of the GDR was, however, hardly compatible with the far-​reaching demands of the Western Basic Law. Increasingly, West Germans were inclined to count the preamble with the demand ‘to fulfill unity and liberty of Germany in free self-​determination’ among the ‘dignified parts’ of the constitution which had no practical value. This was proven wrong after 1989 when more than two thirds of the East Germans were ready to integrate into the new German state under West German guidance. Already Bagehot noticed that the dignified parts of constitutions ‘attract the motivational power’.

The Process of Reunification The reunification process developed very quickly. Until December 1989 most Germans were still in favour of two democratic German states, but the GDR government was half-​hearted in its measures and the East German population increasingly favoured one German state, as the first free elections in the GDR in March 1990 proved. ‘Nationalism from above’ was nevertheless criticized. Even Germany’s most notable philosopher, Jürgen Habermas (1991, pp. 63–​4), was not in favour of this ‘self-​limitation exclusively self-​created’ by the Western political elite. The Western elites were, however, not very nationalist-​minded. They were overwhelmed by the national impetus on both sides of the former Iron Curtain and had unrealistic expectations about the possibilities of German autonomous actions in the relationship between Chancellor Kohl and Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev. In November 1989 Kohl had published a ‘10-​point plan’, which he had not coordinated with the Western allies. ‘Constitutional patriotism’ was one of the famous catchwords created in the Weimar Republic and later popularized by Dolf Sternberger and Jürgen Habermas. The notion worked out in a conservative way: constitutional patriotism was used as a pretext to impede more progressive innovations in the reunification process. The West German elites especially overlooked the necessity of reforms also for the Western part of the country (Lehmbruch 1995). The greatest achievement of the Western elites was the quick fusion of the two German economies. The long-​standing rhetoric about the ‘brothers and sisters’ in East

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GERMANY AFTER 1945    47 and West, was abandoned when the Western citizens discovered their rather ‘poor cousins’ in Eastern Germany. The reunification of Germany came about in a favourable moment when ‘planning ideologies’ in the Western parties had already declined. The possibilities of German federalism, which created complications for the states (Länder), proved advantageous for East German territories in developing in more autonomous ways than originally assumed. Winning the consent to unification of the Western powers was crucial. The achievement of this was helped by the collapse of the bipolar divide. Still, there were about 400,000 Soviet soldiers on East German territory, who had to remain neutral. The main power slogan: ‘Keep the Soviets out—​keep the Germans down’ was no longer accepted. Even France and Britain, with their reservations about German reunification, were afraid of the financial costs and therefore ready to leave the economic tasks exclusively to unified Germany. Even the East European countries, which had only just escaped Soviet rule, hoped to join the European Community quickly once the frontiers between Germany and the East were opened. Even Gorbachev twice gave up his veto positions and started to favour a quick return of Russian soldiers in view of enormous difficulties in discipline among the Soviet troops and after 550 requests for asylum in Germany of Russian troops had been received. Gorbachev also attempted to meet the demands of the former East European allies because he hoped to keep them in a loose democratic confederation with Russia by doing so—​a hope which was not borne out. The memoirs of Edward Shevardnadze (1991), Gorbachev’s Foreign Minister, showed that twice the Soviet consent to German reunification was in danger. One problem was that the Western elites were not ready to recognize in advance the Oder-​Neisse-​frontier in an agreement with Poland. However, the traditional debate as to whether the old German Empire, the ‘Reich’, had perished in 1945 was no longer important. Four treaties opened the road to reunification: -​ the treaty between East and West Germany in May 1990 which created a currency and economic union; -​ the electoral treaty of August 1990; -​ the unification treaty of August 1990; and -​ the two-​plus-​four treaty which created the international consent to reunification. Lothar de Maizière, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the GDR, made a number of demands, which were not accepted by the West, except for making Berlin the capital of a united Germany. Even the two-​plus-​four treaty was considered by some critics to be an unnecessary concession to the GDR. On 3 October, the GDR ministers were included as ‘guests’ in the common German cabinet without having been given policy responsibilities in special policy areas. They demanded a referendum for the whole nation. This demand was not accepted either (Auf dem Weg, 1990). No wonder the derogative expression about an ‘unconditional surrender’ of the East was widespread in the early days of the United Federal Republic. In the German parliament the

48   Klaus von Beyme East German deputies had a certain veto position of about 20 per cent, without much value as long as the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) were also the strongest parties in the East. Wolfgang Schäuble (1991, pp. 130, 157, 231), Minister of the Interior and unusually important in the politics of those days, mentions in his memoirs the many wishes of East Germany. But he believed it necessary not to impose too many demands on the difficult negotiations and believed that reunification was not an occasion to address the problems, which, after all, had not been resolved for the last four decades. Moreover, German federalism did not allow interference of the united German government in many areas, such as cultural and media policies. But the Länder in both parts of Germany accepted a couple of interferences from the central government, which was not quite in harmony with the rules of German federalism (Ackermann 1991). The West German communes also helped significantly in the reconstruction of the city administrations in East German towns—​not quite in conformity with transnational rules. West German interest groups were also important, since the Eastern equivalents—​if they existed at all—​had little independent experience. These pressure groups sometimes had even more influence than West German bureaucrats who did not stick to all the existing rules. Thus, an increasing ‘sectorization in the policy fields’ could be observed, to the regret of some. There were only a few policy areas, such health and child care, which built upon the high standards achieved in the GDR. More than half of East Germans were convinced that their health system was better than the equivalent structures and rules in the West. But the medical doctors preferred the Western system, which was more in accordance with their economic interests. West German pressure for transformation was aimed at moving from a ‘welfare state’ (Sozialstaat) to a ‘state of social safety’ (Nullmeier and Rüb, 1993). Private interests dominated. Not even the rather common ‘gas and water socialism’ utilities in the administrative hands of the state were sufficiently tolerated after re-​unification. The dominance of private capital in the West was even suspected of keeping foreign investors out of East Germany. Some big industrial enterprises were divided to attract smaller West German investors. The state agency ‘Treuhand’ (the public trust agency which managed the GDR’s assets) had an enormous impact on the economic landscape of East Germany. Until 1992, about 200 to 300,000 new enterprises were developed, and in 1993 these figures were reduced to 190,000. But there were still 119,000 closures of East German firms. The economic developments in the unified Germany did not quite correspond to Chancellor Kohl’s slogan, which anticipated ‘flourishing landscapes in the East’. The only Eastern interest groups which seemed to be strong were the trade unions, and their organizational density were initially above the Western level. But the unions declined dramatically, so that the trade unions had to support the neo-​communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS)—​which emphasized social competence more than entrepreneurial competence—​and thereby supported a kind of ‘Leftist populism’, especially in the super election year of 1994.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GERMANY AFTER 1945    49

Economic and Social Development of a United Germany The German economy underwent a crisis of adaptation due to too rapid an integration of both parts of the country. The wages in the East went up to about 80–​90 per cent of the Western level, though Eastern productivity was one third less than in the West. By August 1992 the industrial base in the East had been reduced by 57 per cent. The catchphrase: ‘Restitution instead of compensation’ was not fully realized, because private and foreign investments in the Eastern economy were still rare. But the ‘German council of economic experts’ opposed the approach of a ‘de-​industrialization of the East’. According to surveys it was only in the realm of ‘satisfaction with the working conditions’ that East Germans were most unhappy (Allmendinger, 1993, pp. 247, 275). A heavy drawback for the economy was the fact that Germany had 3.3 asylum seekers per 1000 inhabitants, more than in Austria and Switzerland. Until 1997 about 1.7 million East Germans migrated to the West, which weakened the Eastern economy. Nevertheless, Germany had experienced economic progress as a consequence of unification until 1993—​in a period when the US had already entered an economic recession. The construction sector in particular contributed to a boom in the East until 1996. Most of the time Germany benefitted from her exports centred mainly in Europe, so that the economic crisis in Asia and Latin America in the second half of 1997 had little impact on German international trade. Table 4.1 is an illustration of how complicated the steering of unification in Germany was. The state had to intervene more frequently than appropriate in a system which understood itself as ‘liberal’. Especially in cultural policies the central government oversteered in a kind of unification Keynesianism against their own intentions because the responsible Länder were not willing or financially not able to guide the processes. The reforms after unification were a mixture of transformation strategies, which frequently decentralized developments in a kind of unexpected transformation dynamics (Lehmbruch, 1994). Table 4.1 Dominant actors and aims in the transformation of East Germany State actors

Para-​state actors

Interest groups

Conservation of institutions and rules

Economic structures, employment, and cultural policies

Treuhand rules for state-​ owned business and professional organizations

Trade unions push to preserve jobs, farm, and wage policies

Transformation to Western solutions

Constitution, federalism, financial and legal, and gender/​family policies

Privatization, monetary policy, university systems

Welfare state, insurance systems, health care system

50   Klaus von Beyme

The End of the Bonn Republic and the Development of the Berlin System in Germany The successes in German politics were limited because the country was highly fragmented. This became one of the reasons why the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) under Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt was not as successful as the Social Democrats were in Sweden, because there was less federalist fragmentation in Scandinavia and less sub-​group competition than in the two major German parties, CDU and SPD. Germany suffered under the necessity of coalition governments, which sometimes led to success in areas such as ‘currency stability’, which was an objective of the bourgeois parties rather than the Social Democrats. Institutions, such as the federalist Länder, the Central Bank, and the Constitutional Court also acted as brakes on the Social Democrats being able to develop their political profile. Sometimes, however, these impediments streamlined policy-​ making in Germany and thus were advantageous. For instance, in the long run there were less fluctuations between the policies of different German governments than in one-​party governments, such as in the UK, or in systems with many coalition partners in highly fragmented systems such as in the Netherlands or Denmark. Until German reunification the slogan ‘Bonn is not Weimar’ played a major role in the public debate. The Bonn Republic was shaped after 1945 precisely as a counter-​model to the Weimar Republic and some of the rigid limitations in the system of the ‘Basic Law’ had been introduced in order to avoid the ‘chaos of Weimar’. While they did not become useless, such as the extreme political weakness of the federal president, nevertheless they sometimes inhibited political reforms. When Bonn was replaced by Berlin as the capital, this did not impede anything. Berlin developed only slowly into a capital city where more politicians—​and many politically important intellectuals—​would come to live. But Berlin developed more quickly than former new capitals in other countries, such as St. Petersburg or Washington. The flair of a culturally important capital developed slowly in Berlin but was from the outset more developed than in Bonn where critics sneered that ‘Germany was governed above a pizzeria’. Uniquely, however, the most important newspapers were not published in the capital but in Hamburg, Munich, or Frankfurt/​Main. Hardly any new ‘state architecture’ developed in Berlin. The reconstruction of historical buildings, such as the former imperial castle, was applauded only rarely by most architectural experts. But the former rigid ‘spirit of Potsdam’ did not develop either despite the existence of many buildings in the neo-​classical style—​even though some buildings such as Göring’s ‘Ministry of Air Traffic’ or the former ‘Reichsbank’, were preserved and received new important administrative functions. But it seems that political decisions are not any better if they are made under frescoes of Delacroix—​as in both parliamentary palaces in Paris—​rather than in the many unattractive buildings in Berlin.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GERMANY AFTER 1945    51 The unexpected dynamics of the transformation process led to a new paradox in the German party system: the two biggest parties, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, frequently embarked on the opposite policies they really wished to pursue: the SPD especially wished to focus on labour market policies but it transpired they were more successful in fighting inflation, one of the prime objectives of the Christian Democrats. The Christian Democrats on the other side created a labour market policy, which achieved almost Swedish Social Democratic welfare state dimensions. The development of the German post-​unification party system contributed to some of these changes. Grand coalitions were originally meant to be necessary only as short episodes in difficult cases of forming a government. Since the party system in the 2000s diversified due to the comeback of the Liberal Democrats (FDP) and the development of Right-​wing populism in the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), plausible coalitions became more difficult, especially when the two biggest parties stagnated at around 30 per cent of the vote and soon even much lower in the case of the SPD. On the level of the party system, the increasing integration of East and West in Germany encountered some backlashes since the Eastern Germans—​though confronted with fewer immigrants—​ reacted more negatively towards immigrants and refugees, thus contributing to the strengthening of Right-​wing extremists much more than the Western Germans did. The Federal Republic took on high levels of debt (59.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product in 2002) and was close to the peak groups of indebted states, such as France, which was strongly criticized by the European institutions in Brussels and by the German Central Bank. Britain was in a better position because of Margaret Thatcher’s neo-​liberal policies but suffered a severe reduction of social welfare benefits to its citizens. Some bigger countries such as Japan, however, were still above the German level of public debt. The electoral battles of 2009 led to a debate on raising the value added tax (VAT) to Danish levels, but these demands were not translated into policies. Before unification, Germany was a model of industrial relations, with only a limited number of small-​scale strikes, due to its considerable concentration and regulation of conflicts among the major interest groups, unions, and employer organizations, was frequently admired in foreign countries. This changed markedly in the 2000s. Military expenses in Germany were significantly reduced. Only after Donald Trump’s election in November 2016 and the freezing of relations between Berlin and Moscow did voices in support of increasing the defence budget grow louder. The need for innovation in the German army became important under the guidance of Ursula von der Leyen as Minister of Defence. In the tradition of German liberalism, the British model was always admired, starting with the self-​administration on the local level, to the organization of parliament, and the electoral process, which created a two-​party system. In the meantime, Britain had also lost some of her former advantages, especially regarding its two-​party system. Already in the 1970s a British Royal Commission which examined Germany’s development was admiring of many German regulations from federalism and the electoral system to the

52   Klaus von Beyme regulation of labour relations (Royal Commission on the Constitution, 1973, pp. 152; Report, 1977, p. 2). Some of Germany’s successes could not be attributed to governmental steering. The total destruction of almost all major cities and many industrial firms, oddly enough, created enormous incentives for economic growth. However, any illusion that Germany could continue to be a small great power—​which created enormous costs for Britain and France even after the Second World War and during the years of decolonization—​did not reappear. The ‘industrial reserve army’ of more than 12 million German refugees from the lost Eastern territories helped to stimulate considerable economic growth. The refugees were not ‘guest’ workers with a low level of educational and German language skills. Still, all these advantages were diminished somewhat by the fact that Germany did not undertake bigger institutional innovations. The protectionism of many commercial enterprises and banks helped to slow down the economic dynamism that unfolded. The oversized industrial sector in Germany compared with that of other advanced countries means there is always the threat of economic stagnation. In comparison with Germany’s neighbours, the country has been the ‘économie dominante’ and was increasingly reproached for it, thus creating a new kind of German problem. This has only worsened as the European Union experienced serious sovereign debt crises of its Southern members and Britain left the EU in 2020. Moreover, East European countries like Poland and Hungary had been rather liberal in the late era of communist rule. In the years after 2010 they developed into Right-​wing populist regimes with authoritarian features. German ‘Ostpolitik’ (rapprochement with Eastern Europe, dating back to the 1970s) tried to mitigate the differences of opinion with the EU Commission in Brussels, if only because Germany was the most important partner in foreign trade with Hungary and Poland. In international comparison, German economic strength has ranked high in spite of the problem of ‘political understeering’ of the federalized system. Regarding the level of economic development and competitiveness it ranked just below South Korea, the Netherlands, and the US among the top economies (Greive, 2012). The indicators of economic growth also showed that Germany was not among the top group of countries concerning public debt (68.2 per cent in relation to GDP in 2016). Countries such as France, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the US were in far more debt than Germany. It was better off than most other comparable countries with only Switzerland continually ranked higher than Germany (Table 4.2). But with regard to solving a certain number of social problems, Germany was not very successful. The birthrate of 1.3 per cent was similarly low as in Italy, Spain, Poland, and Russia. On the Human Development Index Germany ranked below most of its neighbours and was more on a par with Spain and Italy. According to the indicator of social inclusion, Germany had improved slightly in 2012 and moved to 12th position, which was average among OECD and EU members. In terms of the rate of poverty Germany ranked only in position 19, making it similar to Switzerland. The proportion of citizens who needed additional state help in spite of being employed had increased (Schraad-​Tischler, 2014, p. 62).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GERMANY AFTER 1945    53 Table 4.2 Comparison of the years 2000 and 2016 (Finanzbericht, 2016, pp. 402ff) GDP growth

Unemployment

Budget deficit

Debt to GDP

7.9

–​ 1.7

59.0

2.0

4.4

+​7.7

68.2

3.7

9.0

+​1.2

58.7

1.7

10.0

–​1.2

97.0

4.2

5.4

–​2.9

39.1

2.4

5.3

+​4.1

90.1

4.2

4.0

+​2.8

55.1

5.0

–​2.4

104.7

Germany

2000

3.0

2016 France

2000 2016

UK

2000 2016

US

2000 2016

3.0

Growing inequality and the growth of a two-​class society led to less consumption and dampened the rise of economic output (Fratzscher, 2016, p. 242). The German educational system was so complex that it did not support quick innovations and the system was highly divided along social class lines. The upper-​middle class were three times as likely to send their children to a Gymnasium (academic-​focused public high school) than the parents of children from the working classes. Demands to reduce the privileges of the rich in Germany via changes in inheritance and property laws as well as through higher taxes are discussed frequently. An analysis by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) found Germany ranked only 9th among the most innovative countries, behind the US, Switzerland but also behind Sweden (Bigalke, 2009, p. 19). Because of the enormous importance of environmental policy, Germany emitted far less carbon dioxide per capita than the US or Russia, and was not in the top group of high emitters. As for gender equality Germany’s performance was rather mediocre. The proportion of working women was below that in the Scandinavian and the Anglo-​Saxon countries. Only in the representation of women in parliament did Germany show better results, with 31.8 per cent of parliamentary seats being held by women. A special problem was increasing migration, which was slightly below the level for the US, Denmark, or the Netherlands. In 2014 a micro-​census indicated that migrants made up 20.3 per cent of the population, and that there was no coherent immigration policy in Germany. The Merkel governments (2005–​21) did not experiment with the recipes of some of the neighbouring countries, such as: limiting the numbers of immigrants per annum, rigid distribution of costs to the German Länder, or severe controls of refugee camps (Schmidt, 2016, p. 121). In view of the rising number of migrants–because of Chancellor Merkel’s rather tolerant policy, which was not coordinated with other important European powers—​the support of the German population declined. The Right-​ wing populist parties, such as the AfD, increased their share of the vote and their party

54   Klaus von Beyme membership numbers, though not to the same extent as in France, the Netherlands, or even in some Scandinavian countries.

Conclusion Already in 1997 the former Federal President Roman Herzog had called for ‘a big jolt’ (‘großer Ruck’) but this did not happen. Despite rising criticism of the lack of innovation in the German system overall, the overall performance was rather high in international comparison. Freedom, safety, and welfare as basic democratic rights were firmly protected. Nevertheless, Germany was severely hit by the economic crisis of 2009 because of its strong dependence on exports. The much criticized ‘Agenda 2010’, introduced by SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, improved the economic situation and was an important step towards the moderate reform of federalism. This ended the references to Germany as the ‘sick man of Europe’ or even ‘communist GDR light’. Prior to the Covid-​19 pandemic of 2020–​21, Germany was sometimes characterized as the only country which had not experienced a severe crisis after the huge wave of refugees entered the country in 2015/​16 and the change of politics in the US under Donald Trump from 2017–​21. This, however, was not entirely advantageous. Suspicion of Germany following the Hitler regime has not disappeared entirely. Foreign countries are afraid of a new German hegemony, particularly if France declines further in relative terms. For most German intellectuals it was clear that new steps of reform in the European Union could only be accepted if Germany and France work closely together, as the French President Macron has always advocated. And Merkel and Macron did indeed develop a good working relationship and relations with the US have improved significantly again since Joe Biden entered the White House in January 2021. Transatlantic efforts to deal with the Covid-​19 pandemic and to forge a new constructive alliance against the assertive behaviour of both Russia and China have so far been successful.

Further Reading Fratzscher, Marcel (2016), Verteilungskampf. Warum Deutschland immer ungleicher wird (Munich: Hanser). Habermas, Jürgen (1991), ‘Die andere Zerstörung der Vernunft. Über die Defizite der deutschen Vereinigung und über die Rolle der intellektuellen Kritik’, Die Zeit (20), pp. 63–​4. Lehmbruch, Gerhard (ed.) (1995), Einigung und Zerfall. Deutschland und Europa nach dem Ende des Ost-​West-​Konflikts (Opladen: Leske & Budrich). Schmidt, Manfred G (2016), Das politische System Deutschlands (3rd edn, Munich: Beck). von Beyme, Klaus (2017 [1983]), Das politische System der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (12th edn, Wiesbaden: Springer VS) (The Political System of the Federal Republic of Germany (English edn, Aldershot).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GERMANY AFTER 1945    55

Bibliography Ackermann, Manfred (1991), Der kulturelle Einigungsprozess. (Bonn: Friedrich Ebert Foundation). Allmendinger, Jutta (ed.) (1993), Staatskultur und Marktkultur, ostdeutsche Orchester im Vergleich. Stiftung mitteldeutscher Kulturrat: Kultur und Kulturträger in der DDR. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag), pp. 215–​81. Auf dem Weg zur deutschen Einheit V (1990), Deutschlandpolitische Debatten im Deutschen Bundestag vom 5. bis 20. September mit Beratungen der Volkskammer der DDR zu dem Vertrag über die Herstellung der Einheit Deutschlands (Bonn: Deutscher Bundestag). Bigalke, S. (2019), ‘Schlechtes Klima für Erfinder. Nur neunter Platz in der Innovationsrangliste’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (22 October), p. 19. Bundesministerium der Finanzen, 'Finanzbericht 2016', Berlin, p. 404. Fratzscher, Marcel (2016), Verteilungskampf. Warum Deutschland immer ungleicher wird (Munich: Hanser). Greive, Martin (2012), ‘So stark ist Deutschland wirklich’, Die Welt (21 October). Habermas, Jürgen (1991), ‘Die andere Zerstörung der Vernunft. Über die Defizite der deutschen Vereinigung und über die Rolle der intellektuellen Kritik’, Die Zeit (20), pp. 63–​4. Lehmbruch, Gerhard (1994), ‘Institutionen, Interessen und sektorale Variationen in der Transformationsdynamik Ostdeutschlands’, Journal für Sozialforschung 34 (2), pp. 21–​44. Lehmbruch, Gerhard (ed.) (1995), Einigung und Zerfall. Deutschland und Europa nach dem Ende des Ost-​West-​Konflikts (Opladen: Leske & Budrich). Nullmeier, Frank and Friedberg W. Rüb (1993), Die Transformation der Sozialpolitik (Frankfurt/​Main: Campus). Report of the Committee of Enquiry on Industrial Democracy (1977) (London: HMSO). Royal Commission on the Constitution (1973) (London: HMSO). Schäuble, Wolfgang (1991), Der Vertrag. (Stuttgart: DVA). Schmidt, Manfred G. (2016), Das politische System Deutschlands (3rd edn, Munich: Beck). Schraad-​Tischler, Daniel (ed.) (2014), Nachhaltiges Regieren in- der OECD und EU. Wo steht Deutschland? (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation). Shevardnadze, Edward (1991), Die Zukunft gehört der Freiheit (Reinbek: Rowohlt). von Beyme, Klaus (1991), Hauptstadtsuche im Interessenkonflikt zwischen Bonn und Berlin (Frankfurt/​Main: Suhrkamp). von Beyme, Klaus ([1983] 2017), Das politische System der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (12th edn, Wiesbaden: Springer VS) (The Political System of the Federal Republic of Germany (English edn, Aldershot).

PA RT I I

G E R M A N Y DU R I N G T H E C OL D WA R E R A

CHAPTER 5

ATL ANTIC INTE G RAT I ON AND ‘ EVER CL O SE R U NI ON’ West Germany, the US, and European Unity During the Cold War Klaus Larres

West Germany was a creation of the Cold War. The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) came into being when the Basic Law, the new West German state’s provisional constitution, was signed into law in May 1949. The first federal elections took place a few months later, on 14 August 1949. Soon thereafter the new country’s parliament was seated and the West German government was sworn in. It was headed by the shrewd septuagenarian Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of the Christian Democratic party (CDU), the nondenominational successor party to the Catholic Zentrumspartei, one of the leading parties of the Weimar Republic. Already West Germany’s first government was a coalition government—​as were all subsequent governments up to the present day. The only exception occurred at the 1957 general election when Adenauer and his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), won an absolute majority for the first and only time in the history of the Federal Republic.1 Incidentally, Adenauer’s political career went as far back as 1917, when he embarked on his long tenure as mayor of the city of Cologne on the Rhine. Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 saw him expelled from the job (Schwarz, 1986). In the immediate years after the end of the Second World War in Europe on 8 May 1945, it had been the unrelenting escalation of tension among the US, the Soviet Union, Britain, and also France, which led to the division of Europe and Germany. The conflict

1  Initially, however, until 1960 -​when the Ministers of the Deutsche Partei (DP) became members of the CDU/​CSU -​this was also a coalition government consisting of the CDU/​CSU and the DP. The CDU/​CSU gained 50.2% of the vote and had 277 parliamentary seats. 260 were required for the absolute majority.

60   Klaus Larres could be traced back to the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, which had profoundly shocked and scared the political and economic elites in most Western countries, not to speak of the surviving monarchies in Europe (Gaddis, 2000). Of course the mounting friction with Moscow had also been a feature of the ‘Big Three’ anti-​Hitler alliance of the Second World War. Disputes and deep mutual suspicions regarding whether, when, and where to open a Second Front against Hitler’s armies and conflicting ideas about the shape of the post-​war world were among the most controversial matters (Weinberg, 2005). In one way or another, at the centre of these disputes always was the question of what to do about Germany. Tension continued and quickly escalated in the post-​war years. Disagreements about reparation payments and the distribution of power and political influence in Germany and Eastern Europe soon turned out to be among the many crucial issues that could not be bridged. The creation of the four post-​war occupation zones in Germany, which had been agreed upon at the Potsdam conference of mid-​1945, first led to economic and administrative divisions, and soon, heralded by the Berlin blockade of 1948/​49, the political division of Germany (Tusa, 2019; Shlaim, 2022). Germany would remain divided for just over fifty years until the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in November 1989 and German unification happened surprisingly quickly less than a year later (McAdams, 1994; Brown, 2020). This chapter focuses on the unique role of the West German state in international politics and its close relations with both the US and its Western European partners. The US pursued two crucially important objectives regarding the FRG during the Cold War era, which will be elaborated on in the following. Both strategies complemented each other and were meant to resolve or at least contain the German Question. First, the US pursued the FRG’s firm and irreversible integration with the Western world, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Second, and perhaps most significantly, West Germany was at the centre and the main reason for the US-​ inspired European integration process. However, both US policy goals overlapped to a significant extent. By the mid-​ 1950s the former objective—​ the Bonn Republic’s integration with the West—​was essentially completed, though quite unwarranted concern about its continued viability arose in the US in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the context of West Germany’s Ostpolitik. The Nixon administration feared, quite wrongly, that the Brandt government might be tempted to develop dangerously chummy relations with the Soviets and loosen its links with the West (Bender, 1986). The second objective, the European integration and unity process, remained a work in progress throughout the Cold War years and indeed well beyond until the present day. Initially, it was driven by the US, in cooperation with France and West Germany, before a decisive turning point occurred in the early to mid-​1970s, when Washington largely cooled towards the European unity process. At times the US even wished to disrupt and reverse this process (Larres, 2022). From the mid-​1970s Washington lost almost all interest in helping and supporting the Europeans to create a united Western Europe. This had deep repercussions for the transatlantic alliance, including German-​American

ATLANTIC INTEGRATION AND ‘EVER CLOSER UNION’    61 relations, for the remainder of the Cold War and well beyond. Much to the disappointment and frustration of the Europeans it transpired that the security-​driven Atlantic framework and Cold War considerations were more important for US policy-​makers than was the question (and the complex details) of how to bring about the unity of the European continent.

West Germany’s Integration with the West In the early Cold War years, Washington wished to stabilize and reconstruct the continent, and above all integrate the new West German state, through economic and financial aid packages. US politicians believed that only a stable, prosperous, and secure Western Europe would be at peace with itself and be part of a concerted Western front against the ideological and military threat from the Soviet Union. George Kennan’s ‘strategy of containment’, as formulated in the years 1946–​47, was the overarching conceptual roof for America’s Cold War strategy (Gaddis, 2005). Kennan, a Soviet expert and career US diplomat, was convinced that the Soviet Union needed to be opposed but not necessarily by military means. US policy towards the Soviet Union ‘must be that of a long-​term, patient but firm, and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies’, Kennan wrote in his famous ‘long telegram’ of February 1946 (Kennan, 1946). Within such an overall scheme both the Western integration and the reconciliation of the West German Republic with its Western European neighbours, not least France, might feasibly take place. This set-​up would guarantee, it was hoped in Washington, that the Bonn Republic would not be tempted to embark on a neutralist policy between the two power blocs and develop into a loose cannon in international politics, as had been the case in the interwar years (Hiden, 1993). Instead, the West Germans would become successfully integrated into a new US-​dominated international framework, which would solve the volatile German Question along Western lines, preserve peace on the European continent, and keep the Soviets at bay. The term ‘double containment’, introduced into the literature by Wilfried Loth and Wolfram Hanrieder, has proven to be a helpful explanatory construct in this context (Loth, 1988; Hanrieder, 1989; Burr, 2018). Washington’s ‘double containment’ aimed at keeping the Soviet Union in check by means of military containment through NATO, which was created in April 1949. At the same time, this strategy was meant to control the West Germans by safely integrating them into the Western alliance in all respects—​militarily, politically, and economically. That way it would also be possible to win over West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer by treating his divided country as a more or less equal and sovereign international partner. NATO was thus the security roof, which the US imposed to contain any revival of Germany’s militaristic tendencies. The famous statement by Lord Ismay,

62   Klaus Larres NATO’s first Secretary General, hit the nail on its head though it is uncertain whether he actually ever made this remark: The purpose of the NATO alliance, Ismay is supposed to have said, was ‘to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down’ (Wheatcroft, 2011; Kaplan, 2014; Sayle, 2019). In fact, in view of the accelerating East-​West conflict, it soon became obvious that due to West Germany’s position on the dividing line between the Western and the communist world, it was vital to anchor West Germany ever more firmly and irreversibly in the West. This included extending special preferential treatment to the former enemy to make the country and its first Chancellor feel internationally respected and appreciated again. Thus, from early on in the immediate post-​war years, the FRG possessed important bargaining powers vis-​à-​vis the allied nations, despite its inferior status as a defeated, economically distraught, and morally despised country. And Chancellor Adenauer was particularly adept at exploiting this situation, despite his increasingly close and trusting relations with the US, not least with the Eisenhower administration, including his confidante US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (Larres and Oppelland, 1997). Already in April 1949, just in time for the founding of the FRG, the three-​power occupation statute had come into being. Until then, the country had been ruled by the allied powers in a kind of judicial vacuum that was based on Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender in May 1945. The three Western allies controlled the new West German state in almost all respects; symbolically the renamed Allied High Commission, formerly the Allied Control Commission, continued to reside in the Hotel Petersberg, located high up on a mountain overlooking the Rhine valley near Bonn, the new West German capital. It was here that British Premier Neville Chamberlain had stayed on his second visit to Germany in September 1938 when he discussed with Hitler the fate of Czechoslovakia in nearby Bad Godesberg. The November 1949 Petersberg Agreement, concluded at the same hotel only just over six months after the founding of the FRG, transformed the occupation statute and turned West Germany into a state with a limited degree of sovereignty. It was revised again as early as March 1951 when the Federal Republic was given new, albeit still limited, foreign policy powers (Wolfrum, 2006). Policy-​makers of both the Truman and succeeding Eisenhower administrations were convinced that this gradual transfer of limited rights of sovereignty and equality would enable the new West German state to develop the confidence and self-​respect it needed to become a loyal and constructive partner within the Western alliance (Brady, 2010; Larres, 1995). Complicating the issue of course was the Western part of Berlin, the former German capital. West Berlin needed to remain part of the West under all circumstances. The city was a symbol of democracy and market capitalism right in the middle of communist-​ruled Eastern Europe. It was living proof of Western determination not to give in to communist intimidation. Moreover, West Berlin had developed into a useful centre of espionage (Murphy and Kondrashev, 1997). During the first decade and a half of the Cold War many contemporaries assumed that the division of Germany was temporary and would soon be overcome. Indeed several

ATLANTIC INTEGRATION AND ‘EVER CLOSER UNION’    63 attempts were made to arrive at an early end to the Cold War, which would perhaps also lead to German reunification. It always remained disputed, however, whether the Cold War had caused the division of Germany or whether the German Question had led to the Cold War. Similarly, contemporaries asked themselves whether reuniting Germany would lead to an end of the Cold War or whether overcoming the Cold War would be a pre-​condition for reuniting Germany. Among the most significant early endeavours to bring about German unification and perhaps also end the Cold War were the controversial 1952 Stalin Note (Steininger, 1990), which was meant to achieve a united but neutral Germany, and British Prime Minister Churchill’s equally controversial summitry of 1953–​54, which had a similar objective (Larres, 2002). There were also a number of disengagement proposals, including Polish Foreign Minister Rapacki’s plan of October 1957 to demilitarize Central Europe (Ozinga, 1989), as well as Khrushchev’s Second Berlin Ultimatum in 1958, which was meant to turn Berlin into a free and demilitarized city. The Soviet leader threatened to transfer Moscow’s East German border control responsibilities to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), a state no Western country recognized, unless the Western powers withdrew their forces from Berlin (Zubok and Pleshakov, 1997). The Western allies as well as the West German government itself, however, adamantly rejected any of the proposed solutions to the German Question. They were not ready to give up the Bonn Republic’s firm integration into the Western world for the potentially unpredictable course of a reunited Germany. The possible expansion of Soviet influence into the whole of Europe, which might result from some of the proposals, was seen as equally dangerous and inadvisable. Instead, the division of Germany intensified in the course of the 1950s; it culminated in the building of the Wall in August 1961 (MacGregor, 2019). By the 1970s many within and outside Germany had become used to the Cold War and the existence of two German states. There was one German nation but two German states, as Willy Brandt declared in his inaugural address as Chancellor in October 1969 (Brandt, 1969). Although by then the East German state kept insisting that two separate German nations had emerged, few were convinced, not even the Soviet Union. Instead, the prosperous, Western-​oriented, and democratic FRG and the dictatorial and much poorer GDR, firmly overseen by the Soviet leaders in Moscow, seemed to be permanent facts of life in the post-​war world. And already by the mid-​1950s both states had become integrated into respectively the Western and Eastern military alliances. Membership of NATO and the Warsaw Pact made the two German states nominally equal to the other sovereign member states in their respective pacts though, as noted, it was obvious that the alliances also served to keep a watchful eye on them. Prior to joining NATO in April 1955 the West Germans had been asked to become a member of the revived Western European Union (WEU), which was partly turned into an arms procurement agency to contain any West German rearmament ambitions, if needed (Jansen, 1992; Ruane, 2000). Throughout the Cold War both German states thus were never truly sovereign and equal. While up to half a million Soviet troops were based on East German soil and

64   Klaus Larres the GDR government always remained highly dependent on the goodwill and whim of the men in the Kremlin, there were also a large number of US and other NATO troops deployed in West Germany as well as a sizeable quantity of nuclear bombs, which were fully outside the control of the Bonn Republic. The first ‘nukes’ had arrived as early as 1955 (Norris et al., 1999). The US government would never share the US President’s ‘finger on the trigger’ with anyone, including the West German government, though the FRG had quickly developed into Washington’s most loyal and dependable ally within the Western camp. It was indeed correct, as has been argued, that the US had been ‘invited’ by its allies in Western Europe to base troops on the European continent—​most of them in West Germany—​and build up its political and not least economic and financial influence, which soon developed into America’s ‘benign empire’ in Western Europe (Lundestad, 1997). Still, a significant degree of mutual distrust persisted, albeit mostly under the surface. An element of dominance, if not hegemony, always characterized the Atlantic alliance throughout the Cold War and beyond, despite the allies’ shared democratic ideals, cultures, and not least their joint fear of communism and nuclear war. The Cold War reality of West Berlin being situated in the middle of communist East Germany, with East Berlin as its capital, and the very fact that Winston Churchill’s ‘iron curtain’ (Larres, 2018) ran straight through divided Germany and Berlin, had handed Cold War Germany a particularly unique and precarious position during the East-​West conflict. There were only a few other divided countries during the Cold War era, such as Korea, Cyprus, Ireland, Yemen, and Vietnam until 1975, for instance. And throughout the Cold War Germany (together with Korea) was the most dangerous and volatile flashpoint, where a third World War might conceivably begin. Proposals of how to overcome the Cold War thus always appealed to a large section of the population. In the aftermath of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which almost led to a nuclear war between the superpowers, a fundamental geopolitical re-​thinking commenced. The era of détente and a gradual rapprochement with Moscow and Eastern Europe began in the mid-​1960s, not least due to the initiative of French President Charles De Gaulle who visited Moscow in July 1966. The process gained considerable speed during Willy Brandt’s Social Democratic-​Liberal government from 1969 to 1974, eventually becoming highly popular in both parts of Germany, though not before several years of high drama in domestic West German politics had occurred. The CDU/​CSU, and in particular its nationalist Right wing, vehemently opposed the Brandt government’s approval of the post-​1945 borders in Europe. They regarded Brandt’s acceptance of the ‘loss’ of the former German territories east of the Oder-​Neisse river tantamount to treason (Haag, 1978). Following the decisions taken at the war conferences at Yalta and Potsdam, these lands had been transferred to Poland in 1945–​46. In the West German party political arena two decisive events settled the issue in the course of 1972: it was the constructive vote of no confidence in the Bundestag in April 1972, which Brandt narrowly and controversially won by two votes, and the snap general election of November 1972, which the SPD won overwhelmingly with 42.7 per cent of the vote and 242 seats. It thus became

ATLANTIC INTEGRATION AND ‘EVER CLOSER UNION’    65 the largest party in parliament for the first time in the history of the FRG (the CDU/​CSU gained 234 seats) (Brandt, 1990). By late 1972, therefore, popular opinion in Germany had turned in favour of Brandt’s Eastern policy. In October 1971 Brandt had already been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his policy. After all, Ostpolitik seemed to lessen greatly the danger of the Cold War turning into a real war fought with nuclear weapons. It also helped to improve economic, trade, and cultural relations between the two parts of Germany. Not least it brought about the temporary reunion of families, eased travel restrictions, and other human rights constraints. When superpower détente between the US and the Soviet Union began to deteriorate in the mid-​1970s and then greatly cooled during the Carter administration from the late 1970s onwards, the Western Europeans, and not least the West Germans under the leadership of Brandt’s successor Helmut Schmidt, broke ranks (Schmidt, 1989). Initially, however, Schmidt had become highly concerned about the deployment of new intermediate-​range nuclear ballistic missiles (SS-​20), which had begun in 1976 and could easily reach his country and the rest of the continent. It made him push for NATO’s ‘double track’ decision of 1979 to deploy equivalent US missiles unless Moscow entered into disarmament negotiations (Schmidt, 1989; Spohr, 2016). Despite Schmidt’s unyielding position in the SS-​ 20 question, he was intent on maintaining détente in Europe, if at all possible. Schmidt and his European colleagues were not prepared to sacrifice the hard-​won rapprochement with the East for Washington’s increasingly uncompromising policies towards the Soviet Union (Schmidt, 1989). The 1980s, therefore, led to much discontent on the old continent. In particular President Reagan’s rearmament drive and ‘new Cold War’ with the Soviet Union and then, once he had embarked on negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985, his tendency to ignore the European allies instead of consulting and cooperating with them, caused much friction (Brown, 2020; Hayward, 2009; Brands, 2015). The last decade of the Cold War thus quickly turned into a highly volatile era in transatlantic and German-​American relations. Yet, the end of the Cold War in 1989/​90 and President George H. W. Bush’s much more stable stewardship of the Atlantic pact restored the old confidence in the value and trust in the alliance on both sides of the Atlantic. In May 1989, during a state visit to West Germany, Bush even famously referred to the US and the Bonn Republic as ‘partners in leadership’ (Bush, 1989). Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the majority of the German people were impressed and liked what they heard. Clearly, the FRG’s successful integration with the West was no longer questioned. Yet, the one-​term George H.W. Bush presidency was a short-​lived exception to the poor state of the transatlantic alliance during most of the Cold War era. In particular, once the ‘golden age’ of transatlantic relations in the 1950s had passed, the years from the mid-​1960s onwards were characterized by volatile and contentious transatlantic relations. The Vietnam War and increasing economic and financial competition between the US and the Europeans were among the most contentious issues but there were also many other conflictual policy areas (Larres, 2022).

66   Klaus Larres The ‘watershed years’ of the early to mid-​1970s, which made the US turn against the process of European integration and the European attempt to create an ‘ever closer union’, severely impacted transatlantic relations, including German-​American relations, with long-​lasting consequences. After all, the Western integration of the FRG into the Atlantic alliance was only one side of the coin. The other side of Washington’s post-​ war strategy for Germany was the European integration process and thus the initially US-​driven attempt to create the United States of Europe on the federal model of the United States of America. While the first pillar of Washington’s two-​pronged strategy for containing and integrating post-​war Germany succeeded impressively within just a few years, the second one—​the creation of a united Europe—​would prove to be much more difficult to accomplish.

Uneasy Relations: West Germany, the US, and European Integration2 Together with the endeavour to integrate the FRG into the Western world, the European integration process must be regarded as the deus ex machina with which the Truman administration intended to square the circle and solve the daunting economic and financial problems of the post-​war world. The main driving force for this policy was the unfolding Cold War. ‘Unless we can succeed in getting an economic recovery in Europe,’ Harry Truman once said, ‘we might just as well look forward to a real dark age because where Russia gets control the standard of living goes back a thousand years—​at least that has happened in nearly every one of the satellite countries’ (Hillman, 2007, p. 218). Most policy-​makers in the US were convinced that it was their country’s responsibility to create a peaceful, stable, and prosperous post-​war world. This required both the maintenance of a well-​functioning transatlantic alliance and the unity of the European continent under firm but benign US leadership. While the creation of a united European continent would help with integrating the FRG economically and politically into the West, it was also meant to serve as an instrument to manage and decide the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union in Washington’s favour. In this context it was always assumed that US support for uniting the European continent meant that the Europeans would not develop independent ‘third force’ ambitions but would always ‘be standing rather close to the United States’ and continue to accept Washington’s well-​meaning ‘empire by invitation’ (Lundestad, 1999, p. 23). Influenced by the thinking of Jean Monnet, in the last resort the US thought that the reconstruction of the continent was only possible on the basis of a closely integrated Europe. Not least, the US foresaw that the united and flourishing European 2 

This part of the chapter is based on my book Uncertain Allies: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Threat of a United Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022).

ATLANTIC INTEGRATION AND ‘EVER CLOSER UNION’    67 nations would also provide a huge new market for US exports. Bringing about the unity of Europe would benefit both Europe and the US. It was a win-​win situation. The first indirect step on the road to European integration was the 1948 Marshall Plan, the Truman administration’s grand anti-​communist scheme for the post-​war reconstruction of Western Europe (van der Beugel, 1964). Among US officials it was taken for granted that in the long run the Marshall Plan could only work on the basis of a closely integrated supranational Europe. Economic historian Alan Milward’s thesis that the Marshall Plan was unnecessary for European economic revival has found little support, not least as it ignores the important psychological impact American assistance had on Western Europe (Milward, 1984). Milward’s other main argument is also controversial. Few scholars agree with his reasoning that the Marshall Plan made the Europeans focus on the recovery of their individual nations, not on cooperation with each other, and that the receipt of Marshall Plan monies may even have delayed genuine European economic integration (Milward, 1992). In the aftermath of the implementation of the Marshall Plan, the US did its best to nudge both Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer towards proposing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the first practical stage on the long road towards a more integrated and united European continent. In fact, it had been Truman’s trusted confidant Dean Acheson who had implored Schuman ‘to take the initiative in incorporating the new West German state in international affairs’ (Judt, 2005, p. 156). Subsequently, future Secretary of State John Foster Duller told Acheson of his conviction that Schuman’s concept was ‘brilliantly creative and could go far to solve the most dangerous problems of our time, namely the relationship of Germany’s industrial power to France and the West’ (FRUS, 1950, Vol. 3, p. 695). The ECSC (or Schuman Plan) proved to be an overwhelming success in both political and economic terms; it became the forerunner of the European Economic Community (EEC) created on 1 January 1958. A similar supranational institution, the European Defense Community (EDC) failed dismally in August 1954, however. Due to the Red Army’s huge conventional superiority on the other side of the Iron Curtain, it was meant to bring about the rearmament of the new West German state and the European continent’s military integration. Instead, as noted, it was NATO, a traditional intergovernmental alliance of friendly countries, which was put in charge of the transatlantic partners’ strategic and military cooperation (Sayle, 2019). The times were not yet ripe for integrating and merging a holy cow such as the European nations’ military. Washington’s creative post-​war vision for the peaceful, stable, and prosperous future of a united (Western) European continent, which promised to also greatly benefit the US, seemed to make a lot of sense. French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman was certainly right when he declared in May 1950 that ‘a united Europe’, including a genuine Franco-​German rapprochement, ‘will not be achieved all at once, nor in a single framework: it will be formed by concrete measures which first create solidarity in fact’. That was the reason why he proposed, ‘that the entire Franco-​German production of coal and steel be placed under a joint High Authority, within an organization open to the participation of other European nations’ (Schuman, 1950).

68   Klaus Larres While the Schuman Plan largely fulfilled its political dimension—​to aid Franco-​ German reconciliation—​the plan’s economic dimension was less successful. At least this was how it was interpreted in Washington. The ECSC turned out to be protectionist and discriminatory in nature, leading to ever-​increasing European endeavours to keep economic competition from the US and the dollar area out of Europe (FRUS, 1958–​60, Vol. 7, Part 1, pp. 218–​20). This meant that genuine liberalization of trade and payments and the introduction of multilateralism and currency convertibility as desired by Washington had to be postponed. Instead, narrow European regionalism prevailed (Romero, 1993, pp. 164–​65). At that stage, however, the US never wavered in its strong support for the further development of the Schuman Plan. When in the mid-​1950s US steel producers protested about the aggressive trade and cartel policies of the ECSC, they found very little sympathy in the State Department. The diplomats in Foggy Bottom regretted the difficulties, but ‘any indication of a weakening of United States support for the ECSC at this time’, a State Department memorandum explained, ‘could have extremely prejudicial effects on current developments in the Community and in the general area of European integration’ (FRUS, 1955–​57, Vol. 4, p. 281). Similarly, in mid-​July 1956, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles issued a guidance memorandum to Washington’s European embassies pointing out that the US in principle deplored international trade restrictions. Nevertheless, Washington was prepared to modify its opposition to such preferential trade arrangements, if this was likely to ‘contribute to the attainment of United States political or economic objectives in a particular area’ (FRUS 1955–​57, Vol. 4, pp. 450–​3). The US agreed, therefore, to a waiver of international economic rules allowing the creation of the ECSC in the first place. Washington’s position ‘with respect to the ECSC’, Dulles explained with an eye on West Germany, ‘was based on the desirability of encouraging the closer political integration of Western Europe and the opportunity which the supranational insights of the ECSC offered for such integration’ (ibid.). Washington clearly regarded the ECSC as a decisive first stepping-​stone for bringing about the unity of Europe. Throughout the 1950s, Washington continued to regard European trade constraints and discriminations as temporary phenomena that would not be able to prevent the gradual development of full multilateralism (Romero, 1993, pp. 114–​18). As long as the US was the predominant global power in almost all respects, Washington was prepared to postpone temporarily both the creation of a new export market for US goods and the full realization of its liberal market economic vision. US policy-​makers were not yet too concerned about the US’ international economic competitiveness, despite a gradually worsening trade balance (ibid.). Still, already in the 1950s, a growing number of critical voices could be heard in Washington. Fewer and fewer officials were convinced that the US ought to make short-​term sacrifices and accept economic disadvantages when supporting the ECSC and thus the early stages of the European integration process in order to obtain long-​term benefits, such as the reconstruction and stabilization of the European continent. A few years later, the creation of the EEC in 1958 caused additional

ATLANTIC INTEGRATION AND ‘EVER CLOSER UNION’    69 worries among officials in Washington, who feared the growing economic competition from Europe. With the worsening economic and financial conditions of the late 1950s, the notion that lofty Cold War geopolitics and the stiff competition with the Soviet Union were more important than the details of economic and trade matters was increasingly challenged within the US government. To many people in Washington, it appeared that economically the US and its transatlantic allies were facing each other as competitors and rivals. The speedy recovery of the European economies, including West Germany’s ‘economic miracle’ that began gradually in the mid-​1950s, and the increasing structural deficiencies in the US’ economic performance made many US policy-​makers resentful. The US, after all, began suffering from rising unemployment and inflation and the late 1950s saw a serious though short-​lived recession in the US. Washington began to view not only the Soviets, who in 1957 sent the first ever satellite into space, but also increasingly the Europeans (and also the Japanese) as significant technological and, above all, economic competitors.

The Kennedy and Johnson Years Thus, by the early 1960s, the economic aspects of transatlantic relations had become crucially important. Washington began to insist on the termination of all protective European tariffs and trade discriminations as well as the full convertibility of the major European currencies. John F. Kennedy’s ‘Grand Design’, as expressed in the President’s speech in Philadelphia on 4 July 1962, contained the expectation that a more united and independent Europe would have a strong and lasting US connection. Contradicting what many people in his administration believed behind closed doors, Kennedy insisted that the US did not view ‘a strong and united Europe as a rival but as a partner’. A Europe, he outlined, that played a greater defence role and worked towards the lowering of trade barriers and resolving other global economic issues would be a partner the US would be able to deal with on ‘the basis of full equality’ (Kennedy, 1962). This certainly sounded good on the European continent. Kennedy and most of his advisers remained opposed, however, to a Europe that ‘struck off on its own’ in order to play an independent role in world affairs. Kennedy strongly believed that Europe’s international activities ought to take place within the Atlantic framework and thus be subject to US guidance. For him, as for all his predecessors and successors, it was the Atlantic dimension which was crucial for transatlantic relations; the European integration dimension was regarded as secondary in comparison, though until the advent of the Nixon administration, the US was careful not to tell the Europeans. In the 1960s, however, Washington became somewhat more attentive to accommodating European criticism about the US’ unilateral behaviour in the Atlantic alliance. This included efforts to give the Europeans a greater say in NATO’s nuclear decision-​making by means of the ill-​fated Multilateral Force (MLF). The creation of

70   Klaus Larres NATO’s top-​secret Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) in December 1966 was meant to convince also NATO’s nonnuclear members—​above all West Germany—​that they were participating in nuclear decision-​making (Bluth, 1995). The Kennedy and Johnson administrations also convened two lengthy multilateral rounds of trade negotiations (the Dillon and Kennedy rounds) to smooth economic relations and make the Europeans reduce their tariffs on US goods (Glick, 1984). Thus, in the 1960s, Washington’s political, military, and economic predominance within the transatlantic alliance inspired more resentment than before, but these challenges were not substantial enough to endanger US hegemony. Since the disastrous 1956 Suez crisis, Britain was keen on demonstrating its loyalty to the US and the West Germans were much too dependent on US goodwill in view of their precarious front-​ line status in the Cold War to openly challenge US predominance in the alliance. The constant squabbling over burden-​sharing issues was merely an unpleasant sideshow, though it did contribute to the fall from power of Chancellor Ludwig Erhard.

The West German Offset Payments Crisis, 1965–​66 In late 1965, as well as in September 1966, Johnson refused to give the West Germans an extension to the offset payments Washington was due, though the Bonn Republic was in the middle of an unprecedented recession, the first one since the Second World War, and a deep budgetary crisis. West Germany’s so-​called offset payments were seen as the country’s contribution to the high cost of maintaining US troops and equipment on German soil. Disputes over the size and the terms of the payments burdened German-​ American relations from the 1960s through the 1970s and beyond. While Erhard’s first visit to Washington in December 1965 proved to be an outright disaster, his next visit to Johnson, some nine months later in September 1966, was even more difficult (Treverton, 1978). In a memorandum of 22 September 1966, George McGhee, the US ambassador in Bonn, informed the President that ‘an obvious failure for Erhard in the talks could bring down his government’. He also spoke of the dire consequences for German-​American relations in the long run. ‘The meeting’, McGhee cautioned, ‘takes place against the backdrop of deterioration in U.S.-​German relations, characterized by a fading confidence on the Germans’ part in the firmness of our commitments to them and Europe, by a feeling that they are not being given the consideration by us they feel is due them as an important and loyal ally. We should set as our primary goal the restoration of mutual confidence and ease in our relationship’ (McGhee, 1989, p. 190). Johnson remained unmoved, however. In his personal talk with the President on 26 September 1966, Erhard explained that his government could fall and that his successor might be a less loyal ally than he was. Johnson, however, remained unimpressed and responded that ‘his financial problems were greater than Erhard’s’. He also expressed great surprise that Bonn wished to avoid its financial commitment and said he was disappointed that he could no longer rely on the word of the West Germans.

ATLANTIC INTEGRATION AND ‘EVER CLOSER UNION’    71 The US President was not prepared to offer Erhard any concessions whatsoever (FRUS, 1964N68, Vol. 8, pp. 471–​7). It was clear that Erhard’s visit was a total failure. Johnson’s refusal to extend a helping hand and show some generosity was a severe blow to Erhard, who had to return home empty-​handed with his authority in shreds. He resigned just over two months later after only little more than three years in office (Hentschel, 1998). Close personal relations with the US had not helped Erhard. Neither had West Germany’s status as one of the few countries that was considered to have a ‘special relationship’ with Washington. The other European countries took note of this and drew their own conclusions: it seemed inadvisable to rely too much on American goodwill. The days of America’s ‘enlightened self-​interest’ or even ‘altruism’ were clearly coming to an end. In the 1960s these and similar disputes between Bonn and Washington did not seriously endanger Washington’s European Cold War strategy, however. Most countries on the old continent were much too weak to pose a major challenge. It was only French President Charles De Gaulle who openly disputed US leadership in the alliance. This culminated in the French withdrawal from NATO’s integrated military command in 1966. The general’s deep-​seated anti-​US attitude angered and perturbed the US, but Washington was fully aware that it was West Germany and not so much France that was the key to the US’ role in Europe (Gardner, 1994; Fenby, 2013). It had become obvious in the course of the 1960s that Washington had no desire to accept the Europeans as genuinely independent players on the global stage. Despite the gradual transformation of the Cold War with the development of East-​West détente and De Gaulle’s challenge to Washington’s European policy, the US’ dominance in the Western alliance remained supreme. Still, throughout the 1960s Washington continued to believe on the whole that despite all difficulties, in the last resort, European integration and the gradual emergence of a united Europe was constructive and mutually beneficial for both Europe and the US.

Turning Point Nevertheless, by the end of the decade a growing number of policy-​makers feared that the ‘ever closer union’ of Europe—​the phrase embedded in the 1957 Rome Treaties to describe the ultimate objective of the EEC—​would turn the Europeans into forceful economic and possibly geopolitical competitors and rivals. It could be assumed that some time soon, a united Europe might well attempt to become a truly independent ‘third force’ in international affairs and, in a worst-​case scenario, even cut its connection with the US altogether. With the advent of the Nixon administration in early 1969, it was this apprehension that had a major impact on the belief system of most senior politicians in Washington, including the President himself and Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser. The long-​foreshadowed open clash between the US and Europe was about to happen (Larres, 2022, chs 4, 5 and 6).

72   Klaus Larres Initially, however President Nixon was quite well disposed towards the Europeans. He believed that the Johnson administration had neglected the continent, and Nixon wished to stabilize and renew the transatlantic relationship rather than launch any dramatic changes in the US’ European policy. Just over four weeks after his inauguration, Nixon embarked on an eight-​day grand presidential tour of many important European countries, which included visits to Britain, Italy, West Germany, and France, as well as NATO headquarters and, briefly, the European Commission in Belgium. Nixon made a good impression, and though he had listened attentively to the pro-​European sentiments he heard in Bonn and Rome, he was not displeased to hear remarks about the continuing importance of the nation-​state in London and above all in Paris from De Gaulle, whom he held in high esteem. Nixon decided that he wanted to focus on the improvement of relations within the Atlantic alliance, including Washington’s bilateral relations with the various European countries, and leave ‘doctrinal disputes’ and ‘the elaboration of Europe’s internal arrangements to the Europeans’ (Kissinger, 1979, pp. 88–​9). The President never really believed that the Europeans would be able to construct something like a united Europe if they had to achieve it by themselves and without US help. He thought that the Europeans ‘had one hell of a time acting as a bloc’, as they simply could ‘not get along with each other’ (FRUS, 1969–​76, Vol. 3, p. 265). The success of the December 1969 EC conference in the Dutch capital The Hague, during which the EC members managed to rejuvenate the European integration process by agreeing on major new initiatives, surprised him therefore (Hiepel, 2009, pp. 105–​25). Henry Kissinger, in any case, was not quite so certain as Nixon that the Europeans would never be able to unite and then oppose US policy. He had a much darker outlook on US-​European relations, perhaps influenced by his own German Jewish heritage. Certainly he always thought that Germany was ‘the last country that should be encouraged to “go it alone” ’ regarding any independent foreign policy ventures (Kissinger, 1960, p. 169), such as for instance Chancellor Willy Brandt’s controversial Ostpolitik, which he greatly disliked (Larres, 1996). Kissinger was also all doom and gloom regarding the prospects for transatlantic relations. The emergence of ‘a specifically European view of the world’, Kissinger pontificated, would lead the Europeans to ‘challenge American hegemony in Atlantic policy’ (Kissinger, 1982, p. 39). He dismissed entirely the widespread US view that European unity would lead to ‘parallel policies’ and ‘similar views about appropriate tactics’ in international affairs. Instead, Kissinger thought ‘a united Europe is likely to insist on a specifically European view of world affairs—​which is another way of saying that it will challenge American hegemony in Atlantic policy’ (ibid., p. 40). To him, it was obvious that a united Europe would not lead to a solution of all Atlantic disagreements; in fact, he thought, ‘in many respects it may magnify rather than reduce differences’ (ibid., p. 230). While Nixon would eventually arrive at very similar convictions, it was Kissinger who had held deeply eurosceptical beliefs all along. Subsequently, it was he who largely designed the Nixon administration’s increasingly suspicious, if not hostile, policy towards European unity. And the more Nixon became distracted by his détente policy

ATLANTIC INTEGRATION AND ‘EVER CLOSER UNION’    73 towards the Soviet Union and China, the escalation of the Vietnam War and its heated domestic repercussions, and, above all, the Watergate crisis, the more Kissinger was in charge of Washington’s European policy. And of course, in Nixon’s view, Kissinger’s background gave him particular expertise on all things European. Already right at the beginning of Nixon’s presidency, Kissinger had advised him that the US should perhaps best keep out of European affairs, pursue a policy of noninterference, and leave it entirely up to the Europeans to find out whether they were capable of making any progress towards creating a united Europe (Larres, 2022, ch. 2). Despite Nixon’s successful visit to Europe in February to March 1969, European frustration and anger over the erosion of Washington’s support of and commitment to a united Europe soon came back to the forefront. Within the EC, shortly to be enlarged to nine members, there was the widespread belief that the US was still not taking seriously European attempts to create a united continent and stand on their own feet in global politics. As the 1960s had demonstrated, US hegemony in NATO and transatlantic security affairs could hardly be successfully challenged; in economic and monetary affairs, however, the circumstances were very different. Here Washington’s policy seemed to display a surprisingly high degree of irresponsibility—​at least this was the perception of most European countries. In particular, France and West Germany, the economic powerhouses and main drivers of the European integration process, saw it that way. Italy viewed things similarly, as did Britain under both Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. London was waiting impatiently in the wings to be accepted as a full EC member and was careful not to come across as too pro-​US. Despite much mutual suspicion on both sides of the Atlantic regarding relations with the Soviet Union in the age of détente and Ostpolitik, it was the economic and monetary areas that became the main, rather vicious battlegrounds in transatlantic relations during the next few years. This resulted in a decisive, long-​lasting turning point in US policy towards a united Europe.

Nixon’s Economic Predicament It was unfortunate for Nixon that his presidency commenced when the country’s economic and financial position had begun to deteriorate. The US was also much less secure socially and regarding its national identity than it had been during the previous postwar decades. From 1971 onwards, the US accumulated an ever-​larger balance of payments deficit. Nixon was particularly concerned that in the same year, and for the first time in almost one hundred years, this situation led to the US developing also a significant trade deficit with the outside world. On top of this came a steep rate of inflation and rising unemployment numbers (Statistical Abstracts, 1951–​94: US Census Bureau). Compared with earlier years, US manufacturing industries in many areas had become much less productive and also worse in terms of product quality. Japanese and European goods were capturing many important sectors of the US market. The administration, however, put the blame for the US’ economic woes on the country’s

74   Klaus Larres foreign competitors. Washington accused them of employing unfair trade practices such as the imposition of high tariffs on US goods and subsidizing their own products to make them cheaper on the US market. Not without justification, the EC’s heavily subsidized Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was viewed particularly suspiciously in Washington as it prevented the US’ large agricultural industry from penetrating the EC market (Fennell, 1997). Above all, the White House blamed the strength of the dollar for the country’s economic predicament. Nixon considered that the hugely overvalued dollar made US goods unnecessarily expensive and uncompetitive on the world markets. While there was some truth in this claim, it also was an exaggeration. The US’ economic problems went much deeper; the country had more than just a monetary problem (James, 1996). Nixon was hopeful, however, that bringing about a much weaker dollar would not only help the country’s export industry but also stabilize its balance of payments and perhaps enable Washington to once again achieve a trade surplus. His administration tried to weaken the dollar, but the depreciation of the US currency led to further inflationary pressure on prices, which endangered the savings and retirement accounts of millions of Americans. It also made foreign investments in the country much less appealing for international industrial and business investors. At the same time, the strength of many European currencies, in particular that of the West German Deutschmark, had made them solid ‘safe havens’ for global investors. Currency speculators moved much of their portfolios to Europe, in particular to West Germany but also to France, thus swamping the old continent with dollars. Already since the mid-​1960s, the transatlantic world had been shaken by repeated monetary crises and the necessity to revalue its currencies, which were all pegged to the US dollar. The latter in turn was pegged to gold at $35 per ounce. The Bretton Woods monetary system, established in 1944, had provided much post-​war monetary stability and prosperity for the Western world but was now straining on its leash and becoming seriously unbalanced. The German and French governments in particular put pressure on Washington to do something about the dire situation. The rise of European prosperity and self-​confidence, if not arrogance at times, had convinced Bonn and Paris that their economic wisdom was turning out to be superior to that of the US yet European criticism met with a ‘policy of benign neglect’ on the part of the Nixon administration. Treasury Secretary John Connally proved to be rather unhelpful. He had little empathy for the monetary difficulties of the allies. ‘The dollar is our currency’, he once told visiting European dignitaries, ‘but it’s your problem’ (James, 1996, p. 210). In the course of the early 1970s, disputes about monetary and economic issues assumed an exceptional viciousness and were conducted in highly nationalistic terms hitherto unheard of among the transatlantic partners. In this hostile environment, US support for the further integration and economic and political unity of Europe became all but extinct. At times, in particular in the spring and summer of 1973, Kissinger did not shrink from trying to persuade Nixon to actively oppose and undermine the European unity process and divide the Europeans among themselves. He believed that the best chance to sow disunity among the EC members was by encouraging the West

ATLANTIC INTEGRATION AND ‘EVER CLOSER UNION’    75 Germans to be less enthusiastic about the European integration process. Their precarious and divided Cold War position, with West Berlin being situated in the middle of communist East Germany, made them particularly vulnerable and dependent on the US after all.

Reelection Concerns During Nixon’s first term in office, there was one overriding factor that was hugely important for the way the President interpreted the worsening situation. It underpinned much of the President’s economic concerns and greatly undermined his trust in the European allies. This factor was Nixon’s reelection prospects, which were severely affected by the monetary upheavals and Europe’s economic and financial competition. As early as 1970, Nixon had become deeply worried about the country’s deteriorating economic situation. With an eye to the forthcoming congressional election of November 1970 and in particular the presidential election of 1972, Nixon felt he urgently had to do something about this. And as the Watergate crisis demonstrated, the President was paranoid about losing the election and prepared to do anything in his power (including resorting to illegal means) to obtain a second term in office. Nixon repeatedly told his advisers, ‘our concern must not be inflation but recession’. He had ‘never heard of losing an election because of inflation, but lots were lost because of unemployment or recession’ (Matusow, 1998, p. 55). Nixon’s electoral concerns influenced his entire approach of how to deal with the growing instability of the Bretton Woods system and the economic competition and monetary criticism of the European allies throughout his first term. Regarding these crucial issues the main influence on him was not so much Kissinger, whose economic knowledge was limited, but Treasury Secretary John Connally, whom Nixon greatly admired, and the latter’s successor, George Shultz. Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns, Under Secretary Paul Volcker, and the writings of the Chicago monetarist Milton Friedman as well as surprisingly the thoughts of the liberal economist John Maynard Keynes, also significantly influenced Nixon’s thinking on how to boost the country’s economic fortunes and fight off foreign competitors. The advice he received and his electoral anxieties resulted in the August 1971 Camp David meeting, the ‘Nixon shocks’, and the ending of the Bretton Woods system. Nixon’s concerns also contributed to the subsequent collapse of the transatlantic monetary compromise deal, the Smithsonian Agreement of December 1971, and eventually led to the free floating of international exchange rates (and the beginning of the dominance of neoliberal economic thinking in much of the Western world) in the spring of 1972. These long months of monetary and political turmoil and uncertainty were accompanied by intense transatlantic acrimony (Larres, 2022, ch. 6). At the end of this process, transatlantic relations and the Europeans’ confidence that they would develop into global players were a shadow of their former selves. The US terminated supporting the European unity process (though in the end the White

76   Klaus Larres House stopped short of actually attempting to actively subvert it), and in August 1974, the Watergate crisis forced Nixon to resign in disgrace. Prior to this, the deep transatlantic acrimony, which accompanied the Yom Kippur war of October 1973, and the results not only of the Washington Energy Conference of February 1974 but also of both the 19 June 1974 Gymnich Compromise and the signing of a new Atlantic Declaration on 26 June 1974, largely confirmed the status quo: Europe’s reluctant acceptance of the US’ continued predominance in the Atlantic alliance in economic, political, and of course security affairs. These developments also demonstrated that Europe was much less united than the EC aspired to be and in the end it turned out that the EC was still quite incapable of standing on its own feet in global affairs.

Conclusion Towards the end of the Nixon administration European-​American relations were in bad shape. Nixon’s assessment of the solid foundation of the transatlantic relationship when he came back from his European journey in early March 1969 had proven highly optimistic. Kissinger had realized the need to rejuvenate transatlantic relations when he gave his ‘Year of Europe’ speech just over four years later in April 1973 but his attempt had badly backfired (Burr and Wampler, 2002; Horne, 2009). The Nixon administration had not taken terribly seriously the developments within Europe in the preceding years. The President and Henry Kissinger greatly underestimated the European unity process, which had infused an entirely new dynamic into the alliance that required new constructive responses. Although it had been Nixon and Kissinger who had contributed much to transforming the Cold War world with their successful détente policies, paradoxically they seemed to believe they had no choice but to continue manoeuvering in a traditional Cold War environment regarding the internal dynamics of the Western alliance. The US thus attempted to reassert its dominance of the Atlantic alliance as it had been established in the 1950s, in entirely different circumstances. Instead of adapting to a rapidly changing world, Kissinger insisted on the US channelling the allies and being respectfully consulted at every turn. In particular this also applied to West Germany, whose loyalty to the West Kissinger never fully trusted. However, in view of the economic and monetary and also political/​military irresponsibility the US had displayed over the last few years, and the growing confidence and increasing unity among the EC-​Nine, this was unacceptable to the Europeans. The result was the deep transatlantic conflict that played out during the Nixon administration. The Europeans, however, could not win this battle. They were still much too weak, particularly in the security policy realm but in other respects too, and were not sufficiently united either. Further, West Germany did not dare to stand up too much to the US. Chancellors Brandt and Schmidt’s monetary and financial criticisms of the US in

ATLANTIC INTEGRATION AND ‘EVER CLOSER UNION’    77 the 1970s were an exception rather than the rule. In other policy areas, certainly in the security sphere, Bonn was much less courageous in challenging Washington. The effective termination of US support for the development of a united Europe during the Nixon administration left lasting damage. Much mutual goodwill had been lost by 8 August 1974, when Nixon made his farewell remarks to his closest associates and departed the White House for good. The short-​lived Ford administration managed to smooth the ruffled transatlantic feathers to a significant extent, yet the damage had been done. Despite an improvement in the personal relations among the main transatlantic players during the Ford years, and in particular between West German Chancellor Schmidt and Ford, the mutual trust and closeness that had once been taken for granted in transatlantic relations would never come back. Relations during the Carter and Reagan years and in particular during George W. Bush’s first term in office during the post-​Cold War years were rather tense. Regarding the 2003 invasion of Iraq and many other issues, Washington continued to insist on a pliant and domesticated Europe that paid its dues and followed American guidance and advice without asking too many, if any, critical questions. Despite all nice rhetoric to the contrary, in the early 21st century the US still had a transatlantic alliance in mind that worked on a basis of subservience rather than equality and mutual respect. This certainly also applied to Germany. There was hardly anything left of the notion of a joint German-​ American ‘partnership in leadership’. Washington’s policy of ‘enlightened self-​interest’ and strong support for a united Europe that had characterized transatlantic relations prior to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger moving to the White House had disintegrated. The development in the US of an eventually outright hostile policy towards the European Union (EU) and the major European states such as Germany and France during the Trump administration went back to the watershed years of the Nixon era. It was in the early 1970s that the widening rift in transatlantic relations began, which characterized the subsequent Cold War years and culminated in the twenty-​first century during the Trump administration of 2017–​21.

Further Reading Hanrieder, Wolfram (1989), Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Larres, Klaus (2002), Churchill’s Cold War: The Politics of Personal Diplomacy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Larres, Klaus (2022), Uncertain Allies: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Threat of a United Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Lundestad, Geir (1998), ‘Empire’ by Integration: The United States and European Integration, 1945–​1997 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Wurm, Clemens (ed.) (1995), Western Europe and Germany: The Beginnings of European Integration, 1945–​1960 (Oxford: Berg).

78   Klaus Larres

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ATLANTIC INTEGRATION AND ‘EVER CLOSER UNION’    79 Gaddis, John Lewis (2000), The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–​1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Gardner, Lloyd (1994), ‘Lyndon Johnson and De Gaulle’, in Robert O. Paxton and Nicholas Wahl (eds), De Gaulle and the United States: A Centennial Reappraisal (Oxford: Berg), pp. 257–​78. Glick, Leslie Alan (1984), Multilateral Trade Negotiations. World Trade after the Tokyo Round (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld). Haag, Madeleine E. (1978), A Study of the CDU/​CSU Opposition to the Ostpolitik in the Sixth German Bundestag 1969–​72 (University of Surrey, Guildford; Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)). Hanrieder, Wolfram (1989), Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Hayward, Steven F. (2009), The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order: 1964–​1980 (New York: Crown). Hentschel, Volker (1998), Ludwig Erhard: Ein Politikerleben (Berlin: Ullstein Verlag). ustn, John (1993), Germany and Europe, 1919–​1939 (London: Routledge). Hiepel, Claudia (2009), ‘The Hague Summit of the European Community, Britain’s Entry, and the New Atlantic Partnership, 1969–​1970’, in Thomas A. Schwartz and Matthias Schulz (eds), The Strained Alliance: US-​European Relations from Nixon to Carter (New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 105–​25. Hillman, William (2007), Harry S. Truman in His Own Words: A Collection of Selected Interviews, Diaries . . . (New York: Kessinger’s Publishing). Hogan, Michael (1993), ‘Dean Acheson and the Marshall Plan’, in Douglas Brinkley (ed.), Dean Acheson and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), pp.1–​27. Holm, Michael (2017), The Marshall Plan: A New Deal for Europe (New York: Routledge). Horne, Alistair (2009), Kissinger: 1973, the Crucial Year (New York: Simon and Schuster). James, Harold (1996), International Monetary Relations since Bretton Woods (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Jansen, Hans-​Juergen (1992), Grossbritannien, das Scheitern der EVG und der NATO-​Beitritt der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Bochum: Brockmeyer). Jones, Bruce (ed.) (2017), The Marshall Plan and the Shaping of American Strategy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press). ust, Tony (2005), Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin). Kaplan, Lawrence S. (2014), The United States and NATO: The Formative Years (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press). Kennan, George F. (1946), ‘The long telegram’, 22 February 1946: http://​www.trumanlibrary. org/​whistlestop/​study_​collections/​coldwar/​documents/​index.php?documentdate=​1946-​ 02-​22&documentid=​6-​6&studycollectionid=​&pagenumber=​1 Kennedy, John F. (1962), ‘Address at Independence Hall’, in Philadelphia on 4 July 1962: https://​www. jfklibrary.org/​archives/​other-​resources/​john-​f-​kennedy-​speeches/​philadelphia-​pa-​19620704 Kissinger, Henry A. (1960), The Necessity for Choice: Prospects of American Foreign Policy (New York: Harper and Brothers). Kissinger, Henry A. (1979), The White House Years (New York: Little, Brown and Company). Kissinger, Henry A. (1982), The Troubled Partnership: A Re-​Appraisal of the Atlantic Alliance, new edn (New York: Praeger). Larres, Klaus (1995), Politik der Illusionen: Churchill, Eisenhower und die Deutsche Frage (Goettingen: Vandenhock).

80   Klaus Larres Larres, Klaus (1996), ‘Germany and the West: The “Rapallo Factor” in German Foreign Policy from the 1950s to the 1990s’, in Klaus Larres and Panikos Panayi (eds), The Federal Republic of Germany since 1949: Politics, Society and Economy before and after Unification (London/​ New York: Longman), pp. 278–​326. Larres, Klaus (2002), Churchill Cold War: The Politics of Personal Diplomacy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Larres, Klaus (2018), ‘Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech in Context: The Attempt to Achieve a “Good Understanding on All Points” with Stalin’s Soviet Union’, International History Review 40(1), pp. 80–​107. Larres, Klaus (2022), Uncertain Allies: Nixon, Kissinger and the Threat of a United Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Larres, Klaus and Torsten Oppelland (eds) (1997), Deutschland und die USA im 20. Jahrhundert: Geschichte der politischen Beziehungen (Darmstadt: WBG). Leffler, Melvyn P. (1993), Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Loth, Wilfried Loth (1988), The Division of the World, 1941–​1955 (London: Routledge). Lundestad, Geir (1998), ‘Empire’ by Integration: The United States and European Integration, 1945–​1997 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Lundestad, Geir (1999), ‘ “Empire” by Integration: The United States and European Integration, 1945–​1996’, in Kathleen Burk and Melvyn Stokes (eds), The United States and the European Alliance since 1945 (Oxford: Berg), pp.17–​41. MacGregor, Iain (2019), Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, The Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place On Earth (New York: Scribner). Matusow, Allen J. (1998), Nixon’s Economy: Booms, Busts, Dollars, and Votes (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas). McAdams, A. James (1994), Germany Divided: From the Wall to Reunification, revised edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press). McGhee, George (1989), At the Creation of a New Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press). 1951 (London: Milward, Alan (1984), The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–​ Methuen, 1984). Milward, Alan (1992), The European Rescue of the Nation State (London: Routledge). Murphy, David E. and Sergei A. Kondrashev (1997), Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Neuss, Beate (2000), Geburtshelfer Europa? Die Rolle der Vereinigten Staaten im europäischen Integrationsprozess 1945–​1958 (Baden-​Baden: Nomos). Norris, Roberts S., William M. Arkin, and William Burr (1999), ‘Where they Were’, Bulletin 35: https://​journals.sagepub.com/​doi/​full/​10.2968/​ of the Atomic Scientists 5(6), pp. 26–​ 055006011 Ozinga, James R. (1989), The Rapacki Plan: The 1957 Proposal to Denuclearize Central Europe, and an Analysis of Its Rejection (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing). Romero, Federico (1993), ‘Interdependence and Integration in American Eyes: From the Marshall Plan to Currency Convertibility’, in Alan Milward et al. (eds), The Frontier of National Sovereignty: History and Theory 1945–​1992 (London: Routledge), pp.155–​181. Ruane, Kevin (2000), The Rise and Fall of the European Defence Community: Anglo-​American Relations and the Crisis of European Defence, 1950–​54 (Basingstoke: Macmillan). Sayle, Timothy A. (2019), Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).

ATLANTIC INTEGRATION AND ‘EVER CLOSER UNION’    81 Schmidt, Helmut (1989), Men and Powers: A Political Retrospective (New York: Random House). Schuman, Robert, ‘Speech to the French parliament’, on 9 May 1950: http://​aei.pitt.edu/​99786/​. Schwarz, Hans-​Peter (1986), Adenauer. Der Aufstieg, 1876–​1952 (2nd edn, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-​Anstalt). Shlaim, Avi (2022), The United States and the Berlin Blockade, 1948–​1949: A Study in Crisis Decision-​making (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Skogmar, Allso Gunnar (2004), The United States and the Nuclear Dimension of European Integration (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Spohr, Kristina (2016), The Global Chancellor: Helmut Schmidt and the Reshaping of the International Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Statistical Abstracts of the United States (1951–​94): http://​www.census.gov/​prod/​www/​abs/​ statab1951-​1994.htm Steil, Benn (2018), The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster). Steininger, Rolf (1990), The German Question: The Stalin Note of 1952 and the Problem of Reunification (New York: Columbia University Press). Treverton, Gregory F. (1978), The Dollar Drain and American Forces in Germany: Managing the Political Economies of Alliance (Athens, OH: Columbia University Press). Tusa, Ann and John (2019), The Berlin Airlift: The Cold War Mission to Save a City, reprinted edn (New York: Skyhorse). United States Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Division: http://​www.cen​sus/​gov/​fore​ign-​trade/​ sta​tist​ics/​his​tori​cal/​gands.txt. Van der Beugel, Ernst H. (1964), Interview with E.H. van der Beugel, 1 June 1964: http://​www. truman​libr​ary.org/​oralh​ist/​beu​gel.htm. Weinberg, Gerhard L. (2005), A World At Arms: A Global History of World War II (2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Wheatcroft, Geoffrey (2011), ‘Who Needs NATO?’ New York Times (15 June): https://​www. nytimes.com/​2011/​06/​16/​opinion/​16iht-​edwheatcroft16.html Wolfrum, Edgar (2006), Die geglückte Demokratie. Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland von ihren Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Klett-​Cotta). Zubok, Vladislav and Constantine Pleshakov (1997), Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev, revised edn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

CHAPTER 6

GER M ANY AND T H E S OV I ET UN ION DU RIN G T H E C OL D WAR E RA Peter Ruggenthaler

Even before the end of the Second World War the Allies had decided to make sure that Germany would never again be in a position to trigger another world war. Any future German state would have to be so weak that it could not pose a threat to any of its neighbours. From the Soviet perspective, the most effective means to bring about Germany’s permanent weakness, in addition to complete demilitarization and denazification, were the surrender of territory or even the entire dismemberment of the German Reich (Laufer, 2009; Kynin and Laufer, 1996–​2003; Ruggenthaler, 2015).

The German Question as Seen by the Allies, 1945–​4 9 The potential scenarios entertained by Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt differed considerably. While the British Prime Minister and the US President largely dropped any plans for Germany’s dismemberment at the Yalta conference in February 1945, Stalin wanted to keep the idea alive. In late March 1945, however, he too changed his mind when it became clear that the Red Army was going to take Berlin and have complete control of the city for some time. The division of Germany, which was rapidly becoming reality from late 1947 onwards, had nothing whatsoever to do with the plans for the country’s dismemberment entertained by the victorious powers during the war. It was purely the result of a situation where London, soon to be joined by Washington, prevented Moscow from extending the

GERMANY AND THE SOVIET UNION DURING THE COLD WAR ERA    83 political framework it had enforced on the Soviet Occupation Zone (SOZ) to the Western zones. Stalin lost no time creating facts on the ground. As early as 1945 work began on transforming the SOZ into a satellite state. Soviet policy concentrated on the establishment of Communist party rule in the SOZ, where Sovietization measures were inititiated from the word go, even if any impression was to be avoided of the occupation power proceeding with undue haste. The ‘new Germany’ was to be built step by step. The installation of the German communists summoned from their Moscow exile as the new (puppet) government on German soil had been prepared since 1944. This was unlike the situation in Austria, where the communists were not accorded a leading role. In Eastern Germany large-​scale landowners were dispossessed without compensation as part of a ‘land reform’, the land was reallotted and the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) and the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands) were forcibly merged in 1946 to form the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands)—​the Socialist Unity Party. Germany’s fate hung in the balance at the 1946 Conference of Foreign Ministers in Paris, where the atmosphere was fraught due to Churchill’s ‘iron curtain’ speech in Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946 and Stalin’s rejection of an invitation to visit the US. The Americans were still prepared to settle for a compromise with Moscow with regard to the German unity question. In September 1946 US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes tabled a plan for Germany based largely on proposals that dated from the spring of 1945. The draft treaty provided for the neutralization of Germany for a period of twenty-​five years and the country’s complete disarmament and demilitarization. All occupation troops were to be withdrawn from Germany. Molotov’s advice to Stalin to start negotiations on this basis did not find favour with the dictator. Stalin believed that Byrnes’ proposal was directed against the Soviet Union (Steininger, 2002a, pp. 247–​8; Pechatnov, 1999, p. 5). But instead of sharing his own assessment with the Americans, Stalin chose to leave them with the impression that he supported the Byrnes plan. Moscow had concluded that the Americans, by contrast to the course of action they had adopted after the First World War, were now in for the long haul in Germany (Laufer and Kynin, 2004, pp. 259, 263–​5). The US now wished to find out whether Stalin was willing to enter into bona fide negotiations on Germany’s future. In Paris it became obvious that Soviet policy was aimed at dividing the country. A withdrawal from Austria was similarly out of the question for the Soviets at least for the time being. This would have necessitated the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary and Romania, since troops were only stationed there, at least in the official version, to safeguard the Soviet passageway to Austria. The Americans were well aware of this but lacked the means to lure the Soviets to the negotiating table. Diplomatic tools were insufficient to prevent Eastern Europe from being saddled with Soviet hegemony (Wettig, 1999, p. 113; Ruggenthaler, 2015, pp. 58–​65).

84   Peter Ruggenthaler

The Road to Two German States The Cold War overshadowed deliberations about Germany. In all internal Soviet analyses of the Byrnes plan the role of the Soviet Occupied Zone (SOZ; which later became the German Democratic Republic (GDR)) as the linchpin of the Soviet Empire was emphasized. It was always seen as the ‘deployment area [platsdarma] for a permanent Soviet military presence in the heart of Europe’ (Zubok, 2011, p. 107). For the consumption of the world outside the Soviet Union Stalin performed the role of the stalwart advocate of German unity. For the Germans he played the emotional card and sought to win them over to the idea of a united, non-​aligned Germany, effectively a neutral country. He hoped to stoke German nationalist feelings and direct them against the Americans, who in turn presented themselves as the main bulwark and protector of a free Germany against the Soviet threat. What Stalin wanted to avoid at all costs was being blamed for the division of Germany (Zubok, 2007, p. 71). At the Conference of Foreign Ministers in Moscow in March/​April 1947, the Western powers tried once again to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union on the German Question. The Soviet position, however, remained intransigent. The draft of a demilitarization treaty prepared by the Americans was rejected, despite far-​reaching concessions to Moscow, which included the issue of reparations. The Moscow conference ended in failure. Washington and London had finally concluded that an agreement with the Soviet Union on the German Question was never going to fly (Ruggenthaler, 2015, p. 66). The course of action that was now adopted in dealing with the German Question contributed decisively to the escalation in the East-​West conflict. The division of Germany was the logical consequence of the incompatible interests of the great powers. In 1947 the US opted for a policy designed to ‘contain’ communism. By 1953 this concept was upgraded to ‘roll-​back’. However, it remained verbal posturing by and large, as became apparent during the uprisings of 1953 in the GDR and 1956 in Hungary, when the West refrained from offensive interventions in Soviet-​dominated territory. The Americans then announced the Marshall Plan and gave West European countries such as West Germany economic aid. The British and the Americans had already agreed on an economic merger of their zones, and within the framework of the Marshall Plan the French, too, allowed their occupation zone to be merged with what was known as the Bizone. Already in the run-​up to the Conference of Foreign Ministers in London in late 1947 Moscow took it for granted that the stalemate in the German Question would not be broken. The negotiations soon took a confrontational turn and collapsed. A peace treaty with or for Germany, however, remained one of Moscow’s tools with which the Kremlin sought to advance its interests in Germany. From the summer of 1946 Soviet propaganda was not aimed at achieving consensus with the Western powers. The last thing Stalin was prepared to grant the Western powers at the conferences of the Council of Foreign Ministers in Moscow and London in 1947 was any kind of influence on, or knowledge of,

GERMANY AND THE SOVIET UNION DURING THE COLD WAR ERA    85 what was going on in the SOZ. Above all, Stalin was concerned with building an—​at first metaphorical—​wall around the Soviet sphere of influence, which included the SOZ as a matter of course (Laufer and Kynin, 2004, pp. LVII, LXXIV, LXXIV, LXXXIII). Moscow now began to get rid of all allied institutions for Germany as a whole in order to consolidate its grip on power. In March 1948 the Soviet military governor pulled the rug from under the Control Council, a body that in 1945 had been vested with the supreme authority in the defeated country. On explicit orders from Moscow the governor left the meeting under the pretext that the Council had come to the end of its useful life. With his next step Stalin tried to force the Western powers to withdraw from Berlin. For this purpose a ‘special plan’ was devised to exert pressure on the Western allies. In late March 1948 the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD, an acronym of the Administration’s German title) issued a series of directives aimed at restricting the movement of the Western allies between their occupation zones and the Western sectors of Berlin. This was the beginning of the blockade of Berlin. The reason given for this was that the city was part of the Soviet zone. In the version the USSR chose to propagate, the Western allies had been granted abode in the city by the USSR so that they could participate in joint decisions concerning a unified Germany. None of this was in fact borne out by the agreements reached in 1945/​46. Since the Western powers, as the Soviet reasoning went, were unwilling to abide by this plan, their presence in Berlin no longer had a legal basis. Road and rail transport was increasingly subjected to limitations after 1 April 1948. Stalin refrained from putting into place the measures against Western flight corridors he had initially envisaged. The US had made it clear that it would make use of all means at its disposal to obviate any restrictions in this respect and the Soviet leader did not want to risk an armed conflict. On 16 June 1948 the Soviet Military Commander left Berlin’s Allied Kommandatura, with the result that no common four-​power institutions were left apart from the allies’ Berlin Air Safety Center (Laufer and Kynin, 2004, pp. LXIV–​ LXX, LXX, LXXXII). This step was taken before the Kremlin got wind of the currency reform that was now imminent in West Germany. At the latest from the autumn of 1947 both Moscow and the Western capitals were alive to the fact that a currency reform in each part of Germany was in the pipeline. Talks about a joint procedure had led nowhere and the Soviet leadership assumed that the West would take several more months to implement the currency reform. Moscow planned to leave it to the West to take the first step, which would enable it to immediately accuse the West of pursuing a divisive policy and paint the currency reform in the SOZ as a necessary countermeasure. Preparations for this procedure proceeded in parallel to, but independently of, the pressure the Soviets brought to bear on the Western powers in Berlin. When the new currency was introduced unexpectedly early in the West, the USSR was caught on the wrong foot and retaliated by imposing a total blockade on Berlin. This was pushed through against the advice of the SMAD, which warned of the Western powers’ potential for tit-​for-​tat. Soviet planning was based on the inclusion of the entire city into the currency area of the SOZ, which would have meant the submission of the entire city into Eastern German power structures, as subsequent negotiations were to show.

86   Peter Ruggenthaler Against all odds the air bridge proved a historic success. Its implemtation was pushed through by American Military Governor Lucius Clay, despite initial doubts of his military and political superiors in Washington. Stalin had arguably planned to unilaterally rescind Berlin’s four-​power status, expel the Western powers from the city, and integrate their sectors into the SOZ. He wanted to paint the Western powers as powerless and clueless in the eyes of the German population, which would, he hoped, finally draw the Germans into the Soviet camp. All these speculations came to nought. Instead, the opposite happened. Once the impression spread that the Soviet threat was becoming acute, it was widely felt in the West that this was the time to close ranks to repel it (Narinskii, 1995, pp. 19–​20; Laufer and Kynin, 2004, pp. LXXX, LXXXI). The result was, of course, the foundation of NATO in 1949. Moreover, the defence of the Western position in Berlin provided the Europeans with the assurance that the allies could count on the US’ commitment to their security. The only condition the Soviets imposed for ending the blockade was convening a Council of Foreign Ministers conference to discuss the German Question. This was Stalin’s attempt to save face. At the conference, however, the Soviet Union consistently blocked any negotiations on Germany and the status of Berlin. Five months after the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in May 1949, Stalin had the Soviet Zone proclaimed an independent state. After the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 Washington demanded with growing urgency the integration of the FRG into the West and a ‘German contribution to defence’. Both demands were seized upon by communist propaganda and presented as incontrovertible proof of West Germany’s rearmament and remilitarization. That the Korean War paved the road for Western European rearmament by the US was not lost on Moscow, which regarded the situation as favourable for unleashing an ‘active struggle against remilitarisation and for the unification of Germany’ (Steininger, 2002b, pp. 145–​60; Egorova, 1999, p. 68). The Soviet Union saw opportunities in a protracted war in the Far East to create ‘obstacles’ for the Americans in Europe. In 1950, French Prime Minister René Pleven suggested the creation of a European Defence Community (EDC). In Moscow’s eyes this was yet another ploy to bring about the ‘remilitarization’ of Germany. West German Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer consistently put the economic, military, and political integration of West Germany into the West centre stage. The US was inclined to accommodate him and his pro-​Western political course. March 1951 saw a revision of the Occupation Statute of the Federal Republic; the Occupation Statute, and thus part of the supremacy of the Western powers in the Bonn Republic, was abolished altogether by the General Treaty in May 1952. The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) acted as Moscow’s proxy in the Western zones and then also in the FRG. It was tasked with ‘helping to prevent the Western integration of the nascent Federal Republic and at the same time to provide propagandistic support for the construction of the GDR’. The Soviets and the German communists were still hoping at that time to emerge victorious from the competition between capitalism and communism. In March 1951 the KPD openly called for the revolutionary toppling

GERMANY AND THE SOVIET UNION DURING THE COLD WAR ERA    87 of Adenauer. Five years later the party was banned by the Federal Constitutional Court (Kössler, 2005, p. 226).

Neutrality for a Reunited Germany? The GDR leadership carried out a sober assessment of events in West Germany and used it to intensify the construction of socialism and consolidate their own power in the GDR. This phase of illusion—​characterized by the belief that communism would unfold in Germany as a whole under its own steam—​had ended in 1951. The deepening of Germany’s division now seemed inevitable. GDR leader Walter Ulbricht took it for granted that the Americans would complete the ‘systematic implementation of West Germany’s remilitarisation’. Having arrived at the conclusion that the Western powers would never give their consent to German neutrality, Moscow sought to bring into play the growing movement of the supporters of neutrality (Ruggenthaler, 2015, p. 204). Moscow’s strategy aimed at a struggle against ‘rearmament and West Germany’s accession to the North Atlantic Pact’ and ‘the exploitation of the movement in favour of Germany’s neutralisation’ (Ruggenthaler, 2015, pp. 201–​2, 206). In the eyes of the Soviets there were good chances of at least throwing a spanner into the works of ‘remilitarization’. The Soviets now pursued three main goals: first, to mobilize the German public against Adenauer’s policy of Germany’s integration into the West; second, to impede the unilateral lifting of the Western Occupation Statute; and, third, to promote the proposed peace treaty in the hope of attracting broad support in West Germany. The ensuing months were taken up in Moscow by intense work on what was referred to as the core elements of a peace treaty for Germany. All contingencies were to be taken into account to ensure that the Soviets would always have a trump up their sleeve in negotiations—​if indeed the West was prepared to return to the negotiating table. Finally, on 10 March 1952, the Soviet proposal for a solution to the German question was handed to the diplomatic representatives of the Western powers in Moscow. That proposal has gone down in history as the ‘Stalin Note’. The ‘Battle of the Notes’ that followed handed Moscow and East Berlin an easy way out, which allowed the two regimes to deny all responsibility for the increasingly entrenched division of Germany for the entire duration of the Cold War. The ‘Battle of the Notes was a concerted effort to stabilize the communist system and the Eastern bloc rather than an attempt to break the Cold War deadlock. The only thing that mattered was shifting the blame for the failure of peace deal for Germany—​and ultimately for the division of Germany—​to the other side. When the Western powers proposed to end the occupation of Austria, Moscow was not interested. The USSR was not ready to enter into talks on Austria. On the contrary, Moscow feared that the West might push forward the conclusion of an Austrian peace treaty (Ruggenthaler, 2015, pp. 245–​6). Observers noted at the time that Stalin could have proved his readiness to grant Germany genuine neutrality by making an

88   Peter Ruggenthaler example of Austria first. He signally failed to do so. Stalin was neither ready to withdraw his troops from Austria nor give up positions in Germany, let alone sacrifice the GDR (Ruggenthaler, 2015, pp. 365–​6; Ruggenthaler, 2014; Ruggenthaler, 2011). In a conversation with the East German leadership in Moscow in April 1952 Stalin no longer minced his words: ‘Recruit a People’s Army—​make no fuss. The pacifist period is over’ (Badstübner and Loth, 1994, p. 395). The inner-​German border was sealed hermetically, the only remaining bolt-​hole being West Berlin. At its Seconnd Party Conference on 12 July 1952 the SED voted for the systematic implementation of socialism. The ‘peace campaigns’ in the West were continued but attracted little attention. It became obvious at last that Stalin was firmly committed to the GDR as a cornerstone of the Soviet Empire. On 5 March 1953, however, Stalin died of a sudden stroke.

Consolidation of Soviet Power over East Germany and the Road to the Berlin Wall In the meantime more and more Germans were leaving the GDR via West Berlin. Neither Stalin nor his successors showed any intention of sealing off the border. The mass exodus was caused by the precarious economic situation in the GDR, in itself the result of the intransigent political course the SED adhered to. Directives from Moscow forced the regime to change tack—​far-​reaching political and economic reforms were prescribed (‘The New Course’). On 17 June 1953 the people in East Berlin and elsewhere in the GDR rose up in revolt, which was quickly and bloodily crushed by Soviet tanks. All of Stalin’s heirs toed the line but inside the Kremlin the realization was rife that ‘the GDR regime is not viable without the presence of Soviet troops’ (Kramer, 1999, p. 14; Wettig, 2012, p. 11; Foitzik, 2012, pp. 118–​19). The conclusion of the Austrian State Treaty in 1955 and the withdrawal of all allied occupation troops raised hopes that a similar solution was possible for Germany. This, however, was illusory. Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov had to follow strict orders to avoid any discussion of the German Question with Western foreign ministers (Stourzh, 2005, p. 478). Germany was divided, Austria was not. East Germany was Sovietized, the Soviet occupation zone in Eastern Austria was spared Sovietization. These differences notwithstanding, the two policies were masterminded by the same people and followed the same logic. Division or no division, Sovietization or no Sovietization—​what tipped the scales were considerations of security policy. In East Germany the construction of socialism was above all a means to an end. Security-​ oriented goals coincided with ideological goals, the two went hand in hand. In Austria it was not only possible, it was even necessary to forego ideology to push the primary objective, the long-​term weakening of Germany and the redrawing of Germany’s borders.

GERMANY AND THE SOVIET UNION DURING THE COLD WAR ERA    89 For Adenauer the conclusion of the Austrian treaty was an ‘Austrian mess [Schweinerei]’ (Gehler, 2009, p. 573), as it saddled him with the charge of not having been flexible enough in his dealings with Moscow, of having blown an opportunity, of having failed to secure a similar solution for Germany. However, such a solution had never been on the table and Moscow’s propaganda machine sought to milk the situation for all its worth. Adenauer soon tried to patch things up with the Soviet Union, despite standing by the Hallstein Doctrine, which considered the severance of diplomatic relations with all countries that recognized the GDR. When Adenauer went to Moscow, on the invitation of the Soviets, in September 1955, the USSR and the FRG agreed to establish diplomatic relations. In return Moscow agreed that the last 10,000 prisoners of war still in Soviet captivity would be repatriated (Borchard, 2000). In 1958 Nikita Khrushchev tried to force the Western powers to withdraw from West Berlin, committing the USSR to a confrontation beyond its capacity. Playing the ‘Berlin card’ turned into a heavy burden for the Soviet Union’s foreign policy. The main bone of contention from the point of view of politics and international law in this showdown between the Soviet Union and the Western powers were differences in the interpretation of the status of the divided city. Moscow insisted—​as it had already done in 1948—​that Berlin in its entirety was part of the Soviet zone and, by the same token, part of the territory of the GDR (Fursenko and Naftali, 2006, pp. 206–​9; Wilke, 2014; Wentker, 2007; Harrison, 2003). With the demand for the conclusion of a peace treaty that Khrushchev kept pressing for from 1958 onwards, he sought to remove, in his own words, ‘the leftovers of the war’ epitomized by the status of Berlin. Until the eventual reunification of Germany, which the Kremlin allegedly still advocated, it was absolutely required in Krushchev’s eyes for Berlin’s Western sectors to shed their character of an aggressive NATO base. The only way to achieve this was if Western occupation troops were to be withdrawn. In terms of content the hypothetical peace treaty proposed by Khrushchev was based on the draft of the ‘Stalin Note’ of 1952. However, the unified Germany of the Note had now been replaced by a reference to two separate states. Germany’s reunification was explicitly declared a matter of exclusive concern to the GDR and the FRG and could therefore not be put on the agenda of any peace treaty negotiations. In addition to making West Berlin part of the Eastern sphere of influence, this peace treaty would have put the final seal in terms of international law on Europe’s post-​war order, including Germany’s border to the East. The twofold realization that the US was fully aware of its own global-​strategic superiority and that the GDR did not have what it takes by way of economic stamina finally forced Khrushchev to rescind the ultimatum that he had issued. This happened in a highly theatrical manner in June 1961 when he met with John F. Kennedy in Vienna. Khrushchev dropped his demand for a deadline for the conclusion of a peace treaty and for an agreement on Berlin as a free city. However, he insisted on the abolition of the status quo. In July 1961 Kennedy declared as non-​negotiable the right of the Western powers to be present in their sectors, free access to those sectors, and the economic viability of West Berlin. The Soviet party boss continued to oppose all three essentials,

90   Peter Ruggenthaler however, and wanted to see them abolished. He switched to a strategy of attrition and changed the time schedule and his modus operandi. Even though Khrushchev had come to the conclusion in 1958 that West Berlin was like a ‘bone in the throat’ (Wettig, 2011, Document 26) that had to be gotten rid of at all costs he did not want to resort to sealing the border between the sectors. Contrary to Ulbricht he was wary of the loss of face attendant on installing a harsh border regime in the middle of Berlin. He realized that the credibility of the superiority which the Socialist system allegedly enjoyed over the ‘capitalist’ order was on the line and that the reputation of socialism was in danger of being damaged in the eyes of the world. Furthermore, he feared a direct confrontation with the US. Moscow did not yet want to hear of Ulbricht’s demand to close the ‘gap’ even though it was common knowledge that, after the end of the war, more than 4.7 million people had left the SOZ and the GDR for West Germany. In 1960/​61 alone, more than 400,000 left, including medical doctors in their hundreds. In the end the mass exodus left Khrushchev no choice but to swallow his aversion to the installation of a hard border regime in the city. In mid-​July 1961 the exodus reached such a dimension that Khrushchev had every reason to fear that the SED regime was going to collapse even before the conclusion of a peace treaty, which was planned for the end of the year, and the takeover of the access routes to West Berlin, that was going to be part of it. He nevertheless continued to be in two minds about closing the border. By pointing out to the other Warsaw Pact states that Berlin was actually an ‘open city’, Khrushchev made it sufficiently clear that closing the border was not his preferred choice and that he would consent to it only if he had to. When, around 20 July 1961, Khrushchev did decide to close the sector border this was supposed to be a provisional measure. It would only be in place until the peace treaty was signed and the GDR was in full control of all access routes to West Berlin by land and air. The construction of a barrier of separation in Berlin did not result in the lifting of the Soviet ultimatum that had been renewed at the Vienna Summit in June 1961 (Bischof, Karner, and Stelzl-​Marx, 2014). It did not end the crisis, as Kennedy had initially expected. Khrushchev continued to insist on the conclusion of a peace treaty and on the East German control of the access routes (including the air corridors). It was only when he realized in October 1961 that he could not risk an acute confrontation that he dropped the ultimatum. He nevertheless demanded that West Berlin’s ‘anomalous situation’ be changed in a way that took Moscow’s priorities into account. He noted with satisfaction Dean Rusk’s assessment that building the wall served the interests of East Germany and the USSR. This was ‘an important acknowledgement’ (Fursenko and Naftali, 2006, p. 394). Nevertheless, the Berlin Wall became a tragic symbol of a divided Europe and a divided world. Kennedy soon realized that the wall had implications that were detrimental to the US. In Bonn and Berlin the severance of interpersonal human contacts in the city and in the country was felt to be a significant deterioration of the status quo that the US as protecting power had done nothing to prevent. When Kennedy was briefed

GERMANY AND THE SOVIET UNION DURING THE COLD WAR ERA    91 on the situation, he set in motion a military convoy to West Berlin via the Autobahn, despatched the ‘hero of the 1948/​49 blockade’, General Lucius Clay, to Berlin as his personal representative and made Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson visit the city with great fanfare. In this way Kennedy managed to reestablish trust. In mid-​1963 he went to West Berlin himself. On 26 June 1963 Kennedy addressed a huge crowd in front of the Schöneberg townhall. Here, to the cheers of an audience of 100,000, he uttered the famous words: ‘Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was “civis Romanus sum”. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner”.’

The Road to the Ostpolitik In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1961, Chancellor Adenauer and Willy Brandt, the governing mayor of West Berlin, agreed that the FRG must turn over a new leaf in its relations with the Soviet Union to safeguard transit routes to West Berlin and facilitate domestic tourist traffic. Kennedy’s visit to Berlin in 1963 brought first results in the form of an agreement on entry permits to cross the border between West and East Berlin. However, the threshold for a deepening of relations remained high. Moscow insisted on the recognition of the GDR and the Polish border in terms of international law. Bonn continued to stand by the goal of national unity, which was enshrined in the FRG’s constitution. In Adenauer’s analysis, Moscow’s reasoning went as follows: to be able to raise the standard of living for its population, to keep abreast of the West in the arms race, and to mount a credible defence against China, the Soviet Union had to ensure its back was covered in Europe. It needed peace in Europe. Moscow set Bonn conditions that seemed clear enough: top priority was to be accorded to the conclusion of the Nuclear Non-​Proliferation Treaty (NPT); next, a European Security Conference was to be convened (Rother and Larres, 2018; Fink and Schaefer, 2009; Kramer, 2016; Borchard, Karner, Küsters, and Ruggenthaler, 2020.) It was, however, obvious that Moscow was already casting about for ways to escape from the corner into which it had painted itself (Keworkow, 1995). With the accession to power of a grand coalition under Chancellor Kurt-​Georg Kiesinger in 1966 and new Foreign Minister Willy Brandt, the new Chancellor continued to follow the direction in Ostpolitik pursued by his predecessor Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, and Erhard’s Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder. Kiesinger, however, also struck a new note in his government declaration. The core messages of the new Ostpolitik were couched in positive terms: renunciation of violence, reconciliation, and peaceful coexistence. In the autumn of 1967 Kiesinger had soundings taken in Moscow regarding ‘possibilities for improved relations’. The new Foreign Minister, Willy Brandt, put the emphasis on ‘striking a balance between contradictory goals and interests’. The term ‘détente’, according to Brandt, opened up a space for collaboration and balancing different interests, with the ultimate goal of ruling out war as a means for achieving

92   Peter Ruggenthaler political objectives. The time had come, Brandt believed, to implement the ideas he had already formulated as chairman of the SPD and when still leader of the opposition—​ ‘change through rapprochement’ and a policy of small steps. In view of the nuclear arsenals in the two antagonistic camps, the Kremlin’s violent suppression of the ‘Prague Spring’ in 1968 made it quite clear once again that the only way to prevent war in Europe was for both sides to accept the reality of a division of Europe into Western and Eastern spheres of influence. The European Security Conference demanded by the Soviets was supposed to guarantee the status quo, which had been reality since the 1945 Yalta conference. The need for peaceful coexistence was underlined on both sides by economic interests that were increasingly being put centre stage. Only a few days after the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia a natural gas pipeline to Austria was ceremoniously inaugurated. Never before had Soviet natural gas been pumped through the Iron Curtain. In order to undercut NATO’s embargo policy, West German companies such as Thyssen were doing business with Moscow via neutral Austria (Karner, 2020, p. 366). When in 1969 Brandt became the first SPD politician to lead the FRG as Federal Chancellor, he had to find a pragmatic way of dealing with the question of reunification. The commitment of his government to the constitution meant in practice that the existing dilemma must be broken. After all, the West German government still insisted towards its allies that the conclusion of a peace treaty with Germany, as stipulated at the 1945 Potsdam conference, was the precondition for German reunification. After the formation of the two Germanies in 1949—​and especially after the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961—​German reunification, however, remained elusive and illusory. The only way out of this dilemma was to move on to a realistic assessment of the FRG’s political possibilities. This meant replacing the endlessly repeated legalistic clamouring for reunification with a new Ostpolitik under the motto of ‘change through rapprochement’. The unfolding of Ostpolitik would not have been possible if in view of the escalating Sino-​Soviet conflict Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had not been ready for a new Westpolitik (Borchard, Karner, Küsters, and Ruggenthaler, 2020, pp. 11, 16). The task awaiting Brandt’s government was to implement Ostpolitik by making it part of Soviet-​German relations and formulating treaties, which would allow both sides to save face, do business, minimize tensions, make life bearable especially for people in West Berlin, and facilitate humanitarian interventions in the GDR (by trading of East German political prisoners). And all of this needed to be achieved without the necessity of changing West Germany’s constitution. It should be noted, however, that after the suppression of the ‘Prague Spring’ and contrary to their original policy and multiuple public statements, Brandt and Egon Bahr, Brandt’s closest confidante and adviser, gradually came to terms with the status quo. The West German leadership saw its political room for manoeuvre and the transformative power of its Ostpolitik increasingly limited. They reshaped ‘Ostpolitik’ accordingly. Instead of the idea of transformation, making progress with détente increasingly became the guiding principle of their politicies (Kramer, 2020, pp. 241–​3).

GERMANY AND THE SOVIET UNION DURING THE COLD WAR ERA    93 In 1970 the Treaty of Moscow was signed and Brandt’s 1971 visit to Brezhnev in the Crimea underscored good faith on both sides in their efforts to bring about détente. In 1972 Bonn ratified the Treaties of Moscow and Warsaw. The next step was the recognition of the GDR by the FRG as a separate state in Germany—​one nation but two states (Grundlagenvertrag). This left the German Question open from a strictly legal point of view and did not prejudice German unity. Still, the West’s political and diplomatic recognition of its client state on German soil, meant that the Soviet Union had achieved one of its key goals and that Bonn had now made its peace with the status quo and especially with Soviet domination in East Central Europe.

The Road to Helsinki The ensuing years were shaped by preparations for the European Security Conference so vehemently demanded by the Soviet Union. During his state visit to Bonn in 1973 Brezhnev repeatedly called for the convention of such a conference at the earliest possible date. He knew that he could count on Brandt’s support for this (Wenger, Mastny, and Nuenlist, 2008; Bange and Niedhart, 2008). Since the 1950s the Soviet leadership had pleaded for the installation of a new system of collective security in Europe (Morgan, 2018) which would include political and economic as well as military considerations. In view of the conflict with China, the USSR was hoping to gain the binding legal enshrinement of the post-​war European borders and the overall stabilization of the situation in Europe. It was with these goals in mind that the USSR and its allies kept advocating the convention of a pan-​European conference. However, it was not until Soviet-​French relations had taken a turn for the better and a number of West European countries, especially in Scandinavia, supported such a conference that the idea really caught on. Still, the main preconditions were the new Ostpolitik and the treaties concluded between the FRG and Poland, Czechoslovakia and the GDR in 1972. Another contributory factor was the improvement in Soviet-​American relations in the first half of the 1970s. Until the early 1970s, the US, as the security guarantor for Western Europe in the post-​war era, had steadfastly opposed such a conference. In 1973 and 1974 the first two preparatory phases for the Conference on Security and Co-​operation in Europe (CSCE) took place in Helsinki and Geneva. Representatives of thirty-​three European countries, the US, and Canada became engaged in the search for compromise solutions and the preparation of a treaty. The CSCE Final Act was signed in Helsinki in 1975 by the thirty-​five countries that had participated in the conference. With this document the signatories guaranteed the inviolability of European borders, territorial integrity, the peaceful resolution of conflicts, non-​interference in internal affairs, renunciation of violence, peoples’ right to self-​determination, and human rights including the right to freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of movement as well as scientific, technical, and economic cooperation. With an eye to the possibility

94   Peter Ruggenthaler of German unity being enshrined in the FRG’s constitution, new West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt insisted in the negotiations on the inclusion of the possibility of shifting borders peacefully. Helsinki had become possible thanks to the policy of détente, which aimed to preclude war in Europe. In spite of full-​throated assurances of its peaceful intentions and its constant appeals for disarmament the Soviet Union triggered the next crisis in 1979 with its deployment of SS-​20 medium-​range missiles and its invasion of Afghanistan. Schmidt for one was quick to spot Europe’s vulnerability. The SS-​20s’ range of 5,000 km put Western Europe (and China) within their reach, but not North America. Schmidt pushed through what has come to be known as NATO’s Double-​Track Decision of 1979 (Wettig, 2009), which provided for a two-​pronged strategy. First, negotiations were to be initiated with Moscow about dismantling the systems. In case negotiations foundered, American medium-​range missiles were to be stationed in Western Europe. When the negotiations in Geneva led nowhere, the Bundestag voted—​only a few days after Brezhnev’s death on 10 November 1982—​in favour of stationing Pershing II, which were capable of reaching Moscow in a matter of minutes. This meant that in case of a first strike the Soviet Union would have no advance warning. Brezhnev’s successors, Yurii Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, failed to revive the Helsinki Process. Trade continued to be the mainstay of Soviet-​German relations. Business thrived on the back of tensions.

A New Era Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s accession to power in 1985 heralded the beginning of a new era. Perestroika and glasnost´ were the two watchwords that signalled his policy of fundamental change in the Soviet Union. ‘New thinking’—​novoe myshlenie—​was more than just another catchphrase, in fact Gorbachev reformulated the USSR’s entire military doctrine: the offensive doctrine in force in the Warsaw Pact until then was replaced by a defensive military concept. Gorbachev accorded priority to disarmament. The 1986 Reykjavik Summit was to prove a game changer in global politics and the beginning of the end of the arms race between the Soviet Union and its main rival, the US. In a related development, an internal discussion was set in motion about a limited withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the GDR. Gorbachev’s determination not to resort to violence in crisis situations became clearly apparent in the first months of 1989 when, at his instigation, the Politburo and the Soviet Military Council passed guidelines the Soviet Union was bound to abide by in case revolts broke out in Eastern Europe. That Gorbachev and the two bodies jointly committed to refraining from any military actions in Eastern Europe even if the communist regimes there were to fall was his way of making sure that the comrades in the Politburo and the Military Council—​the only people who were in a position to thwart him—​were complicit in this momentous decision. By establishing consensus at the top

GERMANY AND THE SOVIET UNION DURING THE COLD WAR ERA    95 against the use of military force, Gorbachev preempted the return of the dilemma that had plagued Khrushchev in Hungary in 1956 (Karner et al., 2014, pp. 20–​1). Democratization of political life in the Soviet Union was the precondition for reform processes to continue in satellite states such as Poland and Hungary. Moving in the opposite direction, the GDR and the other Eastern bloc countries refused to endorse the Soviet reform policy. The reform process itself was overshadowed in the socialist states, above all, by memories of the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, of the ‘Prague Spring’ in 1968, and of the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981. The policy of democratization was fighting an uphill struggle to help people overcome these traumatic experiences and to win their hearts and minds. This provoked fierce resistance from the elites of the Communist parties in power in Eastern Europe. These leaders traditionally saw the use of violence as a means of last resort to fend off reform and change and to make sure that they remained in charge of the levers of power. In 1989, however, the apparatchiks ran out of steam.

The Road to the Fall of the Wall Began in Hungary The gradual dismantling of the Iron Curtain was begun by Hungary in early May 1989. As early as March Gorbachev had been notified in advance about this possibility by the main Hungarian reformer, Prime Minister Miklós Németh. It lead to the beginning of the end of the East German regime. In what was a field day for the media, Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn and his Austrian counterpart, Alois Mock, posed for the cameras as they cut through the barbed wire of the Iron Curtain in late June 1989. To the people in front of their TVs in the GDR the pictures conveyed above all one message: the border with the West is open. The prospect of crossing what had now become a green border to Austria—​even while it was still strictly guarded—​attracted more and more would-​be refugees. By mid-​July about one hundred East Germans had managed to cross the border. Many more GDR citizens were apprehended as they tried to do so though they were treated very leniently by the border guards. They were merely given a warning and turned away from the border. On 19 August 1989 hundreds of GDR ‘holiday makers’ used an event organized by young Hungarian dissidents at the Austro-​Hungarian border, the ‘Pan-​European Picnic’, for the greatest mass exodus since the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 (Ruggenthaler, 2019; Pavlenko and Ruggenthaler, 2015). Unparalleled mass demonstrations in the GDR made the SED regime look decidedly shaky. The SED tried to buy time with attempts to meet the demand for the freedom to travel. When late on 9 November 1989 the regime unwittingly announced a relaxation of the regulations, the East Germans cast all restraint aside. They stormed the border crossings and toppled the Berlin Wall (Hertle, 2006, p. 231; Sarotte, 2014). In its official reaction Moscow declared the opening of the border crossings a sovereign act

96   Peter Ruggenthaler performed by the GDR. The case of Berlin, however, also involved the interests of the three other allies. For the benefit of the Kohl government Gorbachev pointed out that any attempt to distract from the reality that there were two Germanies could only serve one goal: to destablize the situation in the GDR. A phone call on 11 November between Gorbachev and Kohl ended on a more conciliatory note. The Soviet position was nevertheless clear: the existence of two states on German soil was guaranteed by international law and the USSR was certainly going to uphold the status quo. Moscow classified events in the GDR and around the fall of the wall as belonging to the process of change in East Central Europe. The GDR had, at long last, joined the camp of the reform states. At the same time the German Question now became the touchstone for Moscow’s Perestroika policy. No one in the Kremlin thought at this point of German reunification as the solution to the crisis in the GDR. German unity simply had no place on the agenda, as far as the Soviet Union was concerned. Only a few weeks later, however, things changed beyond recognition. The chant ‘We are the people’ morphed into ‘We are one people’. The Germans had begun to vociferously call for unification.

The Road to Reunification The Kremlin’s experts on Germany were now contemplating theoretical alternatives that amounted to models of a confederation between the FRG and the GDR. In short succession Moscow staged efforts—​ some of them rather far-​ fetched—​ to make Kohl affirm the continued validity of existing agreements and to engage his help in underscoring Germany’s twofold statehood. These efforts, however, brought about a result that was diametrically opposed to the one intended by the Soviets. When news of Moscow’s alternative plans reached Bonn, Kohl took the initiative and created facts. In his Zehnpunkte-​Plan, a ten-​point plan, of 28 November 1989, he sketched a viable road to German reunification—​and caused an uproar in Moscow. Subsequently, Kohl paid more attention to the potentially negative repercussions his policies might have on the USSR’s strategic situation. He therefore presented to Moscow his ‘Ten Points’ as a frame of reference for a development which would lead to German reunification only after many years. From the George H. W. Bush–​Gorbachev summit off Malta in December 1989 the Soviet delegation received the impression that the Americans had not yet made up their mind whether a reunified Germany would be an asset or a liability for them (see the notes taken by A. S. Chernyayev, reprinted in: Karner, Kramer, Ruggenthaler, and Wilke, 2014, pp. 535–​49 (Document 89), here p. 540). At the subsequent NATO Council meeting in Brussels the Western allies agreed on a common strategy in the German Question (Küsters, 1998, p. 68; Savranskaya, Blanton, and Zubok, 2010; Savranskaya and Blanton, 2017). Kohl and Bush had worked out a common platform, which made it possible to overcome initial resistance, notably by the British and the French, and sketch a course acceptable to all or at least most

GERMANY AND THE SOVIET UNION DURING THE COLD WAR ERA    97 Western countries. A conference on the pattern of the CSCE process was now envisaged to hammer out the external conditions for German unity. No immediate reaction to this was forthcoming from the Kremlin. Not until late January 1990 did Gorbachev, hard pressed at that time by serious nationality problems and other symptoms of decline in the Soviet empire, assemble his advisers and other political representatives to discuss Germany. It was both the first and the last such meeting. At his most optimistic Gorbachev asserted on that occasion that, regardless of the rapidly rising temperature in the discussion on Germany’s reunification, the process ‘could be delayed for at least a couple of years and the USSR would in the meantime find ways to turn things to its own advantage’, not least by bringing into play the ‘presence of Soviet troops in East Germany’. Furthermore, he showed himself convinced that a reunited Germany would be assigned a place outside NATO. Gorbachev insisted throughout that the Soviet government would do its utmost to gain as much time as possible. According to Gorbachev, it was of the essence now to delay the process without paying heed to what it might ultimately lead to. To achieve this, he proposed moving forward in lockstep with those NATO countries that were themselves viewing Germany’s reunification with a great deal of apprehension, notably France and Great Britain, but also Poland and others (Galkin and Tschernjajew, 2011, p. 286). Gorbachev was convinced that the Warsaw Pact would not only survive but it might even experience a rejuvenation and that the USSR would be able to use the fact that it had troops in the GDR to slow down the pace of change in Germany and to ensure Soviet security interests were respected. Gorbachev, however, was in no doubt that Germany would be reunified in the end. All he wanted to do was to somehow delay reunification for as long as possible. What such a delaying tactic might look like was a question Gorbachev failed to address explicitly. Foreign Minister Edvard Shevardnadze, too, refrained from giving concrete advice nor was there any discussion on negotiation strategies. Marshal Sergey Akhromeev was already ordered to prepare for the withdrawal of troops. At the same time in February 1990, two weeks after this meeting, the Soviet Union, having been expressly requested to do so, offered the governments of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia negotiations on the withdrawal of its troops (Zubok, 2014, p. 630). The next milestones in the reunification process can only be cursorily touched on in this context: the decisive talks James Baker had with Gorbachev in Moscow in February 1990; Gorbachev’s endorsement of Germany’s right to self-​determination during Kohl’s visit to Moscow in the same month; and the relaunch of the ‘Four-​plus-​two’ talks as the ‘Two-​plus-​four’ talks (Zelikow and Rice, 1997). What became quite clear in the course of this development was that Gorbachev was in no position to play for time. This was due to the pace set by Kohl and the US administration. The Soviet stance in the reunification process is graphically illustrated by how the Soviet delegation fared at the Open Skies Conference in Ottawa in February 1990. Nominally the topic was disarmament in the sectors of jet fighters and medium-​range missiles. The really burning issue, however, which was discussed in the hallways and wherever an opportunity arose, was the ‘Two-​plus-​four’ process. The Soviet delegation

98   Peter Ruggenthaler was totally unprepared for this. When Shevardnadze warned against NATO membership of a united Germany and pleaded for the latter’s neutrality, all his British counterpart, Douglas Hurd, had to do was to point out that in this case the most powerful country in Europe alongside the USSR would not be bound by anyone or anything. This, Hurd suggested, could not possibly be in the interest of the Soviet Union. What the British Foreign Minister was doing was rehearsing the Western side’s standard argument in favour of a unified Germany’s accession to NATO (Karner, Kramer, Ruggenthaler, and Wilke, 2015b, p. 76; Kramer, 2009). Ottawa ended with an agreement being struck on the ‘Two-​plus-​four’ mechanism. Shevardnadze could do nothing to gain time, not least due to his lack of a consistent strategy. To make matters worse, relations between Gorbachev and Shevardnadze were increasingly marred by a lack of trust. The Soviet Foreign Minister feared that Gorbachev would no longer shield him against attacks by orthodox forces in Moscow and use him instead as a scapegoat when the time came for German reunification (Zubok, 2014, pp. 627–​8). The Soviet position on NATO membership for a reunited Germany already softened in principle at the start of the ‘Two-​plus-​four’ talks in early May 1990 in Bonn. Shevardnadze declared that there was no immediate need for the issue of a united Germany’s alliance membership to be resolved before the end of the reunification process. This was accompanied by the Soviet Union’s urgent requests for economic aid. What was at stake were billions of Deutschmarks in loans, which were at the centre, for instance, of a secret mission to Moscow undertaken by one of Kohl’s most trusted aides, Horst Teltschik, together with representatives of Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank. The start of the ‘Two-​plus-​four’ negotiations coincided with agreements on exorbitant economic aid (Küsters, 1998, pp. 165–​6). Kohl showed himself highly optimistic to Bush in the run-​up to the summit in Washington. He believed that Gorbachev would ultimately play ball and that a reunited Germany would be allowed to join NATO. When at the May 1990 summit in Washington Gorbachev actually told Bush that it was up to Germany to decide which alliance it wanted to belong to, he did so to the utter surprise of the rest of the Soviet delegation. Some people, such as foreign policy expert Valentin Falin and defence expert Marshal Akhromeev, were in a state of shock about this. In their anger they turned to Anatolii Chernyaev, Gorbachev’s principal foreign policy adviser, to enquire how this had come to pass. Interestingly, not even Chernyaev could think of an explanation as to why Gorbachev had committed himself so unambiguously on the spur of the moment. At first sight and in retrospect, a plausible explanation appears to be that Bush had caught Gorbachev on the wrong foot with a reference to the Final Act of Helsinki and the freedom of signatories to choose the alliance they wanted to belong to (Zelikow and Rice, 1997, p. 377). But was it really possible for Bush to catch Gorbachev on the wrong foot, after all those promises of economic aid and all the agreements that had already been entered into? This is really one of the big open questions that may be asked without necessarily implying that Gorbachev had ‘bartered away’ the GDR to Kohl.

GERMANY AND THE SOVIET UNION DURING THE COLD WAR ERA    99 Neither Gorbachev nor Shevardnadze were opposed to Germany’s reunification as a matter of principle—​unlike many of their critics in Moscow. The two tried to wrest as many positive results as possible for the Soviet Union from negotiations and expected their country to enter into an economic partnership with Germany in the near future. This was linked to the hope that, in accordance with Gorbachev’s philosophical concept of a ‘Common European Home’, the Soviet Union would be integrated into a new European security structure, where it was going to be treated as an equal partner. There was no way in 1990 for Gorbachev and Shevardnadze to reach such overly ambitious goals. What the reunification of Germany really meant for the Soviet Union as a great power becomes clear from a diary entry of one of Shevardnadze’s aides: In a manner of speaking the reunification of Germany throws into relief the greatest triumph in the ill-​fated history of our country: the victory over German fascism, the victory that vindicates this country’s right to exist. A victory that was achieved through sheer endurance, through indomitable will power and at the cost of untold suffering and horrific bloodshed. Furthermore, the victory over Germany provided the impetus for the Soviet Union’s transformation into a global power. Neither Gorbi nor Shevi [Shevardnadze] will ever be forgiven for squandering away that status. Finally the division of Germany has always been regarded by us as the greatest achievement of our foreign policy, which had managed to create, through that selfsame division, an eternal bastion of Russiaʼs security against the eternal German aggressor. Now this bastion is being razed. (Karner, Kramer, Ruggenthaler, and Wilke, 2015b, p. 108).

Further Reading Borchard, Michael, Stefan Karner, Hanns Jürgen Küsters, and Peter Ruggenthaler (eds) (2022), West German Ostpolitik, the Soviet Union, and East-​West Détente in Europe. Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series (Lanham et al.: Lexington). Kramer, Mark (ed.) (2016), ‘CSCE, the German Question, and the Warsaw Pact’ Journal of Cold War Studies 18(3). Küsters, Hanns Jürgen and Daniel Hofmann (eds) (1998), Dokumente zur Deutschlandpolitik. Deutsche Einheit. Sonderedition aus den Akten des Bundeskanzleramtes 1989/​90 (Munich: Oldenbourg). Ruggenthaler, Peter (2015), The Concept of Neutrality in Stalin´s Foreign Policy, 1945–​53. Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series (Lanham et al.: Lexington). Wilke, Manfred (2014), The Path to the Berlin Wall. Critical Stages in the History of Divided Germany (Oxford and New York: Berghahn).

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CHAPTER 7

T HE GOVERNM EN TA L SYST E M AN D P OLITICAL H I STORY OF THE GDR Gert-​J oachim Glaessner

The unconditional surrender of the National Socialist regime on 8 May 1945 meant the end of a sovereign German statehood. The four allied powers, the US, Britain, France, and the new superpower Soviet Union, took over and established a system of joint responsibilities for all German affairs. They ruled with unrestricted power over Germany as a whole and their respective zones of occupation. The unity of the four allies was short-​lived. The fragile anti-​Hitler coalition started to collapse within less than two years after the war. Changing geopolitical interests of the superpowers US and USSR in the post-​Second World War years led to a ‘Cold War’ which was to dominate world politics and the German question for more than forty years. The turning point was the Soviet blockade of West Berlin from June 1948 until May 1949. Occupied Germany (and later the Korean peninsula) became the major battlefield of the emerging Cold War. The two German states were founded in 1949, the Federal Republic on 8 May, and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) on 7 October. Both were part and parcel of the larger strategies of the two main powers. The foundation of two separate, semi-​sovereign states in Germany was the result of the final collapse of the anti-​war coalition. The political system established in East Germany reflected the interests of the Soviet Union to build a cordon sanitaire of socialist states in Eastern Europe, including the eastern part of Germany. From the early days until its end in 1990, the GDR was an ‘occupation regime’ (Huntington,1968), a political system not of its own right but as a vassal of the Soviet Union. Neither in the post-​war plans of the four allied powers, nor in the thinking of German politicians during and immediately after the Second World War had the permanent partition of Germany into two states—​one tied to the Soviet Union, the other allied to the Western powers—​been an option. There was no common positive agreement over what to do with Germany after a period of occupation either. Until 1949, however, it was not

104   ��������������������� yet clear whether the Soviet Zone of Occupation would become a separate German state or whether it would remain under direct Soviet rule for years to come.

The Soviet Zone of Occupation A brief look at the history of the Soviet Zone of Occupation shows that the transformation into a Soviet-​type political system began much earlier than in 1949. Even before the Nazi regime collapsed on 8 May 1945, a group of high-​ranking German communists under the leadership of Walter Ulbricht—​the strong man of the GDR until 1971—​flew from Moscow to a Soviet airfield near Berlin, to start the reconstruction of local government in those parts of East Germany which were already liberated by the Soviet army. Years later its clandestine activities were disclosed by a former member of the group, Wolfgang Leonhard (Leonhard 1976; Krisch, 1974). This group (Gruppe Ulbricht) became the nucleus of the future power-​elite of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, the later GDR. Many German political activists in 1945 hoped for a new democratic beginning in Germany under the auspices of the Four Allies. In accordance with their agreements and in stark contrast to a more reluctant policy by the Western allies, the Soviet Military Administration (SMAD) permitted the formation of political parties and trade unions in the Soviet Zone of Occupation on 10 June 1945—​only a few weeks after the end of the war. The structure and programme of the new parties and organizations stressed the heritage of democratic parties in the Weimar Republic and were all-​German in scope. Only days after the SMAD declaration the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) were re-​established. Despite the efforts of many former members of the Social Democratic and Communist parties to overcome the division of the workers’ movement, the Soviet Union in 1945 insisted on restoring the Communist party under the leadership of devoted old-​style Soviet cadres like Walter Ulbricht and Wilhelm Pieck, the future President of the GDR. When the KPD in June 1945 delivered its first political proclamation (it was written in Moscow), it did not even mention socialism or communism. Instead, it stated that Germany—​not only the Soviet Zone of Occupation—​should become an ‘anti-​fascist democracy’ with all civil rights and freedoms provided for the German people. A few weeks later a new Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPD) were licensed by the Soviet authorities. What seemed to be a new, democratic awakening in East Germany lasted only for a few months. In autumn 1945, the Soviet Union and its political allies within the KPD changed their political strategy and started a campaign for the unification of SPD and KPD, a campaign strongly opposed by leading SPD executives in the Western Zones and only reluctantly accepted by leading SPD members in the Soviet Zone. Against the background of severe opposition from most members of the SPD, the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) was founded in April 1946.

THE GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE GDR    105 In the immediate post-​war period, there were other developments in the Soviet Zone—​however short-​lived—​that gave the impression of democratic evolution rather than revolutionary change. For example, the first economic measures taken by the new administration—​land reform, educational reform, and the expropriation of large enterprises—​were fully endorsed by the general public. But this consensus began to splinter as the SED began to consolidate its grip on power and started to suppress political opponents. The space originally left open by the admission of bourgeois parties into the political scene was being closed. In 1948, the SED began to endorse openly the fundamental principles of Stalinist ideology. The SED proclaimed itself a party of a new type, thus accepting the narrowing of Leninist ideology in favour of a concept where the role of the proletariat was reduced to the fulfilment of the tasks set by the party leadership. The SED leadership, backed by the occupation power, had full authority to suppress deviating views by the use of physical coercion. The SED as a Stalinist vanguard party and SMAD as its de facto patron and as a body of the occupation power had a powerful and relentless grip on East German society. The SED followed the Soviet Stalinist model (Naimark, 1995, ch. 1). It abandoned the original concept of national, specifically ‘German’ characteristics in building a socialist society in the East of Germany and adopted the Soviet planning and management methods as well as central state planning as the means for the reconstruction of the economy. The SED assisted the Soviet Union in transforming the Soviet Zone into a so-​called ‘People’s Democracy’, as outlined by the Stalinist principles of alliance politics. The ‘bourgeois’ parties, such as CDU and LDPD, were made to submit to the SED and forced to accept the principles of ‘democratic centralism’ as the structural basis of the new political order.

The Political System of the GDR From its earliest days the GDR was labelled a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ and a ‘socialist democracy’, determined to meet its historic task of establishing a socialist order on behalf of the working class. The hierarchical power structure—​based on the ideas of Lenin as expressed in his 1902 writing ‘What is to be done?’—​constituted a separation of the political superstructure from society. The communist SED was concerned with directing and controlling state and society. Its self-​proclaimed omnipotence was not restricted simply to the state organization and the governmental system but included the economy, education, culture, and the way ordinary people could conduct their everyday life, i.e. all sectors and all levels of society. Even though these all-​encompassing ambitions never fully materialized, it was this ‘totalitarian’ ambition which characterized Soviet-​style socialist systems like the GDR. The organizational and leadership guiding principle was the Leninist-​ Stalinist concept of ‘democratic centralism’, which meant that every organization and every

106   ��������������������� institution had to accept the leading role of the communist party, the SED. Democratic centralism preserved the concentration and unity of power in the hands of the SED by transposing its principles from the party to the state, the so-​called ‘allied parties’ and to all other organizations and institutions, whether it be factories, public administration, schools, or universities. Based on these principles a power structure emerged in the GDR characterized by the following (Glaessner, 1986, p. 11): 1. The communist party SED in its self-​perception was the ‘politico-​organizational centre of society’. The SED defined itself as the ‘battle-​proven vanguard’, power centre, and leading force of socialist society and the state. The term ‘state socialism’, often used by political scientists to describe the power structure of a polity like the GDR, is misleading insofar as the real centre of power was not the state and state bureaucracy but the Communist party and, in practice, the Politbureau and the General Secretary as party leader. In the GDR the leader was Walter Ulbricht until 1971 and, from 1971 until his dismissal in October 1989, Erich Honecker, who, in personal union, were also heads of state (Vorsitzender des Staatsrats). 2. The conceptual understanding of the state was instrumental. The state and the ‘state machine’ were understood as the chief instrument of the working class led by the Communist party. The state was a subsidiary power in relation to the party. 3. Communist systems rejected the idea of the rule of law as a ‘bourgeois ideology’ which meant nothing but a cover-​up of the repressive economic, social, and political structures of the capitalist system. Again, as with the state, ‘socialist law’ was subsidiary to the power of the Communist party. The law had some regulatory function but was, in general, subjugated to the political will and instructions of the SED. 4. Contrary to most of the other states formed after the Soviet model, the GDR formally was a ‘multiparty system’ which did not mean, however, that the other, so-​ called ‘allied parties’ had any real input on political matters. They recognized and accepted the leadership of the SED without reservation and served as willing political instruments of the SED, which constantly tried to extend its grip on power beyond the boundaries of its own organization. 5. Free social, cultural, or political organizations and non-​ governmental organizations (NGOs) were non-​ existent. Only associations that had been approved and controlled by the communists were allowed to take part in the political process. Freedom of association was mentioned in the GDR constitution (Article 29), but in practice the SED maintained a monopoly of control. These so-​called ‘mass organizations’ accepted the leading role of the SED in all political, social, and cultural matters., The only de facto exception were the Christian churches. The Protestant church in particular was the closest thing the GDR had to an independent association.

THE GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE GDR    107 6. The ‘National Front’ included all parties and mass organizations and, in particular, organized ‘elections’ to rubber-​stamp People’s Chamber (Volkskammer) and representative assemblies on the regional and local level. 7. The GDR constitution ascribed to the Volkskammer the status of the supreme representative body of the people. The official view of this parliament was opposite to its real function within the framework of ‘democratic centralism’. It was described as supreme organ of government, deciding on all fundamental aspects of government policy. Looked upon from the outside, the Volkskammer, like other institutions and organizations within the political system of the GDR, was nothing more than a voting machinery for sanctioning decisions which had been taken beforehand by the SED leadership. All its decisions were unanimous (with the single exception of the abortion law which was opposed by some CDU members). The significance of the People’s Chamber may be judged by the extraordinary infrequency of its sessions, normally held twice a year for a day or two at the most. The chamber operated more as an executive instrument of the party and government than as a deliberating and decision-​making institution. 8. The government of the GDR—​the Council of Ministers (Ministerrat)—​was a body with no actual power of its own. In reality, decisions were made by the Politbureau and the Central Secretariat of the SED and had to be executed by the government. 9. After the death of the first President, Wilhelm Pieck, a collective body, the State Council (Staatsrat), was inaugurated as head of state. It represented the GDR under international law and was formally vested with the right to ratify international treaties. A special committee of the council, the National Council for Defence (Nationaler Verteidigungsrat), chaired by the President of the State Council, was designed as the highest legal body in the event of emergency and war. The presidency of this council was held by Walter Ulbricht and later by his successor Erich Honecker. In late 1989, Egon Krenz, the ‘young man’ of Honecker, took over the post, only to be ousted some weeks later by the revolutionary events of the time. The real power, however, rested with the Politbureau of the communist SED. Originally a powerful body used by the General Secretary of the SED Walter Ulbricht to consolidate his power, the State Council under Erich Honecker lost many of its supervisory functions to party bodies or to the Council of Ministers, but empowered the General Secretary of the ruling SED with the position of head of state. 10. Mention must also be made of the two most powerful institutions besides the ruling party: the armed forces and state security. After the accession of the GDR to the Warsaw Treaty Organization (or Warsaw Pact as it was generally referred to in the West) in January 1956, the National People’s Army (NVA) was instituted. The East German leadership had actually been commanding the military, officially labelled as police forces, since as far back as 1946. As in other communist countries, the East German leadership had, from its inception, established a political police whose purpose was to protect the regime against all attempts to challenge

108   ��������������������� its hold on power. Defending the GDR against all ‘enemies’, ‘slander hostile to the state’ (staatsfeindliche Hetze), and ‘subversive activities’ of ‘western agencies and their zealots’ inside the GDR was the self-​proclaimed aim of the Ministry of State Security (MFS) or Stasi in GDR vernacular. The domestic role of the security services was to control the expression of politically untoward views and to check the growth of autonomous social and political forces in East Germany. With thousands of full-​time staff members and officers and tens of thousands of informers (so called IMs), the Stasi held a firm grip on East German society. The Minister for State Security, Erich Mielke, a dubious former KPD security agent, was the most hated political official in East Germany.

Party-​State Relationship In all Soviet-​type socialist societies the state had three central functions: It was designed to act as: 1. an instrument for the implementation of the party’s politico-​economic aims; 2. an instrument to secure the domination of the Communist party in all sectors of society; 3. an instrument linking the party’s domination to the participation of the members of society. The latter had to be carried out jointly with the Leninist party in its function as a mass party, the mass organizations, and, where they existed (as in the case of the GDR), also with the ‘bourgeois’ parties. The state was to act as an institution, which held society together organizationally while the party did the same politically and ideologically. This meant that the state had to be a ‘Party State’, an organization which in all its activities allowed itself to be guided by the will and intentions of the Communist party (Krisch, 1985, p. 30). The SED, dependent on the will of the occupation power, which itself remained for quite some time undecided about the duration of the socialist experiment in one part of Germany, could not rely on a broad consensus of the population; because it was quite rightly seen as subject to the will of the Soviet leadership. Early promises of a specific German road to socialism and an independent democratic and socialist development in East Germany were doomed to failure, in view of the power-​political constellation in post-​war Germany, the commencing Cold War, and an occupation power interested above all in establishing and preserving its undisputed political leadership. Given the absence of a broad political consensus the SED relied on politico-​administrative coercive methods and the support of the Soviet occupation power. The political character of the newly formed state apparatus, repeatedly stressed by the SED mainly during the first years of the new political system, has led observers to claim that this was exclusively a hierarchically structured organizational system, or even

THE GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE GDR    109 a uniform administration. There is no doubt that the state and economic apparatus, scientific or cultural institutions, mass organizations, representative assemblies, as well as the bourgeois parties had been made to serve the purpose of the party even before the proclamation of the building of socialism in the GDR (at the second party conference in 1952) or had been set up in the first place as transmission or transformation instruments without any political or organizational rights of their own. Yet their existence illustrates the predicament of a ruling Communist party which intended to carry out radical political change. It was compelled to set up a vast management and planning apparatus, to create transmission belts for its own use which would implement its will even in those sections of society where it was not at all or not adequately represented by its members. It had to seize instruments of forming or influencing people’s minds and it had to obtain a semblance of legitimacy. If the will of the party had to be imposed on a vast scale, a strong state and a bureaucracy subordinated to the party appeared to guarantee the comprehensive implementation of the party’s objectives. This involved a hypostatization of the state and of bureaucratic procedures, which became a problem, at the latest, when the revolutionary transformation process had been completed and the new political and social system, existing for the moment only in its rudimentary forms, needed to be internally consolidated and developed. Initial hopes that the new socialist economic basis would automatically create its own superstructure, that the new conditions would persuade people to abandon their originally hesitant and often negative attitude, and that more and more people would take an active part in building socialism were soon to be dashed. The prime object was not to achieve economic efficiency or organizational rationalization but to enforce the will of the party in all spheres of society. The newly created bureaucratic apparatuses and organizations were, above all instruments of mobilization, the object of their activities being to involve all members of society in building socialism (Glaessner, 1986, p. 8). The Stalinist concept of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, which marked the political, economic, and social systems in Eastern Europe including the GDR up to the middle of the 1950s, viewed the specific rational and efficiency-​orientated thinking of major industrial organizations as well as the concomitant differentiation and specialization of the planning and management structures rightly as a threat to its claim to absolute and unchallenged leadership. Any modification of ‘politically’ determined organizational patterns appeared to be a renunciation of the party’s claim to leadership. It would have meant the withdrawal of vast sectors of the new state economic administration from the direct intervention of the party, which had at that stage neither sufficient qualified personnel nor the necessary bureaucratic infrastructure to control these apparatuses without interfering directly in their day-​to-​day activities. This structural conflict could not be solved until the very end of the Soviet socialist systems. The most important lesson and innovation of the post-​Stalinist era is the practical realization that the leading role of the party and efficiency-​orientated economic thinking could not be brought into harmony. This would have been one of the prerequisites for securing the leading role of the Communist party in a changing world

110   ��������������������� on a permanent basis. In the 1980s at the latest, it finally became clear that the planning and organizational methods taken over from the Soviet Union had become dysfunctional. The question now was whether the East European systems and the GDR were in a position to inaugurate a fundamental reform process. When the Soviet leadership under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986 made a decisive step at reforming the petrified system (Perestroika), it faced strong and unrelenting opposition by the GDR leadership.

The GDR as a ‘Multiparty System’ Despite a certain uniformity of the political systems in all communist regimes, the power structure of the GDR in some respects differed from those in other socialist countries (Staritz, 1984, p. 98). As in every other Soviet-​socialist system the real power in the GDR rested with the Communist party, the SED. It was the most important and dominant institution within the GDR’s political system. The constitution made no detailed mention of the SED as far as its objectives, organizational structure, or its predominance within the political system were concerned. The party defined itself as the vanguard of the working class and all working people, the ‘highest form of socio-​political organization’ and as the force of all working-​class organizations, the state, and social organizations. Using the mechanisms of democratic centralism, the SED was able to command and control the entire political system and society as a whole. With over 2.3 million members, the SED organized more than 10 per cent of the GDR population in its ranks. Nearly 60 per cent were workers, nearly 5 per cent collective farmers, and approximately 22 per cent members of the so-​called intelligentsia. Like most communist parties, the SED was structured according to a ‘territorial-​industrial’ principle. Its ‘basic units’ (Grundorganisationen) were primarily organized as groups of party members in public administration, factories, agrarian cooperatives, schools, universities, cultural and scientific institutions, etc. They represented the lowest rung in the party hierarchy. Each subordinate party organization was subject to supervision and control by the superior one (district, regional, central level)—​according to the principle of democratic centralism. The GDR was no One-​Party State like the Soviet Union and most of the communist systems in Eastern Europe. Formally the GDR was a multiparty system. Besides the SED, some so-​called ‘allied parties’ existed, which defined themselves as being in alliance with the communists and therefore accepted their leading role in government and society unreservedly. Between them and the SED there was no competition for political majorities or voters. None of these parties were sovereign political entities in the sense of a liberal-​democratic party system. Instead, they were compliant instruments of the SED. All the other parties in the pseudo multiparty system of the GDR formally accepted and subjugated themselves to the leading role of the SED. This raises the question of what the various

THE GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE GDR    111 parties of the National Front stood for. The Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) was intended to combine Christian faith and active commitment to the socialist society. Founded in June 1945, the CDU was a relic of the early years of Soviet occupation when it seemed appropriate to give a democratic façade to a political system which after a very short period of time became a Stalinist dictatorship. After the purge of the first leadership in the late 1940s the CDU submitted itself to the rule of the SED. This is the reason why the CDU did not play an important role in the improvement of relations between churches and government in the 1980s and in the revolt against the SED regime in late 1989. The church leaders and the new social movements evolving in the 1980s, which often acted under the umbrella of the Protestant church, quite rightly did not consider the CDU an organization worth negotiating with. The second relic of the initial phase of political life in East Germany, the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDPD), mainly addressed skilled workers in cooperatives and small businesses, white-​collar workers, and members of the intelligentsia. Like the CDU, it never developed an independent stance vis-​à-​vis the SED. Even more than the CDU, the LDPD lost its social basis with the abolition of small privately run businesses and workshops, which began as early as in the 1950s. The National Democratic Party of Germany (NDPD), founded in April 1948, aimed mainly at integrating former members of the NSDAP and officers of the German Wehrmacht in the new political and social structure. It was also intended to reduce the membership of the CDU and LDPD, which at that time had not yet fully accepted the leading role of the SED. The Democratic Farmers’ Party (DBD), also founded in 1948 by former communists, was designed to be a political home for small farmers and agricultural workers who resented the communists. That is why, over the years, both the NDPD and the DBD became relics of the political struggles that accompanied the early years of the GDR. Beside political parties, mass organizations like the Confederation of Free German Trade Unions (FDGB), the Free German Youth (FDJ), the Democratic Women’s League of Germany (DFD), and the League of Culture of the GDR (Kulturbund) helped disseminate the politics of the SED. All these parties and organizations became members of the National Front, founded in 1949, and were represented in the national parliament and regional assemblies. Many of the members of the parliamentary groups of the mass organizations were also members of the SED. The size of each faction as decided upon not by the voters, but in advance of the elections in unity lists of the ‘National Front’. The National Front was—​according to its constitutional status—​an all-​embracing form of ‘alliance-​policy’, an alliance of approximately thirty parties, organizations, and federations, including among others the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), the Democratic Farmers’ Party of Germany (DBD), the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDPD), the National Democratic Party of Germany (NDPD), the Confederation of Free German Trade Unions (FDGB), the Free German Youth (FDJ), the Democratic Women’s League of Germany (DFD), the German-​Soviet Friendship Society (DSF), the German Red Cross of the GDR, and the League of Culture of the

112   ��������������������� GDR (Kulturbund). Those parties and organizations which were represented in the Volkskammer and regional assemblies were united in the so-​called ‘Democratic Bloc’, a sub-​organization of the National Front. The following parties and organizations were members of the Democratic Bloc: SED, DBD, CDU, LDPD, NDPD, FDGB, FDJ, DFD, Kulturbund and, from 1986, the ‘Federation of Mutual Peasants’ Assistance’ (VdgB). The representation of various social groups, parties, and mass organizations in parliament did not restrict the SED’s claim on political leadership. As the bearer of political power, it was not prepared to share it with others. Any discussion about the sharing of power within the political and social system of GDR, even an elevation of the ‘multiparty’ system to more pluralism, was strictly rejected by the SED. Until its very end, the SED was neither willing nor able to understand that the post-​Stalinist political structures and procedures no longer maintained the pretence of democracy. Informal social groups and civil rights groups were mushrooming in all sectors of society. The quest for independent representation on all levels of society and the political system was growing. In 1989, the so-​called political and moral unity of the people and party broke down when citizens took to the streets, demonstrated for democratic liberties, and brought down a regime that—​for more than forty years—​managed to maintain absolute power over them.

A Brief History of the GDR When the German Democratic Republic was founded on 7 October 1949, the political system in East Germany already bore all signs of a Marxist-​Leninist polity (Weber, 1985). Absolute political power rested with the communist party, the SED; democratic opposition was suppressed by all means, including state terror; and the economic and social basis of a liberal market economy was destroyed by state ownership of the means of production and central planning. No more mention was made of the national peculiarities of a socialist development in the GDR. Instead, the leading role of the Soviet Union as ‘headed by the great Stalin, the leader of the people’ was accepted without any reservations. In 1952 the SED formally instituted the policy of transforming GDR society according to the Soviet model. Implemented with unrelenting pressure, the political and economic measures to achieve this goal were met with growing resistance. Broad sections of the population, including the working class, rightly understood the adherence to the Soviet model as a final act of subordination to the will of the occupying power. The working class was hit hard by the abandonment of democratic principles. Independent working-​class organizations began to disappear. The party leadership, backed by the occupation power, now had full authority to suppress deviating views by the use of physical coercion. The result of growing disenchantment with the political and economic situation was an uprising of East German

THE GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE GDR    113 workers on 17 June 1953, which, within hours, led to an upheaval of the entire East German population against the political system. The events created such a challenge to the political leadership of the GDR that the Soviet Union had to stage a military intervention in order to protect the ‘achievements’ of socialism in one of the countries within its hegemonic sphere.

Overcoming Stalinism The uprising of June 1953 marked a turning point in GDR history. Only very reluctantly and with great reservation did the SED start reforming the political and social structures. With Stalin’s death in March 1953 the national and international political environment slowly changed for the better. Especially after the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1956, the SED very gradually began to replace Stalinist totalitarianism by a strategy of social, political, and economic reform without abandoning coercive methods. Several watershed moments signalled a turning point in post-​war German history: Since 1950 the GDR had already been a member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA—​COMECON in Western terminology), the Soviet and Eastern European economic and trade organization. In May 1955 the Warsaw Defence Treaty was signed. In 1956 the GDR became a member of the Soviet-​led military alliance. In the same year for the first time the GDR took part in an international forum (with a delegation of observers at the conference of the foreign ministers of the four victorious powers in Geneva). The SED proceeded from the premise that the GDR was developing as a firm component of the world socialist system and was reinforcing the increasingly close alliance with the Soviet Union and the other socialist states.

Technocratic Reforms in the 1960s A series of crises led to the drastic step of erecting the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961. Unrest was rife among the people as coercion became stronger and economic conditions worsened. Growing numbers of people were seeking refuge in the West, with hopes for better prospects for their future. Before the Berlin Wall went up, hundreds of thousands of people, quite often young and well educated, turned their backs on a repressive system and sought one that allowed individual freedom and privacy. Amazingly enough, the building of the wall provided the basis for the only consistent far-​reaching reform attempt in GDR history: the ‘New Economic System’ (NÖS) of 1963. The reforms of the 1960s can be understood as an attempt to overcome the negative consequences of an extremely centralized planning system which could not serve a more advanced economy than the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s when it originally

114   ��������������������� had been introduced (Ludz, 1972). Following a phase of experimentation lasting roughly from 1954 until 1963, the SED drew up a coherent reform concept, the New Economic System, taking up ideas which it had condemned as revisionist only a short time previously. The SED had to concede that the GDR, like all other economically advanced countries, was confronting a new situation: it had to be capable of standing up to the challenges of the second industrial or scientific and technical revolution if it did not want to forfeit its future. The most significant aspect of the New Economic System was the reform of the management structures. This was the prerequisite for improving economic development. Central planning and direction of the economy should no longer be based on wishful thinking about the future but should instead rest on an accurate analysis and scientific forecast of technical and economic development. A second aspect was the deliberate stimulation and utilization of the material interests of the workers as well as the management in socialist combines, agricultural cooperatives, and even the state bureaucracy. It was only feasible that these new economic methods could be implemented through profound changes of the hyper bureaucratic planning procedures. The only way to achieve these goals was to limit central state planning to a small number of indices of particular importance for economic development, leaving all other economic decisions to be taken by production units and by institutions at various echelons of the management apparatus dealing with economic problems. The party leadership was aware of the long-​term dangers to the party’s claim to leadership arising from a purely technical and pragmatic interpretation of the tasks of the state and economic apparatus as well as of the party apparatus. Yet the adoption of a technocratic approach in the sphere of state and economic management was not discussed any further since a thorough debate of this problem would inevitably have led to a critical appraisal not only of the practical manifestations but also of the theoretical concept of the New Economic System itself. The reforms of the 1960s can be understood as an attempt to accept that the revolutionary phase had reached its end. The transformation of the economic, political, and social structures had been widely concluded. Economic and political development of an advanced socialist society had to be conducted with new methods of planning and a new institutional superstructure, responsible for economic and social planning (Krisch, 1985, p. 90). In the end the SED leadership shied away from the consequences of its own reform concept, fearing that criteria such as economic rationality, and decision-​making directed by the particular interests of economic entities like big state combines or trade organizations would lead to a weakening of the power of the centralist power, the party. All reform attempts had their limit where they would have required a thorough opening and liberalization of the entire system. There were also external forces which put a nail in the coffin of fundamental reform: The experiment had to be modified after Nikita Khrushchev’s fall in 1964 and was subsequently abandoned in 1968 when the next crisis erupted. The space for experimentation tolerated by the Soviets had become narrower and narrower. Under different

THE GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE GDR    115 conditions, NÖS could have become a model for a technocratic reform of the socialist systems. Only very few voices in the GDR of the 1960s—​unlike in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia—​demanded fundamental political change. One of the few, and most vehement, was that of Professor Robert Havemann (Havemann, 1964) in a series of lectures at Humboldt University in East Berlin. The violent suppression of the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968 and the termination of Khrushchev’s reforms in the Soviet Union (1968/​69) put an end to all experimentation and returned socialism in the GDR to another two decades of the old, centralist political control. For the GDR, Ulbricht’s fall and replacement with Erich Honecker in 1971 was the end of the experiment, even though it opened the doors to a realistic cooperation of the SED with the West. It also created the preconditions for basic changes in economic and social policy of the SED. The late 1960s were marked by serious problems in international relations. After giving up its inflexible and obstructive policies towards the GDR and the socialist countries, the Federal Republic came to share the general interest of the Western states and the Soviet Union in détente and became a leading force in designing a new Ostpolitik. The GDR under Walter Ulbricht feared that improved East-​West relations would undermine its claim for full recognition as a state. It continued to resist obstinately even when the Soviet Union signalled that its policies towards the West were aimed at building a system of security and co-​operation in Europe that could not be achieved without changing the Soviet Union’s position towards Germany and especially Berlin and improving German-​German relations. The need for a change in leadership and policies was obvious.

The Honecker Era When Erich Honecker became the First Secretary of the SED in 1971, the economic, political, and social system of the GDR was facing crisis. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, there was no longer a real chance of reform because the impact of a reform strategy could not be limited to the economic sector. The Czech example had shown the leaders of the ruling Communist parties that reform of the economic systems alone was a goal that could not be achieved and that a reform strategy had to take into account that different sectors of society needed to be addressed if reforms were to be implemented. They were not prepared to take that risk (Glaeßner, 1988). By 1971 it had become evident that the economic policies of the SED had led to severe market distortions, for example in the supplies industry or in energy supply. It had also become evident that the process of automation was by no means proceeding as swiftly as expected. As a result, the eighth SED Party Congress addressed the task of a planned and balanced development of society as a whole, not just of the economy.

116   ��������������������� The leadership of the SED had to acknowledge that the living conditions of most people were deteriorating despite a relatively positive development in the economic sector. The answer was to use the economic development for recognizable attempts to improve the everyday life of the people through social benefits. The eighth Party Congress of the SED in 1971 proclaimed the ‘unity of economic and social policy’ as the main goal for the years to come and as a trademark of an advanced socialist society (Michalsky, 1988). Social policy was meant to heal the adverse consequences of economic policy and ensure, in the form of social planning, that they did not even emerge. Social policy embraced a range of concerns, including in the fields of demographic development, industrial labour organization, housing, urban and regional planning, health care, social security, leisure and recreation, relations in the workplace and in ‘socialist combines’, and the supply of consumer goods and services available to the public. The proclaimed ‘unity of economic and social policy’ implied a revision of former policies of the SED. It included the admission that even a socialist economy could create social injustice that had to be healed by a paternalistic socialist welfare state. The SED succeeded in the early 1970s in accenting new aspects of its economic and social policy and again increased respect among the people for the new paternalism. Unfortunately, the worldwide energy crisis of the 1970s knocked the bottom out of its ambitious reform plans. Ten years later the dual economic and political strategy of modernizing the economy while simultaneously giving a social and material bonus to the ‘working people’ including those not engaged in the labour market (such as schoolchildren, students, women looking after children, pensioners, the disabled) had spared the GDR social or political conflicts but overstretched its economic abilities and the state budget. A looming economic crisis could only be prevented by a credit of one billion Deutschmark (secretly negotiated by the West German politician, Franz Joseph Strauß). It is a widely held view that his financial support helped to save the GDR from collapsing, as it finally did in 1989. The accession to power of the new leadership under Erich Honecker in 1971 also led to changes in cultural policy, which, for a short period of time, led to liberalization, less control of the arts, and a more open-​minded view by the SED, especially regarding modern literature, theatre, and film. Many artists took the chance to free themselves from the ideological straightjacket of ‘party mindedness’ (Parteilichkeit) and ‘socialist realism’. This more liberal approach of the party abruptly ended when some artists like the songwriter Wolf Biermann called not only for more openness in cultural matters but also for political change. Biermann was eventually expelled to West Germany. Many of his colleagues protested against this political move of the SED in an unprecedented public letter to the SED leadership. The Biermann affair of 1976 was the first but not the last open confrontation between the ruling party and leading intellectuals, many of them devoted members of the SED. A few years later a new confrontation took place when eight prominent writers were expelled from the official writers’ union, which meant that they were banned

THE GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE GDR    117 from publishing in the GDR. This led to an exodus of some of the most prominent and internationally recognized writers in East Germany. The emigration of respected intellectuals to the West was a severe blow to the GDR’s claim to be the political home of all progressive political and cultural movements, in contrast to West Germany which was said to suffer from the devastating influence of American popular culture and decadence (Hanke, 1987). The Biermann affair and the controversy with prominent writers led to a political crisis and demonstrated the unwillingness of the SED to open up the system to new ideas and unconventional views—​an attempt made in the 1980s by the new Soviet leadership under Mikhail Gorbachev, which was strongly rejected by Erich Honecker and his comrades. The final crisis of the GDR, however, was not triggered by disputes over cultural policies, not even by the eruption of popular protest in the autumn of 1989. There had been widespread unease with economic, social, and political stagnation in the years before 1989. In addition, citizens of the GDR saw other socialist countries evolving. First and foremost, the Soviet Union, under the policies of Glasnost and Perestroika, was undertaking an unprecedented course in reform.

Conclusion and the End of the GDR At the end of the 1980s, the modernization of socialist systems had become a complex process that operated on different levels and in different sectors of society. But above all, serious reform attempts were no longer imaginable without democratization (not necessarily in the sense of Western democratic theory). Modernization had become a goal that could not be achieved without rebuilding and reconstructing the whole economic, political, and administrative structure and the forms and methods of control. Last but by no means least modernization required a different mentality and a new, more open framework for economic, political, social, and cultural activities with more participation and less bureaucratic restriction. The advent of Perestroika in the Soviet Union arguably presented the GDR with its last opportunity to initiate a process of transformation. It was an opportunity lost. The SED and its notion of party-​centralized planning and rule failed to grasp the complexity of the new problems. It failed to realize that since the 1960s social, cultural, and political changes had occurred in the GDR that affected every political sphere. Neither the normative regulations in place nor the existing institutional system and state doctrine could cope with the new difficulties they faced. ‘Real socialism’ as the derivative of Stalinist rule had proved to be a political and socio-​economic system unable to meet the demands of a modern society. It had failed once and for all, and the ‘GDR model’ has collapsed in its wake.

118   ���������������������

Further Reading Beyme, Klaus von and Hartmut Zimmermann (eds) (1984), Policymaking in the German Democratic Republic (New York: St. Martin’s Press). Bundesministerium für innerdeutsche Beziehungen (ed.) (1985), DDR-​ Handbuch (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik). Childs, David, Thomas A. Baylis, and Marilyn Rueschemeyer (eds) (1989), East Germany in Comparative Perspective. Conference on the GDR in the Socialist World (London: Routledge). Dahrendorf, Ralf (1979), Society and Democracy in Germany (New York/​London: W.W. Norton & Company). Glaeßner, Gert-​Joachim (1989), Die andere deutsche Republik. Gesellschaft und Politik in der DDR (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag).

Bibliography Glaessner, Gert-​ Joachim (1986), Bureaucratic Rule: Overcoming Conflicts in the GDR (Cologne: Index). Glaeßner, Gert-​ Joachim (ed.) (1988), Die DDR in der Ära Honecker. Politik—​ Kultur—​ Gesellschaft (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag). Hanke, Irma (1987), Alltag und Politik. Zur politischen Kultur einer unpolitischen Gesellschaft. Eine Untersuchung zur erzählenden Gegenwartsliteratur in der DDR in den 70er Jahren (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag). Havemann, Robert (1964), Dialektik ohne Dogma. Naturwissenschaft und Weltanschauung (Reinbek: Rowohlt). Huntington, Samuel (1968), Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press). Krisch, Henry (1974): German Politics under Soviet Occupation (New York: Columbia University Press). Krisch, Henry (1985), The German Democratic Republic. The Search for Identity (Boulder/​ London, Westview Press). Leonhard, Wolfgang (1955), Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch). Ludz, Peter C. (1972), The Changing Party Elite in East Germany (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Michalsky, Helga (1988), ‘Soziale Sicherheit ist nicht genug!Konzeption und Leistungen der der sozialistischen Sozialpolitik’, in Gert-​Joachim Glaeßner (ed.) (1988), Die DDR in der Ära Honecker. Politik—​Kultur—​Gesellschaft (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag), pp. 402–​21. Naimark, Norman (1995), The Russians in Germany (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Staritz, Dieter (1984), Geschichte der DDR 1949–​1985 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Weber, Hermann (1985), Geschichte der DDR (München: DTV).

CHAPTER 8

T HE END OF T H E C OL D WAR AND THE PRO C E S S OF GERM AN UNIFI C AT I ON Larissa R. Stiglich

Since its construction in 1961, the Berlin Wall served not only as an impermeable barrier between East and West Berlin, but also as a literal and figurative representation of the Iron Curtain and the bipolar division of the Cold War world order. As such, when people around the world learned of the extraordinary events in Berlin on the evening of 9 November 1989, they understood the fall of the Berlin Wall as symbolic of the end of the Cold War—​a shorthand which prevails to this day. The front pages of newspapers on the morning of 10 November described how jubilant East Germans had streamed across the German-​German border in the thousands, welcomed no less enthusiastically by their West German counterparts. Even these brief cover stories from both West German and American newspapers were already grappling with the question of how this previously unimaginable event had come to pass so suddenly. Did ‘East Germans open [the] Berlin Wall’, as the headlines of the Chicago Tribune proclaimed? Were East German communist authorities to thank for their ‘desperate attempt to stem the flow of people fleeing to the West’, as the Associated Press described? Or was this all a part of Gorbachev’s apparent new policy of non-​interference in the affairs of Soviet satellite states, as David Remnick suggested in The Washington Post? These questions demanded answers. After all, if anything, the previous decade had witnessed a renewal of hostilities between the two superpowers of the Cold War, as evidenced by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the deployment of Moscow’s SS-​20 missiles, NATO’s double track rearmament decision, and Reagan’s so-​ called ‘Star Wars’ missile defence system, as well as heightened rhetoric on both sides. If the fall of the Berlin Wall stunned the domestic and international community, the pace of German unification which unfolded over the course of the next eleven months was no less astounding. Since the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was absorbed into the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) on 3 October 1990, scholars and

120   Larissa R. Stiglich contemporary observers alike have sought to understand what led to the disintegration of the East German state and how the process of German unification was completed so rapidly. Some early popular interpretations, especially those in the West, tended to view the rapid collapse of the East German state as the inevitable victory of capitalism and democracy over communism. The bulk of the credit for the end of the Cold War was assigned to the US. Indeed, Americans’ seemingly ubiquitous popular memory of President Reagan’s demand in June 1987 that General Secretary Gorbachev ‘tear down this wall’ is a testament to the longevity of the perception that the presidencies of Reagan and later George H.W. Bush were the most decisive factors in ending the Cold War and reuniting the two Germanys. From the mid-​1990s on, however, more balanced accounts of the recent events began to emerge. In an attempt to understand the complicated political process of unification, these interpretations considered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the process of German unification to be caused by some combination of ‘implosion from above’, ‘revolution from below’, and ‘collapse from outside’ (Fulbrook, 1995, pp. 244–​5; Ross, 2002, pp. 127–​47). More recent literature has also emphasized the contingencies of the process of German unification. Despite the fall of the wall, ‘the way forward was not obvious’, in fact, there were competing models for how this new world order should be achieved (Sarotte, 2009, p. 3). Finally, in the past decade or so, historians have followed the cue of earlier anthropologists by attending to the longer-​term effects of post-​socialist transition on the lives of ordinary former East Germans who experienced the dizzying pace and jarring upheavals of German unification first-​hand (Jarausch, 2013, pp. 1–​24; Bergerson and Schmieding, 2017, pp. 1–​31). This most recent scholarship has also begun to offer more nuanced examinations of how challenges to the regime and the process of unification played out in specific local contexts (Demshuk, 2020, pp. 149–​91; Stiglich, 2020, pp. 114–​74). Taken together, the addition of more local studies and contemporary histories of life in a reunified Germany are important in explaining the continued existence of the ‘wall in the head’. After all, even over three decades after German unification, the Eastern Länder—​the former GDR—​continue to lag behind Western Germany regarding many economic indicators. The general satisfaction about life in a united Germany is also much lower in the Eastern than in the Western part of the country (Gramlich, 2019a, p. 3; Gramlich, 2019b, pp. 1–​9). This essay offers an examination of the economic, political, diplomatic, social, and cultural causes for the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of state socialism, and the unification of the two Germanys. Throughout, I emphasize the contingencies of the political processes of state collapse and unification, while not losing sight of the agency of East Germans and how these changes affected their everyday lives. What follows is divided into four sections and a conclusion, proceeding both chronologically and thematically through the international and domestic contexts, decisive events, and actions of politicians and ordinary people alike who shaped the process of German unification. The first section lays out the shifting international context on account of reformist impulses emanating from Moscow from the mid-​1980s on, paying special attention to how East German leaders responded to these changes. The second section focuses

THE END OF THE COLD WAR AND THE PROCESS OF GERMAN UNIFICATION    121 on the convergence of economic, political, social, and cultural sources of dissatisfaction and outright protest in the GDR, and how these pressures ultimately resulted in the fall of the Berlin Wall. The third section highlights the multiplicity of actors attempting to shape the future of the GDR, as well as how the path towards unification with West Germany emerged as the decisive outcome. The fourth section and subsequent conclusion focuses on how East Germans experienced the triple transition from a planned to a market economy, from communism to democracy, and from a divided to a united Germany, underscoring the rapid pace of these transformations and their longer-​term consequences.

International Context An examination of the conditions in the Soviet Union itself in the 1980s is a necessary starting point for understanding the broader international context that shifted to accommodate the growth of dissident movements and democratization impulses in the Eastern bloc in 1989. By the beginning of the 1980s, the USSR was straining under the weight of a multitude of systemic pressures, both domestic and international in nature. The relatively weaker position of the Soviet socialist system compared to the international capitalist market in terms of economic output and technological innovation was reflected not only in the GDP, but also in a growing gap in the standard of living between socialist and capitalist states, of which Soviet citizens were all too aware thanks to consumption of translated Western television (Halliday, 1995, pp. 288–​9; Kotkin, 2008, pp. 41–​2). Moreover, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 inaugurated a decade-​long conflict that put further economic strain on the USSR. To make matters worse, there was a rapid turnover of the geriatric leadership of the Soviet Union between Leonid Brezhnev’s death in 1982 and his eventual replacement by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 (Kotkin, 2008, pp. 50–​6). This generational shift combined with the dire economic situation ultimately manifested in substantial policy changes with transformational repercussions throughout the entire Soviet bloc. There were two overarching prongs to Gorbachev’s reform policies. The first sought to address the most pressing problem in the Soviet Union, namely, the planned economy. The economic restructuring plan, known as perestroika, attempted to introduce more autonomy for various sectors across the economy (Kotkin, 2008, p. 65; Suny, 2010, pp. 481–​4). Ideally, these reforms would be able to address both the long-​inadequate quality of Soviet manufactured goods, as well as the quantity of industrial goods that had also begun to flag by the mid-​to late 1970s (Brooks and Wohlforth, 2000–​01, pp. 14–​16). In reality, however, these efforts to resurrect the economy produced ‘a budget deficit, inflation . . . a ballooning internal debt, a growing foreign exchange shortage, and a rising defence burden as a share of GDP’ (Brooks and Wohlforth, 2000–​01, p. 31). The second prong of Gorbachev’s reforms was known as glasnost, or openness. By lifting state censorship, rehabilitating dissidents, and removing resistant party and

122   Larissa R. Stiglich government officials from their posts, among other strategies, Gorbachev managed to steadily increase the openness of Soviet society. This openness allowed for legitimately critical discussions about the weaknesses in the Soviet system, as well as proposals for alternatives. The party itself was divided between reformers and hardliners, and even Gorbachev’s own policies were often contradictory, because ‘they attempted to coordinate complex policies of transformation . . . while actually eroding central state and party power and authority’ (Suny, 2010, p. 486). In so doing, Gorbachev reformers raised the hopes of Soviet citizens for improvements in their political and economic circumstances without being able to fulfil them. The mixed successes of glasnost and Perestroika notwithstanding, Gorbachev’s reformist policies extended to the realm of foreign policy, as well. Indeed, from his first days in office in March 1985, Gorbachev had effectively repealed the Brezhnev Doctrine, walking back on the policy that had retroactively justified the Soviet Union’s suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968 in the name of protecting the stability of the Warsaw Pact (Suny, 2010, p. 500). In a reversal of the rationale that had dominated since early in Stalin’s reign, domestic needs began to take precedence over foreign policy aims. In part, the deteriorating economic situation in the USSR also necessitated a shift away from previous tactics in dealing with internal challenges to the stability of the Soviet bloc, as the state was overburdened with propping up the failing planned economies of its satellite states. Improving domestic problems also ‘depended on a decrease in international tension, to create breathing space for the Soviet Union, and a reduction in the costs of competition with the United States’ (Suny, 2010, pp. 487–​8). In short, the foreign policy elements of Gorbachev’s reforms had important implications for countries throughout the Soviet bloc. In the summer of 1989, two Warsaw Pact satellite states tested Moscow’s new foreign policy boundaries by pursuing their own reform efforts. In Poland, the Solidarity labour movement that had been forced underground in 1981 took advantage of the growing openness to initiate roundtable talks with the Polish ruling party that resulted in gradual democratization and semi-​free elections in June 1989 (Sarotte, 2014, pp. 22–​ 3). Hungarian opposition groups, inspired by the Polish example, likewise entered into roundtable discussions with the ruling Hungarian party and Moscow in June 1989. These talks resulted in some swift changes, including steps to demolish fortifications along the Hungarian-​Austrian border (Sarotte, 2014, pp. 23–​4). These transformations, unimaginable just a handful of years previously, raised the hopes of many East Germans that they too could expect a similar easing of restrictions soon. How the East German state chose to deal with these growing external threats and mounting domestic pressures (which are discussed further in the next section) was decisive in shaping the course of events that unfolded in the GDR in the autumn of 1989. Since Gorbachev’s rise to power in the Soviet Union, leading functionaries of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) in East Germany had treated the reformist impulses with scepticism if not outright dismissal. This attitude was famously expressed by SED ideologue Kurt Hager’s flippant assessment that there was no need for Berlin ‘to change the wallpaper just because its neighbours were remodelling’, and subsequently confirmed

THE END OF THE COLD WAR AND THE PROCESS OF GERMAN UNIFICATION    123 by the General Secretary of the SED, Erich Honecker (Jarausch, 1994, p. 10; Sarotte, 2014, p. 22). Instead, the ageing SED leadership stayed the course, attempting to maintain a firm grip on both the press and the people of the GDR despite mounting evidence that their tactics were no longer working. Indeed, in 1988 over 29,000 GDR citizens had left the country legally, with another nearly 10,000 fleeing illegally, representing an 87.6 per cent increase of illegal border crossings compared to the previous year (Richter, 2009, p. 80). Honecker, for his part, left the East German leadership in limbo throughout the duration of its next acute crisis on account of liver cancer that side-​lined him from the summer of 1989. Despite the East German leadership’s hardline approach, their efforts to prevent the flow of people out of the country were dramatically undercut in the late summer of 1989 by the aforementioned reforms and democratization impulses in their fellow Warsaw Pact country, Hungary. Despite assurances to the East German leadership that Hungary would continue to police its relaxed borders to prevent GDR citizens from fleeing west to Austria, this promise proved impossible to fulfil. By August there were an estimated 200,000 would-​be East German refugees in Hungary and Prime Minister Miklós Németh was under increasing pressure from West German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, to allow the emigrants to make their way to the Federal Republic. This pressure, combined with assurances of financial assistance from West Germany to help Hungary tackle their own economic crisis, tipped the scales. After informing Moscow and Berlin, the Hungarian leadership fully opened its borders on 11 September 1989, resulting in the mass flight of an estimated 600,000 East Germans (Sarotte, 2014, pp. 26–​7). The Western media remained captivated as the refugee crisis continued into late September 1989 when up to 7,000 East Germans also flocked to the West German embassy in Prague in the hopes of securing passage out of the GDR by different means (Larres, 2015, p. 369). Honecker returned from his illness in time to reluctantly acquiesce to allow the ‘embassy-​squatters’ to leave East Germany via sealed train cars, before swiftly making the decision to completely close the borders of the entire country on 3 October 1989 (Sarotte, 2014, pp. 28–​9). Certainly, the reformist impulses emanating from Moscow from the mid-​1980s were essential in reshaping the parameters of independent action both within the Soviet Union and in the other state socialist republics, as was evident in the case of Poland and Hungary. While the SED leadership attempted damage control of this new international context and their haemorrhaging population, they also had to face their own set of mounting domestic problems and an increasingly agitated population who were beginning to hold them more seriously accountable for their failures to deliver on the promises of socialism.

Domestic Pressures Against the backdrop of shifting international relations and emerging reform impulses from Moscow, domestic pressures within the GDR had also been building for some

124   Larissa R. Stiglich time. Like its Soviet counterpart, the East German economy was facing its own set of challenges throughout the 1970s and 1980s. General Secretary of the SED Erich Honecker’s promise in the 1970s to deliver ‘real existing socialism’ to the citizens of the GDR had resulted in a debt crisis. The 1980s witnessed further problems, including declining economic productivity and failure to meet production quotas, prompting widespread shortages, all of which contributed to an erosion of the living standards in which East Germans had come to expect continual improvement (Steiner, 2010, p. 171). Beyond their material circumstances, other East Germans participated in small but growing opposition movements, criticizing the regime for its irresponsible environmental policies, joining unofficial peace demonstrations, and expressing other dissenting ideas about travel restrictions and human rights violations, among others. All told, by the late 1980s, ordinary East Germans had many causes for deep frustration and concern about life in the GDR. These worries found expression in a range of different places and spaces throughout the course of the 1980s. Some East German citizens made use of the regime’s official mechanisms for registering dissatisfactions by writing formal letters of complaint (Eingaben) to their local, regional, or national party representatives. Originating in the early months of the regime, the right for ordinary citizens to petition their government was enshrined in Article 3 of the 1949 constitution and further institutionalized throughout the decades (Fulbrook, 2005, p. 272). By the late 1980s, East Germans were writing more letters than ever before, totalling more than a million per year (Betts, 2012, p. 419). Topics of complaint ranged broadly from shortages of material goods, inadequate quality of available consumer goods, long waiting periods for apartments or replacement parts for cars, televisions, and other electronics, among many others. The letters typically followed a prescribed formula in which the petitioner articulated their socialist credentials, subsequently implicitly or explicitly castigating the state for its failure to adequately provide for its citizens. This marked increase in the volume of complaints by the end of the 1980s can be interpreted in a number of ways. On the one hand, it was certainly a reflection of citizens’ mounting frustration with their deteriorating standards of living. On the other hand, writing formal letters of complaint was also a widespread practice that demonstrated an underlying belief that the system ‘while imperfect in practice was nevertheless developing on the right lines and in principle could be improved’ (Fulbrook, 2005, p. 284). In addition to this official mechanism of complaint, a smaller but still significant number of East Germans found their way to unofficial spaces of protest and dissent, foremost among them the Protestant Church. As one of the only semi-​autonomous institutions in East Germany, over the course of the 1970s and 1980s the Protestant Church was able to provide a literal and metaphorical home for a range of dissenting voices (Fulbrook, 1995, pp. 220–​36). For example, the church-​based environmental movement was instrumental in the 1980s in blurring the distinction between state-​ mediated and oppositional criticism about pollution, ultimately contributing to the further destabilization of the SED’s legitimacy (Ault, 2018, p. 4). Other groups that found a foothold in the Protestant churches throughout the 1970s and 1980s included human

THE END OF THE COLD WAR AND THE PROCESS OF GERMAN UNIFICATION    125 rights and peace movements, groups advocating for women’s rights and gay rights, as well as Third World solidarity groups (Dale, 2005, pp. 98–​119). These nascent oppositional movements laid the groundwork for the widespread protests that gained momentum in the summer and autumn of 1989, as well as serving as the foundation for the growth of civil society. For those East Germans who did not manage to leave before the regime made the drastic decision to seal the GDR entirely on 3 October 1989, protest became a powerful outlet for expressing rage and frustration about their greatly curtailed travel freedoms. By the early autumn of 1989 a Monday Demonstration (Montagsdemo) was already a recognizable if not ubiquitous political and cultural phenomenon throughout East Germany. The form of protest had its origins in the Saxon city of Leipzig. Beginning as early as autumn 1988, small groups of church attendees had gathered every Monday after the evening service at St. Nicholas Church for a peace prayer (Richter, 2009, p. 98). Over the course of the summer and early autumn of 1989, these small peace prayers had grown into more organized protests. In August and September, citizens’ agitation for relaxed travel restrictions and an increase in the number of exit visas joined the ranks of those protesting against human rights violations. Other causes for protest ranged widely, including the aforementioned shortages of basic and more luxury consumer goods, as well as frustration about insufficient environmental protection efforts, anger over sham elections and near-​constant surveillance by the East German secret police (Stasi), and a general erosion of belief in the ability of socialism to address the problems facing the country (Richter, 2009, p. 82). By the end of September, several thousand people were routinely gathering on Monday evenings in Leipzig to show their growing dissatisfaction with the regime. On the first Monday of October, protestors numbered 20,000 in Leipzig, with several thousand more coming together in places like Berlin, Dresden, Karl-​Marx-​Stadt, Schwedt, and Magdeburg (Jarausch, 1994, p. 47). On the evening of Monday, 9 October 1989, protesters gathered in Leipzig for what would later be interpreted as a turning point in the process of democratic renewal in the GDR (Kowalczuk, 2009, pp. 401–​6). On this Monday, three more churches had also agreed to hold Monday prayers at 5:00 pm, meaning that the number of protesters could be expected to swell dramatically. Expecting a larger turn-​out, the regime had prepared by ensuring that an armed force of 8,000 police, National People’s Army soldiers, and Stasi were standing by in Leipzig. Fear of bloodshed, or of a result like Tiananmen square in Beijing in April 1989, permeated the city. Indeed, the party had prepared for and anticipated this possibility, as evidenced by their directive for hospitals to make additional beds and blood reserves available, and to prepare horse stalls and even a football stadium to detain arrested demonstrators (Sarotte, 2009, p. 20; Hertle, 1999, pp. 136–​7). Ultimately, as the crowd of 70,000 moved to occupy the ring road surrounding the city centre, it came down to a split-​second decision on the part of Helmut Hackenberg, who was acting as First Secretary in Leipzig at the time. Unable to get confirmation from Egon Krenz, head of security issues for the party, as to whether he should let the demonstration pass or follow Honecker’s orders to ‘commence all measures’ to keep the crowd from reaching the main train station, Hackenburg ordered the armed forces to stand

126   Larissa R. Stiglich down unless the crowd attacked. In other words, he allowed the demonstrators to pass peacefully, marking a turning point in the party’s response to the demonstrators. At a moment that could very easily have ended with violent repression as had been the case throughout the Eastern bloc in 1953, 1956, and 1968, among others, the East German officials exhibited tolerance for the protestors, signalling a significant shift for the protests and negotiations that were yet to come (Sarotte, 2014, pp. 49–​82). That said, this shift, like another that would follow exactly one month later, was in part accidental, based on a series of overlapping contingencies and spontaneous decisions on the part of SED functionaries. The common denominator, however, remained the people of the GDR, who took advantage of these openings to bring about the ‘revolution from below’. In the period after the 9 October Montagsdemo, East German politics and the press set a dramatic new course towards liberalization in order to keep pace with the now increasingly stronger demands of the East German people. One decisive moment in this shift came after a Politburo meeting on Tuesday, 17 October when Erich Honecker was ousted from his role as General Secretary of the SED and replaced by Egon Krenz. In order to truly convince East German citizens of the changes afoot in the regime, Krenz adopted a conciliatory attitude, ‘wrap[ping] himself in Gorbachev’s mantle’ (Jarausch, 1994, p. 59). Although rejecting the possibility of unification with West Germany, he candidly acknowledged economic problems and laid out a set of priorities intended to emphasize economic recovery, improve ‘socialist human rights’, and ease travel restrictions, calling for a ‘new dialogue’ intended to reinvigorate socialism. These initial assurances that the GDR state was on a path towards reform did not mollify East German citizens quickly enough and they continued to flee in the tens of thousands, hoping to enter West Germany through Czechoslovakia. By 9 November 1989, the SED leadership was under immense pressure from both the Czech Politburo and West German leaders to make more substantive and immediate concessions on travel restrictions (Kowalczuk, 2009, pp. 453–​4). A group of mid-​level bureaucrats returned to the task of drafting a statement that appeared to promote freedom of travel, but which contained sufficient caveats to prevent further depopulation of the state. This text, which included wording specifying that ‘permanent emigration may take place over all border crossings between the GDR and FRG and Berlin West’, was quickly approved by the SED Politburo and Central Committee, ultimately landing in the hands of Günter Schabowski (Sarotte, 2014, pp. 105–​9). At the international press conference televised live that evening at 6:00 pm, Schabowski appeared in his capacity as the Politburo member responsible for media affairs. The room was packed with Western journalists, but the press conference got off to a very mundane start until one Italian journalist asked directly about travel restrictions for East Germans. At this point, Schabowski haltingly relayed the decisions that had been made earlier that day, fumbling through his papers to find the text to read aloud. The listening journalists were initially stunned as they heard him explain that East Germans could apply for foreign trips—​whether for emigration or personal reasons—​without providing justification for their travel. When asked to clarify when these new regulations went into force and whether they applied to West Berlin,

THE END OF THE COLD WAR AND THE PROCESS OF GERMAN UNIFICATION    127 Schabowski confirmed that they did apply to the border in West Berlin and that they went into effect ‘right away’ (Sarotte, 2014, pp. 109–​19). When East Berliners watching the international press conference on West German television heard this announcement, they had to see for themselves. Within ten minutes of the end of the press conference about a dozen had gathered at the border crossing station Bornholmer Street on the northern border of West Berlin. By 8:30 pm the crowd had grown into the hundreds. The border guards at stations throughout Berlin’s inter-​ state border were quickly outnumbered and received insufficient instructions from their superiors on how to deal with the swelling crowds. At Bornholmer Street alone there were more than 10,000 people, chanting with increasing impatience, ‘Open the gate!’ Finally, the senior officer on duty made the decision to disobey direct orders and open the gate in order to preserve the safety of his men and prevent the situation from escalating to violence (Sarotte, 2014, pp. 136–​63). What followed are the scenes so prevalent in the collective memory of the fall of the Berlin Wall: East Germans pouring across to West Berlin, tears of joy streaming down their faces; crowds of West Germans welcoming a never-​ending line of quintessential East German automobiles, the Trabi, across the border with bottles of champagne; East and West Germans scaling the Berlin Wall at Brandenburg Gate, breaking off pieces of the now obsolete structure. These images depicting masses of banner-​wielding, peaceful protestors remain indelibly stamped on the popular and scholarly memories of the autumn of 1989, even over thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And for good reason: the historiography of the Wende—​a term meaning ‘turn’ or ‘reversal’ used by scholars and ordinary Germans alike to describe the events of 1989 and 1990—​confirms that this citizens’ movement is essential to our understanding of the peaceful disintegration of the East German state. Though the turning points of both October and November 1989 were also made possible by a cascade of miscommunications and contingencies, the ‘revolution from below’ was an integral ingredient not only to the fall of the Berlin Wall, but also in deciding what was to come next.

Towards German Unification In the weeks and months that followed the momentous events of 9 November, discussion bloomed throughout all corners of the regime as ordinary East German citizens openly voiced their honest criticisms of the state in the local press, in public discussions, at open city council meetings, and elsewhere. These democratic discussions quickly became more regulated and institutionalized, perhaps most famously with the creation of the Round Table. Originating from a 10 November proposal from members of the civic movement in Leipzig and subsequently approved by Protestant Church leaders and the SED itself, the Round Table was a meeting of civic activists, SED members, and members of other auxiliary political parties that intended to mediate the process of

128   Larissa R. Stiglich democratization. The first meeting was held in Leipzig on 7 December 1989, and while the group did not wield official executive or legislative power, its members formed working groups to ‘draw up a new election law, establish fresh rules for associations, draft a new constitution, and solve economic problems’ (Jarausch, 1994, pp. 75–​7). They were determined to continue their work until the conclusion of the country’s first free elections, which were initially set for 6 May 1990, in order to allow time for campaigning. The Round Table in Leipzig provided a model for grassroots democratic discussion throughout the rest of the country, as Round Tables sprang up in local and regional municipalities in the following months. The visions for the future of the East German state were as varied as the background of the participants. While some East Germans were enticed by the prospect of unification with the West, and others were true believers in Marxism, a growing impetus formed to find a so-​called Third Way between communism and capitalism (Jarausch, 1994, pp. 74–​94). This search for a middle ground was informed by a deep ambivalence about life in the West, shaped by incomplete information about the FRG combined with decades of propaganda that led people to equate life in the Federal Republic with ‘NATO militarism, unemployment, imperialism in the Third World, and drug abuse’ (Jarausch, 1994, p. 77). The newly formed political parties and the former auxiliary bloc parties of the GDR also picked up on this rhetoric of a Third Way, seeking to distance themselves from the SED. As a result of the worsening economic situation, combined with the ever-​increasing number of East German citizens who were fleeing to the West, on 28 January 1990, the members of the East Berlin Round Table and Minister President Hans Modrow, who had replaced Egon Krenz as head of government back in November, decided to change the date of the upcoming parliamentary elections from 6 May to 18 March. The newly formed political parties and independent bloc parties complained that they would not have enough time to campaign. But the recently renamed Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS, previously the SED) and the Social Democratic Party of the GDR (also abbreviated SPD, but independent of its Western branch) insisted on the new date. They hoped that moving the free elections up by several months would help to stabilize the economic and demographic challenges that had escalated so dramatically since the previous autumn (Jarausch, 1994, pp. 95–​114). In the background of the GDR’s mounting internal economic and political problems, West German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, was hard at work to make international conditions favourable for unification. On 28 November 1989, Kohl had presented a ‘Ten-​ Point Plan for Germany Unity’ to the West German Bundestag (Sarotte, 2009, pp. 70–​6). Outside of the Federal Republic, however, other European leaders responded far less favourably to the prospect of German unification. Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the UK, had articulated her opposition to the unification of the two states even before the fall of the Berlin Wall. She claimed in a September 1989 conversation with Gorbachev that ‘it would lead to changes in the post-​war borders’, undermining ‘the stability of the entire international situation’ (Larres, 2015, pp. 366–​7). For his part, French President François Mitterrand had very recently expressed his openness to unification, but the

THE END OF THE COLD WAR AND THE PROCESS OF GERMAN UNIFICATION    129 events of 9 November 1989 made clear how soon this could become a reality. Given that he was simultaneously serving as president of the European Community (EC), securing Mitterrand’s approval would be essential in order for German unification to proceed (Sarotte, 2009, pp. 56–​7). One decisive diplomatic step towards unification took place at the Open Skies conference in Ottawa, Canada in February 1990, which was an international meeting intended to build confidence and security between the attending NATO and Warsaw Pact countries. Instead of discussing flight observation standards and schedules, the foreign ministers of the four former occupying powers of Germany, as well as East and West German foreign ministers, spoke ‘with stunning frankness’ about finally ending the post-​war order (Jarausch, 1994, p. 111). This discussion laid the groundwork for the Two-​Plus-​Four Agreement, in which the two German states and the four former occupying powers agreed to oversee the external diplomatic elements of uniting the two Germanys (Sarotte, 2009, pp. 104–​5). This international development made the prospect of German unification seem closer than it had been in over forty years. The 1949 West German Basic Law had intentionally left the eventual accession of the other German state an open-​ended possibility, requiring every West German Chancellor to work towards achieving that objective. Ultimately, however, it was the 18 March 1990 free parliamentary elections that gave ordinary East German citizens the chance to speak with their votes. Had GDR citizens’ faith in socialism been pushed to the breaking point or were they willing to continue to try to reform the party and political system into a working solution? The results offered an immediate answer as to how the country would face the question of unification that had crystallized in the preceding months. They would do so with a newly constituted, democratically elected government—​the first ever in the country’s forty-​year history. The Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) would no longer serve as the ruling party of East Germany. As the front page of one regional newspaper declared, ‘The CDU made the race clear’. With 40.8 per cent of the vote, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was the decisive winner. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) had achieved a disappointing 21.9 per cent and the PDS had received only 16.4 per cent of all East Germans’ votes (Sarotte, 2009, p. 143). By casting their votes for the CDU, which had run on Kohl’s platform of pushing rapid incorporation of East Germany into West Germany, East German citizens had voted in favour of German unification. Although many economic advisers and politicians—​ including the EC itself—​ had expected a slower process of economic and political transition, the path towards German unification would continue to proceed with unanticipated rapidity (Schmidt and Nicolaus, 2000, p. 239). As the preconditions for the monetary and political union swiftly slid into place, the scope of the task began to take more concrete shape. Uniting the two Germanys would necessitate further geopolitical cooperation between NATO and the Soviet Union, as well as tremendous financial investments on the part of the Federal Republic. Despite the euphoria of the Peaceful Revolution, the prospect of unification also raised new questions about the social and cultural challenges of uniting societies that had been divided for over four decades.

130   Larissa R. Stiglich

‘The Dilemma of Simultaneity’ In the early scholarship on the Wende, political scientists were particularly interested in and adept at investigating the processes of economic and political transformation while they were still happening, quickly recognizing the ‘dilemma of simultaneity’ that faced Eastern European countries coping with multiple transition processes at once (Offe, 1991, pp. 279–​92; Merkel, 1998, pp. 39–​61). Democratization and the processes of economic, social, cultural, and spatial change—​to name only a few—​were occurring simultaneously and rapidly. In its effort to capture the monumental scope of these transitions, this scholarship was complemented by the contributions of anthropologists who were able to highlight the tremendous and immediate implications for the everyday lives of individual East Germans (Borneman, 1991; Berdahl, 1999). Taking its cue from these bodies of scholarship, this section centres the experiences of ordinary East Germans for whom the currency union and subsequent Unification Treaty proceeded with dizzying rapidity and unsettling uncertainty. Even before the process of German unification had truly begun, German economic leaders began to prepare for the anticipated transition from a centrally planned economy to free market competition. At the forty-​fifth meeting of COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) in Sofia, Bulgaria, in early January 1990, the Soviet Union’s decision to allow Hungary and Poland to transition to world-​market prices suggested that this was the type of transition model that the GDR could expect (Schmidt and Nicolaus, 2000, p. 238). The transitional government also took steps to facilitate the transition of East Germany’s state-​owned enterprises to the private sector. In early March 1990, the GDR Ministry accepted the suggestion that a trusteeship should be formed in order to protect the publicly-​owned industries of the GDR during this privatization process. The new institute for the fiduciary management of public property was called the Treuhandanstalt (Trusteeship Agency (THA)). The THA faced the herculean task of reorganizing the centrally planned economy of the GDR by demerging the state-​owned monopolies and firms and overseeing their privatization (Seibel, 2005). When the Treaty for the Creation of an Economic, Monetary, and Social Union went into effect on 1 July 1990, East Germans greeted it with a mixture of euphoria and scepticism. After a period of negotiation, a compromise had been reached in terms of the conversion rate at which East Germans could exchange their Ostmark for West German Deutschmark (Jarausch, 1994, pp. 139–​43). On the one hand, many East Germans were ecstatic to be able to purchase long-​coveted West German goods, travel outside of the Soviet bloc, or pursue educational or career opportunities outside of the GDR. On the other hand, other East Germans were more hesitant to spend their new Deutschmark, as they were unsure what challenges they might have to navigate in a new market economy. Would they experience the unemployment that had so long hovered on the horizon as a spectre of life in the capitalist West? How could they afford to pay rent on

THE END OF THE COLD WAR AND THE PROCESS OF GERMAN UNIFICATION    131 their apartments that the East German state so heavily subsidized? The answers to these questions would not take long to play out. As for the newly privatized firms of the formerly centrally planned economy, the currency union meant that they entered into free market competition overnight. Some of these firms—​ranging from heavy manufacturing to smaller retail businesses—​were able to attract Western investors or were bought by West German companies. Others, however, struggled to survive in a competitive German, European, and global market. Having lost their state-​funding, businesses were faced with the necessity of cutting nonessential programmes and services, such as formerly subsidized child care, cafeteria meals, recreational activities, and even holidays, all services which had often been organized and subsidized by large state-​owned firms during the GDR. These services were often transferred to the municipal governments that no longer had the budgets to support them, thus adding another layer of disruption to the lives of former East Germans. Another way that newly privatized firms cut costs was, of course, through consolidation, dramatically downsizing their personnel. Finally, many other businesses were forced to close completely, leaving their workers with the difficult if not impossible task of finding employment elsewhere (Schmidt and Nicolaus, 2000, pp. 243–​70). Against the backdrop of the rollout of the Deutschmark in East Germany, international political leaders were still negotiating the process of political unification. By the summer of 1990, Mitterrand and Thatcher, as well as President George H.W. Bush, had all but accepted the inevitability of German unification. Mitterrand had consented to the prospect of unification after securing agreement from Kohl in December 1989 that a united Germany would support the establishment of a European Monetary Union and subsequently adopt a European currency (Larres, 2015, p. 379). Thatcher remained resistant for longer but ultimately came around publicly in a speech to the House of Commons on 6 February 1990. Not willing to completely relinquish her former reticence, she still expressed some concern about ‘the future of NATO, Kohl’s hesitation to recognize the Western frontier of Poland, and also about the form and substance of the Two-​Plus-​Four framework’ (Larres, 2015, p. 384). The biggest remaining impediment to German unification came from the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was particularly worried about membership of a single German state in NATO. During Kohl’s successful trip to Moscow in July 1990, Gorbachev verbally acquiesced to allowing a united Germany to maintain its membership in NATO (Sarotte, 2009, pp. 175–​86). While this seemed a decisive victory, behind the scenes, West German officials now had to work overtime to ensure that political unification could proceed. Kohl and the East German coalition led by the recently elected Lothar de Maiziére hoped to achieve unity by October so that the FRG elections scheduled for December could be the first in a united Germany. To achieve this, the Two-​Plus-​Four Agreement was signed in Moscow in mid-​September. De Maiziére managed to secure parliamentary approval of the unification of the two Germanys under Article 23 of the West German Basic Law (Sarotte, 2009, pp. 186–​94). With these hurdles successfully navigated, unification was set to proceed on 3 October 1990.

132   Larissa R. Stiglich Of all of the changes that accompanied the transition to a market economy and the formal unification of the two countries, the absence of stable employment prospects for former GDR citizens was among the most traumatic rupture. Since its founding, one of the central claims of superiority of the East German state over its Western counterpart was that it could boast full employment. East German citizens had not been plagued by the hardships accompanying uncertain or inconsistent employment opportunities. Rather, the planned economy of the GDR had necessitated the full labour force of its citizens in order to function. Given the fate of so many former state-​owned enterprises under the conditions of market capitalism, unemployment in the new German states had already risen to over 10 per cent by 1991. This upward trajectory continued more or less unabated throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, reaching its peak in 2005 when 20.6 per cent of former East Germans had registered for unemployment (Bundesagentur für Arbeit, 2014, p. 4). On an individual level, many East Germans felt left behind or cast adrift in a new cutthroat employment environment, as evidenced by the widespread protests against unemployment rates throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s. Moreover, they were not the only ones shouldering the financial and psychological burden of unification. The political and monetary union, including the tremendous investments necessary to modernize East German infrastructure, were funded largely by increases in West German taxes. This engendered frustration on the part of ordinary West Germans, making the psychological reconciliation between East and West Germans even more difficult (Jarausch, 1994, pp. 203–​4). East German experiences during these years proved highly challenging. Many if not most families grappled with the crushing uncertainty of the job situation, including the frustrations of a competitive job market and the humiliation of long-​term unemployment. The transition from communism to capitalism was not a unilateral success story. Living in a market economy in a state that no longer subsidized rents, groceries, and social services, meant that many former East Germans found it impossible to bear the rising private costs of everyday necessities. These conditions further challenged the triumphalist narratives of the victory of Western capitalism and democracy over communism. Still, when considering other areas of everyday life quite a different story comes to light. Beginning in 1990, East Germans were eager to purchase West German goods, buy new cars, build their own homes, and travel by train, plane, or automobile to destinations they never could have dreamt of while living in the GDR. This evidence counters the characterization of German unification as a story of overwhelming loss, an interpretation common among those with selective memories of state socialism or ‘nostalgia for the East’ (Ostalgie). Ultimately, studies that privilege the perspectives of ordinary East Germans are necessary to complement the dominant political and diplomatic narratives. The tensions between the benefits of liberal democracy and a free market, on the one hand, and the dislocations of transitioning to a capitalist society, on the other hand, literally played themselves out in the everyday lives of the Germans in the Eastern part of the country.

THE END OF THE COLD WAR AND THE PROCESS OF GERMAN UNIFICATION    133

Conclusion The opening of the Berlin Wall, now often considered synonymous with the end of the Cold War, was a symbolic marker of the sea change in societal and political upheaval already underway in East Germany—​physical evidence that the popular challenge to the one-​party state had gained momentum and that permanent changes were to come. But the build-​up and aftermath of this tremendous event were not monolithic. They took different shapes, moved at different speeds, and had different outcomes depending on the local places and spaces in which events unfolded. Indeed, as Mary Elise Sarotte cautions, it is important to remember that even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the process of German unification was not a foregone conclusion (Sarotte, 2009, p. 3). This essay has offered an overview of a stunningly complex interplay of international and domestic, political and diplomatic, social and cultural factors that contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall, German unification, and the decisive end to the Cold War. Throughout the process, the diplomacy of high-​ranking politicians, the unanticipated results of spontaneous decisions on the part of individual historical actors, as well as the actions of thousands of East Germans who joined the ranks of previous dissidents and protestors, all served integral roles in the course of events. That said, our understandings of the end of the Cold War and the process of German unification are far from complete. With the benefit of over three decades of hindsight, newer scholarship will no doubt continue to push the temporal boundaries of historical analysis to consider outcomes of German unification that were not yet clear by the end of the 1990s, as there are many continuities in addition to ruptures yet to be examined. These investigations have broader implications for understanding the transformation of state and society in other post-​communist states, as well as for other contexts of rapid regime change. The emergence of more local studies will go a long way in answering Mary Fulbrook’s call for a more thorough investigation of ‘the differential regional distribution of “social peace” and discontent’ in the revolutionary autumn (Fulbrook, 2005, p. 62). After all, not all towns and cities throughout the GDR were centres of discontent like Leipzig, Dresden, or Berlin. Further examinations of patterns of post-​socialist transition that depart from these popular narratives of the Peaceful Revolution allow for more careful attention to the tension between what former East Germans perceive themselves to have lost or gained as a result of German unification and how that continues to colour their experiences of everyday life in the Federal Republic over three decades later.

Further Reading Bergerson, Andrew Stuart and Leonard Schmieding (eds) (2017), Ruptures in the Everyday: Views of Modern Germany from the Ground (New York: Berghahn Books).

134   Larissa R. Stiglich Demshuk, Andrew (2020), Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany (Cornell: Cornell University Press). Jarausch, Konrad H. (1994), The Rush to German Unity (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Maier, Charles S. (1997), Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Sarotte, Mary Elise (2009), 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-​Cold War Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Bibliography Ault, Julia E. (2019), ‘Defending God’s Creation? The Environment in State, Church and Society in the German Democratic Republic’, German History 37(2), pp. 205–​26. Berdahl, Daphne (1999), Where the World Ended: Re-​Unification and Identity in the German Borderland (Berkeley: University of California Press. Bergerson, Andrew Stuart and Leonard Schmieding (eds) (2017), Ruptures in the Everyday: Views of Modern Germany from the Ground (New York: Berghahn Books). Betts, Paul (2012), ‘Socialism, Social Rights, and Human Rights: The Case of East Germany’, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Development 3(3), pp. 407–​26. Borneman, John (1991), After the Wall: East Meets West in the New Berlin (New York: Basic Books). Brooks, Stephen G. and William C. Wohlforth (Winter 2000–​01), ‘Power, Globalization, and the End of the Cold War: Reevaluating a Landmark Case for Ideas’, International Security 25(3), pp. 5–​53. Bundesagentur für Arbeit (2014), ‘Arbeitslosigkeit im Zeitverlauf [online]’. Available at: https://​ www.goo​gle.com/​url?sa=​t&rct=​j&q=​&esrc=​s&sou​rce=​web&cd=​&ved=​2ahUKEwjc4pjLutvvA​ hVEW​K0KH​R9WA​G0QF​jAAe​gQIB​BAD&url=​https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bpb.de%2Fsys​ tem%2Ffi​les%2Fd​okum​ent_​pdf%2F01%2520​Arbe​itsl​ose%2520​und%2520​Arbe​itsl​osen​quot​e_​ 0.pdf&usg=​AOvVa​w3TZ​EzIn​qM4o​gJPq​nv_​9​MVS. (Accessed 30 March 2021). Dale, Gareth (2005), Popular Protest in East Germany, 1945–​1989 (New York: Routledge). Demshuk, Andrew (2020), Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany (Cornell: Cornell University Press). Fulbrook, Mary (1995), Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949–​1989 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fulbrook, Mary (2005), The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven: Yale University Press). Gramlich, John (2019a), ‘How the Attitudes of West and East Germans Compare, 30 Years After Fall of Berlin Wall’, Pew Research Center [online]. Available at: https://​www.pewr​esea​ rch.org/​fact-​tank/​2019/​10/​18/​how-​the-​attitu​des-​of-​west-​and-​east-​germ​ans-​comp​are-​30-​ years-​after-​fall-​of-​ber​lin-​wall/​ (Accessed 29 March 2021). Gramlich, John (2019b), ‘East Germany Has Narrowed Economic Gap with West German since Fall of Communism, but Still Lags’, Pew Research Center [online]. Available at: https://​ www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​fact-​tank/​2019/​11/​06/​east-​germ​any-​has-​narro​wed-​econo​mic-​gap-​ with-​west-​germ​any-​since-​fall-​of-​commun​ism-​but-​still-​lags/​ (Accessed 29 March 2021).

THE END OF THE COLD WAR AND THE PROCESS OF GERMAN UNIFICATION    135 Halliday, Fred (1995), ‘A Singular Collapse: The Soviet Union, Market Pressure, and Inter-​ State Competition’, in Nikki R. Keddie (ed.), Debating Revolutions (New York: New York University Press), pp. 275–​96. Hertle, Hans-​Hermann (1999), Der Fall der Mauer: die unbeabsichtigte Selbstauflösung des SED-​Staates (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag). Jarausch, Konrad H. (1994), The Rush to German Unity (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Jarausch, Konrad H. (ed.) (2013), United Germany: Debating Processes and Prospects (New York: Berghahn Books). Kotkin, Stephen (2008), Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–​2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Kowalczuk, Ilko-​Sascha (2009), Endspiel: Die Revolution von 1989 in der DDR (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck). Larres, Klaus (2015), ‘Margaret Thatcher and German Unification Revisited’, in Michael Gehler, Wolfgang Mueller, and Arnold Suppan (eds), The Revolutions of 1989 (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press), pp. 355–​84. Merkel, Wolfgang (1998), ‘Die Konsolidierung postautoritärer und posttotalitärer Demokratien: ein Beitrag zur theorieorientierten Transformationsforschung’, in Hans Süssmut (ed), Transformationsprozess in den Staaten Ostmitteleuropas (Baden-​ Baden: Nomos), pp. 39–​61. Offe, Claus (1991), ‘Das Dilemma der Gleichzeitigkeit. Demokratisierung und Marktwirtschaft in Osteuropa’, Merkur 45(4), pp. 279–​92. Richter, Michael (2009), Die Friedliche Revolution: Aufbruch zur Demokratie in Sachsen 1989/​ 90, Band 1 & 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht). Ross, Corey (2002), The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of the GDR (London: Arnold). Sarotte, Mary Elise (2009), 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-​Cold War Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Sarotte, Mary Elise (2014), The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall (New York: Basic Books). Schmidt, Lutz and Herbert Nicolaus (2000), Einblicke: 50 Jahre EKO Stahl (Eisenhüttenstadt: EKO Stahl). Seibel, Wolfgang (2005), Verwaltete Illusionen: Die Privatisierung der DDR-​Wirtschaft durch die Treuhandanstalt und ihre Nachfolger, 1990–​2000 (Frankfurt/​New York: Campus Verlag). Steiner, André (2010), The Plans That Failed: An Economic History of the GDR. Ewald Osers (trans.) (New York: Berghahn Books). Stiglich, Larissa R. (2020), After Socialism: The Transformation of Everyday Life in Eisenhüttenstadt, 1975–​2015. Ph.D. Dissertation (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). Suny, Ronald Grigor (2010), The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

PA RT I I I

GERMANY SI N C E 1990 Political Institutions and Constitutional Design

CHAPTER 9

THE EXEC U T I V E The German Government and Civil Service Ray Hebestreit and Karl-​Rudolf Korte

This chapter examines the executive branch of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) with a particular focus on the Federal Chancellor, the ministers who form the Federal Cabinet including their ministries, and other federal administrative authorities which form the executive bodies of the federal government. There is only a brief discussion of the German parliament (Bundestag), which has a close relationship with the ruling government in Germany’s political system. Germany’s federal government is best viewed as a ‘Chancellor’s Democracy’ whose policies and decision-​making are guided by cultivating consensus between the major and minor parties of a governing coalition. Over time, historical developments have diminished the role of certain bodies, such as the Cabinet, and empowered others, such as the Office of the Chancellery, which were not mentioned in the Grundgesetz (German Basic Law).

Government Election and Appointment of the Federal Government The FRG is a parliamentary democracy. This means that the German government and the federal parliament (Bundestag) are closely linked during a legislative period that normally lasts four years.1 The government is based upon the ruling coalition in the Bundestag. This means that the executive and legislative branches of Germany’s government are interdependent (Hebestreit and Korte, 2020, p. 159; Marschall, 2018, p. 153). The ruling government and the parliamentary majority in Germany, as is typical in 1 

On elections and the electoral system in Germany see Korte, 2021a.

140    Ray Hebestreit and Karl-Rudolf Korte parliamentary systems, therefore form part of the same governing faction (Korte and Fröhlich, 2009, p. 100). According to Article 62 of the Grundgesetz, the federal government consists of the Federal Chancellor as the Head of Government and their ministers. Like the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, the government has the right to initiate legislation. Although the Bundestag is the legislative branch, in practice the ruling federal government initiates most legislation (Korte, 2016b, p. 85). Under Article 63 of the Grundgesetz, the Chancellor is elected by the Bundestag after being nominated by the German Federal President (an overview of all Chancellors can be found in table 9.1). To be elected, a candidate must receive the votes of an absolute majority of all members of the Bundestag. Upon achieving this the President officially appoints them to the position of Chancellor.2 Subsequently, the Chancellor proposes future ministers of the next government to the President. The Chancellor and ministers are then appointed by the Federal President (Article 64.1 of the Grundgesetz). The Bundestag has no formal or direct ability to influence the selection and appointment of ministers. Although the Chancellor is free to select their own ministers, the Chancellor must ensure that various coalition partners and party associates within their parliamentary base are adequately considered when forming a government. This is done, for example, by selecting ministers in proportion to the representation of the coalition parties in the Bundestag (Korte and Fröhlich, 2009). However, neither the Chancellor nor their ministers do not necessarily have to be elected members of the Bundestag.

Actors and Operation of the Government The central actors of the German government are the Chancellor, the ministers, and the Cabinet. These actors as well as the parliamentary State Secretaries will be examined in more detail below, as well as the three characteristic principles through which the federal government operates: the principle of the Chancellor, the ministerial principle, and the principle of the Cabinet, which is also known as the principle of collegiality.

The Chancellor and the Chancellor Principle The Chancellor occupies a prominent position in the institutional system of the FRG and within the ruling federal government. For this reason, German democracy should be understood as a ‘Chancellor’s democracy’ (Kanzlerdemokratie). There are three primary reasons for this. First, as already shown, the Chancellor is the only member of the German government elected directly by the Bundestag and can only be replaced through a vote of 2 

For functions and tasks of the Federal President see esp. Korte, 2019a.

THE EXECUTIVE   141 Table 9.1 Chancellors of the Federal Government of Germany since 1949 Name

Party

Term

Konrad Adenauer

CDU

1949–​63

Ludwig Erhard

CDU

1963–​66

Kurt Georg Kiesinger

CDU

1966–​69

Willy Brandt

SPD

1969–​74

Helmut Schmidt

SPD

1974–​82

Helmut Kohl

CDU

1982–​98

Gerhard Schröder

SPD

1998–​2005

Angela Merkel

CDU

2005–​21

Olaf Scholz

SPD

since 2021

no confidence (see chapter “Vote of (No) Confidence” below). In this respect, the Chancellor is the only member of the executive branch of German government who gains their legitimacy through a vote. The ministers, on the other hand, are proposed by the Chancellor and appointed by the Federal President. The Chancellor also has the power to dismiss ministers. Second, the Chancellor has the authority to issue directives. Article 65 of the Grundgesetz states: ‘The Federal Chancellor shall determine and be responsible for the general guidelines of policy’. The Chancellor therefore sets out substantive guidelines and objectives on specific policies according to which ministers must orient themselves (‘Richtlinienkompetenz’ in German). If they choose not to, the Chancellor may dismiss them in a government reshuffle. Thus, during disputes the Chancellor can enforce their ideas onto ministers through the authority of issuing directives. Additionally, the Chancellor directs the regular procedures of the federal government (Article 65 of the Gruunndgesetz). Third, the Chancellor is responsible for organizing the ruling federal government. According to the rules of procedure of the federal government, the Chancellor decides on the number and structure of the federal ministries. The Federal Chancellor thus determines the number, the thematic focus, and responsibilities of the ministers in their government. This means that the Chancellor has a large degree of latitude regarding the shape and scope of the federal government. According to the Grundgesetz, only the ministries of Defence, Justice, and Finance are compulsory. Furthermore, the ministries are structured as a result of various historical path dependencies as well as field-​specific political priorities (cf. Rudzio, 2015, p. 256; Marschall, 2018, pp. 161ff.). The strong position of the Chancellor, which has been referred to as the ‘Chancellor Principle’ (Korte and Fröhlich, 2009, pp. 52ff.), is intended to ensure the German government’s unity and capacity to act (Rudzio, 2015, p. 257). A Chancellor’s strength is

142    Ray Hebestreit and Karl-Rudolf Korte not only determined by formal institutions and rules but is also strongly influenced by other factors. These include support based on personal relations within their own party and with coalition partners. In this context, Korte and Fröhlich refer to three arenas of political management: the parliamentary arena (party democracy), the administrative arena (negotiation democracy), and the public arena (media democracy) (cf. Korte and Fröhlich, 2009, pp. 231ff.). The better the Chancellor can manage these arenas to their own benefit, the stronger their position will be in Germany’s political system.

Ministers and the Departmental Principle Federal ministers are dependent upon the Federal Chancellor in several ways. As already explained, they are appointed by the Chancellor (and subsequently sworn in by the Federal President) and can also be dismissed by the Chancellor. Their term of office corresponds to that of the Chancellor’s—​i.e. if the Chancellor resigns or is voted out, they also lose office. They must also adhere to the Chancellor’s authority to issue directives. However, the ministers also enjoy their own set of powers. In addition to laying out the authority of the Federal Chancellor to issue directives, Article 65 of the Grundgesetz also defines the so-​called departmental principle (‘Ressortprinzip’) as follows: ‘Within these limits [the general policy guidelines of the Chancellor; the Authors] each Federal Minister shall conduct the affairs of their department independently and on their own responsibility’. Accordingly, ministers work independently in their area of responsibility and the Chancellor cannot overrule the ministers in their areas of responsibility within their ministries. On the other hand, ministers must take responsibility for misconduct within their own institutions and, if necessary, resign from office. The number and type of ministries have varied considerably throughout the history of the FRG. These variations are mostly based on political relevance, priorities, and coalition-​specific considerations. However, there are three ministries—​the Ministries of Defence, Justice, and Finance—​that are explicitly mentioned in the Grundgesetz and are formally provided for in Germany’s federal system. The Ministry of Finance plays a particularly large role. Other central ministries have achieved a degree of permanence for themselves. For example, the abolition of the Foreign Ministry or the Ministry of Economic Affairs would be unthinkable. Other ministries, such as the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications or the Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and the Disabled have become outdated or irrelevant, while new areas of political relevance have led to the creation of new ministries. For example, the Ministry of the Environment was founded in 1986 in no small part because of Germany’s response to the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident. Moreover, the specific content of the individual ministries often changes after a new government takes office. For example, responsibilities regularly move from one ministry to another. In addition to shifts in the political priorities of newly elected governments, changes are often linked to the inclusion of new coalition partners who are seeking to

THE EXECUTIVE   143 Table 9.2 Ministries and Ministers in the Scholz government (as of January 2022) Office and /​or Ministry

Name

Party

Chancellor

Olaf Scholz

SPD

Finance

Christian Lindner

FDP

Foreign Office

Annalena Baerbock

Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen

Interior and Community

Nancy Faeser

SPD

Justice

Marco Buschmann

FDP

Economic Affairs and Climate Action

Robert Habeck

Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen

Labour and Social Affairs

Hubertus Heil

SPD

Food and Agriculture

Cem Özdemir

Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen

Defence

Christine Lambrecht

SPD

Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth

Anne Spiegel

Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen

Health

Karl Lauterbach

SPD

Digital and Transport

Volker Wissing

FDP

Housing, Urban Development and Building

Klara Geywitz SPD

Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection

Steffi Lemke

Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen

Education and Research

Bettina Stark-​Watzinger

FDP

Economic Cooperation and Development

Svenja Schulze

SPD

Federal Minister for Special Affairs and Head of the Federal Chancellery

Wolfgang Schmidt

SPD

address new priorities. Ministries are occasionally, although rarely, combined into a so-​ called superministry, as was the case between 2002 and 2005 in the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour. In other cases, responsibilities are sometimes outsourced from existing ministries and transferred to new independent ministries. For an overview of the current ministries and ministers in the Scholz government, see table 9.2.

Cabinet and the Cabinet Principle One should speak of the Federal Cabinet when considering the ruling German government not as the sum of its individual parts—​i.e. the Federal Chancellor plus their federal ministers—​but as a collective body. The Federal Cabinet is formally the most important decision-​making body of the German executive branch. The Cabinet principle (the principle of collegiality, or ‘Kabinettsprinzip’) is a way to understand how the Cabinet works. The Cabinet deliberates, usually on a consensual basis, on legislative initiatives to be introduced into the legislative process. The Chancellor has the deciding

144    Ray Hebestreit and Karl-Rudolf Korte vote in the event of a tie. In the event of differences of opinion between ministers, the government as a collective body also decides in accordance with Article 65’s stipulations on the Cabinet. As a rule, the Cabinet meets once a week, usually on a Wednesday morning, and is chaired by the Chancellor. The procedure for Cabinet meetings, which are confidential, is regulated in the Rules of Procedure of the Federal Government. In addition to the Chancellor and the ministers, the Head of the Federal Chancellery, the Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Chancellor, the head of the Office of the Federal President, the head of the Federal Press, the personal adviser to the Chancellor, and the Secretary will also sit at the Cabinet table. Each Cabinet meeting is intensively prepared for in advance due to the short time available and the abundance of topics to be dealt with and decided upon by the Cabinet. The aim is above all to resolve existing differences between the coalition partners or individual ministries in the run-​up to Cabinet meetings. In recent decades, a system of Cabinet committees, inter-​ministerial bodies, and informal coalition bodies (e.g. the coalition committee; see chapter “The Coalition Committee” below) has been established to relieve the Cabinet of this burden. Draft resolutions are only presented to the Cabinet for approval and formal resolution if controversial points have already been resolved between the individual ministries, with the Ministry of Finance particularly emphasizing budgetary consequences. Since the 1970s, however, the importance of Cabinet committees has increasingly diminished in favour of other forms of political control and coordination (Korte and Fröhlich, 2009, pp. 91ff.; Rudzio, 2015, p. 262). The increasing powerlessness of the Cabinet and the decreasing importance of Cabinet committees have gradually resulted in an increasingly less powerful Cabinet. Indeed, it is sometimes seen as merely a voting, rather than a real decision-​making, body. One reason for this is precisely the fact that many projects are already discussed in advance at a lower level between ministries or in other informal bodies and are brought into the Cabinet as matters that have already been completely negotiated. Additionally, ministers often lack detailed knowledge of certain projects, since they must deal with many other tasks in their ministries that have little to do with the concrete work of the Cabinet (cf. Rudzio, 2015, pp. 266ff.).

Parliamentary State Secretaries Parliamentary State Secretaries act as a link between the ministries and the Bundestag. On the one hand, they are part of the top administrators of a ministry within the executive branch. On the other hand, they are also legislative members of the Bundestag. The Janus-​faced nature of these posts lies in their tasks: parliamentary State Secretaries are supposed to aid their ministers by taking on certain tasks in the ministry and they often represent their ministers in political and official matters. For example, parliamentary State Secretaries often represent their respective ministers and answer questions during question time in the Bundestag.

THE EXECUTIVE   145 Parliamentary State Secretaries are nominated by the Chancellor with the consent of their respective minister and officially appointed by the Federal President. The posts of parliamentary State Secretaries can be used by the Chancellor to create additional government posts that will satisfy their coalition partners. Furthermore, the Chancellor can use parliamentary State Secretaries in government to exercise, within limits, a role of control and review of government ministers and other parliamentary State Secretaries of the various parties. Finally, the position of parliamentary State Secretary is regarded as a recruiting pool for future ministers, since most ministers have often held the office of parliamentary State Secretary before eventually being appointed to the Cabinet as a minister.

The Principle of Coalition Governments Coalition Governments in the Federal Republic of Germany In contrast to the voting system in the UK or the US, absolute majorities are very rare in Germany due to the personalized proportional representation system. Only once, in 1957, did the CDU/​CSU3 win the absolute majority of votes and seats in the Bundestag. For this reason, coalition governments in Germany that are a ‘temporary alliance of convenience’ (Korte and Fröhlich, 2009, p. 96) are the rule. These coalitions consist of at least two parties fulfilling the governmental duties (see, among others, Switek, 2022). Since the founding of the FRG, the CDU/​CSU has spent most of its time as the dominant coalition partner in government, mostly with the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP) in black-​yellow coalitions or in a grand coalition with the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD). From 1969–​82, the SPD was the main partner in a red-​yellow coalition with the FDP and in the period from 1998–​2005 in a red-​green coalition with Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen. Since 2005, the coalition governments have changed at every Bundestag election—​with the exception of the 2017 election—​and have remained under the leadership of the CDU/​CSU as the strongest ruling parties and Angela Merkel as Chancellor until the 2021 election. Thus, a grand coalition of the CDU/​CSU and SPD under Merkel’s leadership ruled from 2005–​09 and 2013–​17 and again until 2021. This was briefly interrupted by a black-​yellow coalition of the CDU/​CSU and FDP from 2009–​13. After the 2021 election, in which the SPD became the strongest party, a government consisting of SPD, Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen and FDP was formed for the first time in Germany's history and Olaf Scholz became Chancellor. According to the colors of the three parties (SPD red, FDP yellow, Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen green), this government is called ‘traffic light’ coalition or Ampel coalition. 3 CDU

(Christlich Demokratische Union) and CSU (Christlich-Soziale Union) traditionally form a parliamentary group in the Bundestag and are therefore often counted as one party.

146    Ray Hebestreit and Karl-Rudolf Korte A certain continuity of coalition partners has been a characteristic for German governments since 1949. Consequently, changes to the ruling government typically take place through the exchange of a coalition partner (Korte and Fröhlich, 2009, p. 97). Only once, in the 1998 federal election, did a ‘real’ change of power take place in which the voters completely voted out a government: from a black-​yellow to a red-​green coalition. Chancellors have relied on majorities of varying sizes depending on the make-​up of different governing coalitions. This has ranged from more than 90 per cent of the members of the first grand coalition from 1966–​69 to very narrow majorities during Konrad Adenauer’s first chancellorship from 1949–​53 (see table 9.3). The basis for the cooperation of a government coalition usually takes the form of a coalition agreement in which the government partners stipulate their common government policy and the central political projects for the legislative period. This coalition agreement should not be understood in terms of a legally binding contract but as a political declaration of intent with a concrete expiration date. However, violations of the coalition agreement can lead to the dissolution of the government coalition. The 2017 federal election in particular illustrates the difficulties of government formation between coalition partners. In that specific case, parties who had some diametrically opposing positions in their election programmes—​namely the CDU/​CSU, FDP, and Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen –​tried to find a common basis for a government coalition. The sought-​after coalition failed spectacularly when the FDP said no after weeks of exploratory talks. For the first time since the establishment of the FRG, four parties (in this case, the CSU counted as an independent party) were involved in these exploratory talks. In the sense of the saying ‘less is more’, it became apparent that the more parties involved in the coalition negotiations, the more the formation of a coalition runs into difficulties.

The Coalition Committee Over the course of time, informal decision-​making bodies have become increasingly important for the joint coordination of the coalition partners’ policies during the legislative period. These bodies—​the so-​called coalition committees or coalition session—​ were not originally designated in the institutional structure of Germany (Grunden, 2022). As an instrument of coalition management, among other things, they serve to settle conflicts within the coalition in smaller groups outside the Federal Cabinet with central decision-​makers of the coalition parties. In addition to that, they work to make concrete political decisions or to set a strategic course. Thus, the central cabinets and inter-​ministerial committees who originally held these tasks lost much of their importance. By now, it has become usual to enshrine the principle of coalition committees in the coalition agreement although nothing is said about their composition. Coalition committees hold a meeting in various regular intervals in a legislative period. Furthermore, they also meet in the event of an urgent need for coordination between the coalition partners. The meetings are regularly attended by top politicians from the government, as well as the government’s parliamentary groups and coalition

THE EXECUTIVE   147 Table 9.3 Coalitions since 1949 Chancellor

Coalition

Majority in the Bundestag

CDU/​CSU+​ FDP+​ DP CDU/​CSU+​ FDP +​ DP +​ GB/​BHE CDU/​CSU +​ DP CDU/​CSU without coalition partner CDU/​CSU+​ FDP

2 08 out of 402 mandates 333 out of 487 mandates 287 out of 497 mandates 279 out of 497 mandates 309 out of 499 mandates

CDU/​CSU+​ FDP CDU/​CSU+​ FDP

3 09 out of 499 mandates 294 out of 496 mandates

CDU/​CSU+​ SPD

447 out of 496 mandates

SPD+​ FDP SPD+​ FDP

2 54 out of 496 mandates 271 out of 496 mandates

SPD+​ FDP SPD+​ FDP SPD+​ FDP

2 71 out of 496 mandates 253 out of 496 mandates 271 out of 497 mandates

CDU/​CSU+​ FDP CDU/​CSU+​ FDP CDU/​CSU+​ FDP CDU/​CSU+​ FDP CDU/​CSU+​ FDP

2 79 out of 497 mandates 278 out of 498 mandates 269 out of 497 mandates 398 out of 662 mandates 341 out of 672 mandates

SPD+​Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen SPD+​Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen

3 45 out of 669 mandates 306 out of 603 mandates

CDU/​CSU +​ SPD CDU/​CSU+​ FDP CDU/​CSU+​ SPD CDU/​CSU+​ SPD

4 48 out of 614 mandates 332 out of 622 mandates 504 out of 631 mandates 397 out of 709 mandates

Konrad Adenauer I. Cabinet (1949–​53) II. Cabinet (1953–​57) III. Cabinet (1957–​60) IV. Cabinet (1960–​61) V. Cabinet (1961–​63) Ludwig Ehrhardt I. Cabinet (1963–​65) II. Cabinet (1965–​66) Kurt Georg Kiesinger I. Cabinet (1966–​69) Willy Brandt I. Cabinet (1969–​72) II. Cabinet (1972–​74) Helmut Schmidt I. Cabinet (1974–​76) II. Cabinet (1976–​80) III. Cabinet (1980–​82) Helmut Kohl I. Cabinet (1982–​83) II. Cabinet (1983–​87) III. Cabinet (1987–​91) IV. Cabinet (1991–​94) V. Cabinet (1994–​98) Gerhard Schröder I. Cabinet (1998–​2002) II. Cabinet (2002–​05) Angela Merkel I. Cabinet (2005–​09) II. Cabinet (2009–​13) III. Cabinet (2013–​17) IV. Cabinet (2018–​21) Olaf Scholz I. Cabinet (since 2021)

SPD +​Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen +​FPD 416 out of 736 mandates

Source: Marschall, 2018, p. 156; own amendments (as of 14 January 2022).

148    Ray Hebestreit and Karl-Rudolf Korte parties (in addition to the Chancellor, central ministers, the parliamentary group chairmen, the party chairmen, etc.). In these meetings, the Chancellor mainly takes the role of a moderator. Although the coalition committee is an informal body, the decisions taken in this particular committee have a significant, de facto binding force. The decisions are accepted or implemented by the Cabinet and the governing factions and, eventually, are also transformed into the legislation. In light of this, the meetings of the informal coalition bodies are where the actual decision-​making in the political system of Germany takes place. This runs contrary to wide held assumption that the Bundestag or the government are the centre of power (Korte, 2018; Marschall, 2018, pp. 156ff.; Rudzio, 2015, pp. 272ff.). The shift of actual decision-​making activities from formal institutions such as the Bundestag or the federal government towards an informal body not provided for in the Grundgesetz has always provoked criticism. Nevertheless, coalition committees have established themselves as an effective political steering and decision-​making body as well as an expression of the political governing faction, the majority in the Bundestag, and coalition parties in Germany (Korte and Fröhlich, 2009, p. 100; Rudzio, 2015, p. 275).

Vote of (No) Confidence As in any parliamentary system, Germany’s government—​ more precisely the Chancellor—​ depends upon the confidence of parliament. Normally, the future Chancellor requires an absolute majority of the votes of all members of the Bundestag (a Chancellor majority or ‘Kanzlermehrheit’; see chapter “Election and Appointment of the Federal Government” above)4 which includes the votes of the deputies of the ruling coalition. During a legislative period, the confidence of parliamentarians in the Chancellor and their government may dwindle and the government majority may crack. For instance, there is a possibility that individual members of parliament might decide to leave one of the government factions or to join an opposition faction. Moreover, it is conceivable that the situation from 1982 will repeat itself and a coalition partner will completely withdraw from the government. In that case, the Bundestag is offered the opportunity to vote against the Chancellor by means of a vote of no confidence. This means that the members of the Bundestag deny their support to the Chancellor and, therefore, also their government. As usual in parliamentary democracies, the so-​called ‘constructive vote of no confidence’ exists in Germany. It is exceptional in that an incumbent Chancellor can only be removed from office if the Bundestag elects a successor by an absolute majority of its members at the same time. 4  It is also possible that in the first two rounds of voting for the Chancellor may fail to result in an absolute majority. The Chancellor may then be elected by a relative majority in a third ballot. However, this has never happened in the history of the FRG.

THE EXECUTIVE   149 Article 67 Grundgesetz: Vote of no confidence The Bundestag may express its lack of confidence in the Federal Chancellor only by electing a successor by the vote of a majority of its Members and requesting the Federal President to dismiss the Federal Chancellor. The Federal President must comply with the request and appoint the person elected.5

If it is not successful in attaining the majority of votes for the election of a new Chancellor, the incumbent Chancellor remains in office. This emerged historically from the experiences of the Weimar Republic, which often had unstable and short-​term governments. The constructive vote of no confidence is meant to ensure stable government majorities. So far, the vote of no confidence has only been taken twice in the history of the FRG (see, among others, Korte, 2022). In April 1972, the CDU/​CSU faction tried to overthrow the incumbent Chancellor Willy Brandt by means of a constructive vote of no confidence and to elect the Christian Democratic candidate Rainer Barzel as his successor. However, this attempt failed since Barzel did not attain the required majority of the members of parliament. Thus, Brandt remained in office. In 1982 the FDP was the smaller government partner in the ruling red-​yellow SPD/​ FDP coalition. The FDP quit the governing coalition to form a new government with the CDU/​CSU faction. The CDU, CSU, and FDP then requested a constructive vote of no confidence in order to depose the incumbent Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD) from office and at the same time elect Helmut Kohl (CDU) as the new Chancellor. For the first time the project ‘vote of no confidence’ was successful: Helmut Kohl attained the required majority of votes (Chancellor majority) on 1 October and remained Chancellor for four legislative periods until his CDU/​CSU/​FDP government was voted out of office in 1998. However, the Chancellor is also in the position to seek the assurance of the confidence of the majority of the Bundestag and to maintain the cooperation of their coalition partners. The basis for this, Article 68 of the Grundgesetz, provides a so-​called vote of confidence (‘Vertrauensfrage’). If the lack of confidence and approval of the majority becomes apparent in a vote of confidence, the Chancellor has two options: they can either request that the Federal President dissolve the parliament or the incumbent government can continue to govern as a minority government.

Article 68 Grundgesetz: Vote of confidence If a motion of the Federal Chancellor for a vote of confidence is not supported by the majority of the Members of the Bundestag, the Federal President, upon the proposal of the Federal Chancellor, may dissolve the Bundestag within twenty-​one days. https://​www.gesetze-​im-​internet.de/​englisch_​gg/​englisch_​gg.html#p0318

5 

https://​www.gesetze-​im-​internet.de/​englisch_​gg/​englisch_​gg.html#p0315

150    Ray Hebestreit and Karl-Rudolf Korte As a result, the vote of confidence not only allows the Chancellor to ensure the confidence of the majority of the members of the Bundestag, but also serves as an instrument to maintain discipline within the parliamentary fractions of the ruling coalition. So far, the vote of confidence has been employed five times. On four occasions (1972, twice in 1982, and 2005) there was an abstract vote of confidence to fundamentally assure the confidence of the majority of the Bundestag. In 2001 it was connected to a specific proposition of the then red-​green government. The confidence issues of December 1982, 2001, and 2005 led to controversial discussions. In 1982 and 2005, the sitting Chancellor (Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schröder, respectively) intentionally triggered a vote of no confidence in order to fail to gain a majority of votes and subsequently call new elections. These two instances have often been referred to as ‘fake votes of confidence’. After the FDP left the red-​yellow government in 1982, which led to the election of Kohl as Chancellor through a vote of no confidence, Kohl saw the opportunity to further expand the CDU/​CSU/​FDP majority in the Bundestag by means of new elections, which otherwise would not have taken place until autumn 1984. CDU and CSU members of parliament deliberately abstained from the vote of confidence in December 1982 to ensure that Kohl would lose the vote. Consequently, the Federal President dissolved the Bundestag and called for new elections. The 2005 vote of confidence was set off by a series of state elections, some of which resulted in severe losses for the SPD, particularly those in North Rhine-​ Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state. Facing heavy criticism from outside and within the SPD, Schröder sought to gain legitimacy for his social and labour market reform course by means of new elections. Schröder therefore asked for a vote of confidence in the Bundestag in July 2005, more than one year before the next scheduled election. As expected, he lost this election since many members of his red-​green government coalition abstained from voting. Thereupon, the Bundestag was dissolved and new elections were held, which resulted in the first Chancellorship of Angela Merkel. In both cases, Kohl and Schröder did not use the vote of confidence to either secure or discipline their majority in parliament. Instead, they used it as a means of dissolving the Bundestag and call for new elections by deliberately and intentionally not allowing confidence to be expressed by the parliament. Kohl and Schröder were criticized for dissolving the parliament despite enjoying a stable government majority. However, the Federal Constitutional Court confirmed the constitutionality of their use of this procedure in both cases. Nonetheless, the Court admonished the actors to avoid the future use of the vote of confidence in the Bundestag. Over time, according to Marschall (2018, pp. 160ff.), the vote of confidence, and thus the possibility of a premature dissolution of parliament and the holding of new elections, has become a normal instrument of power for the Federal Chancellor. The vote of confidence by Schröder in November 2001 is of particular interest because it was the first and only time to date that a specific bill was linked to a vote of confidence. The background was the planned deployment of German Bundeswehr units in the fight against international terrorism in Afghanistan, a move which required the approval

THE EXECUTIVE   151 of the Bundestag.6 This decision was highly controversial within the ruling red-​green coalition, especially within the smaller partner, Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen. The government therefore could not be sure of achieving a majority in the Bundestag. Chancellor Schröder decided to link the vote on the bill to send German troops to Afghanistan with a vote of confidence. Schröder threatened that if the members of the coalition factions—​ especially his Green coalition partners—​in the Bundestag did not speak out in favour of the deployment, it would be an expression of a lack of confidence and thus a failed vote of confidence. The threat resulted in a majority vote in favour of the deployment. However, members of parliament from the Green Party felt blackmailed by the Chancellor and confidence in Schröder was damaged. The Federal President is not necessarily obliged to dissolve the Bundestag if the majority of the members of parliament do not express their confidence in the Chancellor. There would be an option for the Chancellor to form of a minority government. In the event that the Chancellor lacks the absolute majority of the members of the Bundestag, the government would have to constantly seek new majorities depending on its plans and projects. However, this ‘governing with changing majorities’ has not yet occurred in the FRG and would also contradict the routines of the parliamentary system of government in Germany which rely on stable government majorities in the Bundestag.

The Federal Chancellery as the Power Centre of the German Chancellor The Federal Chancellery is the organizational centre of power for the Chancellor. It is the pivotal element of the principles of the Chancellor, department, Cabinet, coalition, and party. Although the Federal Chancellery is not mentioned at all in the Grundgesetz, it plays a key role in the institutional structure of the Federal Republic: all the threads of the Federal German executive branch converge at that exact point. After all, the Federal Chancellery is the starting point of the coordination of the German executive branch. The tasks of the Federal Chancellery range from merely secretarial functions to providing information for the work of the Chancellor right up to the coordination of the ministries (cf. Korte and Fröhlich, 2009, pp. 83ff.; Korte, 2016a). Only the Federal Chancellery gives the Chancellor the opportunity to develop their leading role as the head of the government (Marschall, 2018, p. 166). Over the past decades, the Federal Chancellery has been increasingly expanded to become the centre of government (cf. Helms, 2022). Nowadays, this supreme federal authority with more than 500 employees is the size of a ministry. The structure of the Federal Chancellery reflects the structure of the federal ministries. At the highest working level it consists of departments in which the ministries of the federal ministries 6 

The German Bundeswehr is a parliamentary army. This means that the Bundeswehr’s deployments must be decided by the Bundestag.

152    Ray Hebestreit and Karl-Rudolf Korte are grouped together.7 Therefore, Department (Abteilung) 1 is responsible for domestic and legal policy and Department 3, among other things, for social, health, and labour market policy. The departments, in turn, are subdivided into groups and units. In view of the federal ministries and due to this inverse structure of the Federal Chancellery, the term ‘Spiegelreferate’ (‘mirror-​departments’) is often used. This highlights the necessarily intense cooperation between the Federal Chancellery and the respective federal ministries. Thus, it provides the possibility, for example, to obtain information quickly and technical expertise for the work of the government from the ministries (Federal Chancellery’s task of information) and to coordinate and control the work of the executive branch (coordination task). Nevertheless, the Chancellery has no authority to issue directives to the ministries (see chapter “Ministers and the Departmental Principle” and Korte 2016a). The Federal Chancellery is managed by the Head of the Federal Chancellery. As a central figure at the intersection of politics and administration who primarily works outside the public eye, the Head of the Federal Chancellery is often referred to as the éminence grise of the German executive branch (among others Marschall, 2018, p. 166). Since the mid-​1980s they have usually held the position of Minister (Federal Minister for Special Tasks) throughout their tenure and thus sit at the Cabinet table (see chapter “Cabinet and the Cabinet Principle” above). Among other things, this fact reflects the importance of their position. The organization and coordination of the work of the government is their most urgent task. To give an example: the Head of the Federal Chancellery sets the agenda for Cabinet meetings and prepares them by obtaining any necessary proposals or votes from the ministries or organizing coordination processes between the ministries and the Federal Chancellery. In doing so, the required decisions can be taken in Cabinet meetings without lengthy discussions (Korte, 2016a). Moreover as government commissioner, they are responsible for the federal intelligence services. As one of the Chancellor’s closest confidants, they also serve as an early warning system: the more the Head of the Federal Chancellery is anchored in the party and in the parliamentary group, the sooner they can inform the Chancellor in time when topics become politically explosive and there is an acute need for decision-​making (Korte and Fröhlich, 2009, p. 87).

Political Management in the Federal Government Governance in the FRG is based on interdependent management (Korte, 2014, p. 11). This means that many actors have the power to block negotiations and therefore influence political decisions through an institutionally guaranteed right to participate 7  Compare the organization chart of the Federal Chancellery, https://​www.bund​esre​gier​ung.de/​resou​ rce/​blob/​975​196/​7 73​044/​6ef4d​d641​0b2b​a122​adf8​969e​0edd​5ac/​druck​vers​ion-​orga​nigr​amm-​bkamt-​ data.pdf?downl​oad=​1 (as of 17 January 2022; an organizational chart of the Federal Chancellery under Chancellor Olaf Scholz does not appear to have been published by mid-​January 2022).

THE EXECUTIVE   153 in decision-​making in Germany’s political system. Examples include the German federal states via the Bundesrat or the Federal Constitutional Court, as well as European institutions. This naturally has an impact on the government’s political management. Within the institutional structure of Germany, the ruling federal government is both an executive and a constitutional body. Moreover, it is a central—​if not the central—​political actor in German democracy (Grunden and Korte, 2013, p. 13; Florack and Korte, 2022). Especially in crisis situations since the mid-​2000s, the role of the government and the Chancellor as head of the government has been further enhanced in comparison with other political actors in Germany. It was the ruling government, and especially the Chancellor, that set the course in decisions such as German and European bank bailouts during the financial crisis, as well as the granting of loans and guarantees worth billions to Southern European countries to save the Euro and in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. The Bundestag, as the government’s controlling body, could only either confirm the decisions taken by ministers and heads of state at summits or, at most, force the government to make minimal concessions. The courts—​particularly the Federal Constitutional Court—​have also expressed criticism of the increasingly lopsided influence of the executive branch in German politics but have nevertheless approved most decisions coming from it. Accordingly, it can be said that times of crisis are equally times of the executive branch. It is the key player in the management of political or social problems. But governments are by no means monolithic actors. Instead—​as already seen—​the German government is a loose group of collective actors (Cabinet, coalition factions, parties) whose work is subject to various principles laid down in the Grundgesetz (the Chancellor principle, the Cabinet principle, and the departmental principle) and which, despite differing and partly competing programmatic and personal interests, must be arranged into a ‘governing faction’ acting together. This is done, for example, through the informal instruments of a coalition agreement and regular coalition meetings (see chapter “The Coalition Committee” above). The process of self-​organization (Rüb, 2009) imitates a corporate actor (e.g. Florack, Grunden, and Korte, 2015, pp. 628ff.; Grunden and Korte, 2013, p. 13). Within the German government—​which is typically a coalition government—​hierarchy and rule by majority do not dominate the decision-​making process. Instead, decisions are generally brought about by consensus, which often requires extensive pre-​voting processes (e.g. by involving the Federal Chancellery or inter-​ministerial discussions prior to Cabinet meetings; see chapter “Cabinet and the Cabinet Principle” above). It is only in this way that the governing faction can be assuredly guaranteed. Otherwise, the smaller coalition partners would always run the risk of being outvoted in majority decisions. In achieving their goals, they would depend on the goodwill of the large coalition partner, who in turn could not completely rely on the smaller coalition partner (Grunden, 2022). Against this background, a carefully balanced set of rules and conflict resolution mechanisms have emerged throughout the history of the FRG. Coalition partners abide by this through agreements during coalition negotiations and the resulting coalition

154    Ray Hebestreit and Karl-Rudolf Korte agreement. As a result, the principle of consensus within a governing faction is the guiding force in German coalition governments. This typically results in smaller coalition partners enjoying more negotiating power in coalition negotiations than their representation in the Bundestag would suggest, mostly because their partners anticipate the veto power of the smaller party during the formation of the government.

Ministries and Federal Public Administration Basic Structures of the Federal Public Administration The executive branch in the FRG consists, on the one hand, of the government—​the Chancellor and the ministers. On the other hand, the executive also includes the public administration, without which the government would not be able to fulfil its tasks and implement its agenda. The so-​called federal administration comprises the ministries and subordinate areas, such as federal institutions (e.g. the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, which reports to the Federal Ministry of Finance) and federal authorities (e.g. the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, which reports to the Federal Ministry of the Interior). Overall, the German federal administration is divided into supreme federal authorities, higher federal authorities, federal funding authorities, and subordinate federal authorities, with the federal ministries being the supreme federal authorities. The ministries are headed by respective ministers. As a Cabinet member, they are part of the ruling government. They are also the head of a comprehensive administration which, depending on the size of the ministry, can comprise several hundred to over 1,000 employees. This administration is responsible for preparing decisions in the federal government and ensuring their implementation. Apart from through the ministers themselves, the link between the federal government and the ministries is through the State Secretaries (‘Staatssekretäre’). Together with their respective minister, they comprise the highest level of a ministry. In addition to the parliamentary State Secretaries, the federal ministries also include civil servant State Secretaries. Parliamentary State Secretaries (see chapter “Parliamentary State Secretaries” above) must be members of the Bundestag and support the minister in their governmental and leadership functions in the ministry. They can represent the minister in the Cabinet or in the Bundestag. Their office is always linked to the respective minister; if the minister leaves office, the parliamentary State Secretary usually leaves office with them. Civil servant Secretaries of State, on the other hand, are civil servants for life and are therefore not bound to ministers’ terms of office. They also perform central managerial functions in the ministries and are authorized to give instructions to ministry employees. In contrast to the parliamentary Secretaries of State, however, they have

THE EXECUTIVE   155 less impact on the political sphere and the public. Their focus is on administrative work within the ministry. The structure of the federal ministries is regulated at a national level. Accordingly, the highest level consists of the respective minister, who heads the ministry, and the State Secretaries, who represent and are subordinate to the minister. The next level consists of departments, which can be subsumed into subdivisions. The departments and subdivisions consist of units (‘Referate’ in German), which are the smallest organizational units within a ministry. One unit is made up of the Head of Unit and at least four other employees (section 9 of the Common Rules of Procedure of the Federal Ministries). The actual substantive work takes place in the ministries’ units. Here, for example, information is prepared and made available for upper levels all the way to ministers for whom drafts, for example, law drafts, are developed. The heads of higher levels (subdivisions and departments), on the other hand, mainly coordinate with one another.

Organizational Principles of Public Administration The structure and strict hierarchy within the public administration, and especially in ministries, is exemplified by the principle of the ‘chain of command’. This principle abstractly holds that communication within ministries must always be top-​down or bottom-​up through the next higher authority. Legislation on which the Cabinet votes, for example, is often drafted in the units of a ministry as a ‘draft bill’ (Referentenentwurf). They then go through the next higher authorities (heads of subdivision, heads of department, State Secretaries, ministers) via inner-​ministerial chain of command, where they generally undergo various adjustments and changes before they leave the ministry and are discussed and decided as bills in the Cabinet. With their expertise, the employees in the ministries—​and here in particular in the units—​are thus far more than mere executors of government policy, but are instead involved to a not inconsiderable extent in shaping the legislation of Germany (cf. Korte, 2016a). This presupposes a special relationship of the administrative staff in the ministries to the Federal Republic, to the government, and to the heads of the respective ministries. The so-​called ‘Beamtentum’ (civil service) therefore also characterizes the work in the federal administration and in the federal ministries in particular. In the ministries, most of the staff is made up of civil servants who are employed for life. They are subject to a special public-​law service, loyalty and welfare relationship that requires them to be non-​partisan in their work and particularly law-​abiding and obedient to their employer. For example, they are forbidden from going on strike (Marschall, 2018, p. 169). For some time now, however, there has been a trend towards increasing party politicization among the personnel in the ministries. In recent decades, for example, the proportion of administrative staff in the ministries who are also members of an administering party has increased. Even if only a few of them are actually politically active, it can be readily observed that the higher one’s position in the hierarchy, the

156    Ray Hebestreit and Karl-Rudolf Korte Head of Ministry Minister

Office of the Minister

Office of Cabinet Affairs

(Civil servant) State Secretary

Central Service Department

(Civil servant) State Secretary

Parliamentary State Secretary

Department I

Parliamentary State Secretary

Department II Subdivision A

Unit A 1 Organization Unit A 2 Staff Unit A 3 Finances Unit A 4 Legal counsel Unit A 5 Communication Unit A 6 ........

Press Office

Department III

Subdivision B

Unit 10

Unit 30 Unit II A 1

Unit II B 1

Unit II A 2

Unit II B 2

Unit II A 3

Unit II B 3

Unit II A 4

Unit II B 4

Unit II A 5

Unit II B 5

Unit 11

Unit 31

Unit 32

Unit 12

Unit 13

Unit 33

Unit 14

Unit 15

Figure based on Marschall, 2018, p. 169.

Figure 9.1  Basic structure of a Federal Ministry

more important party allegiance becomes. Proximity to politics and parties therefore increases the career chances as a ministry employee. Personnel in management positions (State Secretaries, department heads) often have the same party membership as the minister themself. These top positions of so-​called ‘political civil servants’ have a special relationship of trust with the respective minister and are therefore regularly assigned by them according to political criteria. They can be dismissed at any time without justification if they do not follow the political guidelines of the minister, as it is considered necessary that they follow the programme and objectives of the government and the respective ministers, and implement them. As such, it is possible for the respective ministers to lead the ministries as they see fit. This special link between ‘political civil servants’ and a particular minister or party typically means that when there is a change of government or a change at the top of the ministry, these management

THE EXECUTIVE   157 positions are often filled as well (Rudzio, 2015, pp. 281ff., 398; Schnapp and Willner, 2013, p. 251). Finally, although the German government and the Bundestag have been based in Berlin since 1999, not all ministries have moved from the former capital Bonn to the new political centre of Germany. Instead, all federal ministries have locations both in Berlin and in Bonn, which, however, requires additional travel and coordination within individual ministries and between them. However, most federal ministries now have their headquarters in Berlin.

Outlook As in most Western and Central European countries, support for centrist parties has been eroding in Germany since the turn of the millennium. This erosion is evident not only in the loss of dues-​paying members of the centrist parties. The fact that fewer citizens vote for the traditional popular parties has become increasingly more important in relation to the mechanics of forming a coalition government. This has created an opening for smaller and newer parties, one of which, the Alternative für Deutschland8 (AfD), was able to establish itself in the Bundestag during the 2017 election. Thus, German politics is becoming more colourful and adapting to European trends (see Korte, 2019b; Korte et al., 2018; Bieber et al., 2017). The entry of the AfD meant that for the first time seven parties were represented in the German Bundestag between 2017 and 2021. This had serious consequences for the formation of the government after the 2017 election. First, it takes much more time to build a government when several partners are part of the coalition talks. Additionally, the current structure of political camps in Germany is losing its orientation. There are two parties at the edges of the party spectrum represented in the Bundestag—​the AfD on the right and Die Linke on the left. This fact is particularly important since none of the other represented parties are willing to form a coalition with either of these two parties. In turn, this situation severely limits the options and possibilities to form a government. Following the 2017 election, the initial attempts to form a ‘Jamaica coalition’ consisting of the CDU/​CSU, FDP, and Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen were unsuccessful despite several weeks of exploratory talks. Since this type of coalition had never existed before at the federal level, the participants in the exploratory talks lacked experience and trust in each other. Exploratory coalition talks between the Volksparteien of the CDU, CSU, and SPD ensued after the Jamaica talks had failed. Eventually, almost six months after the federal election, these negotiations led to the formation of a grand coalition—​the third grand coalition since 2005—​which could finally be sworn in on 14 March 2018.

8 

Alternative for Germany.

158    Ray Hebestreit and Karl-Rudolf Korte The federal election in September 2021 and the subsequent formation of a new government took place under special circumstances (Korte, 2021b). First, the campaign and the election were dominated by the fight against and the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic (see Florack et al., 2021). Second, for the first time in the history of the FRG, an incumbent Chancellor did not run for re-​election. The CDU/​ CSU were therefore unable to anticipate any form of an incumbent bonus to boost their election campaign (Korte, 2021c). Third, for the first time since Chancellor Merkel took office in 2005, coalition options without the CDU/​CSU were actually realistic again. The 2021 federal election again brought seven parties into the Bundestag. The strongest party was the SPD, closely followed by the CDU/​CSU. Mathematically, it would have been possible for both parties to form a coalition government under their leadership. Therefore, after the election, on the one hand, the SPD held exploratory talks with Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen and FDP. On the other hand, the CDU and CSU initiated exploratory talks—​as they did after the 2017 election—​also with Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen and FDP. Finally, Bündnis 90/​Die Grünen and FDP decided to enter into coalition talks with the SPD, which were successful. Thus, on December 8, 2021, Olaf Scholz (SPD) was elected Chancellor of the first red-​yellow-​green government in the Bundestag, following a proposal by the German Federal President. His government is also the first three-​party government alliance at the federal level in Germany. The options for forming government coalitions are therefore expanding, and German governments tend to become more colourful in the future.

Further Reading Florack, Martin, Korte, Karl-​Rudolf, and Julia Schwanholz (eds) (2021), Coronakratie—​ Demokratisches Regieren in Ausnahmezeiten (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus). Korte, Karl-​Rudolf and Manuel Fröhlich (2009), Politik und Regieren in Deutschland (3rd edn, Paderborn: Schöningh). Korte, Karl-​Rudolf and Florack, Martin (eds) (2022), Handbuch Regierungsforschung (2nd edn, Wiesbaden: Springer VS (in print)). Marschall, Stefan (2018), Das politische System Deutschlands (4th edn, ). Rudzio, Wolfgang (2015), Das politische System der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (9th edn, Wiesbaden: Springer VS).

Bibliography Bieber, Christoph, Blätte, Andreas, Karl-​ Rudolf Korte, and Niko Switek (eds) (2017), Regieren in der Einwanderungsgesellschaft. Impulse zur Integrationsdebatte aus Sicht der Regierungsforschung (Wiesbaden: Springer VS). Florack, Martin, Timo Grunden, and Karl-​Rudolf Korte (2015), ‘Regierungsorganisation und Kernexekutive. Thesen zu einer modernen Regierungsforschung’ Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 4, pp. 617–​34.

THE EXECUTIVE   159 Florack, Martin and Karl-​ Rudolf Korte (2022), ‘Über die Regierung: Gegenstände der Regierungsforschung und neue Konturen des Regierens’, in Karl-​Rudolf Korte and Martin Florack (eds), Handbuch Regierungsforschung (2nd edn, Wiesbaden: Springer VS (in print)). Florack, Martin, Karl-​ Rudolf Korte, and Julia Schwanholz (eds) (2021), Coronakratie—​ Demokratisches Regieren in Ausnahmezeiten (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus). Grunden, Timo (2022), ‘Formales und informelles Regieren in rechtsstaatlichen Demokratien: Analysezugänge und Untersuchungsgegenstände’, in Karl-​Rudolf Korte and Martin Florack (eds), Handbuch Regierungsforschung (2nd edn, Wiesbaden: Springer VS (in print)). Grunden, Timo and Karl-​ Rudolf Korte (2013), ‘Über die Regierung. Gegenstände der Regierungsforschung und neue Konturen des Regierens’, in Karl-​Rudolf Korte and Timo Grunden (eds), Handbuch Regierungsforschung (Wiesbaden: Springer VS), pp. 11–​29. Hebestreit, Ray and Karl-​Rudolf Korte (2020), ‘Das Institutionengefüge des bundesdeutschen Regierungssystems’, in Andres Kost, Peter Massing, and Marion Reiser (eds), Handbuch Demokratie (Frankfurt a.M.: Wochenschau Verlag), pp. 157–​74. Helms, Ludger (2022), ‘Regierungsorganisation und Regierungsführung. Demokratische Regierungschefs im Kontext der politischen Exekutive’, in Karl-​Rudolf Korte and Martin Florack (eds), Handbuch Regierungsforschung (2nd edn, Wiesbaden: Springer VS (in print)). Korte, Karl-​Rudolf (2014), ‘Über das Politikmanagement einer modernen Opposition’, in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (APuZ) 38–​39, pp. 8–​15. Korte, Karl-​Rudolf (2016a), ‘Politikberatung von innen’, in Svenja Falk, Manuela Glaab, Andrea Römmele, Henrik Schober, and Martin Thunert (eds), Handbuch Politikberatung (Wiesbaden: Springer VS), pp. 129–​ 143. https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​978-​3-​658-​07461-​6_​11-​1 (20.01.2022). Korte, Karl Rudolf (2016b), ‘Das politische System der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’, in Hans-​ Joachim Lauth and Christian Wagner (eds), Politikwissenschaft. Eine Einführung (8th edn, Paderborn: Schöningh), pp. 63–​97. Korte, Karl Rudolf (2018), ‘Das politische System der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’, in Hans-​ Joachim Lauth and Christian Wagner (eds), Politikwissenschaft. Eine Einführung (9th edn, Paderborn: Schöningh), pp. 63–​103. Korte, Karl-​ Rudolf (2019a), Gesichter der Macht. Über die Gestaltungspotenziale der Bundespräsidenten (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus). Korte, Karl-​ Rudolf (2019b), Die Bundestagswahl 2017. Analysen der Wahl-​ , Parteien-​ , Kommunikations-​und Regierungsforschung (Wiesbaden: Springer VS). Korte, Karl-​Rudolf (2021a), Wahlen in Deutschland. Grundsätze, Verfahren und Analysen (10th edn, Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung). Korte, Karl-​Rudolf (2022), ‘Machtwechsel in der Kanzlerdemokratie: Aufstieg und Fall von Regierungen’, in Karl-​Rudolf Korte and Martin Florack (eds), Handbuch Regierungsforschung (2nd edn, Wiesbaden: Springer VS (in print)). Korte, Karl-​Rudolf (2021b), ‘Die Konturen des Nicht-​Wissens im Superwahljahr 2021: Wählen in Zeiten der Pandemie’ Zeitschrift für Politikwissenshaft ZPol 31(1), pp. 83–​90. https://​doi. org/​10.1007/​s41358-​021-​00253-​8 Korte, Karl-​Rudolf and Manuel Fröhlich (2009), Politik und Regieren in Deutschland (3rd edn, Paderborn: Schöningh). Korte, Karl-​Rudolf, Dennis Michels, Jan Schoofs, Niko Switek, and Kristina Weissenbach (2018), Parteiendemokratie in Bewegung. Organisations-​und Entscheidungsmuster der deutschen Parteien im Vergleich (Baden-​Baden: Nomos).

160    Ray Hebestreit and Karl-Rudolf Korte Korte, Karl-​ Rudolf and Niko Switek (2013), ‘Regierungsbilanz. Politikwechsel und Krisenentscheidungen’ Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (APuZ) 48–​9, pp. 3–​9. Marschall, Stefan (2018), Das politische System Deutschlands (4th edn, Konstanz). Rüb, Friedbert (2009), ‘Über das Organisieren der Regierungsorganisation und über Regierungsstile. Eine praxeologische Perspektive’ Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 38(1), pp. 43–​60. Rudzio, Wolfgang (2015), Das politische System der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (9th edn, Wiesbaden: Springer VS). Schnapp, Kai-​Uwe and Roland Willner (2013), ‘Regierung und Bürokratie. Zum Einfluss der Ministerialbürokratie auf das Regierungshandeln’, in Karl-​Rudolf Korte and Timo Grunden (eds), Handbuch Regierungsforschung (Wiesbaden: Springer VS), pp. 247–​56. Switek, Niko (2022), ‘Koalitionsregierungen. Kooperation unter Konkurrenten’, in Karl-​Rudolf Korte and Martin Florack (eds), Handbuch Regierungsforschung (2nd edn, Wiesbaden: Springer VS (in print)).

CHAPTER 10

THE GERM AN BU N DE STAG Core Institution in a Parliamentary Democracy Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer and Sven T. Siefken

The German Bundestag is the only political institution at the federal level that is directly elected. This is an important feature but it is not the only reason why Parliament stands in the centre of the constitutional design of the German political system. In order to grasp this status adequately and use it as the backdrop to rational judgements on German politics it is necessary to understand some basic characteristics of this parliamentary (party) democracy: the configuration of powers in the ‘new dualism’, Parliaments’ role for legitimization, the electoral system of personalized proportional representation and the parliamentary functions.

Separation of Powers and the ‘New Dualism’ Separation of powers in a parliamentary system of government does not run along the lines of what seems to be an indestructible ‘conventional wisdom’. It is not the ‘classic’ trichotomy of the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branch, let alone the notion of a strict separation between them (which has often been the misinterpretation of Neustadt’s famous phrase of ‘separated institutions sharing powers’, Neustadt, 1960, p. 42). In fact, the historical development of democratic government in Europe since the late eighteenth century brought about parliaments that became more and more representative of certain groups and forces in society and had to guarantee political leadership. As early as 1867, Walter Bagehot, British journalist and keen observer of politics in his country, described the elective function as the most important task of the House of Commons. To recruit a group of men who were able to steer the political decisions, support her Majesty’s government (i.e. render the necessary parliamentary majority),

162    Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer and Sven T. Siefken and make sure that this government conducts politics successfully—​that was the first and foremost responsibility of Parliament in Bagehot’s eyes. Unmistakably clearly did he describe the government as the most important committee of the House (Bagehot, 1993 [1867], p. 240). This turned out to be the line of political development in many European countries in the following decades: parliaments starting as elite bodies of representatives from selected parts of society. In the course of democratic enfranchisement participation was widened and became increasingly organized through political parties. These parties as representatives of the people would be in charge of building a majority and delegating executive powers to those who could best accomplish the political goals of this majority, run the country successfully, and thereby also secure the status of the majority in the next election. This created a special relationship between parliament and the government, or more precisely: between the parliamentary majority and ‘its’ Cabinet. On the other side stands the opposition—​the parliamentary minority—​which is equally important for the set-​up of this kind of system, as it guarantees the alternative in persons and policies for the voters and ensures public oversight and accountability of the governmental majority. The key logic of parliamentarism thus described, it becomes clear that the line of separation of powers does not neatly separate the legislative and executive branches of government, with each independently legitimized through democratic elections. That is the case in presidential systems such as the US. Instead, in parliamentarism we observe a ‘new dualism’ where this line and the corresponding power check is found between a parliamentary government plus its cabinet on one side and the parliamentary opposition on the other. This split guides much of the behaviour of members of parliament (MPs) and parliamentary parties in countries where a parliamentary system of government is established. And it is at the core of understanding the way the German Bundestag works.

Functions of Parliament and Legitimization A plethora of catalogues on parliamentary functions exist. They differ in detail and with regard to the labels that their authors give to the various tasks ascribed to the institution. All catalogues aim at capturing the functions parliaments fulfil in a political system as accurately as possible. It must be kept in mind that they shall serve as an analytical tool for studying parliaments comprehensively and not as a normative benchmark in the sense of postulating that only an institution that carries out all these functions consistently and constantly is a real parliament. Hence, it seems plausible to identify the elective, legislative, and control functions as those which are more formally prescribed in the constitution, in laws and statutes.

THE GERMAN BUNDESTAG   163 Others are less formalized and regulated but nevertheless remain essential tasks of parliaments: articulating the interests of the people, making democratic accountability possible through public visibility of the political process, and explaining alternatives to decisions taken. In short, parliaments (should) serve as the communicative link between citizens and the state. All these functions are components of representation. And this entire process is geared towards the ultimate end: democratic legitimacy. Legitimacy is produced in different ways. In a formal channel it follows delegation along the ‘unbroken chains of legitimization’, as prescribed by the German Constitutional Court. On the federal level in Germany this means: Members of the Bundestag are elected by the people. Parliament in turn elects the Chancellor, who organizes the Cabinet and chooses its ministers. The ministers and the Chancellor together form the government as a collegial body where no decisions can be made unilaterally, not even by the Chancellor. • At the same time, the ministers are heading a strictly hierarchical organization with clear reporting and subordination lines that reach down to every administrative act.

• • • •

In that way, every decision of public administration can be traced back along the chain to the will of the people. Parliament, being the only directly elected actor, plays a key role in it. The realities of this arrangement are a bit more complicated, of course, as the power of chancellors—​and indeed their continuance in office—​depends on the parliamentary majority. This means that they are bound by the consent of their own parliamentary party and that of the coalition partner(s), as Germany has been governed by formal party coalitions (see section ‘Electing the Chancellor’). Moreover, in the federal system of Germany most of the policy implementation happens at the subnational state level (‘Landesebene’) and through local authorities within (see Chapters 9 by Hebestreit and Korte, and 11 by Benz in this volume). All of this must be taken into account for a more complex picture of direct and indirect chains of legitimization in modern multi-​ level governance—​and to make things more complicated, the supranational level of the European Union would have to be included as well. In order to provide legitimacy, these institutional arrangements need to be filled with content. Investigating (1) input, (2) throughput, and (3) output helps to structure the analysis (Scharpf, 1975). Making sure that the general wishes and goals of the people, as well as their concrete demands, are heard and acted upon is described as the input perspective (Easton, 1965). ‘Throughput’ relates to the political process itself, how it is made transparent, how stakeholders are involved, and how the broader public is informed about it (Schmidt, 2013). The output perspective looks at the results of political decisions and their consequences after they have been implemented. For the latter, public perception is also important, thus bringing the complicated dynamics of public opinion into play. This rough sketch of the complex process of representation illustrates which tasks have to be mastered in order to achieve legitimacy. And the parliamentary functions identified above show that in democratic systems parliaments are the key actors in this

164    Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer and Sven T. Siefken process of producing political results for society in a way that creates sufficient satisfaction and trust to keep it together. Taking it all at face value, the Bundestag seems largely to have succeeded in this. We are witnessing the longest lasting democratic parliament on German soil, and today, it is well established beyond doubt. This judgement needs further inspection, not least because more than seventy years after its inauguration in the Federal Republic of Germany, a number of misperceptions of the organizational and functional features of the Bundestag have occurred and have been repeatedly updated. The Bundestag is often seen as easily sidelined, readily reduced to a rubber-​stamping institution or even—​again most recently with regard to the Covid-​19 crisis—​criticized as having ‘rushed to subordinate itself to the government and degrade itself to a secondary institution in relation to the executive’ (Merkel, 2020, p. 3). This judgement was cleary based on misconception (Siefken, 2022b). Taking a closer look at the steps along the chain of legitimization and the Bundestag’s role in it can bring about a better understanding of Germany’s political system that takes into account the logic of its ‘new dualism’ described above.

Not Two Types of MPs: The Electoral System of Personalized Proportional Representation Electing parliament is the first step in the above-​mentioned chain of legitimization. Germany has a specific system of personalized proportional representation (‘personalisiertes Verhältniswahlrecht’), where every ballot allows for two votes. The first vote is for the MP representing the electoral district with a direct mandate. Whichever candidate receives the most votes in each of the 299 electoral districts wins—​thus, securing a mere relative majority of votes is sufficient to win the seat. The second vote is for the state party list. However, this vote is by no means ‘secondary’—​as its overarching goal is to secure proportionality of the public’s political preferences within the Bundestag. Hence, the second vote is in fact the more important one. Not every citizen understands this, because mathematical operations have to be made in multiple steps: the votes on the state level are calculated for the federal level, different degrees of voter turnout and all directly elected MPs with resulting surplus mandates and compensations are factored in. This ensures that in the end, proportionality according to the second vote is achieved for all parties that have reached at least 5 percent of the national vote. Thus, if a party has 20 percent of the votes on the national level, it also receives 20 percent of the seats in Parliament—​and this share includes the MPs from that party who have won a direct mandate.

THE GERMAN BUNDESTAG   165 Over the decades, split ticket voting has increased. It reached an all-​time high in 2017 when over 27 percent of voters gave their first vote to the candidate from a different party than their second vote (in 2021 it went down to 24,9 percent). This has led to an unequal number of votes needed for one seat. Following an order by the Constitutional Court in 2013, the Bundestag introduced compensation mandates to fully secure proportionality. A side effect was a strong increase in the Bundestag’s size that is set at 598 by law: 299 direct mandates, 299 list mandates. In reality, however, it has grown to be one of the largest parliaments in the world: In its nineteenth electoral period (2017-​2021), the Bundestag had 709 members, after the 2021 election it came up to 736 MPs, making it the largest first chamber of a democratic parliament in the world. Although no optimal size of a Parliament can be calculated and prescribed, it is now the common understanding among all parties in Germany that the size of parliament should be reduced. But how exactly this can be achieved is still unclear at the time of writing. Multiple reform attempts have failed; an expert commission, installed in April 2021 (and reinstated in March 2022), was tasked with finding a solution, and the coalition treaty of December 2021 stresses the plan to reduce the Bundestag size. However, minor adjustments are much more likely than a complete overhaul of the electoral system. Personalized proportional representation is very likely to stay in Germany because it is established and well-​received by public opinion, and through its incentives it does indeed combine ‘the best of both worlds’ of electoral systems (Shugart and Wattenberg, 2001): proportional representation and majority voting. The electoral districts are important not only for voting. While just 299 MPs are elected in the districts, most others are also clearly connected and rooted there. It has indeed become a common requirement in all parties, that to be positioned high on the party list one needs to be nominated as a district candidate, too. This is also true for parties that only have a very limited chance of success in the districts. But running for a direct mandate, even when chances are slim, signals serious ambition and a strong local base. Of the 736 members of the twentieth Bundestag, 721 had been candidates at the district level. Among the remaining twenty-​three are some prominent MPs with leadership functions in parliament or the executive. But even the Chancellor, parliamentary party group leaders, and ministers consider it necessary to run in a district and do not rely solely on a top position on their respective party list. The consequence is that one district may in fact be represented by several MPs. Thus it is not surprising that our research on representative behaviour of members of the Bundestag shows that contrary to claims in comparative studies, there are no systematic behavioural differences following from the mandate type of an MP—​directly elected or via the party list (Siefken, 2017, p. 480). Thus whilst the term of a ‘mixed member electoral system’ (Shugart and Wattenberg, 2001) is useful for comparative studies, it is misleading for the single-​case description of Germany. But it is certainly true that its ‘invention’ was the result of political compromise rather than grand design (Scarrow, 2001, p. 67).

166    Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer and Sven T. Siefken

Not an Aloof Political Elite: MPs’ Engagement on the Ground All in all, the district work of MPs of the Bundestag is often overlooked but of crucial importance for representation. It is here, ‘back home’, that MPs have the chance to make direct contact with citizens, local officials, enterprises, and civil society organizations. This network on the ground is closely linked to the local party, but while parties play an important role in district work, they do not dominate it. Thus, district work in Germany has the potential, at least, to serve as a tool for real parliamentary outreach, for picking up the climate of public opinion—​but also for exercising communicative leadership and explaining the political process and its results. The extensive study of MPs and their district work quoted above (Gabriel, Kerrouche, and Schüttemeyer, 2018) found that they were very accessible to a wide range of groups there. Regardless of their status in Berlin, MPs placed a strong focus on gathering information in their districts. In their communication, they often cut across formal borders and covered not just federal policy, thereby serving as ‘multilevel representatives’ (Siefken and Costa, 2018, p. 111) of the political system. Many MPs coordinated their work with local politicians and office holders, and with members of the Landtage or the European Parliament. It has also become evident that within their district, members of the Bundestag usually deal with all kinds of topics, not just those of their specialization in parliament. The distinction of ‘Berlin style’ vs. ‘district style’ certainly applies in Germany, too, as it does in the US where Richard F. Fenno coined the terms, ‘home style’ and ‘hill style’ (Fenno, 1978). MPs in Germany also deliver ‘service responsiveness’ through case work—​individual help to citizens with administrative or other matters. But this takes up much less effort and time than in countries such as the UK or the US and France, where the share of these kinds of activities is much more sizeable measured in hours spent on it or dedicated staff resources (Norris, 1997). District work provides one—​but not the only—​way of checking the ‘national mood’, gathering input from citizens, local companies, administrative agencies, and civil society organizations. Therefore, it can be an essential source for processes of democratic representation through communication. The particular incentives of the German electoral system—​including the candidate nomination practices—​make sure that this communicative connection is not neglected by MPs. An entirely different question is, however, whether they can manage to compete with other sources of information and entertainment there. So on the ‘supply side’ German MPs put a strong focus on communicating in the district. But it is less clear that on the ‘demand side’ citizens place an equally strong focus on communicating with their MPs. This is an eternal challenge—​not just in Germany but in most modern democracies. Ongoing individualization and social mobilization as well as alternative ways for political participation and—​of course—​entertainment make this even more difficult than in the ‘good old days’ (if they ever existed).

THE GERMAN BUNDESTAG   167

Electing the Chancellor: The Core Function of the Bundestag In a parliamentary democracy, the parliament is not only elected but also does the electing. This is the next step along the chain of legitimization, and the creation of an effective and stable government depends on it, indeed whether a government is created at all. This responsibility of parliament and its parties cannot be emphasized enough, especially in comparison to presidential systems of government. According to the German constitution, an absolute majority of the members of the Bundestag is needed to elect the Chancellor. The electoral system of proportional representation has always made coalition governments necessary (except for a short period in the 1950s, when one was formed anyway). In recent decades, the party system of Germany has been transformed from considerable stability in the 1960s and 1970s to higher pluralization and fluidity in the 2000s (see Chapters 13 and 14, by Patton and Pautz, respectively in this volume). Majorities have become tighter and only a grand coalition or three-​party coalitions –​as after the 2021 election –​could bring together enough votes in parliament to form a government. Of course, electing the Chancellor is not a spontaneous act. Its prerequisites are successful coalition negotiations, which have become increasingly formalized over the years (Siefken forthcoming). Once the votes are cast and counted, the involved parties that can reach the required majority together hold preliminary talks (‘Sondierungsgespräche’). This can lead to formal negotiations which will then be concluded by a coalition treaty (‘Koalitionsvertrag’). After the Bundestag election in 2017 it took the longest time ever in German history: the new government was sworn in 171 days after the election of parliament. In 2021, formalization was not much lower –​ but the talks were conducted more efficiently and the new Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was elected 73 days after Parliament. While in the old days of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the resulting agreement was a mere eight pages long and not made public, the Koalitionsvertrag has grown to well over 100 pages since 2005 and reached record numbers of over 170 pages in 2018 and 2021. The ways in which those contracts were negotiated shows that parliamentarism at the federal level in Germany comprises the complete multi-​level political system. The main negotiating group in 2018 had ninety-​one members from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD): forty-​seven of them were members of the Bundestag, thirty-​three members of the Landtage, and four members of the European Parliament. Twenty-​ eight members of the main negotiating group held executive office in the Länder and at the federal level—​and thirteen were heads of government. But on top of this, these negotiations among the ninety-​one were prepared by eighteen policy-​specific working groups (Siefken, 2018b, p. 422). Likewise, in 2021, roughly 300 politicians from the different levels of the political system participated in the negotiations and 22 working

168    Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer and Sven T. Siefken groups were set up (Siefken, 2022c, p. 182). In other words, policy-​making in Germany takes into account the multi-​level political system from the outset. Needless to say, the coalition treaty is not a legally binding document—​it sets the agenda for the upcoming electoral period of the Bundestag. External events and changing circumstances are usually much more formative than this plan for actual government action. Most major policy changes in the last few decades were in fact not stipulated in the respective coalition contracts but were rather the results of political expedience and leadership in particular situations. This is as true for the labour market reform in 2002, for putting the military draft ‘on hold’, or for phasing out nuclear energy after the Fukushima catastrophe—​as it is for major unforeseen reactions to terror attacks, refugee crises, migration, the financial crises, the Covid-​19 pandemic and the war on Ukraine. It is thus well worth debating whether the very detail-​oriented coalition treaties that have developed over the last years are truly adequate for modern-​day governance. They certainly create a coalition—​but can they also hold it together? Included in the treaty is the portfolio allocation of the Cabinet among the coalition partners. So, while it is constitutionally up to the Chancellor alone to decide who gets which ministry, it is in fact clearly determined ahead and decided by the respective parties in parliament. Their leaders, in turn, are not independent in these decisions but must accomplish acts of representation by taking into account the whole spectrum of their respective party—​with regard to persons as well as to policy preferences. All in all, the “contractualization of coalitions” in Germany brings about remarkable stability. Most governments so far have seen the regular end of their term. An early dissolution of Parliament—​which is possible only when Chancellor, Parliament, and the Federal President agree—​is an exception that has only occurred three times in over seventy years. Stability and compromise, in other words, are deeply embedded in public expectations, enforced by the institutions and achieved by political actors in Germany. One way to secure this is by significant informal coordination and preparation of the decisions and actions that are formally made later on in the process. This is not an exception but a requirement of efficient governance—​and parliamentary actors are involved throughout the process. While electing the Chancellor is an important next step of delegation along the chain of legitimization, Parliament’s option to remove the incumbent by a vote of no confidence has an even stronger effect on government stability and party cohesion. In the case of Germany, the short duration of Cabinets during the Weimar Republic made the founders of the constitution design the ‘constructive’ vote of no confidence: The Bundestag cannot simply remove a Chancellor but has to elect a new officeholder in order to get rid of the old one. This instrument has been used even less often than the dissolution of parliament described above. Two attempts have been made to date. In 1972 the CDU had no success against Willy Brandt, SPD. But in 1982 Helmut Schmidt, SPD, was replaced by Helmut Kohl, CDU, when the FDP changed coalition in the middle of an electoral term. This tool is strong, even when it is not used, because it makes clear that the ultimate power in the political system of Germany rests with Parliament. And this fact is well understood and anticipated by all political actors—​so it is keeping the government accountable to

THE GERMAN BUNDESTAG   169 parliament, or more precisely, to the parliamentary parties that carry the incumbent government. The price the government has to pay if it detaches itself from its parliamentary base is its own political end. So contrary to a common critique: Executive dominance over parliament is not an aberration but the systemic intention of parliamentary government. The Chancellor and the Cabinet are put in place by the parliamentary majority to lead the political business—​carefully watched by this majority and only followed as long as it is successful.

Giving Laws: The Key Everyday Function of Parliament The electoral function of the Bundestag, as described above, is only exercised rarely. But the resulting logic and incentives structure how parliament exercises its everyday functions. That is precisely why Walter Bagehot considered the electoral function to be the House of Commons’ most important role (Bagehot, 1993 [1867], p. 99). The same is true for the Bundestag today, which is why we do not classify it as a ‘legislature’ but as a parliament—​but those two terms seem to be eternal puzzles in comparative political science. Undoubtedly, in daily business, legislation and oversight are the prevalent activities. Thus, the Bundestag is often simply referred to as ‘der Gesetzgeber’, the legislator (Beyme, 1998). On average, 180 draft bills are submitted to the Bundestag every year. The clear majority of these—​58%—​are formally initiated by the government (see Figure 10.1). Among tho those bills that eventually become laws, the share of governmental origin is around 80 percent. This is nothing exceptional and follows from the logic of new dualism described above. The executive ministries with their highly qualified staff and resources are simply in the right position to prepare laws. In fact, this activity is one of the core ministerial tasks. The fact that the first version of a bill is prepared in the executive does not mean that it passes through Parliament unchecked and unchanged. A famous phrase in Berlin is ‘Struck’s Law’, attributed to Peter Struck, the former head of the SPD parliamentary party group: ‘No bill ever leaves the Bundestag as it entered’.1 Such changes occur during the important committee phase of legislation. As in almost all parliaments across the world, the Bundestag has established a differentiated committee system (Siefken, 2022a). It mirrors the portfolios of the ministries quite precisely. For each ministry, there are one or more committees in Parliament. In the twentieth electoral period (since 2021), twenty-​five committees were installed. This occurred only after the completed coalition negotiations when the ministerial structure was clear. After formal initiative in the House, draft bills are sent to the 1  In his memoirs (Struck, 2010, p. 46), writes that this sentence was not coined by him, but he did agree with it.

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Figure 10.1  Bills in the Bundestag 1949–​2021 (per electoral period) Data from the Bundestag data handbook and updated statistics for the time from 1949 to 2017, detailed sources reported in Siefken (2018a, 119), and data for the nineteenth electoral period from Bundestag (2021a)

committees. Only in rare cases of special importance does a plenary debate ever happen before the committee phase. In the committees, the bills are inspected, reviewed, scrutinized, amended—​ and finally, the committee decides on a recommended committee version of the bill and reports it back to the plenary for debate and final decision. Formally, the Bundestag committees have no delegated powers in legislation, they serve only in a preparatory role. However, what happens in them is not spontaneous deliberation among their members. Proceedings and positions are all well-​prepared within and among the parliamentary party groups, particularly those of the coalition. This preparation is aided by the expertise of the executive. But members of opposition parties, too, can exercise constructive influence if they wish. However, in the end, committees make decisions according to the majority in parliament, because this is, after all, the democratic mandate from the voters. In order to mirror this, committees are proportionally composed according to the share of each party’s seats in the whole House. Hence, the behavioural logic of the new dualism extends into committee work, too. Thus—​even though they take place behind closed doors—​proceedings are rather predictable and often have the character of a testing ground and rehearsal space for the plenary debates that occur later (Oertzen, 2006). MPs in committees are highly specialized policy experts. At the beginning of each electoral period, they can name the committees they wish to sit on, but it is a task for the leadership of each parliamentary party group to decide who gets to serve where. Policy expertise, seniority, balance between genders, regions, and party wings, as well as MP district characteristics play a role in this decision. Once assigned, the MPs usually stay in the committee for the entire electoral period—​and most of them serve on one or two committees only. There are no backbenchers in the Bundestag, every MP is an expert for some policy topic. This gives them ample room for specialization, and the differentiation reaches further into the committees: Rapporteurs are assigned, often from all parties, to deal with an individual piece of legislation. So, it is usually not the entire committee but a small group of MPs from different parties that do the actual work on a

THE GERMAN BUNDESTAG   171 bill. This high degree of specialization and the focus on committee work is typical for a ‘working parliament’, as Winfried Steffani has famously put it: ‘Not the grand orator, but the knowledgeable expert for details . . . is the most important parliamentary figure there’ (Steffani, 1979, p. 96). And influence of these policy experts in parliament reaches out of the committees, too. When looking at the entire process, these MPs exercise influence in the early, pre-​parliamentary phases of ministerial bill-​drafting, too. They also serve as the all-​important specialists for their own parliamentary party group, creating an indispensable system of mutual interdependence and trust, which is the precondition for division of labour. Moreover, they are active in the relevant policy networks of their specialization, keeping contact with think tanks, academics, interest groups, and affected communities. So real influence often happens by ‘rapporteur governance’ and the Bundestag committees are not the ‘paradise of policy-​making’ as which they are often portrayed even in official Bundestag statements (Siefken, 2022a). Nevertheless, in light of the role that the ministerial bureaucracy and the Cabinet plays, the Bundestag, its parliamentary parties, and its deputies are better described as actors of law-​giving rather than of law-​making. They accompany the process and have developed considerable policy expertise and internal working structures so that they cannot be passed over by the executive’s specialists. Their crucial influence, however, originates from their ‘power of the last word’, i.e. nothing will become valid law which has not been given the final formal legitimizing consent of parliament.

Often Overlooked: The Oversight Function of the Bundestag The classic perspective in Germany is that of ‘legislative programming’. Accordingly, laws are the ‘software’ and determine how public administration as ‘hardware’ implements policy in a machine-​like fashion. This view, going back to Max Weber’s classic writings, is outdated. Today, it is clear that passing a law is certainly not the final act to resolve problems. Precisely this should be checked, evaluated, and possibly readjusted. Oversight and scrutiny are important activities of the Bundestag that have functionally served that purpose for many years. In fact, in the European non-​revolutionary context of parliamentarization, the oversight function historically precedes the legislative function. The Bundestag has numerous instruments for checking governmental and executive activities at its disposal. Some of them can accompany executive action, others may be employed after the fact. The accompanying instruments are used frequently, and their numbers continue to break records. Four different question tools are available in Germany, the most important among them in recent years being small interpellations. In fact, these are by no means ‘small’ and can comprise a battery of detailed questions

172    Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer and Sven T. Siefken to the government dealing with one overarching topic. Small interpellations need to be posed by a parliamentary party group (or 5 percent of the Bundestag members). The entire process is conducted in writing; both questions and answers become part of the official and public record and are readily accessible through the Bundestag website. Small interpellations have grown since the tenth electoral period (1983–​87), when the Green party entered Parliament. In the nineteenth electoral period (2017–​21), another record was set with 11,677 small interpellations posed to the government—​leading (once again) to worries that this might overwhelm the executive branch. But answering to Parliament is in fact another core function of the ministries. And it is obvious that the opposition has more need for information than the parliamentary parties of the majority which have direct access to the executive and hence, other—​informal—​channels at their disposal. The Constitutional Court of Germany has upheld, stressed, and repeatedly strengthened the question rights of the Bundestag in recent decisions. So even if not everybody likes it, small interpellations are here to stay—​and that is because they are effective not just for gathering information from the executive, but also for making it public. Thus, they always serve communicative and signalling purposes, too. This can be clearly seen by party-​specific topical interests: While in opposition, the Green parliamentary party asks most questions about the environment, the liberal FDP about economic policy, the Right-​wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) about migration and the Left on domestic affairs. And as the Bundestag in its nineteenth electoral period had four strong and active opposition parties, two more than in the previous period, the number of small interpellations has well-​nigh exploded (see Figure 10.2). There are other question instruments. The grand interpellation is similar to the small one, but it can lead to a plenary debate. In recent years, it has not been used very frequently. While interpellations can only be submitted by the parliamentary parties, the oral and written questions are a tool for individual MPs. It is clear that the use of all these 12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0

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THE GERMAN BUNDESTAG   173 question instruments is not just for gathering information but also for parliamentary communication. In fact, they have turned into a domain that is almost exclusively used by the opposition parties. Committees of investigation are a strong and very visible instrument of parliamentary scrutiny, sometimes referred to as parliament’s ‘sharpest weapon’ (Thaysen, 1988, p. 28). In German political practice, they are set up for ex post scrutiny of major scandals. The Bundestag has installed between one and five such committees in each electoral term. Recent investigating committees have dealt with the 2016 terror attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, the management of the automobile toll (‘Maut’), the handling and regulation of the banking industry (‘Wirecard’), and the use of external consultants by the Ministry of Defence. Investigating committees have the power to subpoena witnesses and a mandate to receive information and documents from the federal administration. They are very labour-​intensive for all actors involved, which is especially challenging for the smaller party groups. While such investigative committees, mandated by the constitution, can be set up by 25 percent of the MPs, that decision needs to be weighed carefully. An inflated use of these investigations may simply decrease their value, but also overwhelm Parliament. As with other oversight and scrutiny instruments, investigating committees have important anticipatory power. The threat to set up such a formal investigation may coerce government officials to be more forthcoming in other channels of exchange with MPs. Investigating committees, too, are mostly used by the opposition parties—​but decisions can only be made by the normal majority in parliament which is also translated in their composition. Thus, pure obstruction through investigating committees cannot succeed. Once more in contrast to widespread criticism: It is true that the most visible oversight tools are almost exclusively employed by the parliamentary parties of the opposition. This does not mean that parliamentary oversight is the job of the opposition only. In fact, the majority parties exercise significant influence in controlling government action, but this happens largely behind the scenes and in a less formal setting than the activities of the opposition. The situation can be described by the metaphor of an iceberg (Figure 10.3). Only some elements of parliamentary control are visible, but beneath the waterline rests a sizeable foundation keeping the visible parts afloat. Informal interaction at the rapporteur level is common—​groups are assembled, letters are written back and forth. While very effective, these channels of influence are not very well seen and understood—​which poses an important challenge for political scientists who try to study them. It is also not true that opposition parties are only active in the formal channels of oversight. Their MPs, too, are using the informal channels and are also involved in rapporteur dialogue. This involvement is not only a consequence of established protocols but also of the structure of the federal system where opposition parties at the federal level are often members of the majorities in the state parliaments—​and are therefore influential via the Bundesrat (see Chapter 11, by Benz in this volume). It is exactly the logic of ‘Germany—​the grand coalition state’ that is described here (Schmidt, 2008, p. 58). In the early response to the Covid-​19 crisis, this has become very visible (Siefken, 2022b).

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Figure 10.3  The iceberg model of parliamentary control by the Bundestag Based on Siefken (2018a, p. 421)

Regardless of the actual coalition format in the Bundestag, a very grand coalition has to be formed, spanning levels, institutions, and actors.

Conclusion: A Working Parliament Under Pressure If a single label is needed for the Bundestag, seventy years of parliamentary practice in Germany suggest the term ‘working parliament’. The corresponding internal organization of Parliament, the socialized parliamentary culture of its members, and the incentives of legislative behaviour all point in this direction. It may, indeed, be doubted whether the Bundestag has ever accomplished a balanced ‘mixture’ of a working and a debating parliament. In fact, the criticism has long been made that the Bundestag scores rather poorly when it comes to making politics public. Too much, so the criticism goes, happens behind closed doors—​the plenary debate has lost its classical function, the ‘grand orators’ (Steffani, 1979, p. 96) are lacking. One part of this allegation is based on an erroneous notion of parliamentary debates. The ideal of an assembly where hundreds of wise (usually) men came together to struggle for the best solution in an open discourse, trying to convince each other, and finding compromise for the common good has never truly existed. Needless to say, the detailed and complex questions which parliaments deal with

THE GERMAN BUNDESTAG   175 today and the demands of modern society make such processes of decision-​making impossible, if not undesirable. For parliamentary systems of government another reason must be added: In these systems the voters mandate and legitimize a majority to govern and exercise political leadership and they make others the minority. This minority—​ the democratic opposition—​is as vital as the majority because it exerts control and guarantees a choice for the electorate by presenting alternatives to the incumbent majority, in terms of individuals as well as in policies. Hence, the parliamentary debate has the function of explaining decisions of the majority and publicizing the rejected options of the opposition. At the same time, this act creates accountability—​for majority action as well as for opposition promises. Having clarified the role of the plenary debate in today’s parliamentary systems does not mean that the Bundestag has nothing to improve on this field. Too little of the internal organization of parliament is visible for the general public. The plenary debate—​to use the analogy of the iceberg once more—​is the tip of the mass of activities that committees, the working groups and assemblies of the parliamentary parties, and the Council of Elders carry out before issues reach the whole House. These working structures, however, almost always act behind closed doors. Meanwhile, the Bundestag has opened up the committee stage to a certain extent by quite frequently conducting public hearings on bills. New information technologies and social media could also assist in making more parts of Parliament public and enhancing the public’s understanding of its structures and procedures. The coalition treaty 2021 promises that a special focus will be on such efforts in the twentieth electoral period of the Bundestag (Siefken, 2022c, p. 187). But while they were vested with much hope for more democratic discourse, these practices have shown their downsides. Current challenges to parliamentarism, in particular growing distrust in the principle of democratic representation, must be thoroughly reflected before deciding which measures should be intensified to improve parliamentary communication with the public. Taking efficiency, transparency, and participation as the three key factors of a modern theory of democracy (Steffani, 1973) that have to be balanced among each other, threats come from each direction. Demands for more instruments of citizen participation, even for referenda that substitute parliamentary decision-​making, are widespread. Calling for more transparency is as prominent and sometimes seems to have become an end in itself without profoundly scrutinizing its implications. ‘Post-​parliamentary’ prescriptions thrive on these grounds. Efficiency is the issue of those who criticize the slow procedures and negotiations of parliamentary democracy, its orientation towards an idea of a common good, of consensus and compromise. Among these critiques, the Covid-​19 pandemic brought to light some barely concealed admiration for authoritarian states. Protagonists of post-​parliamentary or technocratic alternatives to parliaments and parliamentarism should consider this: The growing diversity of interests and the complexity of issues, at the level of the nation-​state, below it in the regions, and over its borders in international communities and organizations does not call for less but for more representation—​as long as it is responsive, willing to lead, and accountable. From

176    Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer and Sven T. Siefken this perspective there is no successful competitor in sight for the institutional design of a democratic parliament—​in Germany or elsewhere.

Further Reading There is currently no general textbook on the Bundestag available in English. Older overviews are: Thaysen, Uwe, Roger H. Davidson, and Robert G. Livingston (eds) (1990), The U.S. Congress and the German Bundestag: Comparisons of Democratic Processes (Boulder: Westview Press). Saalfeld, Thomas (1998), ‘The German Bundestag: Influence and Accountability in a Complex Environment’, in P. Norton (ed.), Parliaments and Governments in Western Europe. Parliaments in contemporary Western Europe (London: Frank Cass), pp. 44–​7 1. This title provides a richly illustrated overview of the history, functions, and architecture as well as the Reichstag building. Deutscher Bundestag (ed.) (2017), The German Parliament (Konstanz: UVK). Current handbooks on parliamentary studies are Benoît, Cyril and Rozenberg, Olivier (eds) (2020), Handbook of Parliamentary Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Legislatures (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing). Martin, Shane, Thomas Saalfeld, and Kaare W. Strøm (eds) (2014), The Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Research articles published in the special academic journals deal with very specific aspects of parliamentary activity. Those are the Journal of Legislative Studies, Parliamentary Affairs, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and German Politics. The International Journal of Parliamentary Studies has been recently founded. Published in German, the Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen (ZParl, German Journal of Parliamentary Affairs) has a special focus on parliaments and the Bundestag.

Bibliography Bagehot, Walter (1993 [1867]), The English Constitution (London: Fontana). Beyme, Klaus von (1998), The Legislator: German Parliament as a Centre of Political Decision-​ Making (Aldershot: Ashgate). Bundestag (2021a), Statistik der Gesetzgebung –​19. Wahlperiode: Stand: 3.1.2022 (Berlin: Deutscher Bundestag). Bundestag (2021b), Statistik der Parlamentarischen Kontrolltätigkeit. Überblick 19. Wahlperiode: Stand: 19.11.2021 (Berlin: Deutscher Bundestag). Easton, David (1965), A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley). Fenno, Richard F. (1978), Home Style: House Members in their Districts (Boston: Little Brown).

THE GERMAN BUNDESTAG   177 Gabriel, Oscar W., Eric Kerrouche, and Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer (eds) (2018), Political Representation in France and Germany. Attitudes and Activities of Citizens and MPs (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Merkel, Wolfgang (2020), ‘Who Governs in Deep Crises? The Case of Germany’, Democratic Theory 7(2), pp. 1–​11. Neustadt, Richard E. (1960), Presidential Power. The Politics of Leadership (New York: John Wiley and Sons). Norris, Pippa (1997), ‘The Puzzle of Constituency Service’, The Journal of Legislative Studies 3(2), pp. 29–​49. Oertzen, Jürgen von (2006), Das Expertenparlament. Abgeordnetenrollen in den Fachstrukturen bundesdeutscher Parlamente (Baden-​Baden: Nomos). Scarrow, Susan E. (2001), ‘Germany: The Mixed-​Member System as a Political Compromise’, in Matthew S. Shugart and Martin P. Wattenberg (eds), Mixed-​Member Electoral Systems. The Best of Both Worlds? (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 55–​69. Scharpf, Fritz W. (1975), Demokratietheorie zwischen Utopie und Anpassung (Kronberg: Sciptor Verlag). Schmidt, Manfred G. (2008), ‘Germany. The Grand Coalition State’, in Josep M. Colomer (ed.), Comparative European Politics (London: Routledge), pp. 58–​93. Schmidt, Vivien A. (2013), ‘Democracy and Legitimacy in the European Union Revisited: Input, Output and “Throughput”’, Political Studies 61(1), pp. 2–​22. Schüttemeyer, Suzanne S. (1998), Fraktionen im Deutschen Bundestag 1949–​1997. Empirische Befunde und theoretische Folgerungen (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag). Schüttemeyer, Suzanne S. (2001), Parliamentary Parties in the German Bundestag, German Issues No. 24 (Washington, DC: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies). Schüttemeyer, Suzanne S. (2002), ‘Die Bundestagsabgeordneten im Kräftefeld von Parlament, Fraktion, Partei und Wählern’, Politische Bildung 35(4), pp. 48–​61. Schüttemeyer, Suzanne S. (2009), ‘Deparliamentarisation: How Severely is the German Bundestag Affected?’ German Politics 18(1), pp. 1–​11. Schüttemeyer, Suzanne S. (2013), ‘Der ewige Zweite? Überlegungen zur Regierungsdominanz im Deutscheo Bundestag’, in Silke I. Keil and S. Isabell Thaidigsmann (eds), Zivile Bürgergesellschaft und Demokratie: Aktuelle Ergebnisse der empirischen Politikforschung (Wiesbaden: Springer), pp. 451–​68. Shugart, Matthew S. and Wattenberg, Martin P. (eds) (2001), Mixed-​Member Electoral Systems. The Best of Both Worlds? (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Siefken, Sven T. (2017), ‘At the Grassroots of Representation: District Work of MPs in Germany’, French Politics 14(4), pp. 469–​85. Siefken, Sven T. (2018a), Parlamentarische Kontrolle im Wandel: Theorie und Praxis des Deutschen Bundestages (Baden-​Baden: Nomos). Siefken, Sven T. (2018b) ‘Regierungsbildung “wider Willen”—​der mühsame Weg zur Koalition nach der Bundestagswahl 2017’, Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 49(2), pp. 407–​36. Siefken, Sven T. (2022a), ‘No Paradise of Policy-​ Making. The Role of Parliamentary Committees in the German Bundestag’, in Sven T. Siefken and Hilmar Rommetvedt (eds), Parliamentary Committees in the Policy Process (London: Routledge), pp. 116–​136. Siefken, Sven T. (2022b), ‘The Bundestag in the Pandemic Year 2020 to 2021 –​Continuity and Challenges in the Covid-​19 Crisis’, German Politics Online First, available from https://​doi. org/​10.1080/​09644008.2021.2024806

178    Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer and Sven T. Siefken Siefken, Sven T. (forthcoming), ‘The Reparliamentarization of Coalition Formation. Negotiating the Coalition Contract after the 2021 Bundestag Election’, German Politics and Society, 40(2) Siefken, Sven T. and Olivier Costa (2018), ‘Available, Accessible and Ready to Listen’, in Oscar W. Gabriel, Eric Kerrouche, and Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer (eds), Political Representation in France and Germany. Attitudes and Activities of Citizens and MPs (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 87–​115. Siefken, Sven T. and Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer (2013), ‘The German Bundestag and External Expertise: Policy-​Orientation as Counterweight to Deparliamentarisation?’ in Klaus Schubert and Sonja Blum (eds), Policy Analysis in Germany (Bristol: The Policy Press), pp. 161–​80. Steffani, Winfried (1973), ‘Parlamentarische Demokratie—​Zur Problematik von Effizienz, Transparenz und Partizipation’, in Winfried Steffani (ed.), Parlamentarismus ohne Transparenz (2nd edn, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag), pp. 17–​47. Steffani, Winfried (1979), ‘Strukturtypen präsidentieller und parlamentarischer Regierungssysteme’, in Winfried Steffani (ed.), Parlamentarische und präsidentielle Demokratie: Strukturelle Aspekte westlicher Demokratien (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag), pp. 37–​60. Struck, Peter (2010), So läuft das: Politik mit Ecken und Kanten (Berlin: Propyläen-​Verlag). Thaysen, Uwe (1988), ‘Die Wahrheiten der parlamentarischen Untersuchungsausschüsse’, in Uwe Thaysen and Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer (eds), Bedarf das Recht der parlamentarischen Untersuchungsausschüsse einer Reform? Beiträge und Materialien (Baden-​Baden: Nomos), pp. 11–​30.

CHAPTER 11

THE FEDERA L SYST E M AND THE L ÄN DE R Arthur Benz

The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) belongs to the group of states combining federalism with parliamentary democracy. Within this group, the German federal de­mocracy is unique in two respects: First, given the multi-​party system and proportional representation in parliament, coalition governments are the rule at the federal and Länder level. Second, the particular constitutional division and sharing of powers in the federal system compels the federal and Länder governments in important policy fields to negotiate joint decisions. In both intragovernmental and intergovernmental negotiations, actors represent parties, and party politics links these arenas, as do institutional rules of ‘council governance’ giving Länder governments a voice in federal legislation. Yet logics of negotiations differ. In coalition governments, rivalry with opposition parties strongly motivates partners to cooperate with each other. In contrast, federal-​Länder negotiations serve to form an issue-​specific majority or a consensus. Although affiliated to different parties, governments must also cope with territorial divides. Moreover, informal relations among executives and bureaucrats prepare intergovernmental negotiations, which reduces the immediate impact of party confrontation. The interaction of these particular negotiations systems, both linked to party competition, explains how the German federal system operates. The close interlinkage of the parliamentary and intergovernmental arenas constrains policy-​making and makes government vulnerable to deadlocks. However, as is proved by empirical research and explained by theories, not only have policy-​makers found ways to reach agreements, they have also adjusted patterns of governance to changing economic and societal conditions. The real challenge for the German federal system is to balance effectiveness and democratic legitimacy in governance and to maintain flexibility of a decentralized polity despite the pressure of policy harmonization and power centralization.

180   Arthur Benz

Perspectives on German Federalism The federal system of Germany can be studied from different analytical perspectives. For a long time, a legal perspective predominated which focused debates on normative issues like the problem of divided sovereignty, the allocation of powers, or the uniformity of the law in a decentralized polity. In political science, a historical approach emphasizing the path-​dependent evolution of institutions and patterns of interactions has proved instructive to understand the characteristic features of German federalism (Lehmbruch, 2002). In addition, actor-​centred institutionalism has guided research on the specific modes of joint decision-​making between federal and Länder executives and on the interplay between intergovernmental relations and party competition in the parliamentary system (Scharpf, 1988). A third political science approach focuses on the dynamics of a federal system. It explains how changes in society find expression in ideas, institutions, and party systems; how economic, social, or cultural diversity of regions modify political cleavages; and how institutional policies revising the allocation of power or intergovernmental relations respond to rescaling of problems and ongoing processes of authority migration between levels of government (Benz, 2020; Benz and Broschek, 2013). Based on these approaches, scholars elaborated different theories. However, there was never a real debate on theories of federalism in Germany because research focused on particular issues. Discussions in this field concerned normative or conceptual questions, and empirical research mostly aimed at testing specific hypotheses under changing conditions rather than refuting general theories. Different characterizations of German federalism revealed disputes about concepts. Some scholars arguing from a comparative perspective questioned whether the German government can be categorized as federal (Wheare, 1963, p. 26; Abromeit, 1992) or regarded federalism as obsolete. Others defended the vertical division of power in the German federation despite the unifying effects of social policy and federal-​Länder cooperation (Hesse, 1962). During the 1960s, intergovernmental cooperation came to be considered as a characteristic feature of a modern federation, although lawyers criticized the fact that the emerging practice lacked a constitutional foundation. Soon after a reform of the Basic Law in 1969 had legalized this practice, scholars pointed out the problematic effects of the German type of cooperative federalism. Seminal studies by Fritz W. Scharpf (Scharpf, Reissert, and Schnabel, 1976) and Gerhard Lehmbruch (1976, 2000) shaped the scientific discussion and influenced public debate. Political scientists put in context the constraining effects of the German federal system on policy-​making and institutional reforms, when they emphasized the adaptability and dynamics of cooperative federalism (Benz, 1985; Wachendorfer-​Schmidt, 2003), while in public, many blamed federal-​Länder cooperation as a cause of reform backlog. Assisted by economists, business representatives complained about inefficient policy-​making and called for a competitive federalism. Lawyers pleaded for disentangling competences of federal and Länder governments in

THE FEDERAL SYSTEM AND THE LÄNDER   181 order to clarify responsibilities. They found wide resonance for this appeal in politics. Political scientists supported suggestions to reform German federalism, after European integration had increased the complexity of multi-​level governance and after German unification had complicated intergovernmental negotiations. Yet they also doubted the feasibility of radical reform concepts and emphasized the need to manage interdependence in a federal system (Scharpf, 2009). Recent reforms of federalism stimulated research, which resulted in different evaluations and explanations of the outcome, as well as studies that analysed German federalism in comparative view (Benz, 2016). In comparative research emphasizing varieties of federalism, the German federal system nowadays attracts more attention than in the 1960s, when US federalism was the standard model. Scholars take it as a particular type of a federal system, as an intra-​state compared to an inter-​state federalism (Broschek, 2010) or a unique system of council governance (Hueglin, 2013, p. 41). Others are interested in the highly integrated party system, which they presume stabilizes federalism against centripetal or centrifugal trends (Filippov, Ordeshook and Shvetsova, 2004, pp. 241–​5). Finally, the concept of joint decision-​making and the joint-​decision trap has found its way into comparative federalism research either to categorize patterns of intergovernmental relations (e.g. Painter, 2001) or to characterize specific features of German and European multi-​level governance (Scharpf, 1988). The following sections focus is on these particularities of the German federal system, which will be outlined from the political science perspectives mentioned above.

Historical Legacies Like the US constitution, the Basic Law of the Federal Republic was ratified by parliaments of the constituent states, that is, the West German Länder. Therefore, the constitution not only created a federal system, its legitimacy also rooted in principles of federalism. Although practical reasons explain this procedure, it was justified by the fact that the idea of federalism played a strong role in German history and state theory. In this respect, the West German state was constituted from below, while the East German state was built from above. The Länder, as they exist today, were established after the Second World War. In 1945, the allied forces dissolved Prussia, restructured territories of most pre-​war Länder, or demarcated new ones. Moreover, they authorized the election of Land parliaments, which passed constitutions. In the South-​West, the three Länder Baden, Württemberg-​Baden, and Württemberg-​Hohenzollern, demarcated by the French and US authorities, united in 1952 to become the Land Baden-​Württemberg. The five Länder founded in the Soviet zone of occupation disappeared in 1952, when the East German government transformed them into administrative districts of a state designed according to the principle of  ‘democratic centralism’. In West Germany, the establishment of Länder governments revitalized the long tradition of federalism. During the early modern era, at a time when in Northern

182   Arthur Benz and Western Europe political power was increasingly concentrated in the central state, the German Empire evolved as a particular kind of a federation (Whaley, 2011). The Emperor had to share powers with the rulers of the Länder who controlled military power. In order to make law or to raise taxes, he needed the agreement of the Imperial Diet (Reichstag), the assembly of the estates, in which sovereigns of territories predominated. The Reformation, which in Germany started in 1517, demonstrated the effective power wielded by the rulers of the Länder, since many of them opposed the Emperor’s attempts to suppress the new protestant confession. In accordance with the compromise settled at the Augsburg meeting of the Reichstag in 1555, the rulers of the Länder determined the religious denomination of the subjects living in their territory. In consequence, the German Empire was divided along the religious cleavage and the Emperor’s power diminished further. Yet three processes prevented the disintegration of the Empire. One was the spread of the German language used in protestant services, in commerce, and in the emerging public administration. The second was the evolution of law driven by the jurisprudence of the Imperial Chamber Court (Reichskammergericht). Third, the governments of the Länder realized that they had to cooperate, either in order to defend their interests against the Emperor or to pool resources in armed conflicts. After the Thirty Years’ War, the Reichstag turned from an assembly of the estates into a council of representatives of Länder governments. This change reflected the decline of the power of the German Emperor and the simultaneous state building in the Länder. Since the early eighteenth century, the Länder governments transformed the ancient feudal structures into institutions of a modern state. They established a professional administration, they organized government as a Cabinet of ministers sharing powers with the monarch, they founded a standing army at least in the larger and medium-​ sized Länder, and they developed an independent judiciary. At the federal level, the institutional arrangement of ‘council governance’ solidified and continued to exist in form of the Federal Assembly of the German Confederation (1815–​66), the Bundesrat of the German Empire (1871–​1918), the Reichsrat of the Weimar Republic (1918–​33), and finally the Bundesrat of the Federal Republic (since 1949). In the late nineteenth century, centralization of powers was promoted by the prevailing ideology of nationalism, German unification under the hegemony of Prussia, political cleavages of an industrializing society, and the formation of political parties representing class interests rather than territorial communities. Nonetheless, the Länder governments constituted a countervailing power against the central state. Moreover, cultural heterogeneity of the German Länder legitimized decentralization and influenced politics at the federal level. Even in the era of the nation-​state, Germany remained a federation, which had to balance unity and diversity (Urwin, 1982). Unity found expression in the idea of a German nation, in the concept of the state as a coherent legal order, and in the practice of intergovernmental negotiations. Diversity persisted in the notion of ‘Landsmannschaften’, that is regional communities of people sharing a common identity, in a decentralized organization of public administration, and in a divergent economic development of the Länder.

THE FEDERAL SYSTEM AND THE LÄNDER   183 The durable effects of these historical legacies (Lehmbruch, 2002) explain why in 1949 the Basic Law re-​established and revived federalism after the fall of the centralist Nazi dictatorship. To be sure, the Western allied occupation powers would by no means have accepted a central state in Germany. They cooperated with the functioning administration that existed in the Länder, they initiated the formation of governments in the Länder, and finally commissioned the Länder premiers to draft a constitution for a democratic federation. Yet irrespective of the influence of the Western allies, most West German parties favoured federalism instead of centralism. A vast majority of the members of the Parliamentary Council who eventually drafted the Basic Law agreed on the federal principle, and by implementing this principle, they drew on experiences of the past rather than on the US model. They combined the parliamentary system with the old German type of a ‘cooperative federalism’, and divided powers in a way that reinforced the uniformity of the law and the welfare state while to a large extent maintaining decentralization of administrative functions. In East Germany, the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) broke with the tradition of federalism and copied the centralist state organization of the Soviet Union. Yet forty years of communist rule could not eradicate the idea of federalism. Immediately after the fall of the communist regime, the new government recreated the five Länder. Instead of a unification of the two German states, these Länder joined the Federal Republic in 1990. Although they emulated Western institutions and depended on federal support, which was provided for thirty years, the particular economic, social, and cultural conditions of the East increased diversity in the German federal system. Moreover, unification gave rise to a debate about the state of federalism and the need for a reform, which started after the turn of the century. European integration, in particular the series of Treaty amendments commencing with the Single European Act in 1986 raised the issue of compatibility of German federalism with European Union (EU) multi-​level governance. At the same time, the idea of a ‘Europe of the Regions’ underpinned calls for a decentralization of powers. Still, constitutional amendments passed during the last three decades cannot hide the fact that German federalism reveals more continuity than change (Benz and Sonnicksen, 2018). Apart from historical legacies and the path-​dependency of institutional change, the particular structures of the German federal democracy and the patterns of policy-​making and politics explain this evolution by flexible adjustments.

Institutions and Policy-​M aking Federal systems vary according to their institutional design, which can be characterized by three basic features: the territorial structure, the division of power, and the type of democracy. German federalism is exceptional in all three respects. The Länder territories dramatically changed during the course of history (Gunlicks, 2003, pp. 7–​53). After the Second World War, the division of Germany into four occupation zones, the

184   Arthur Benz separation of East and West Germany, and the accession of the Saarland in 1957 again transformed the territorial structure. The Western occupation authorities and members of the Parliamentary Council realized the potential negative effects of this reorganization occurring under the pressure of circumstances. Yet apart from the formation of the Land Baden-​Württemberg in 1952, no further territorial reorganization took place. The Basic Law had required such a reform before it was amended in 1976, and Article 29 still lays down rules for a territorial reorganization. The topic has surfaced from time to time in public discussions, but to no avail. The last serious attempt, a fusion of Berlin and Brandenburg, failed in 1995. Although most citizens do not express strong regional identity with their Land, a majority of them oppose any change of the existing territories, while debates among experts continue (Hrbek, 2009). One of the reasons justifying calls for a territorial reorganization is an imbalance of governance capacities of Länder governments. Compared to other federations, disparities among German Länder are modest, no matter whether geography, size, economic structure, fiscal capacities, or culture is looked at. However, Germans prefer uniformity of law and equivalent living conditions, and both principles are considered as constitutional norms. Though in political rhetoric, federalism has been praised as a fundamental constitutional value, centralization of legislative power has hardly met resistance, whereas administrative powers have been left to the Länder. Fiscal federalism, which evolved through a series of amendments of the Basic Law, was designed to prevent economic disparities being translated into fiscal imbalance. Significant tax revenues are shared between levels of governments, with part of the Länder portion being distributed for fiscal equalization. A constitutional amendment of 2006 slightly revised this trend towards centralization and sharing of power in legislation, although not in public finance. However, later reforms of federalism extended the federal government’s influence on administration and fiscal policy of the Länder, while they again failed to disentangle tax revenues (Benz and Sonnicksen 2018; Kropp and Behnke, 2016). This specific division of powers (see Table 11.1 on page 185) compels federal and Länder governments to cooperate in significant areas of legislation and administration. In legal terms, either the Länder governments participate in federal policy or the federal government participates in policies the Länder are responsible for. The first applies to federal legislation. All bills approved by the federal parliament have to be passed on to the Federal Council (Bundesrat), where each Land government is represented by members of its Cabinet. In cases where a federal law affects the domain of the Länder, the Bundesrat can veto the decision of parliament by a majority of its votes. Constitutional amendments require the assent of a two-​thirds majority in the Bundesrat, following a decision with the same majority in the parliament. All other laws are dealt with in the Bundesrat, but the federal parliament can override its decision. In administration, the Basic Law specifies ‘Joint Tasks’ to improve regional economic and agricultural structures, to promote education, science, and research, to harmonize information technology in the public sector, to evaluate performance of administration, to support unemployed persons, and to supervise budgeting. These constitutional rules require or allow the federal government to cooperate with Länder governments. Beyond that, Länder executives cooperate

THE FEDERAL SYSTEM AND THE LÄNDER   185 Table 11.1 Division of powers between federal and Länder level under the German Basic Law Powers

Articles of Basic Law

Legislative powers exclusive powers of the Länder governments

30 and 70 paragraph 1

exclusive powers of the federal government

71, 73

concurrent powers of the federal government

72, 74

• unconditional

72 paragraph 1, 74 paragraph 1

• provided that necessary to establish equal living conditions throughout the federal territory or to maintain legal or economic unity

72 paragraph 2, 74 paragraph 1

• with a right of Länder parliaments to deviate from federal law

72 paragraph 3

Executive powers Länder administration •  implementation of Länder law

30

•  implementation of federal law

83, 84

• implementation of federal law on behalf of the federal government

85

Federal administration

86–​90

Joint Tasks

91 a–​e

Fiscal powers Budgetary autonomy of federal and Länder governments

104a paragraph 1, 109

Monitoring of budgeting

109a

Public debt

109 paragraph 3

Tax revenues •  Länder and local taxes

106 paragraphs 2 and 6

•  federal taxes

106 paragraph 1

•  shared taxes

106 paragraphs 3–​5

Federal transfers to Länder (coverage of administrative costs, grants)

104 a paragraphs 3–​5, 104 b, 104 c

Judicial power Federal courts (Federal Constitutional Court, Supreme Courts, other federal courts)

93–​96

Länder courts

30, 98, 99

in conferences of prime ministers or ministers and in informal meetings of civil servants (Kropp, 2010). These various patterns of power-​sharing, council governance, and intergovernmental relations can be traced back to the particular history of German federalism, the division

186   Arthur Benz of power in the German Empire, and the cooperation of executives to manage affairs of the federation (Lehmbruch, 2002). However, the adoption of the parliamentary system changed conditions of cooperation. Executives are responsible to parliament and depend on the support of majority parties. In consequence, members of the Bundesrat regularly follow the policy of their party and cast their vote in agreement with their coalition parties, although they are not bound to a mandate of their Land parliament in legal terms. Certainly, the Länder use the Bundesrat as a safeguard against federal power and to pursue the interests of their Land, but party competition shapes decision-​ making within the Bundesrat, too (Leunig and Träger, 2012). Civil servants cooperating in diverse administrative networks cannot ignore party politics either. This linkage of cooperative federalism or joint decision-​making to parliamentary democracy significantly affects how German federalism works (Lehmbruch, 2000). The German type of cooperative federalism is based on an institutional framework preventing the exit of individual governments. As Fritz W. Scharpf has observed, the characteristic features of intergovernmental relations find expression in rules and routines of negotiations which he has designated as ‘joint decision making’ (Scharpf, 1988; Scharpf, Reissert, and Schnabel, 1976). Whereas in many federations, intergovernmental relations have emerged in practice, remain informal, and often coexist with parliamentary sovereignty, in Germany they either result from shared powers entrenched in the constitution or find expression in institutionalized federal-​Länder cooperation. Thus, governments at both levels gave up their autonomy in the policy fields concerned. Instead, they must come to an agreement in order to make or change a policy. However, negotiating an agreement turns out to be extremely difficult since executives aiming at a joint decision are accountable to political parties competing for votes and represent constituent states pursuing divergent institutional or fiscal policies. Although they are willing in principle to cooperate if they cannot solve problems on their own, they negotiate in the bargaining mode or stick to their position in a confrontation, whenever matters are contested among parties or cause redistributive conflicts among governments. This pattern of ‘antagonistic cooperation’ (Scharpf, 1989, p. 132) arises in particular in legislation requiring the assent of the Bundesrat. When opposition parties in parliament control Länder governments holding the majority in the Bundesrat, confrontation may prevail in intergovernmental negotiations and can cause a deadlock in policy-​making. Since the 1970s, this constellation of a politically divided legislature tends to be the rule rather than the exception. Yet instead of running into deadlock, actors involved in federal-​Länder negotiations have found ways to escape the quandary of joint decision-​making. Some of these ways reduce the level of conflict, but also the effectiveness of policy-​making (Scharpf, Reissert, and Schnabel, 1976). For instance, when the federal government introduces a bill in the legislative process, it usually refrains from far-​reaching changes, which might provoke a veto of the Bundesrat (Manow and Burkhart, 2007). Taking into account the party complexion of Länder governments, the federal government can anticipate objections in the Bundesrat right from the outset. Besides, compromises often also result from informal bargaining between federal and Länder governments or from

THE FEDERAL SYSTEM AND THE LÄNDER   187 negotiations among Länder representatives preparing Bundesrat meetings. In rare cases, package deals are possible, but often, they come with high costs, as is exemplified by the 2016 reform of fiscal equalization outlined below. Legislation on issues affecting the resources of Länder governments such as reductions of shared taxes usually end with incremental modifications of the status quo. Nonetheless, German federalism and joint decision-​making neither obstruct policy change in general nor do they cause governance failure. In a democratic federation, intergovernmental relations constitute part of a differentiated, multidimensional system of government (Kriesi, 2013), with party competition in the parliamentary system, interest intermediation, and the policy communities of civil servants forming additional arenas of politics and policy-​making. While joint decision-​making in legislation and party competition are closely coupled in the German federal system, politics in the other arenas is only loosely linked to these processes (Benz, 2020, pp. 240–​75). Executives regularly shift policy-​making to the community of experts in the administration, who are motivated to solve the problems delegated to them by political leaders. Certainly, civil servants are not able to decide on highly politicized issues, but they often find feasible alternatives, which provide a way to overcome political disputes. Executives can also engage in negotiations with interest groups. Such pre-​legislative processes can set the agenda for party politics and intergovernmental negotiations with the consequence that potential alternatives and the intensity of conflict are reduced in legislation. The decision of the red-​green coalition government under Chancellor Schröder to phase out nuclear energy exemplifies this method to circumvent joint decision-​making. In 2000, the federal government negotiated an agreement with the four major energy companies before it initiated legislation. In view of public support for this ‘consensus’, Länder governments opposing this policy refrained from using the Bundesrat to block the envisaged change of energy policy. In other cases, the federal government prevented a Bundesrat veto against its policy by winning the support of individual Länder governments in bilateral negotiations. In this way the Federal Cabinet, led by Chancellor Merkel, transposed into law its 2011 decision on the ‘Energiewende’, in spite of the initial opposition from Länder premiers of her own party. Joint decision-​making in the executive differs from patterns prevailing in legislation. Here federal and Länder representatives continuously interact and negotiate on specific tasks. Party political conflicts cannot be ruled out in these processes, as can be demonstrated in science and education policy. In other joint policies concerning agriculture, regional development, evaluation of public administration, or budgeting, conflicts on policy objectives or resources predominate, while parties are regularly less interested even though parliaments may have a say. Yet conflicts on the allocation of finances can obstruct negotiations no less than party competition. Studies from the 1970s revealed that executives pursued compromises to avoid conflict and deadlock, with the consequence that fiscal resources to assist distressed regions were not used efficiently (Scharpf, Reissert, and Schnabel, 1976). This finding still holds true, but executives have adjusted structures of intergovernmental relations, and recently

188   Arthur Benz established patterns of joint decision-​making show some significant variations (Benz, Detemple, and Heinz, 2016). The Joint Tasks introduced in 1967 are still fulfilled by a planning or coordination committee in which responsible ministers of the federal and Länder governments decide on goals and criteria for allocating funds. As these decisions and the overall amount of funds are reviewed and updated annually, incremental adjustments have minimized redistributive conflicts. In science and research policy, the Joint Science Conference of federal and Länder ministers decides on continuous funding of existing research institutions, but also on specific programmes or projects. Beyond redistributive conflicts, party politics complicates the negotiations on these issues. In this case, a combination of two arenas of negotiations helps to avoid deadlock. A Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat) gives advice to the conference of ministers, and the epistemic authority of experts compensates for political bargaining among ministers. Moreover, specific funds are allocated in competitive tendering procedures and the Joint Science Conference regularly monitors the effects of these programmes. Such particular structures and procedures provide favourable conditions for policy-​learning. Similar adjustments of procedures can be observed in other fields of institutionalized federal-​Länder cooperation. In agriculture and regional policy, the federal government has circumvented the joint planning and coordination committee by regularly organizing performance contests (Meincke, 2012), a process designed to generate best practices and mutual learning in regions. The new Joint Task enabling performance evaluation in public administration could induce a similar process, but so far, the Länder governments have failed to negotiate an agreement on appropriate procedures. In education policy, a group of ministers convinced their colleagues in other Länder to participate in international student assessments, and the disappointing results for Germany in general and some Länder in particular raised public awareness. Ensuing discussions finally ended the confrontation among parties which, during the 1970s and 1980s, had blocked any agreement to reform the general education system. In other policy fields, we observe a shift towards a hierarchical structure of joint decision-​making. In energy policy, powers are divided between federal, Länder, and local governments, but the federal government increasingly assumed control in policies promoting renewable energy. Certainly, the Länder governments participated in legislation, mostly with a veto right, but pathbreaking decisions clearly revealed the leadership of the federal government. It defined its general goals and its strategy without coordinating them with the Länder governments, which published their own long-​term plans (Olhorst, 2015). In the planning of high-​ voltage power lines crossing Länder borders, administrative responsibility was delegated to the Federal Network Agency. Since 2009, a different form of hierarchical joint decision-​making exists in fiscal policy. The Stability Council responsible for monitoring budget policy appears as a traditional federal-​Länder committee. However, in practice, it controls expenditure decisions of the Länder by ‘naming and shaming’ those Länder governments which fail to meet the precise criteria of sound fiscal policy defined by the Council.

THE FEDERAL SYSTEM AND THE LÄNDER   189 Federal executive

Joint Tasks (Art 91 a-e GG)

Federal-Länder conferences

Federal legislation Federal Parliament (Bundestag)

Mediation committee

Administrative committees and networks

Federal Council (Bundesrat)

Conferences of Land premiers Conferences of Land ministers

Land executives Land parliaments

Figure 11.1  Cooperative federalism and intergovernmental relations

In general, joint decision-​making can be regarded as the unique pattern of intergovernmental relations, which evolved in the institutional framework of German federalism (see Figure 1.1). However, the essential mechanism of intergovernmental bargaining operates under varying conditions (Benz, Detemple, and Heinz, 2016; Kropp, 2010). The polarization in party politics, differentiation of arenas of negotiation, the effective power of participants, or the pressure of problems or public opinion can affect policy-​making and outcomes. These conditions have changed since the foundation of the Federal Republic, although the basic institutional structures of the German federal system remained in place. In spite of its institutional continuity, German federalism has proved its dynamism.

Federal Dynamics: Societal Change, Party Politics, and Constitutional Policy Federal systems change during their history, but over the shorter term, dynamics can be caused by changes in society, institutional policy, and actors’ strategies in politics (Benz and Broschek, 2013). In Germany, these processes had significant impacts on the effective structure and operation of federalism. Society-​centred theories of territorial politics (Keating, 1998) highlight the parallel evolution of regionalism and globalization as the main trends that changed modern societies and their political organization

190   Arthur Benz during the second half of the twentieth century. Both trends had impacts on culture and economy. In Germany, these pertained to a rather homogeneous society, which took shape during the twentieth century, when industrialization, two World Wars, changes of political regime, immigration of refugees, and the rise of the media society weakened the regional diversity of cultures resulting from the Reformation era. The 1970s saw a revival of regional cultures. Nonetheless, economic regionalization rather than the rise of regional identities propelled territorial politics, not the least since German industrialization developed since the nineteenth century in various regional clusters (Herrigel, 1996). Accordingly, globalization had different repercussions on regional economies. Politics responded to this trend. The federal government subsidized peripheral regions since the 1950s, the Länder government later started regional development strategies in order to cope with the challenges of economic structural change, which also transformed industrialized regions. Coordinated public and private activities aimed at improving local conditions of production, which turned out to be decisive for competitiveness of firms in a de-​nationalized market. In this context, Länder governments also engaged in policies aiming at job creation and reintegrating the unemployed into the labour market (Schmid and Blancke, 2001). De facto, the Länders’ impact on economic and social policy increased. Changes in social cleavages had fewer territorial implications, but nonetheless affected the federal system via the party system. During the first three decades of the Federal Republic, the dominance of the conservative Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats reflected the ‘frozen’ class cleavage of the industrial society, while the consensus on the welfare state limited the electoral success of the Liberal Party. During the 1980s, the rise of the Green party expressed the increasing importance of post-​material values. After German unification, the success of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS; successor to the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands SED that had governed the GDR) and later ‘the Left’ (Die Linke) revealed the increasing social inequalities, whereas the Right-​wing populist ‘Alterative for Germany’ (AFD) attracted voters from the middle class which felt threatened by European integration and globalization. Federalism facilitated the pluralization of the party system following from these changes in society, since new parties could first gain ground at the Länder level. The rising number of effective parties affects the operation of joint decision-​making. It complicates the coordination of voting in the Bundesrat, both within and between Länder governments. Coordination within a Land is essential because decision rules prohibit splitting the votes of a Land government. If a coalition government in a Land includes parties from the majority and the opposition side in the federal parliament, the Bundesrat members representing this government tend to abstain from voting in case of disagreement, which means that they do not give their assent to a bill. Since the number of such ‘neutral’ Land governments has increased, a Bundesrat veto has become more likely. At the same time, given the diversity of coalitions in the Länder, the federal government can no longer know for sure how Länder governments vote. Hence the increased difficulty in anticipating vetoes has made informal negotiations all the more important. Yet, in view of the heterogeneity of coalitions, the federal government can

THE FEDERAL SYSTEM AND THE LÄNDER   191 expect to make deals with individual governments, whereas the Länder governments face more problems in trying to form an alliance against the federal government. Pluralization of the party system has come with regionalization of politics. For a long time, German parties participated in politics at the federal and Länder level with compatible programmes, and parties served as venues to settle federal-​Länder disputes. Compared to other federations, the German party system is still highly integrated, but tendencies of a regional differentiation are evident. Confronted with challenges differing from region to region, Länder governments have to adjust their policies accordingly irrespective of their party affiliation. Beyond the economic disparities between East and West German Länder, variations in industrial structures, energy supply structures, and demographic change due to an ageing population or migration preclude uniform policies at the Land level. However, divergent policies cause conflicts inside parties, either between representatives from different Länder or between federal and Länder representatives. Therefore, parties no longer constitute unitizing forces in the federal system (Detterbeck, 2016, pp. 651–​4). So far, the consequences of these changes are difficult to estimate. The German federal system does not appear to be threatened by increasing instability, be it as a result of gridlocks in policy-​making or the rise of regionalist movements. Rather, we observe institutional rigidity because all efforts to reform the federal system in the face of changing conditions have ended with frustrating outcomes. And there have been quite a number of such efforts. As mentioned, constitutional amendments during the first two decades of the West German Republic created the legal basis for executive federal-​Länder cooperation. Later reforms aimed at adjusting German federalism to European integration and German unification. An amendment passed in 1992 required the federal government to consider the Bundesrat’s opinion in European affairs. As usual, the reform adjusted constitutional law to emergent practice, in this case to Europeanization of German intergovernmental relations and to regionalization of the EU. On the other hand, a substantial revision of the allocation of power between levels of government or fiscal federalism failed immediately after unification (Jeffery, 1995). It was not till 2006 that a federalism reform ended with a decentralization of twelve matters of legislation and with amendments which decreased the number of objection bills in federal legislation. Yet again, the overall effects turned out to be modest, not the least regarding the fiscal autonomy of the Länder governments (Scharpf, 2009). While their power to decide on tax revenues remained limited, a further reform passed in 2009 increased fiscal constraints. Now the constitution compels the Länder governments to balance their budgets as of 2020 and to participate in the monitoring system of the Stability Council. A revision of fiscal federalism was postponed. In 2016, after years of bargaining among ministers of finance and prime ministers, the Länder governments came to a joint proposal on moderate changes of the existing law on fiscal equalization. They reached an agreement, which left no Land government worse off after the implementation of the new equalization scheme. Yet this result was only possible by shifting fiscal burdens to the federal government. At the end, heads of

192   Arthur Benz government concluded a package deal, which finally passed into legislation. The federal government conceded a reallocation of joint tax revenues and additional grants to the Länder. In return, it gained powers in areas of public administration. Institutional reform of the federal system and constitutional amendments affect the distribution of power and finances and often raise controversies among parties. Therefore, distributive bargaining between federal and Länder representatives limits the scope of change. Constitutional policy is likely to end in the ‘joint-​decision trap’ (Scharpf, 1988). This does not mean that change is impossible. However, like joint decision-​making in general, constitutional policy leads to incremental changes at best. More often than not, amendments of the Basic Law legalize or regulate emergent practices by constitutional rules. Since the 1980s, reforms aimed at a separation of power, in spite of increasing interdependence between local, regional, national, and supranational policies. The never addressed to conflict between Länder autonomy and the need for federal-​Länder-​coordination (Benz, 2020, pp. 70–​92). Instead of strengthening the Länder governments, they ended with an overregulation of cooperative federalism (Benz and Sonnicksen, 2018). Responses of federal and Länder governments to the COVID-​19 pandemic reveal more flexibility, but have also demonstrated the problem of a detailed constitutional law. Decentralized, informally coordinated regulative policies have been combined with centralized fiscal measures. Yet in order to allow federal support of local governments, the constitution had to be amended once again. Moreover, the consequences of huge deficits will have to be managed in joint decision-​making.

Conclusion The federal system of Germany has maintained its stability in the face of changing economic and societal conditions. Despite their different approaches, scholars working on German federalism have observed institutional rigidity as well as incremental adjustment of policies. Certainly, deadlocks occurred from time to time when party confrontation obstructed negotiations. But even in these periods, governments regularly settled agreements both in federal legislation and in administrative joint policy-​making. Since the ruling coalition at the federal level often depends on the support from opposition parties to pass bills with the consent of the Bundesrat, Germany seems to be governed by a kind of continuous grand coalition (Schmidt, 2008). With the disintegration of the party system and the dissolution of the old dualism between the Christian and Social Democrats, this constellation appears more like a minority government, as the government has to find issue-​specific support from different parties. Despite these changes, the particular linkage of majority and consensus democracy still favours a ‘policy of the middle way’ (Schmidt, 2008). The close coupling of party competition in the parliamentary system and negotiations in the federal arena prevents significant twists and turns in policy-​making, but gridlock of governance can

THE FEDERAL SYSTEM AND THE LÄNDER   193 be avoided under normal circumstances. From time to time, the federal government can even circumvent constraints of joint decision-​making by playing off commitments in the different negotiations. Moreover, cooperative federalism in the executive reveals significant variations of intergovernmental relations. In some policy fields, experts influence policies and reduce the intensity of conflicts, in others, joint decision-​making has been modified by a stronger role of the federal government and attempts to foster policy competition among the Länder. Finally, administrative networks of federal and Länder civil servants contribute to make federalism work. However, strategies to bypass the tightly coupled processes of party politics in parliament and joint decision-​making in the federal system have their costs. By consolidating informal relations among executives and bureaucrats, governments prevent deadlocks in policy-​making, but also blur accountability. Thus, like other federations, the German federal system faces a dilemma of effectiveness and democratic legitimacy.

Further Reading Benz, Arthur and Jared Sonnicksen (2018), ‘Advancing Backwards: Why Institutional Reform of German Federalism Reinforced Joint Decision-​Making’, Publius. The Journal of Federalism 48(1), pp. 134–​59. Detterbeck, Klaus, Wolfgang Renzsch, and Stefan Schieren (eds) (2010), Föderalismus in Deutschland (Munich, Vienna: Oldenbourg). Kropp, Sabine (2010), Kooperativer Föderalismus und Politikverflechtung (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften). Moore, Carolyn and Wade Jacoby (eds) (2010), German Federalism in Transition. Reforms in a Consensual State (London, New York: Routledge). Scharpf, Fritz W. (1988), ‘The Joint-​Decision Trap: Lessons from German Federalism and European Integration’, Public Administration 66(3), pp. 239–​78. Umbach, Maiken (ed.) (2002), German Federalism. Past, Present and Future (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

Bibliography Abromeit, Heidrun (1992), Der verkappte Einheitsstaat (Opladen: Leske and Budrich). Benz, Arthur (1985), Föderalismus als dynamisches System: Zentralisierung und Dezentralisierung im föderativen Staat (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag). Benz, Arthur (2016), Constitutional Policy in Multilevel Government. The Art of Keeping the Balance (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Benz, Arthur (2020), Föderale Demokratie. Regieren im Spannungsfeld von Interdependenz und Autonomie (Baden-​Baden: Nomos). Benz, Arthur and Jörg Broschek (2013), ‘Conclusion. Theorizing Federal Dynamics’, in Arthur Benz and Jörg Broschek (eds), Federal Dynamics: Continuity, Change, and the Varieties of Federalism (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 366–​88. Benz, Arthur, Jessica Detemple, and Dominic Heinz (2016), Varianten und Dynamiken der Politikverflechtung (Baden-​Baden, Nomos).

194   Arthur Benz Benz, Arthur and Jared Sonnicksen (2018), ‘Advancing Backwards: Why Institutional Reform of German Federalism Reinforced Joint Decision-​Making’, Publius. The Journal of Federalism 48(1), pp. 134–​59. Broschek, Jörg (2010), ‘Federalism and Political Change: Canada and Germany in Historical-​ Institutionalist Perspective’, Canadian Journal of Political Science 43(1), pp. 1–​24. Detterbeck, Klaus (2016), ‘The Role of Party and Coalition Politics in Federal Reform’, Regional and Federal Studies 26(5), pp. 645–​66. Filippov, Mikhail, Peter C. Ordeshook, and Olga Shvetsova (2004), Designing Federalism: A Theory of Self-​sustainable Federal Institutions (New York: Cambridge University Press). Gunlicks, Arthur (2003), The Länder and German Federalism (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Hesse, Konrad (1962), Der unitarische Bundesstaat (Karlsruhe: C.F. Müller). Herrigel, Gary (1996), Industrial Constructions: The Sources of German Industrial Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hrbek, Rudolf (2009), ‘Neugliederung: Ein (fast) folgenloses Dauerthema deutscher Politik’, in Europäisches Zentrum für Föderalismusforschung (ed.), Jahrbuch des Föderalismus 2009 (Baden-​Baden: Nomos), pp. 173–​88. Hueglin, Thomas (2013), ‘Models, Varieties, and Dimensions of Federalism’, in Arthur Benz and Jörg Broschek (eds), Federal Dynamics: Continuity, Change, and the Varieties of Federalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 28–​47. Jeffery, Charlie (1995), ‘The Non-​Reform of the German Federal System after Unification’, West European Politics 18(2), pp. 252–​72. Keating, Michael (1998), The New Regionalism in Western Europe: Territorial Restructuring and Political Change (Cheltenham, Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing). Kriesi, Hanspeter (2013), ‘Introduction—​ The New Challenges to Democracy’, in Hanspeter Kriesi et al. (eds), Democracy in the Age of Globalization and Mediatization (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 1–​16. Kropp, Sabine (2010), Kooperativer Föderalismus und Politikverflechtung (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften). Kropp, Sabine and Nathalie Behnke (2016), ‘Marble Cake Dreaming of Layer Cake: The Merits and Pitfalls of Disentanglement in German Federalism Reform’, Regional and Federal Studies 26(5), pp. 667–​86. Lehmbruch, Gerhard (1976), Parteienwettbewerb Im Bundesstaat (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer). Lehmbruch, Gerhard (2000), Parteienwettbewerb Im Bundesstaat. Regelsysteme und Spannungslagen im Institutionengefüge der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (3rd edn, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag). Lehmbruch, Gerhard (2002). ‘Der unitarische Bundesstaat in Deutschland: Pfadabhängigkeit und Wandel’, in Arthur Benz and Gerhard Lehmbruch (eds), Föderalismus. Analysen in entwicklungsgeschichtlicher und vergleichender Perspektive (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag), pp. 53–​110. Leunig, Sven and Hendrik Träger (eds) (2012), Parteipolitik und Landesinteressen. Der deutsche Bundesrat 1949–​2009 (Münster: LIT-​Verlag). Manow, Philip and Simone Burkhart (2007), ‘Legislative Self-​ Restraint Under Divided Government in Germany, 1976–​2002’, Legislative Studies Quarterly 32(2), pp. 167–​91. Meincke, Anna (2012), Regionen im Wettbewerb. Leistungswettbewerb als Steuerungsinstrument regionaler Netzwerke (Baden-​Baden: Nomos).

THE FEDERAL SYSTEM AND THE LÄNDER   195 Ohlhorst, Dörte (2015), ‘Germany’s Energy Transition Policy Between National Targets and Decentralized Responsibilities’, Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences 12(4), pp. 303–​22. Painter, Martin (2001) ‘Multi-​level Governance and the Emergence of Collaborative Federal Institutions in Australia’, Policy and Politics 29(2), pp. 137–​50. Scharpf, Fritz W. (1989), ‘Der Bundesrat und die Kooperation auf der “dritten Ebene” ’, in Bundesrat (ed.), 40 Jahre Bundesrat (Baden-​Baden: Nomos), pp. 121–​62. Scharpf, Fritz W. (1988), ‘The Joint-​Decision Trap: Lessons from German Federalism and European Integration’, Public Administration 66(3), pp. 239–​78. Scharpf, Fritz W. (2009), Föderalismusreform. Kein Ausweg aus der Politikverflechtungsfalle? (Frankfurt, New York: Campus). Scharpf, Fritz W., Bernd Reissert, and Fritz Schnabel (1976), Politikverflechtung: Theorie und Empirie des kooperativen Föderalismus in der Bundesrepublik (Kronberg/​Ts.: Scriptor). Schmid, Josef and Susanne Blancke (2001), Arbeitsmarktpolitik der Bundesländer. Chancen und Restriktionen einer aktiven Arbeitsmarkt-​und Strukturpolitik im Föderalismus (Berlin: Edition sigma). Schmidt, Manfred G. (2008), ‘Germany: The Grand Coalition State’, in Josep M. Colomer (ed.), Comparative European Politics (Milton Park, New York: Routledge), pp. 58–​93. Urwin, Derek W. (1982), ‘Germany: From Geographical Expression to Regional Accomodation’, in Stein Rokkan and Derek W. Urwin (eds), The Politics of Territorial Identity: Studies in European Regionalism (London, Beverly Hills: Sage), pp. 165–​249. Wachendorfer-​ Schmidt, Ute (2003), Politikverflechtung im Vereinigten Deutschland (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag). Whaley, Joachim (2011), Germany and the Holy Roman Empire (2 vols) (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Wheare, Kenneth C. (1963), Federal Government (London: Oxford University Press).

CHAPTER 12

THE GERMAN L E G A L SYSTEM AND C OU RTS Russell A. Miller

The Roman historian Tacitus did not paint a very flattering picture of the German tribes on the Empire’s northern frontier. He repeatedly remarks on the Germans’ general indolence in all activities except martial affairs: ‘You will find it harder to persuade a German to plough the land and to await its annual produce with patience than to challenge a foe and earn the prize of wounds’ (Tacitus, 1948). Still, Tacitus’ tract Germania (whether history, fiction, or propaganda) provides some glimpse into the German tribes’ political and legal order at the beginning of the first millennium. He noted, for example, that the ‘power even of the [German] kings is not absolute or arbitrary’ (ibid.). Tacitus reported that tribal decision-​making followed a strictly observed process involving the casting of lots in a public forum. ‘If the lots forbid an enterprise,’ Tacitus explained, ‘there can be no further consultation that day; if they allow it, further confirmation by auspices is required’ (ibid.). According to Tacitus major affairs were debated by the whole community assembling on fixed days, ‘when the moon is either crescent or nearing her full orb’ (ibid.). The most extreme punishments (Tacitus described a complex retributive regime) were denied to the political leadership and could be issued only by the priests. Other remedies were assigned by Councils that ‘dispensed justice through the country districts and villages’ (ibid.). Tacitus noted that these Councils consisted in chiefs elected to that service and ‘a hundred companions, drawn from the commons, both to advise [the chief] and to add weight to his decisions’ (ibid.). German justice changed only a little from its barbarian roots in the succeeding centuries. Richard Wagner’s Romantic opera Lohengrin (1850) reimagines the Germanic ‘Swan Knight’ myth as a medieval mash-​up of Christian and pagan themes (Matthews, 2016; Loomis, 1997). It also provides a sketch of the subtle evolution of legal authority and process in the German lands. In the opera, the knight Lohengrin, one of the mystical guardians of the Holy Grail, is sent to defend the honour of the Duchess Elsa von Brabant who has been accused of murdering her brother. Lohengrin arrives on the scene in a boat drawn by a swan. It’s an opera, so Lohengrin and Elsa fall in love. To the

THE GERMAN LEGAL SYSTEM AND COURTS     197 good fortune of wedding parties everywhere, they marry in a scene backed by Wagner’s ‘Bridal Chorus’, which accompanies many brides to the alter to this day. But too often the love that blossoms in an opera is doomed to tragedy. Lohengrin is no exception. Elsa can’t keep herself from asking her new husband the forbidden questions: who is he and where is he from? The sting of Elsa’s punishment—​separation from Lohengrin who retreats in the same fantastical manner as he arrived—​is not allayed by the miraculous reappearance of Elsa’s brother. As Lohengrin fades from view and the curtain falls, Elsa collapses and dies of a broken heart. The scandalous accusation in the opera’s First Act sets the drama in motion. Elsa demonstrates heroic, steadfast resolve, first by insisting that she is innocent of her brother’s murder and then by demanding a fair trial and representation. In Europe’s dark Middle Ages what passes for a legal process is really a trial by combat. As Elsa’s defender, Lohengrin isn’t armed with a briefcase and law books but a sharp, glinting, long sword. Lohengrin’s ensuing battle with and triumph over the scheming Duke von Telramund involves a scene that isn’t so far off the mark from what would have counted as justice in the Germanic world up to the thirteenth century (Janin, 2004; Ziegler, 2004). From the late Middle Ages, however, the princes, clerics, and merchants that cobbled together the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation found that their needs called for modern legal systems staffed by trained judges and lawyers. Stefan Vogenauer explained that the Germans turned to the rediscovered and revived principles of Roman law and to the insights of Canon law for models when local customary norms proved inadequate, archaic, or too disunified (Vogenauer, 2005). Two legal institutions were central to and representative of the professionalization and rationalization of the law in the shift from ‘medieval feudalism to the modern state’ (ibid.). The first was the Reichshofsrat (Imperial Privy Council), which served as the Empire’s highest court as well as a government and administrative body. The second was the Reichskammergericht (Imperial Chamber Court), which relied on Roman law to settle civil disputes between the Empire’s nobility and thereby helped to maintain the peace between Germany’s many and fractious principalities. Already, some enduring elements of modern German justice can be seen in these institutions. First, they drew their competence and structure from positive law enactments. Second, they were large collegial bodies consisting of different constellations of judges and chambers. Third, their practices were governed by sophisticated procedural regimes. This would be the shape of German law and justice for nearly half a millennium, albeit reproduced with local variation within the sundered German principalities and capped by appellate Imperial courts. Considering the immense influence Prussia would have on the eventual unification of the Germans into a single modern nation, there is good reason to treat the Prussian legal system and judiciary of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as representative of German justice in that period. The Prussian legal system had two components. The first was a system of provincial or regional courts serving as both first-​instance trial courts and intermediate appellate courts (Koch, 1978). The second was the national, last-​instance Supreme Court of Prussia (ibid.). Under pressure from Enlightenment revolutions in the English colonies in North America and in France, the Prussian

198   Russell A. Miller monarchy fostered sweeping reform of the kingdom’s legal institutions, including the promulgation of a new civil code, the Allgemeines Landrecht für die Preußischen Staaten, and an accompanying reform of the judicial appointments process (ibid.). In this way, the Prussian judicial system came to have specialized jurisdictions—​and courts—​ aligned with their respective codifications. That was the basis for the emergence of a specialized administrative law jurisdiction featuring independent judges charged with overseeing the expansive and powerful Prussian bureaucracy’s interaction with Prussian citizens (Ledford, 2004). German national unification was at last achieved through the iron will of the Prussian Emperor Wilhelm and his Chancellor Bismarck by way of the Prussian victory over France in 1871. Unification prompted further legal reform that produced the great German codifications: the Criminal Code (1872) and the Civil Code (1900). These sweeping normative systems still operate—​with some changes—​as the law of contemporary Germany. Actions arising under these codes were heard in the ordentliche Gerichtsbarkeit (ordinary courts), which were crowned by the Reichsgericht (Imperial Court) in Leipzig. These courts were established by the Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz (Courts Constitution Act) and organized according to the Reichsjustizgesetz (Imperial Justice Act). German jurisprudence in the early twentieth century was characterized by the positivism and dogmatic formalism that are common features of the continental civil law tradition. The German Empire’s highly-​trained and sophisticated judges understood themselves to be skilled operators of the codes’ complex, carefully reasoned machinery. They divined and applied the legislator’s normative vision. They were not normative actors themselves, in the sense that common law judges might make the law. This jurisprudence had its zenith in the teachings of the mid-​twentieth-​century Austrian legal theorist Hans Kelsen who advanced the ‘separation thesis’ (Kelsen, 1970). Pursuant to the separation thesis jurists should seek to identify and enforce the positive law without regard to its moral or political consequences, that is, without considering justice of the rule (ibid.). The Imperial legal system and Kelsenian jurisprudence continued in force even as Germany succumbed to a revolution, conceded the First World War to the allies, abandoned the monarchy for Germany’s first Republic, and adopted a visionary, liberal constitution. There were hints of a new understanding of the role of the judiciary as Weimar-​era judges flirted with judicial review in the enforcement of the constitution’s basic rights and considered the possibility of accounting for parties’ interests—​and not just a dogmatic reading of the positive law—​as paramount in the interpretation of the law (Calabresi, 2021). Those and all other rational impulses for justice were snuffed out, however, with Hitler’s ascent to power. In his personality cult and dictatorial tyranny, the legal system would be either a tool for his regime of terror and murder, or it would be an irritant and obstacle to his aims. Too tragically, the judiciary and the legal profession mostly served in the former capacity (Müller, 1992). But its ossified structures and practices could not be co-​opted comprehensively enough so Hitler established a new parallel system of ‘special’ Nazi justice administered by the so-​called Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court) (ibid.). This grotesque institution had jurisdiction over a broad and loosely-​defined range of political offences and essentially was charged with papering over and legitimizing the

THE GERMAN LEGAL SYSTEM AND COURTS     199 Nazis’ brutal regime of oppression and control (ibid.). Proceedings before the People’s Court were summary and very often fatal. The People’s Court issued thousands of swiftly executed death sentences (ibid.). In the Cold War face-​off with the Soviet Union in the dismembered remnants of Hitler’s Reich the victorious Western allies were desperate for the speedy re-​establishment of public order and state authority in their occupation zones. The old German codes and courts were among the many traditional institutions to which they resorted as a foundation for the new democratic republic, formally founded as the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1949 under the authority of a new constitution, the Grundgesetz (Basic Law). The Basic Law largely assumes the existence and continued operation of the traditional German judicial system as hosted and administered by the Länder (federal states). With that in mind, the Basic Law reanimated the federal appellate courts. But it also established an altogether new judicial organ: the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court). This remarkable institution, given exclusive jurisdiction over the interpretation and adjudication of constitutional disputes, has played a significant and historic role in fostering democracy, liberty, and justice in post-​war Germany’s renaissance (Collings, 2015; Kommers and Miller, 2012). The founders of the Federal Republic were conscious of the Nazis’ political instrumentalization of the judiciary so, with respect to old and new courts, Article 97 of the Basic Law simply and succinctly declares: ‘Judges shall be independent and subject only to the law’. West Germany’s founders balked at calling their founding charter a Verfassung (constitution) because part of the country lay in the hands of the Soviets. As the German Democratic Republic (GDR), East Germany was contributing to humankind’s ‘socialist destiny’—​even if it had to do so by walling-​up and comprehensively surveilling its reluctant citizens. The East Germans had a different judicial system and East German judges had a different mission. GDR justice did not prioritize judicial independence in the same way as the West German Basic Law. Inga Markovits explained that ‘East German judges primarily seem to have seen themselves as educators and social workers’ tasked with finding ‘the politically correct solutions to social ills whose diagnosis and remedy usually had already been prescribed by the Party’ (Markovits, 1996). In the end the East German legal system was cast aside during the euphoric process of German reunification that took place in the 1990s. By that time the German legal system—​with its old imperial and new liberal constitutional elements—​had been extended to the whole of a newly-​united and increasingly ‘normal’ Germany.

Contemporary Judicial Authority and Courts Many of the central features of the contemporary German judicial system are products of evolution from its long-​ago roots in the wilds of Germania; from the institutions

200   Russell A. Miller and norms of conflict resolution in the era of medieval European feudalism; and from European Enlightenment and Romanticism, which served as the duel impetuses for German modernization, liberalization, unification, and codification (Whitman, 1990). Two of the most important of these inherited and evolved features are the contemporary judicial power’s decentralization and specialization.

Decentralization As the country’s name—​Federal Republic of Germany—​establishes, Germany consists of a federalist political structure. There are sixteen Länder (states) exercising a spectrum of public authority in cooperation with the public authority exercised by the Bund (federation). I emphasize the word ‘cooperation’ because German federalism largely imagines that there is a single source of state authority that happens to be shared and—​collegially and complementarily—​implemented by the Republic’s two political entities: the federation and the states (Gunlicks, 2003). This model of cooperative federalism differs from the American ‘dual sovereignty’ approach, which, at least in theory, claims to have ‘split the atom of sovereignty’ between the US government and the governments of the fifty states so that both political entities separately exercise their own autonomous and exclusive spectrum of state sovereignty (Zimmerman, 2008; Hueglin and Fenna, 2015). The distinction between the two models of federalism can be overstated, especially as there is evidence of both paradigms in both systems. But the essence of the distinction can be seen in the structures the two countries have established for the exercise of judicial power. In the American dual sovereignty model each sovereign—​the federation or one of the states—​enjoys its own exclusive jurisdiction and autonomously administers all the judicial infrastructure needed for that role. That’s why there is a federal court system charged with interpreting and implementing federal law, while, at the same time, each American state has its own court system charged with interpreting and implementing its law. It is said that American judicial power is centralized because these sovereigns’ independent legal systems host the full complement of courts and judicial actors, from first-​instance courts up to a last-​instance supreme court. The entirety of the judicial function is centralized in the hands of a single sovereign. A startling example of this separation and autonomy is the long-​recognized possibility that, despite the US constitution’s prohibition on double jeopardy, a person can be accused of and tried for a crime in one of the jurisdictions (the federal courts, for example) even if he or she has been acquitted of the same criminal conduct in one of the other jurisdictions (a state’s courts, for example). The logic is that one sovereign’s crimes and judicial processes have nothing to do with another sovereign’s criminal regime. That’s true even if the two systems are responding to the same set of facts and events. The German model of cooperative federalism, however, permits a decentralized judicial structure. The administration of the state’s single expression of judicial power is shared between the German Bund and the Länder so that there is only one court system

THE GERMAN LEGAL SYSTEM AND COURTS     201 over which the two sovereigns share responsibility by operating distinct parts. In the German system this means that the sixteen states largely are responsible for providing the infrastructure and personnel for the system’s Amtsgerichte and Landgerichte (first-​ instance courts) and Oberlandesgerichte (intermediate appellate courts). For its part, the federation largely is responsible for providing the infrastructure and personnel for the system’s Bundesgerichte (last-​instance or supreme federal courts). If one imagines the trajectory of a court case as a vertical ascent from a first-​instance trial court and perhaps involving a stop at an intermediate appeals court before ending at a last-​instance court of appeals, then in the German system the first and second rungs on the ladder take place in state courts. If the case proceeds to the highest appellate court, then it is handed over to the federation for proceedings in a federal supreme court. In this way the German state’s unified judicial authority is said to be decentralized because the exercise of that power is shared among separate sovereigns. The decentralization of the justice system in Germany accommodates two prominent frames in German history and politics. On the one hand, it reflects the deeply federalist character of state power in Germany, including the old principalities but also the local states that the Western allies rapidly reconstituted and empowered after the Second World War. On the other hand, decentralization of the judicial function reflects the German imperial tradition, whether of the Holy Roman or Prussian variety, which involved a powerful overarching authority as the seat of the last instance of justice. Those historical influences are important. But decentralization of the justice system also can be justified on functional terms. The states’ administration of justice at the level closest to the citizens lends the system legitimacy and, at least in theory, permits some variation in the exercise of judicial authority out of respect for the character and culture of a particular locality. These gains in the integrity of the judicial function should reinforce respect for the law and the courts. For its part, the federal jurisdiction, consisting of last-​ instance appellate courts, helps to ensure the quality and uniformity of the interpretation and application of the law across the whole of the Federal Republic.

Specialization The decentralization of the German judicial system calls on us to imagine the judicial process as if it is arranged vertically, with the lower rungs of the ladder administered locally by the states and the highest rung of the ladder administered by the federation. The specialization of the German judicial system involves a horizontal perspective that represents the division of the German judiciary into six distinct, specialized subject matter jurisdictions. From this vantage point it is as if there were six separate ladders lined up next to each other. The courts in Germany, different to most courts in the American legal system, are not courts of general jurisdiction that are charged with interpreting the law and resolving disputes across the full spectrum of possible legal issues. Instead, German courts are highly specialized and exercise jurisdiction over a

202   Russell A. Miller discrete set of legal issues. The relevant jurisdictions in Germany’s system of specialized courts include: constitutional law jurisdiction; ordinary jurisdiction (civil law and criminal law), labour law jurisdiction, administrative law jurisdiction, tax and finance law jurisdiction, and social law jurisdiction. Each of these jurisdictions has competence—​ jurisdiction—​to adjudicate disputes arising under a particular legal code. These codes are understood to provide a highly complex and intricate—​but also comprehensive—​ normative resolution of all possible legal concerns in the related realm of society. For example, the ordentliche Gerichtsbarkeit (ordinary courts jurisdiction) is responsible for interpreting and adjudicating disputes arising under the Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch (German Civil Code) and the Strafgesetzbuch (German Criminal Code). As civil law (contracts, torts, property, family law, and succession) and criminal law involve a big swath of the law’s nexus with life, the ordinary courts charged with hearing cases under those codes are the most prominent and present of Germany’s specialized jurisdictions. That is not to say that the other five specialized jurisdictions are unimportant. Especially in Germany’s heavily bureaucratized political economy and in light of its extensive, cradle-​to-​grave social welfare system, the administrative and social courts also feature prominently in ordinary Germans’ lives. Germany’s courts are tethered to distinct substantive codes. Each is also accompanied by a distinct set of procedures. Staying with the example of the Civil Code and Criminal Code as adjudicated by the ordinary courts, the relevant procedure in civil and criminal matters is established by the Zivilprozessordnung (Code of Civil Procedure) and the Strafprozeßordnung (Code of Criminal Procedure). Finally, each jurisdiction is constituted and coordinated by a sperate legislative grant. The ordinary courts, for example, are formed and regulated by the Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz (Courts Constitution Act). The positive law elements of Germany’s specialized judiciary—​substantive, procedural, and constitutive—​are reproduced for each of the systems’ six specialized jurisdictions. This hermetic horizontal framework and its positive law predisposition present some interesting points for reflection, especially in relation to the German system’s decentralization. There is a blending, or sharing, of administrative responsibility for justice between the federation and the states. But the subject matter authority of the German judiciary is highly compartmentalized. One justification for this is that the quality of justice produced by the complex and sophisticated codes benefits from judicial specialization. Here one picks up the echoes of Kant’s influence on German jurisprudence. In rejecting the classical notion of natural law as a product of human reason, Kant inspired hopes for a Rechtswissenschaft (science of law), which would focus exclusively on the positive law and rely on empirical and systematizing approaches (Kant, 1933; Kant, 1949). The German codes drafted under the influence of these ambitions, and the judicial method developed to help realize them, suggest something like the delicate inner-​ works of a carefully calibrated watch. Just like you wouldn’t hand your Breitling Aviator timepiece over for repairs to a mall kiosk selling sunglasses and watch batteries, the function and interpretation of the German codes call for master technicians. The early

THE GERMAN LEGAL SYSTEM AND COURTS     203 twentieth-​century German legal scholar Hermann Kantorowicz described this phenomenon in terms that do not mask his sarcasm: The reigning ideal image of the jurist is as follows: a higher civil servant with academic training sits in his cell armed only with a thinking machine, certainly one of the finest kinds. His cell is furnished with nothing more than a green table on which the State Code lies before him. Present him with any kind of situation, real or imaginary, and with the help of pure logical operations and a secret technique understood only by him, dutifully he is able to deduce the decision with absolute precision from the legal code (Kantorowicz, 2011).

Another point meriting reflection is that the entire positive law framework for each of these jurisdictional ladders is formed by federal statutes. The specialized substantive codes, the specialized procedural codes, and the specialized acts constituting the six specialized jurisdictions—​all of this law is a product of federal legislative authority. This further complicates the cooperative federalism exemplified by the German judicial system’s decentralization because it means that in the states’ portion of the process (first-​instance proceedings and intermediate appeals on the lower rungs of the ladder) the state-​administered courts are nevertheless interpreting and implementing substantive federal law, while conforming to federal procedural rules, by way of state-​run judicial institutions constituted according to federal standards. That’s an intricate web of sources and systems that even might have confounded Tacitus’ barbarian Germans.

Two Representative Courts: Federal Court of Justice and Federal Constitutional Court The last, or ‘highest’, rung on the ladders of the vertically decentralized judicial framework operating within each specialized subject matter jurisdiction in the German legal system is occupied by a federal court. These courts sit atop their respective jurisdictions. This is not the forum for a detailed accounting of all of these supreme federal courts. Instead, I will sketch the structure, personnel, function, and practice of two of them: the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice), which serves as the supreme court for the ordentliche Gerichtsbarket (ordinary courts); and the previously mentioned Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court), which serves as Germany’s exclusive tribunal for constitutional law issues. These are two of the most important courts in the German legal system. In their structure and practice, they also are representative of the other federal supreme courts.

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Federal Court of Justice The Federal Court of Justice (FCJ) was established under the supervision of the Federal Republic’s Ministry of Justice in 1950 (in fulfilment of the constitutional mandate from Article 95 of the Basic Law). But the founding of the FCJ did not take place without the benefit of some precedent. From 1879 up to the collapse of Hitler’s Third Reich and the subsequent allied occupation, the Reichsgericht (Imperial Court) served as Germany’s apex court. For much of this tenure there was little judicial specialization so the Imperial Court, with its seat in Leipzig, was Germany’s truly supreme court. But after the turn of the twentieth century the trend was towards specialization. In that process the Imperial Court ceded some of its jurisdiction. On the one hand, new Imperial courts concerned with tax and financial matters were established. On the other hand, a separate administrative law jurisdiction emerged. The November Revolution in 1918 led to the creation of the Weimar Republic under a new liberal-​democratic constitution. The Imperial Court continued in its traditional role but it also came to host the newly ordained Staatsgerichtshof (State Court), which exercised limited jurisdiction over constitutional issues involving the organization of the state (competence, separation of powers, or federalism issues). Significantly, the Imperial Court sought to use the basic rights secured by the Weimar Constitution as the basis for a cautious exercise of judicial review (Stolleis, 2003). In a legal culture such as Germany’s, which prioritizes the positive law promulgated by the legislature, the idea that the judiciary might overturn legislation it finds to be unconstitutional (a jurisprudential innovation famously justified by Chief Justice John Marshall in the US Supreme Court decision Marbury v. Madison [1803]) was revolutionary (Wesel, 2004). Like many revolutions, however, the Imperial Court’s foray into judicial review proved to be short-​ lived and ineffectual. The court was hemmed-​in by the novelty of the practice. The absence of a citizens’ constitutional complaint for adjudicating basic rights violations was a choke-​point. When issues under the basic rights were presented to the Court it struggled to make much out of social rights guarantees that lacked a broad political consensus. Traditional liberal rights of freedom were too broadly framed to significantly constrain the state’s institutions. Hitler and the Nazis made the Weimar Constitution’s basic rights—​and many other constitutional provisions—​a cynical front for their horrific regime. In that era the Imperial Court served as the institutional base for Hitler’s Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court). Today the FCJ sits in Karlsruhe and Leipzig with a presiding President of the Court and another 150 judges serving in collegial fashion in six criminal law Senates and thirteen civil law Senates (Bundesgerichtshof, 2021). Each Senate is assigned from six to eight judges (ibid.). But a Senate seldom acts with its full complement of judges. Instead, it usually hears cases as a Sitzgruppe (panel) of five judges (ibid.). The FCJ is responsible for last-​instance appeals in civil law and criminal law matters. In that role it hears Revisionen (appeals) from decisions of the lower, state-​administered Amtsgerichte,

THE GERMAN LEGAL SYSTEM AND COURTS     205 Landgerichte, and Oberlandesgerichte. It is the keeper and definitive interpreter of Germany’s esteemed civil and criminal codes. It is a widely respected tribunal, both inside and outside Germany, even if its jurisprudence remains of greatest interest to sitting German judges and practicing German lawyers. The FCJ is widely thought to engage in a rather traditional and dogmatic jurisprudence that seems well-​suited to its Karlsruhe residence—​the neo-​Baroque palace once occupied by the Grand Dukes of Baden. The limits on the FCJ’s progressive potential is reinforced by two conservative factors. First, the Court’s judges are successful career jurists who often are promoted from the state-​administered courts. Appointment to the FCJ with life-​tenure follows vetting and election by the Judicial Selection Committee, which is convened by the Federal Ministry of Justice and consists of the sixteen state-​level ministers of justice and sixteen members of parliament. This is a conservative talent pool selected by a conservative institution. Second, civil law appeals can be brought before the FCJ only by specially qualified lawyers who gain admission to this practice upon approval of the Federal Minister of Justice. The small, insular, and elite Federal Court of Justice Bar currently numbers fewer than forty lawyers all of whom have offices in provincial Karlsruhe. There is little diversity or dynamism in this group.

Federal Constitutional Court The Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) is an altogether new entity with no precedent in the German legal tradition. Still, the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), established by the new post-​war Basic Law, has emerged as Germany’s most prominent and globally recognized tribunal. In fact, it has served as a model for the emergence of similar courts around the world (Tatham, 2013). The FCJ may have inherited much of the legitimacy and gravitas (as well as the yoke) of the German judicial tradition. But the innovative and courageous FCC has captured the spirit of post-​ war Germany and it has become the marquee brand for the German judiciary. The FCC also has its home in Karlsruhe, making that quiet city in Germany’s southwest the ‘capital of German justice’. But the Constitutional Court sits in a separate glass, steel, and wood Bauhaus residence nestled into the city’s Schlossgarten. The modern building is meant to be representative of the new progressive and transparent character of German justice. That is not all that distinguishes the FCC from the FCJ. The FCC also has a separate—​modern—​constitutional foundation. Where the Basic Law left it to the ‘Federation to establish’ the supreme courts, the constitution itself establishes the FCC. Article 93 sets out the new Court’s jurisdiction in painstaking detail. Article 94 provides details about the Court’s composition. I will describe the Court’s jurisdiction in more depth later. The important thing at this point is to note that, as its title suggests, the FCC is responsible for interpreting and enforcing the Basic Law. In fact, it is the sole and exclusive tribunal with authority to rule on the meaning of the constitution. In this sense, the FCC, as a single court, constitutes Germany’s sixth specialized jurisdiction.

206   Russell A. Miller It’s just that the code over which it has responsibility happens to be the constitution. In fact, the Court is sometimes called the Guardian of the Constitution (Casper, 1980). The constitutional jurisdiction envisioned by the Basic Law differs from the American Supreme Court in two ways. First, the Supreme Court does not have exclusive jurisdiction over constitutional adjudication and jurisprudence in the manner that it is exclusively assigned to the FCC in Karlsruhe. Constitutional jurisdiction in the US is decentralized and any court of general jurisdiction—​even state courts—​is expected to consider constitutional claims and rule on them. But unlike the FCC, which hears nothing but constitutional claims, the US Supreme Court serves as the court of last instance for all constitutional matters as well as for federal secondary law (statues and regulations). In fact, despite all the attention the Supreme Court’s constitutional rulings attract, its docket is more heavily weighted towards statutory interpretation and review. The FCC, however, carefully avoids ruling on statutory matters, mostly in deference to the FCJ. The FCC’s constitutional mooring and the importance of its mission eventually led the Court to acquire its independence from the Federal Ministry of Justice, which oversees the other federal supreme courts. The specifics of its operations are settled in the Bundersverassungsgerichtsgesetz (Federal Constitutional Court Act). The Court itself submits its budget request to the Bundestag (federal parliament) for approval. This independence and standing means that the FCC counts among the supreme organs of the Federal Republic, alongside the Bundestag (federal parliament), the Bundesrat (Federal Council of State Governments), the Bundespräsident (Federal President), and the Bundesregierung (federal government). The most important structural feature of the FCC is its division into two Senates with mutually exclusive jurisdiction and personnel (Kommers and Miller, 2009). Justices are elected to either the First Senate or the Second Senate, with the Court’s President presiding over one Senate and the Court’s Vice President presiding over the other Senate (ibid.). The division of the FCC into two Senates was meant to embody the FCC’s dual mandates. The Second Senate serves the role once played by the Weimar-​ era Staatsgerichtshof. That court decided structural or state-​organizational issues. Now the Second Senate rules on constitutional issues involving political disputes between branches and levels of government, contested elections, the constitutionality of political parties, impeachment, and abstract questions of constitutional law. The First Senate was designed to remedy a flaw in the Weimar Constitution, which contained a robust catalogue of basic rights but did not explicitly empower the Imperial Court to exercise judicial review of legislation on the basis of those rights. To correct this the First Senate is empowered to hear constitutional complaints of ordinary citizens as well as referrals from other courts when a case they are adjudicating raises a constitutional issue. There are sixteen FCC justices, eight each for the two Senates (ibid.). The Basic Law provides that half the Court’s members are to be elected by the Bundestag (federal parliament) and half by the Bundesrat (Federal Council of States). The participation of the Bundestag in the selection of the Court’s justices underscores the significant role the Court plays in reviewing the content and democratic integrity of the enactments

THE GERMAN LEGAL SYSTEM AND COURTS     207 promulgated by the popularly elected federal parliament. It seems appropriate, then, that the Bundestag plays some role in staffing the Court. Similarly, the participation of the Bundesrat in the selection of the Court’s justices was meant to ensure that the Court was, at least with respect to its staffing, steeped in Germany’s federalism. The Bundesrat is the federal states’ chamber in the federal legislative process. The Bundestag elects its eight justices indirectly through a twelve-​person Judicial Selection Committee (JSC) known as the Wahlausschuss (ibid.). Party representation on the JSC is proportional to each party’s strength in the Bundestag. Eight votes—​a two-​thirds super-​majority—​are required to elect a justice to the FCC (ibid.). The Bundesrat votes as a plenum for its eight justices, with a two-​thirds vote also being required to elect. The two chambers alternately host the Court’s President and Vice President. The process of judicial selection is highly politicized but the two-​thirds majority required to elect a justice endows opposition parties with considerable leverage over appointments to the FCC. The super-​ majority requirement also discourages the nomination of jurists with extreme ideology or marginal jurisprudential approaches. The traditional main parties and, increasingly, smaller parties, are in a position to veto each other’s nominees. Compromise is a practical necessity. The cult of personality that has formed around many US Supreme Court justices, both past and present, has no parallel at the FCC. This is a product of several factors. Despite the FCC’s modern orientation, it nevertheless is firmly rooted in the German civil law tradition, which fundamentally prioritizes ‘the legislator’ over ‘the adjudicator’ in its hierarchy of the sources of norms. The German yearning for a Rechtswissenschaft (science of law) also plays a role at the FCC where the justices still imagine that they are articulating a single, logically well-​founded truth about the meaning of the law (Larenz, 1991). This is evident in the fact that most of the FCC’s decisions are issued unanimously and without identifying a judgment’s author. The Court adopted the practice of publishing dissenting opinions only in the early 1970s (Kommers and Miller, 2012). Dissents remain extremely rare. For all of these reasons the FCC functions and is viewed as a collegial body speaking with one voice. The Court has benefitted from the service of a large number of world-​class jurists who are drawn from the other federal courts, from the legal academy, and occasionally from politics or private practice (Kommers and Miller, 2009). Despite the tradition of refrainment among the Court’s justices some have enjoyed a measure of professional and public recognition that is uncommon for German judges. Roman Herzog, for example, was elected Germany’s Bundespräsident (Federal President) after his term as the President of the FCC (1983–​94). Others emerged as prominent legal scholars and commentators during and after their time on the Court. It is futile, even despairing, to single out just a few of these superstar scholar-​judges in a country that holds its thinkers in such high esteem. But an FCC All-​Star ballot certainly would have to include Konrad Zweigert (1951–​56), Gerhard Leibholz (1951–​7 1), Ernst-​Wolfgang Böckenförde (1983–​96), Dieter Grimm (1987–​99), and Udo di Fabio (1999–​2011). Especially as a contrast to the slowly decaying patriarchy at the US Supreme Court, it can be a point of pride for Germans that their apex court has a better record of gender inclusion. Nine of the Court’s current

208   Russell A. Miller sixteen justices are women. The path to a majority female bench at the FCC was blazed by Erna Scheffler (the first woman to serve as a justice at the Court) (1951–​63), Jutta Limbach (the first woman to serve as the Court’s President) (1994–​2002), and Susanne Baer (the first openly homosexual justice to serve on the Court) (2011–​23). The justices at the FCC are elected for a single, twelve-​year term. Some justices leave the Court before the expiry of that term because of a mandatory retirement age of 68 (ibid.). The Court’s two-​Senate structure means that each Senate speaks authoritatively for the Court in the range of cases assigned to it. All sixteen justices meet as a plenum of the Court for administrative purposes and on the rare occasion when that is necessary to resolve discrepancies in the jurisprudence of the two Senates (ibid.). But even within the competence of the Senates, the Court’s work frequently is conducted through three-​ justice Chambers, which help decide whether cases merit the consideration of the full Senate and, in doing so, often issue definitive judgments in cases (ibid.). The Chamber system was established to help the Court manage its big docket of more than 5,000 newly submitted cases each year. The justices also are helped in managing the Court’s large docket by a team of four wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeiter (judicial law clerks) that are assigned to each justice. The judicial clerks are respected and established lower-​court judges or early career academics who are temporarily seconded to the FCC. Most of the Court’s work is resolved on the basis of the written record alone. The judicial clerks prepare research memos, and they draft extensive proposed judgments that often form the basis of the justices’ internal debates and eventual decisions. The judicial clerks play such an important role in the life of the Court that they are sometimes referred to collectively as the informal Dritter Senat (Third Senate). The Senates hear oral arguments in the Court’s luminous, glass-​walled hearing chamber in only a few of the most prominent or impactful cases each year. On those occasions the justices are arrayed in their scarlet robes along the natural-​wood, elevated bench beneath a large, rough-​hewn, wood-​carved Bundesadler. As noted earlier, the Basic Law enumerates the totality of the FCC’s jurisdiction. I can only summarize the five most important of these competences here. Party Bans—​The Court’s function as guardian of the constitutional order finds its most vivid expression in Article 21(2) of the Basic Law (ibid.). Under this provision, political parties seeking ‘to impair or abolish the free democratic basic order or to endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany shall be unconstitutional’. The article goes on to declare that only the FCC may declare parties unconstitutional. The Court has received only eight party-​ban petitions from the other federal organs and it has decided just five of those cases. In only two, concluded early on, did the Court sustain the petitions: in 1952 when it banned the neo-​Nazi Socialist Reich party, and in 1956 when it ruled the Communist party unconstitutional (ibid.). Recent applications to ban the Right-​ wing Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany) crashed out of the Court for procedural reasons (2003) or were rejected on the merits because the Court found the party’s ideology to be constitutionally offensive but largely without impact in the country’s practical political life (2017).

THE GERMAN LEGAL SYSTEM AND COURTS     209 Organstreite—​ Conflicts known as Organstreit proceedings involve constitutional disputes between the highest ‘organs’, or branches, of the Federal Republic. The Court’s function here is to supervise the operation and internal procedures of these executive and legislative organs and to maintain the proper institutional balance between them (ibid.). The governmental organs qualified to bring cases under this jurisdiction are the Bundespräsident (Federal President), Bundestag (federal parliament), Bundesrat (Federal Council of States), Bundesregierung (federal government), and units of these organs vested with independent rights by their rules of procedure or the Basic Law (ibid.). Included among these sub-​units are individual members of the Bundestag, any one of whom may initiate an Organstreit proceeding to vindicate his or her status as a parliamentary representative. These sub-​units also include the parliamentary political parties. An Organstreit proceeding is not available, however, to administrative agencies, governmental corporations, churches, or other corporate bodies with quasi-​public status. Concrete Judicial Review—​Concrete, or collateral, judicial review arises from an ordinary lawsuit (ibid.). If a court in any one of the other specialized jurisdictions in the Germany legal system is convinced that a relevant federal or state law under which a case has arisen violates the Basic Law, then the court hearing the matter must refer the constitutional question to the FCC before proceeding to a resolution of the case (ibid.). Judicial referrals do not depend on the issue of constitutionality having been raised by one of the parties. The courts in the other specialized jurisdictions are obliged to make a referral when they become convinced that a law under which a case has arisen is in conflict with the constitution. Abstract Judicial Review—​The FCC may decide differences of opinion or doubts about the compatibility of a federal or state law with the Basic Law on the mere request of the federal or a state government or of one-​fourth of the members of the Bundestag (ibid.). Oral argument before the Court, a rarity in most cases, is always permitted in abstract review proceedings. The question of the law’s validity is squarely before the Court in these proceedings, and a decision against validity renders the law null and void. Constitutional Complaints—​The Basic Law grants individuals and some entities the right to file a constitutional complaint with the FCC in order to vindicate an alleged violation of a basic right (ibid.). All other available means to find relief in the courts of the relevant specialized jurisdiction must be exhausted. Constitutional complaints must be lodged within a certain time, identify the offending act or omission and the agency responsible, and specify the constitutional right that has been violated. Petitioners only have to show that they have been ‘directly, personally, and presently affected’ by the alleged constitutional violation to have ‘standing’ to lodge a complaint. The procedure for filing constitutional complaints is relatively easy and inexpensive. No filing fees or formal papers are required. Most complaints are prepared without the aid of a lawyer (lawyers prepare about a third of the complaints filed). In fact, legal assistance is not required at any stage of the complaint proceeding. As a consequence of these rather permissive access and ‘standing’ rules, the Court has been inundated with complaints, which swelled in number from under 1,000 per year in the 1950s, to around 3,500 per year in the mid-​1980s, and rising above 5,000 per year since the 1990s (Bundesverfassungsgericht,

210   Russell A. Miller 2021). The constitutional complaints are, by a large measure, the dominant part of the FCC’s docket. The Court must accept for decision any complaint that is constitutionally significant, or if the failure to review the complaint might impose a grave hardship on the complainant (Kommers and Miller, 2009). The three-​justice Chambers play an essential role in vetting the submitted complaints. The Court grants full senate review to barely more than 1 per cent of all constitutional complaints, but such complaints result in some of its most significant decisions and make up more than 50 per cent of its published opinions (ibid.). The Court has accumulated a considerable store of moral authority and public approval. Public opinion polls show that the Court enjoys substantially more public trust than other major political or social institutions (ibid.). The FCC relies on this goodwill when, as it often does, it wades into Germany’s most contentious issues. Among the many reasons for the widespread acceptance the Court enjoys are its passive posture in the scheme of separation of powers and the restraint is has typically shown when it does act. With respect to the latter virtue, when summoned to service, in numerous ways the Court shows considerable restraint. First, the Court has traditionally refrained from anticipating a question of constitutional law in advance of the necessity for deciding it. While every case properly before the Court involves a constitutional question, the Court usually refrains from deciding ancillary constitutional issues not yet ripe for decision. Second, the approach the Court takes towards interpretation exemplifies its modesty. A leading principle of judicial review in Germany, for example, obliges the Court to interpret statutes, when possible, in conformity with the Basic Law. The Court also perfected the use of the proportionality principle in constitutional law (Barak, 2012). That approach has become a centerpiece of constitutional jurisprudence around the world (ibid.). In that mode the Court seldom categorically invalidates legislation but instead seeks to balance the constitutional interests in conflict in a case and prescribes amendments or adjustments to the challenged law that aim to mutually preserve as much of the government’s policy and as much of the individual’s freedom as possible. The proportionality principle may shield the Court from accusations of judicial activism on the basis of a counter-​majoritarian rejection of popularly legitimated policy. But it has the collateral effect of involving the Court in a deep assessment of the legitimacy, suitability, necessity, and policy-​balance of each provision in a challenged law. This often results in long, extremely detailed, and extensively prescriptive opinions. The Court’s record, in spite of the modesty just described, reveals a self-​confident tribunal deeply engaged in Germans’ lives and politics. It has invalidated more than 600 laws and administrative regulations (or particular provisions thereof) under the Basic Law (Bundesverfassungsgericht, 2021). The number and range of cases in which the FCC has acted to dramatically impact German politics are too great to systematically or comprehensively recount in this survey. But it is clear that the FCC is one of the Federal Republic’s essential institutions. It has banned political parties as unconstitutional. It has policed federal-​state relations. It has monitored the democratic process. It has overseen the dissolution of parliament. It has supervised the unification of West and East Germany. It has shaped education policy. It has delineated Germany’s social market

THE GERMAN LEGAL SYSTEM AND COURTS     211 economy and cradle-​to-​grave welfare regime. And it has defined and enforced a regime of basic liberties extending from classic rights to freedom of speech and religion and extending to modern interests in technological privacy. It is for good reason that many observers of contemporary politics and society regard the FCC as the main driver for the emergence and stability of a free and democratic Germany.

The European Judicial Framework Germany’s constitution commits the country to international cooperation and to integration into supranational regimes. Especially at the European level, this mandate has had a profound impact on the German legal system. First, German courts are obliged to try to realize and give force to the country’s commitments under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The Convention is an international treaty that operates within the framework of the Council of Europe. The Council is a European-​based international organization that was founded to promote democracy and human rights in post-​war Europe. There is little doubt that the ECHR is one of the Council’s most important achievements. The interpretation of the Convention and the adjudication of claims of states’ violations of the rights it guarantees are the responsibility of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) based in Strasbourg, France. The rulings of the Strasbourg Court are not directly binding in a discrete German case in the way the decision of a higher domestic appellate court directly impacts the course of those proceedings by either endorsing the decision of a lower court or by rejecting the lower court’s decision and imposing (or ordering that the lower court impose) a different outcome. But the decisions of the ECtHR do play a significant role in the ordinary course of German law. In the most direct way, the judgments may order German authorities to change their practices or the terms of a statute. Rarely, a decision of the ECtHR might directly dictate the outcome of a German proceeding if, pursuant to German law, those proceedings are re-​opened after the Strasbourg Court’s decision. But more commonly, the judgments of the ECtHR constitute the authoritative gloss on the positive law rights secured by the Convention. The Convention has been ‘domesticated’ as applicable federal law through the enactment of an enabling statute that requires the German courts to observe and apply the Convention when interpreting national law. When engaging with the Convention in a German proceeding through this attenuated framework, the German courts must consider the Strasbourg Court’s jurisprudence and align their interpretation of European human rights with that Court’s interpretation of the Convention (Hoffmeister, 2006). For this reason, the decisions of the Strasbourg Court can be a fundamental part of the parties’ advocacy before a German court and where necessary they must serve as a fundamental part of the logic of a German court’s reasoning. The Strasbourg Court’s decisions cast a significant shadow across the German legal landscape even if the ECtHR

212   Russell A. Miller is not a last-​instance or super-​appellate court atop any of the specialized jurisdictions in the German legal system. Second, the German legal system and courts are woven into the layered and interdependent fabric of the European Union (EU) project. Although it is the product of ‘mere’ international treaties, the EU has come to be understood as something different, something more than a traditional international organization. Instead, it functions as a sui generis political form that exclusively possesses and acts upon the elements of state sovereignty that have been assigned to it by the member states. The Union does so exclusively through its own self-​contained legal framework. That includes the enforcement of primary law (the European Union Treaties) and the promulgation, interpretation, and implementation of secondary law (including EU regulations that have automatic, direct effect throughout all EU member states). The EU—​neither a cooperative international organization nor an old-​fashioned federal state—​has been characterized as a new supranational political entity. This concerns Germany’s legal system because the EU is mostly obliged to exercise its authority by prevailing upon the member states’ institutions to interpret and implement EU law. German bureaucrats must implement EU regulations alongside the federal, state, and local norms they administer. And German courts must apply and interpret all EU law that is relevant to a case. This is a form of the cooperative federalism that functions within the German federal scheme: the power at the centre gains legitimacy and acceptance by having its mandates realized by familiar and trusted local institutions; the involvement of local institutions permits some flexibility and subtle variation in the interpretation and implementation of the centre’s norms so that they are better aligned with local conditions and customs. In any case, the member states were never going to authorize the EU to develop its own administrative and judicial authorities that would then operate all across the Union parallel to domestic institutions in the way that US federal agencies and courts exist shoulder-​to-​shoulder with the states’ administrations and courts. That truly federalist framework lies far in the future for the EU—​if it is ever to be achieved at all. For the time being, German courts often find themselves called upon to adjudicate and interpret EU law, which is thought to be hierarchically superior to national norms. In this sense, German courts are part-​time EU courts. But, to maintain the coherence and integrity of EU law, the domestic courts are required to refer tricky EU law questions to the EU judicial authorities consisting of two bodies sitting in Luxembourg: the Court of Justice and the General Court. Together, these tribunals are referred to as the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and their opinions provide the definitive interpretation of EU law. German judges must have a command of EU primary and secondary law, including a grasp of the CJEU’s interpretation of those norms. Where they feel that the jurisprudence is well-​ settled they are expected to enforce the interpretations emanating from Luxembourg. If they are uncertain, then they must call on the Luxembourg system for clarification and await those results before going ahead with a decision in the case. In both contexts—​the Convention system in Strasbourg and the EU regime—​the interplay between European and German courts has sometimes been the source of

THE GERMAN LEGAL SYSTEM AND COURTS     213 ‘tension’, although proponents of European integration have sought to soften the potential damage by calling the difficulty a judicial ‘dialogue’ (van Gestel and de Pooter, 2019; Claes, 2006). It has particularly been a problem when it appeared that European law might preempt German constitutional law and, in doing so, subordinate the German FCC. The resulting ballet—​featuring the FCC, the CJEU, and the ECtHR—​has been an evolving performance with each court straining to claim the lead role and occasionally stomping on the toes of the other dancers (by accident in some cases, but other scenes offered a whiff of purposefulness). The metaphor of dancers sharing the stage seems a good fit because many of the interactions between the courts are choreographed in advance by thick constitutional and procedural rules. And besides their legitimate desire to effectively perform their assigned role (and thereby preserve their legal system’s assigned status) in concert with the other courts, one also detects a bit of institutional jealousy and self-​regard often attributable to glamorous dancers, each striving to become the prima ballerina. The FCC has pushed hard—​sometimes in complex and convoluted decisions—​to ensure that the peace and prosperity secured by Germany’s post-​war Basic Law are not carelessly or illegitimately cast aside, not even in the name of the grand dream of an ever-​closer Europe. If, in doing so, it has seemed to aggrandize itself, there will be few in Germany or elsewhere who will suggest that modern German justice doesn’t merit this respect.

Conclusion Germans love the law and they love their courts. Their faith in the competence, objectivity, and independence of the judiciary can almost seem like an undemocratic impulse. Those remote, robed guardians, and not their elected parliamentarians, inspire Germans’ greatest trust and respect. Perhaps this habit contains an echo of the Teutonic tribal priests described by Tacitus. It certainly expresses Germans’ post-​Nazi temperance towards the will and whims of popular democracy. More than anything else, the Federal Republic of Germany is a Rechtssaat—​a state subordinated to the law that has been enacted by democratically accountable legislators. But if law is king (as opposed to a literal king, or a dictator for that matter), then the courts that interpret and apply the law must have a special standing in the system’s architecture. In Germany, they do.

Further Readings Dubber, M. and Hörnle, T. (2014), Criminal Law: A Comparative Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Foster, N. and Satish, S. (2010), German Legal System and Laws (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

214   Russell A. Miller Heyde, W. (Christopher Pavis trans. 1994). Justice and the Law in the Federal Republic of Germany (Heidelberg: Müller Verlag). Kommers, D. and Miller, R. (2012), The Constitutional Jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press). Markesinis, B. and Unberath, H. (2002), German Law of Torts: A Comparative Treatise (Oxford: Hart Publishing). Robbers, G. (2017), Einführung in das deutsche Recht (Baden-​Baden: Nomos Verlag). Simon, H. and Funk-​Baker, G. (2013), Einführung in das deutsche Recht und die deutsche Rechtssprache (Munich: Beck Verlag). Stolleis, M. (2017), Public Law in Germany: A Historical Introduction from the 16th to the 21st Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Zekoll, J. and Wagner, G. (2018), Introduction to German Law (Alphen aan den Rijn, The Netherlands: Wolters Kluwer). Zimmermann, R., (2006), The New German Law of Obligations: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Bibliography Barak, A. (2012), Proportionality: Constitutional Rights and Their Limitations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Bundesgerichtshof (2021), Das Gericht https://​www.bundes​geri​chts​hof.de/​DE/​Das​Geri​cht/​ dasG​eric​ht_​n​ode.html (Last accessed 3 August 2021.) Bundesverfassungsgericht (2021), Jahresstatistiken (Last accessed 3 August 2021.) Calabresi, S. (2021), The History and Growth of Judicial Review—​Volume 2: The G20 Civil Law Countries (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Casper, G. (1980), ‘Guardians of the Constitution’, Southern California Law Review 53, p. 773. Claes, M. (2006), The National Courts’ Mandate in the European Constitution (Oxford: Hart Publishing). Collings, J. (2015), Democracy’s Guardians: A History of the German Federal Constitutional Court, 1951–​2001 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Gunlicks, A. (2003), The Lander and German Federalism (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Hoffmeister, F. (2006), ‘Germany: Status of European Convention on Human Rights in Domestic Law’, I.CON 4(4), p. 722. Hueglin, T.O., and Fenna, A. (2015), Comparative Federalism: A Systematic Inquiry (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). Janin, H. (2004), Medieval justice: Cases and Laws in France, England and Germany, 500–​1500 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers). Kant, I. (Norman Kemp Smith trans., 1933), Critique of Pure Reason (London: Macmillan). Kant, I. (Lewis White Beck trans., 1949), Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Kantorowicz, H. (Cory Merrill trans. 2011), ‘The Battle for Legal Science’, German Law Journal 12(11), p. 2005.

THE GERMAN LEGAL SYSTEM AND COURTS     215 Kelsen, H. (Max Knight trans. 1970), The Pure Theory of Law (Berkeley, California: University of California Press). Koch, H.W. (1978), A History of Prussia (London: Routledge). Kommers, D. and Miller, R. (2009), ‘Das Bundesverfassungsgericht: Procedure, Practice and Policy of the German Federal Constitutional Court’, Journal of Comparative Law 3(2), p. 194. Kommers, D.P. and Miller, R.A. (2012), The Constitutional Jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press). Larenz, K. (1991), Methodenlehre der Rechtswissenschaft (Heidelberg: Springer-​Verlag). Ledford, K.F. (2004), ‘Formalizing the Rule of Law in Prussia: The Supreme Administrative Law Court, 1876–​1914’, Central European History 37(2), pp. 203–​24. Loomis, R.S. (1997), Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers). Markovits, I. (1996), ‘Children of a Lesser God: GDR Lawyers in Post-​Socialist Germany’, Michigan Law Review 94, p. 2270. Mathews, A. (2016), The Medieval German Lohengrin: Narrative Poetics in the Story of the Swan Knight (Rochester: Boydell & Brewer). Müller, I. (Deborah Schneider trans., 1992), Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press). Stolleis, M. (2003), ‘Judicial Review, Administrative Review, and Constitutional Review in the Weimar Republic’ Ratio Juris 16(2), pp. 266–​80. Tacitus, P. C. (Harold Mattingly trans., 1948), On Britain and Germany (New York: Penguin Books). Tatham, A. (2013), Central European Constitutional Courts in the Face of EU Membership (Leiden: Brill). van Gestel, R. and de Pooter, J. (2019), In the Court We Trust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Vogenauer, S. (2005), ‘An Empire of Light? Learning and Lawmaking in the History of German Law’, The Cambridge Law Journal 64(2), pp. 481–​500. Wesel, U. (2004), Der Gang nach Karlsruhe—​Das Bundesverfassungsgericht in der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik (Munich: Karl Blessing Verlag). Whitman, J. (1990), The Legacy of Roman Law in the German Romantic Era (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Ziegler, V.L. (2004), Trial by Fire and Battle in Medieval German Literature (Rochester: Boydell & Brewer). Zimmerman, J.F. (2008), Contemporary American Federalism—​The Growth of National Power (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press).

CHAPTER 13

THE ‘OLD FI V E ’ The Bonn Parties in the Berlin Republic David F. Patton

The German party system is a study in contrasts. Of the seven parties that returned to the Bundestag after the 2021 federal election, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Greens, i.e. the former ‘Bonn parties’, had all arisen in West Germany and been shaped by its institutions and norms. After unification, these ‘old five’ were joined by the ‘new two’, in the form of the Left Party (die Linke) and the Alternative for Germany (AfD). With the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, forming a single caucus, the Bundestag features six parliamentary groups. Even though unification lies more than three decades back, the ‘old five’ show disproportionate strength in the former West Germany, while the ‘new two’ overperform in the former East Germany. The former comprise the political centre; the latter are situated on the ideological wings. The former stand by the European Union (EU) and the Atlantic Alliance; the latter are more Eurosceptical and critical of the US (Lemke, 2020; Patton, 2013); the ‘old five’ are the political mainstream; the ‘new two’ are the populist challengers. The former have crossed the threshold of joining governments at the national level; the newcomers are deemed unfit for federal office. According to 2021 polling, voters bunched the five Bonn parties in the ideological centre. On a left-​right scale of 1–​11 they situated the Greens at 4.6, the SPD at 4.9, the FDP at 6.1, the CDU at 6.4 and the CSU at 6.9, and the trend, especially pronounced among the CDU and CSU after 2005, has been towards the centre since unification. In contrast, voters located the Left Party at 2.7 and the AfD at 9.7 (Forschungsgruppe Wahlen: Politbarometer, 2021a). After the 2021 election, the ‘old five’ convened to hammer out a SPD-​Greens-​ FDP (‘traffic light’) coalition government that ensured that the parties of the old West Germany would govern nationally as they have since unification. Yet this is not to say that these five have not changed markedly. Since 1990, all have confronted an increasingly volatile electorate, electoral and organizational weakness in

THE ‘OLD FIVE’    217 the East, a more fragmented party system, and populism. While the five as a group have lost vote share since unification, some have fared much better than others. This chapter introduces the five parties—​first the longstanding catch-​all parties and then the two smaller niche parties—​and subsequently examines their development and prospects in the early 2020s.

Volksparteien No More?: The CDU/​CSU and SPD By the 1960s, the CDU/​CSU and SPD had come to resemble the ‘catch-​all party’ (Volkspartei) model that Otto Kirchheimer hypothesized was emerging in post-​war Western Europe. To Kirchheimer, unlike class-​based or religion-​based parties of mass mobilization, the catch-​all parties were less ideological in their programmatic outlook; featured a stronger leadership; afforded party members less influence; targeted a broad range of voters on a cross-​class or cross-​denomination basis; and had close relations with different societal groups (Krouwel, 2003, pp. 26–​7; Kirchheimer, 1966). The Christian Democrats and Social Democrats increasingly fit the bill, even as they retained deep ties to long-​established socio-​cultural milieus. The CDU and CSU arose after the Second World War as big tent parties for Catholics and Protestants to bridge the religious divide of past party systems, for nationally-​ minded conservatives, for business interests, and for rural communities. In its 1959 Godesberg party programme, the SPD jettisoned its Marxist critique of capitalism and courted constituencies beyond the socialist working class (Lees, 2005, pp. 160–​6). In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the Volksparteien won more than 80 per cent of the vote in every federal election, peaking at 91.2 per cent in 1976. Electoral decline commenced in the next decade and accelerated in unified Germany (Poguntke, 2014; Wiesendahl, 2011, pp. 125–​49). In the 2021 Bundestag election, the CDU, CSU, and SPD received their smallest combined vote share ever—​49.8 per cent. This offered further evidence, along with declining party membership, that these once mighty parties were a shadow of their former selves (Matuschek and Güllner, 2011; Niedermayer, 2017, p. 2). Long-​term trends weakened the catch-​all parties. Scholars pointed to eroding religious and working-​class sub-​cultures that had undergirded the CDU/​CSU and SPD, to greater individualism as a result of socio-​economic transformations, to declining membership among associations linked to the Volksparteien, and to political dealignment and rising voter volatility (Merkel, 2017; Wiesendahl, 2011; Lösche, 2009). Once imposing Christian Democratic and Social Democratic parties struggled throughout Europe. Christian Democracy in Italy and Belgium all but collapsed; the mainstream centre-​left parties in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Austria, and France witnessed steep drops in recent decades (Bale and Krouwel, 2013; Lemke and Marks, 1992; Kitschelt, 1999; Kersbergen, 1999).

218   David F. Patton

Christian Democratic Union, Christian Social Union In West Germany, the CDU placed the Chancellor for twenty-​eight of forty-​one years and, with the CSU, finished first in ten of eleven federal elections. It drew heavily on church members, especially Catholics, on the elderly, rural voters, and business and agricultural interests. With Konrad Adenauer as Chancellor and Ludwig Erhard as Economics Minister, the Christian Democrats benefitted from the ‘economic miracle’ of the 1950s, when West Germany had high growth rates, low unemployment, and low inflation, and from its close association with the country’s ‘social market economy’, a rule-​ based capitalism with a strong social welfare dimension. To Steven Martin, ‘In simplistic electoral terms, the CDU squared the democratic circle—​its conservativism could draw support from rural areas, Erhard’s free-​market ideas were sure to appeal to ambitious entrepreneurs and the “social market” approach could attract workers as well as the representatives of big business who were prepared to tolerate Erhard’s animosity toward monopolistic practices in return for the prospect of harmonious labour relations’ (Martin, 2018, p. 94). The CDU and CSU no longer rely as much upon regular church-​goers, as the country, in particular in the East, has become more secular and less socially conservative (Wiesendahl, 2011, pp. 166–​7, 171–​2). The Union’s base among farmers has also eroded as the modern service sector has grown at the expense of agriculture (Wiesendahl, 2011, pp. 172–​3.) Moreover, anti-​communism, once an ideological pillar of Christian Democracy, lost salience with the Cold War’s end. Amidst these changes, and after the Christian Democrats had lost to the Social Democrats in the 1998 federal election, the CDU entered the opposition and, with Angela Merkel as party leader in 2000 and as Chancellor in 2005, it embarked on programmatic modernization in an effort to recover lost ground (Green, 2013; Wiesendahl, 2011, pp. 184–​8). The conservative party moved to the centre, adopting new positions on nuclear power, the military draft, the minimum wage, family policy, and immigration and integration (Green, 2013, p. 46; Lau, 2009; Wahl, 2011, pp. 295–​400; Wiliarty, 2010, pp. 179–​84; Mushaben, 2017, pp. 215–​90). Although the CDU/​CSU had in the past favoured nuclear energy, Chancellor Merkel backed the shuttering of Germany’s nuclear power plants while embracing an ambitious renewable energy push (Energiewende). Merkel-​led governments also ended military conscription, made the German military a more family-​friendly institution, introduced a quota for women on public company boards, established a national minimum wage, and allowed a same-​sex marriage bill to become law. In a decision that alarmed many conservatives, and cost the CDU significant electoral support, Merkel opened Germany’s borders in 2015 to hundreds of thousands of refugees, embracing a ‘welcoming culture’ (Willkommenskultur) to those in need. Christian Democracy adjusted its policies to an electorate whose interests and identities differed from those of past generations. It reinvented itself to continue to

THE ‘OLD FIVE’    219 appeal across social class, religious denomination, region and generation. In the 2013 Bundestag election, the CDU/​CSU, led by the popular Merkel, won 41.5 per cent of the vote, its best result since 1990, and narrowly fell short of achieving an absolute majority in parliament, seating 311 of 631 Bundestag deputies. Its centrist course opened up new coalition options. Whereas in the mid-​1980s leading Christian Democrats had attacked the Greens as a threat to German democracy (Kraatz and Peters, 2013, pp. 127–​32, Patton, 2020, pp. 91–​3), by 2017 Merkel and the Greens were finding sufficient commonalities to govern together. It was the FDP not the Greens that cut short coalition talks in 2017. Tellingly, 75 per cent of Green voters in 2017 approved of Merkel’s job performance—​ more than the 64 per cent nationally (Infratest dimap, 2017b). In February 2021, 80 per cent of Green party supporters hoped that the CDU/​CSU would form a coalition with the Greens after the federal election (Röhlig, 2021). To its critics, the CDU’s leftward turn resulted in a ‘social democratisation’ and ‘greening’ that alienated conservatives and allowed the AfD to take root (Plickert, 2017a; Plickert, 2017b). Former CSU leader Franz Josef Strauß had cautioned the Christian Democrats against a democratically legitimate party establishing itself to their right. The AfD, however, was poised to do just this. In 2013, 290,000 CDU/​CSU voters switched to the newcomer (Infratest dimap, 2013); four years, later an additional 980,000 net voters went from the CDU/​CSU to the AfD (Infratest dimap, 2017a). The Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a CDU-​affiliated think tank, surveyed CDU party members in 2015 and found that they situated themselves politically to the right of where they located their own party. ‘From the perspective of party members, however, the CDU as a party stands clearly to the left of their own position’ (Neu, 2017, pp. 11–​12). Party members on the whole showed little support for a minimum wage (29 per cent), same-​sex marriage (22 per cent), and more immigration (20 per cent) (Neu, 2017, p. 26). Angela Merkel oversaw a transformation of the CDU (Mushaben, 2017; Wiliarty, 2010). Under her leadership, the CDU positioned itself as a competent pragmatic party of government, disarming its competitors through a strategy of ‘calculated demobilization’, in which it adopted their positions or avoided debates altogether (Dostal, 2019, pp. 287–​8). The CDU nonetheless faces a difficult strategic choice. If it continues to eschew cooperation with the far-​right AfD at all levels, then it will need partners on the left, including the Greens and potentially even the Left Party in the East, thereby blurring its profile as a centre-​right party. If the CDU pivots to the right, whether by returning to conservative cultural and immigration positions or by cooperating with the right-​wing populist party, as the centre-​ right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) did under its chair Sebastian Kurz, then it will lose members and voters to its moderate competitors (Oppelland, 2020, p. 65). Following the 2017 election, the CDU slumped in the polls. After Chancellor Merkel stepped down as CDU chair, party general secretary Annegret Kramp-​Karrenbauer in December 2018 narrowly edged out for party leadership Friedrich Merz who stood for a conservative reorientation of the party. In the 2019 European Parliament (EP) election, the CDU/​CSU received 28.9 per cent nationally, its worst result ever in an EP election. It lost support in a number of Eastern and Western German regional elections in 2018–​20 as well. Following an indecisive regional election in Thuringia in autumn 2018, in which

220   David F. Patton the Left Party, SPD, and Greens as well as the ‘old five’ fell short of a parliamentary majority, the CDU faced the unappealing alternative of cooperating with either the Left Party or the AfD. It backed the FDP candidate for Minister President who, with AfD votes, briefly assumed the office before resigning amidst national outrage. After February 2020, the Thuringia CDU tolerated a Left Party-​SPD-​Greens minority governing coalition in order to ensure that the regional government did not need support from the AfD. After failing to convince the regional chapter of the CDU to back new elections in Thuringia in 2020, Kramp-​Karrenbauer announced in mid-​February that she would resign as party leader and not be available as CDU Chancellor candidate in 2021. In January 2021, Armin Laschet, the middle-​of-​the-​road CDU Minister President in North Rhine-​Westphalia, topped Friedrich Merz to take the reins as party leader. By picking Laschet over the conservative Merz as chair, and then Laschet over Markus Söder (CSU) as CDU/​CSU Chancellor candidate, the CDU signalled that it would continue Merkel’s moderate course. When the coronavirus pandemic struck in late winter 2020, the CDU/​CSU’s standing in the polls rose from the upper-​mid 20s to around 40 per cent by late spring. Angela Merkel, who bolstered her reputation as an effective crisis manager by responding to the emergency in a reasoned, calm, and scientific fashion, again enjoyed stellar approval ratings, higher than that of other German politicians. It is nothing new that voters often rally around the government during challenging times. Yet crises too may beget a populist backlash that cuts into support for the establishment. Although there were large demonstrations against the government’s coronavirus measures, they lacked societal reach while attracting extremists and conspiracy theorists. These protests did not represent the kind of durable social movement that could sustain and fortify a political opposition. In comparison to other crises, the populist narrative of a corrupt political establishment did not resonate among voters looking for decisive, competent problem-​solving. Amidst second and third coronavirus waves in late 2020 and early 2021, the CDU/​CSU lost support and fell back to pre-​pandemic levels. Government missteps, profiteering by Union politicians, and dissatisfaction with the pandemic’s toll hurt the CDU and its reputation for competent crisis management. During the 2021 election campaign, Armin Laschet struggled to unite his party, bungled a high-​profile public appearance following catastrophic July flooding in western Germany, and subsequently led the CDU/​CSU to its worst result ever—​24.1 per cent nationally and a second-​place finish. He stepped aside as party chair and was replaced by Friedrich Merz in January 2022. The CDU’s relations with its more conservative sister party, the Bavarian Christian Social Union, worsened during the 2015–​16 refugee crisis. In 2016, Markus Söder, a leading CSU politician who became Bavarian Minister President in 2018 and party chair the following year, acknowledged that ‘sister parties had become distant relatives’ and that there was the ‘threat of a profound alienation between the CDU and CSU’ (Roßmann, 2016). In contrast to the other catch-​all parties, the CSU maintained a strong electoral and organizational position (Zolleis and Wertheimer, 2013). In 1990, its party members comprised 1.95 per cent of all those who were eligible, but by 2015, this had

THE ‘OLD FIVE’    221 dipped to 1.31 per cent—​still far higher than that of the CDU (0.75 per cent) and the SPD (0.61 per cent) (Niedermayer, 2017, p. 3). Prior to 2009, the CSU with few exceptions had won absolute majorities in Bavaria in federal elections since the mid-​1950s. After receiving only 42.5 per cent in 2009, the party, under the leadership of Horst Seehofer, turned to a younger, less male-​dominated leadership, a more modern programmatic offering which included a stronger environmental emphasis, enhanced grassroots and greater party unity (Weigl, 2015, pp. 76–​86.) In the 2013 Bundestag election, the party won an impressive 49.3 per cent in Bavaria. Yet four years later, the CSU garnered just 38.8 per cent in Bavaria, its smallest share since 1949. The party, which had been critical of Angela Merkel’s decision to open Germany to refugees in September 2015, and had campaigned in 2017 for an upper limit to the number of refugees admitted per year, lost votes to the AfD and FDP, both of which had criticized Merkel’s refugee policies. Seehofer concluded that ‘we left the right flank open somewhat. We have to now close this vacuum’ (Beck, 2017). By late spring 2018, Seehofer, as Federal Interior Minister, was demanding, in opposition to Chancellor Merkel, that some asylum-​seekers could be turned away at the German border (Geis and Hildebrandt, 2018). The tensions between the two sister parties reached their highest level since the mid-​1970s. On 14 October 2018, the CSU received 37.2 per cent of the vote in the Bavarian regional elections, its worst showing since 1950. The Greens surged to 17.5 per cent; the centre-​right Free Voters (FW) to 11.6 per cent; and the AfD to 10.2 per cent. The media and the party itself concluded that the CSU’s efforts to attract AfD supporters had backfired, hurting the party among moderates, to the benefit of the Greens. After the election, the CSU softened its anti-​immigration rhetoric and its relations with the CDU improved. Markus Söder and the CSU adjusted the party’s statute in an effort to attract new supporters, among them women, youth, and migrants, while strengthening the CSU’s commitment to environmental protection and other post-​material concerns (CSU, 2019; Weigl, 2020, pp. 236–​43). In short, the CSU, traditionally the more conservative of the two Christian Democratic parties, had shifted to the centre as well. In spring 2021, Germans were again reminded that the CDU and CSU were indeed separate parties after a bitter contest between Laschet and Söder to serve as the parties’ joint Chancellor candidate. In the end, the CDU backed its party chair over the more popular CSU leader, leaving Söder and his supporters feeling ill-​treated. The CSU won 31.7 per cent in Bavaria in the 2021 federal election, a decline of 7.1 percentage points from that of 2017.

Social Democratic Party In the late 1990s, the SPD also embarked on a modernization course, in which it tacked to the political centre by focusing more on middle-​class concerns and less on those of the industrial working class, which had grown smaller and less cohesive (Wiesendahl,

222   David F. Patton 2011, pp. 164–​5, 168–​7 1). Whereas the Christian Democrats under Chancellor Merkel shifted leftward on socio-​cultural issues, the Social Democrats moved rightward on economic policy when in office from 1998–​2005. In both cases, periods atop government drove programmatic and policy changes. With the SPD in opposition throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s, an element within the party embraced the ‘Third Way’ perspective that Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, and other centre-​left leaders had pioneered. In June 1999, Gerhard Schröder, Federal Chancellor and SPD chair, penned a manifesto with British Prime Minister Tony Blair that was entitled Europe: The Third Way/​The New Centre (Die Neue Mitte), in which they laid out the ideological foundations for an intellectual and programmatic rejuvenation of social democracy (1999). In this eleven-​page document, in which variations of the word ‘modern’ appeared no fewer than twenty-​eight times, Blair and Schröder contrasted their approach with that of the traditional leftwing whose focus on equality through economic redistribution and welfare state expansion had, in their view, produced suboptimal outcomes that reduced social democracy’s appeal. They blamed excessive statism for disincentivizing individual initiative, for overly burdensome regulations, and for bloated bureaucracy. Reformers instead called for policies, such as more preschools and vocational training, that provided greater opportunity to all. Deemphasizing class conflict, while embracing a market economy (but not a ‘market society’), they articulated middle-​class concerns about high taxes, crime, poor schools, and overregulation. Although Blair and Schröder rejected unbridled markets, they also cautioned that ‘there must not be a renaissance of 1970s-​style reliance on deficit spending and heavy-​handed state intervention’ (1999). Consistent with what Schröder termed ‘Support and Demand’ (Fördern und Fordern), Third Way politicians provided financial assistance on the condition that recipients seek work or engage in vocational training. To Herbert Kitschelt, centre-​left parties confront a political economic dilemma: they pay an electoral price for rejecting market liberal reforms, yet when they implement these policies, they alienate their core constituency and decline electorally (Kitschelt, 1999, pp. 322–​5). This occurred in Germany after the SPD-​Green government won re-​election in 2002. Chancellor Schröder embarked on ambitious reforms, dubbed Agenda 2010, in an effort to revitalize the German economy by containing health care costs, trimming welfare payouts, and liberalizing labour markets. A particularly controversial measure, Hartz IV, cut benefits for the long-​term unemployed, combined long-​term unemployment support and welfare within a single programme, and imposed conditions on those who were to receive support (Hassel and Schiller, 2010). In 2004, anti-​Hartz IV protests erupted throughout Germany, but were especially strong in the Eastern part where the unemployment rate was much higher (Baumgarten and Lahusen, 2012, pp. 57–​ 88.) Left-​wing Social Democrats and trade union activists attacked Hartz IV as being at odds with the party’s core principles of solidarity and social justice. They founded Electoral Alliance Jobs and Social Justice (WASG), which joined forces with the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) in the 2015 Bundestag election and then merged with the PDS into a single party, the Left Party (die Linke), in 2007. Whereas the PDS, as heir to the

THE ‘OLD FIVE’    223 East German Communist party, had struggled since 1990 to attract Western voters and members, the new party, co-​led by former SPD chair Oskar Lafontaine, performed quite strongly in the West, especially among unemployed and economically disadvantaged voters, encroaching upon the SPD’s voters, its members, and its message of social justice. Although economists credited Hartz IV with reducing unemployment, the SPD paid a heavy political price. After Schröder left the political arena in 2005, the SPD no longer defined itself as the New Centre (die neue Mitte) and reemphasized social justice. This proved a hard sell since Agenda 2010 had been its signature programme and remained closely associated with the party. When distancing itself from Hartz IV and giving renewed attention to social justice, the SPD faced credibility problems. Moreover, the SPD was repeatedly drawn into a grand coalition with the CDU/​CSU (first in 2005–​09; then in 2013–​17; and again in 2017–​21), in which it had to answer for further welfare state retrenchment, such as the raising of the retirement age, that exposed it to blistering criticism from the Left Party. As a junior partner in government, it received little credit from voters for the policies it helped implement, such as the introduction of a national minimum wage, retirement at 63 if conditions were met, and the extension of rent control (Jun, 2020, p. 87). Its social justice message fell short at a time when voters judged the country’s economic situation to be favourable. Furthermore, although the party still presented itself as the voice of the economically vulnerable, its backing came heavily from middle-​class and skilled workers whose interests diverged from those of the most precarious. (Jun, 2020, pp. 96–​7). When Martin Schulz, who had been the European Parliament President, became the SPD’s party chair and Chancellor candidate in early 2017, he pledged to put social justice front and centre in the party’s election campaign. What would later be dubbed the ‘Schulz hype’, his party soared in national polls, even surpassing that of the CDU/​CSU, and it appeared as if Angela Merkel’s days as Chancellor might be numbered. Yet the surge faded quickly. During the campaign, the party did not effectively convey what it meant by social justice nor how it would go about achieving it but rather offered a vague concept that failed to mobilize voters (Wiesendahl, 2017, pp. 10–​13.) After winning 23 per cent of the vote in the 2009 Bundestag election and 25.7 per cent in 2013, it settled for 20.5 per cent in 2017. It received nearly 9.4 million second ballot votes, less than half of the nearly 20.3 million that it had garnered in 1998. After the 2017 federal election, Schulz announced that the SPD would enter the opposition. However, when talks between the CDU/​CSU, FDP and Greens collapsed, the SPD negotiated another coalition agreement with the Christian Democrats, approved by party members in a referendum. Andrea Nahles replaced Martin Schulz as party leader in early 2018, but after the SPD settled for 15.8 per cent in the 2019 European Parliament election, she stepped down as party leader and SPD Bundestag caucus chair. A provisional three-​person executive took over until late 2019 when a new team, headed by the left-​wing Social Democrats Saskia Esken and Norbert Walters-​Borjans, assumed the reins. The party had had but three leaders between 1946 and 1987; thereafter no fewer than thirteen people had served as party chair by mid-​2021. In 2019, the SPD resolved to replace Hartz IV with a basic income. Despite its leftward turn, it named Olaf Scholz,

224   David F. Patton the centrist Federal Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor, its standard bearer in the upcoming federal election campaign. Scholz led the SPD to a surprising first-​place finish by winning 25.7 per cent of the vote in 2021. In summary, after unification the catch-​all parties tacked to the centre, under the mantle of modernization. Yet they faced a ‘modernization trap’, by which the broadening of their programme and policy necessary to attract new groups of voters risked alienating core supporters (Wiesendahl, 2011 pp. 181–​9; Wiesendahl, 2017, pp. 6–​ 8). For the CDU, its repositioning occurred during Angela Merkel’s tenure as party chair (2000–​2018) and as Chancellor (2005–​2021); in the SPD’s case, it accelerated during Gerhard Schröder’s second term as Chancellor. Although both leaders encountered resistance from party traditionalists, whether conservatives in the CDU and CSU or the SPD’s leftwing, the latter’s defection to the WASG and the Left Party proved especially vexing for the SPD, resulting in a new force on the left wing of the party system. A similar fate haunts the CDU/​CSU in the form of the AfD, which has lured away voters and members from the Christian Democrats (Dilling, 2018; Wiesendahl, 2017, p. 8). Whereas the SPD has moved away from neo-​liberalism, apparent in its choice of Esken and Walters-​Borjans as party leaders in 2019, the CDU has not returned to its prior conservativism.

The Free Democratic Party and Alliance ’90/​The Greens The FDP: The Free Democratic Party (FDP) long played a central role in post-​war politics, even though it typically won between 6 and 12 per cent of the vote in federal elections. Founded in 1948, the party championed individual rights and freedoms in both the economic and social spheres. The new party unified the national-​liberal and social-​liberal wings of political liberalism, overcoming a longstanding party-​system divide in Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic. In the 1950s and 1960s, the former dominated and backed ‘bourgeois governments’ with the CDU/​CSU. By 1969, however, the party’s ascendant social-​liberal wing had crafted a coalition with the SPD that held until 1982. A CDU/​CSU-​FDP government then formed and endured until 1998. This centre-​right alignment was again in power from 2013–​17. Yet the Federal Republic and its party system were changing to the FDP’s disadvantage. Its traditional societal base eroded with the old middle class’ decline and its new middle-​class backers were less dependable (Dittberner, 2014, pp. 49–​50). By the early 1980s, the party faced a social liberal competitor in the Greens to whom it eventually ceded its kingmaker function (Abedi and Siroff, 2011; Dittberner, 2014, p. 52). By the mid-​1990s, the FDP espoused neo-​liberal economic positions, demanded tax cuts, deregulation and fiscal restraint, thereby positioning itself to the CDU/​CSU’s right on economic policy (Søe, 2000, pp. 60–​1, 66–​7).

THE ‘OLD FIVE’    225 In the 2009 Bundestag election, the FDP achieved its best result ever of 14.6 per cent after campaigning on far-​reaching tax relief. However, the party struggled to cut taxes once in government and was accused of favouring its own narrow clientele, such as hotel owners, rather than the broader public (Patton, 2015, p. 188). During the Eurozone crisis, the FDP backed the controversial bailouts to Greece, despite opposition from within its parliamentary caucus and among its members. To Jürgen Dittberner, ‘Black-​Yellow was a coalition, in which the Union was credited with all the successes and the FDP was held accountable for all the mishaps. The Union was the winner of the “Black-​Yellow project” from 2009–​2013 and the FDP was the loser’ (Dittberner, 2014, pp. 29–​30). In 2013, the FDP failed to clear 5 per cent and for the first time in its long history was dismissed from the Bundestag. Its weakness in the Länder complicated matters. It was present in less than half of the regional parliaments and was not in a single regional government by late 2014. Christian Lindner, a former FDP general secretary, became party leader in 2013. Viewing its brand as fundamentally sound, the party refurbished its logo, foregrounded the youthful Lindner as the face of a forward-​thinking party that had learned from its mistakes, and highlighted its policy positions on education and digitization so as to be not only identified with tax cuts and deregulation. By 2015, it had turned the corner, performing well in a series of regional elections, which helped set the stage for the party’s strong showing in the 2017 federal election when it more than doubled its 2013 vote share and captured 10.7 per cent of the vote. The election extended the FDP’s roller coast ride of recent years, from a record high in the 2009 Bundestag election to a record low in 2013 and then back to a double-​digit finish in 2017. The FDP had showcased Lindner who proved an energetic, effective campaigner on the stump and in televised talk shows. Lindner appealed to what he called the country’s ‘impatient middle’ (ungeduldige Mitte) who had grown frustrated by the lack of reform under the grand coalition. In 2013, the AfD had stood for liberal markets and had taken more votes (430,000) from the Liberals than from any other party (Niedermayer 2015, p. 193; Infratest dimap, 2013). In 2017, critics accused the FDP of positioning itself as an ‘AfD-​light’ (Michal, 2017). The party criticized Merkel’s refugee policies, called in its programme for a phasing out of the European Stability Mechanism’s lending facilities for the Eurozone, and appeared open to easing the sanctions on Russia imposed after its annexation of Crimea. Its tougher stance towards refugees resonated with voters (Infratest dimap, 2017c; Patton, 2018b, pp. 137–​8). In addition, the party called for educational reform, digitization, an immigration law, tax cuts, and deregulation. As in the past, the FDP drew votes from CDU supporters. The party did well among the educated and affluent, the self-​employed, the young, and those in the West. After the election, the FDP broke off coalition negotiations with the CDU/​CSU and Greens citing policy differences. Its decision to walk away was likely influenced by its recent travails in a Merkel-​led government, culminating in its 2013 election loss, and by its ambition to win over less extreme AfD voters, which might be carried out more effectively from the ranks of the opposition (Monath and Fiedler, 2018; Patton, 2018a, p. 60).

226   David F. Patton The FDP initially lost ground during the pandemic. As a party with many self-​ employed and small business owners amongst its ranks, it called for an easing of the coronavirus restrictions. Yet most Germans approved of the restrictions and supported opening up the economy gradually. By late spring 2021, surveys showed that the FDP was polling just above the critical 5 per cent mark. However, as Covid-​19 cases surged in late 2020 and early 2021 and the federal government, in consultation with regional governments, introduced new restrictions, the FDP rebounded in the polls as a critic of the restrictive measures. In early 2021, claiming that some officials seemed more interested in grounding citizens than in combatting the pandemic, Lindner called out the ‘spiral of anxiety’ and ‘path of standstill’ and demanded a smarter course that balanced public health, individual liberty, and economic success (Lindner, 2021). In the 2021 Bundestag campaign, the party pursued a centrist course that revealed stark policy differences to the AfD in regard to the European Union, immigration and newcomer integration. The FDP won 11.5 per cent, a modest increase over its 2017 result, and performed disproportionately well among younger voters, those with higher educational attainment, and among the self employed (Forschungsgruppen Wahlen, 2021b). Alliance ’90/​The Greens: As the youngest of the ‘old five’, the Greens stood apart from West Germany’s political establishment. Unlike others, they were not among those that had been licensed by the occupying powers. Instead, they formed as a national party in 1980 in opposition to the ‘old parties’. Its founders saw it as an ‘anti-​party party’ (Kelly, 1994, p. 37). The Greens exemplified a ‘new politics party’ on the basis of their ideology, party organization, political style, and their members’ and voters’ socio-​economic profile (Poguntke, 1987, pp. 80–​1). The party held a left of centre ideology and supported individual self-​realization, minority rights, grassroots democracy, the environment, disarmament, and the global South (Poguntke, 1987, pp. 78–​9). With its focus on quality of life issues, it reflected the post-​material values of a post-​war generation that had come of age in the absence of economic and physical insecurity (Inglehart, 1977; Inglehart, 2008, pp. 899–​90). The Greens favoured a participatory, amateur-​activist party organization to prevent internal oligarchies (Rihoux, 2016). Typical of other ‘new politics parties’, they had an unconventional political style and enjoyed close relations to the social movements that had helped bring forth the party. Finally, Green supporters were often young, well educated, and part of the new middle class (Poguntke, 1987, pp. 78, 81). Whereas in the 1980s left-​wing activists (Fundis) challenged party moderates (Realos), the latter had prevailed by the early 1990s. After the party’s shock federal election defeat in 1990, the Greens defined themselves as an ecological reform party, streamlined party structures by reducing the amateur-​activist elements, and supported coalitions with the SPD. In 1993, the West German Greens merged with Alliance ’90, the heir to the East German citizen groups that had helped topple communism in 1989. By 1998, the Alliance ’90/​the Greens, as the party was officially called, had entered into national government with the SPD (1998–​2005). They supported Schröder’s Agenda 2010 reforms and backed Germany’s military participation in NATO’s 1999 Kosovo War, thereby marking a break with the party’s earlier pacifism. A ‘New Green’ pragmatism recognized the constraints of tight budgets (Blühdorn, 2004). In terms of its targeted constituency,

THE ‘OLD FIVE’    227 ‘it means the attempt to overcome excessive reliance on the eco-​libertarian and post-​ materialist social movement sector and to move towards the liberal and post-​ideological centre ground’ (ibid., p. 566). Finally, the acceptance of less conventional allies, such as the CDU, characterized the Greens’ newfound pragmatism (ibid.). The Greens’ coalition options expanded beyond Red-​Green to include the FDP, the Left Party, and the CDU. In its Baden-​Württemberg stronghold in Southwestern Germany, the party forged the first Green-​led regional government in 2011 under Winfried Kretschmann as Minister President. After the 2016 regional election, in which it won 30 per cent of the vote, the Baden-​Württemberg Greens governed with the CDU. The federal party’s longstanding practice of including one party chair from the Realo camp and one from the left-​wing camp ended in late 2018 with the election of two centrists. As in the past, the Greens continue to perform well among younger votes, women, those with higher levels of education, city dwellers, and among Westerners. Between 1995 and 2017, their federal election results ranged from 6.7 per cent to 10.7 per cent. Unlike the CDU, CSU, SPD, and FDP, the Greens have more members now than in 1990, growing their membership by nearly a half (Niedermayer, 2017, p.1). In the 2017 federal election campaign, the Greens kept their options open, neither ruling out a left-​wing alliance with the SPD and perhaps the Left Party, nor a centre-​right one with the CDU/​CSU and possibly the FDP. They concentrated on environmental issues and generally avoided divisive left-​wing economic policy demands, thereby removing a potential obstacle to a post-​election deal with the Christian Democrats (Lees, 2018, pp. 127–​8.) On 24 September, the Greens met or exceeded expectations when they finished with 8.9 per cent. After the 2017 election, the Greens entered into coalition talks with the centre-​ right parties. They had shown themselves to be a pragmatic partner at the regional level and had governed with the CDU in Hesse and Baden-​Württemberg and with the CDU and FDP in Saarland and Schleswig-​Holstein. Given the SPD’s electoral weakness, and without the realistic option of a SPD-​Left Party-​Greens government, ‘Black-​Green’ (CDU/​CSU-​Greens) offered the Greens the possibility of governing at the national level. Whereas talks between the CDU, CSU, and Greens had been unsuccessful in 2013, in 2017 a CDU/​CSU-​FDP-​Greens coalition seemed viable. The Greens proved accommodating and established a good working relationship with Merkel and the CDU/​CSU. However, disagreements among the four parties surfaced over family reunification policy for refugees, emissions cuts, the Eurozone, and the solidarity tax for Eastern Germany (Carstens, et al., 2017). After negotiations collapsed and a grand coalition followed, the Greens stayed in the opposition where they aggressively challenged the AfD. The Greens entered the year 2020 on a remarkable run. In 2019, the party had built upon its success in 2018 regional elections in Bavaria and Hesse by winning 20.5 per cent and finishing second in the European Parliament election. Voter concerns about climate change and a popular leadership fuelled the Greens’ rise. The coronavirus pandemic, however, overshadowed concerns about the environment and played into the hands of the executive at the expense of the Bundestag opposition parties. In

228   David F. Patton its ‘role of a quasi-​governing party on stand-​by’ (Habeck, 2019), the Greens, who fell back in the polls, supported the Chancellor’s coronavirus policy. In March 2021, the Greens performed strongly in regional elections in Western Germany and, led by its newly appointed Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock, surged above 20 per cent in national polls. The party seemed poised to join or even lead the next government. However, the Greens struggled during the campaign, as Baerbock faced criticism that she had not reported income, that she had plagiarized parts of a book she had written and that she had inflated her resume. On election day, they received 14.8 per cent of the vote. Nearly 40 per cent had regarded the Greens as best able to combat climate change, the most salient issue for voters (Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, 2021b).

Conclusion Down but not out, the ‘old five’ have seen their vote share dip from 98.7 per cent in 1987 to 92.1 per cent in unified Germany’s first federal election in December 1990, to 73.1 per cent in 2017, only to rebound to 76.1 per cent in 2021. The catch-​all parties fell the furthest, while the FDP and the Greens generally maintained or improved their standing. When support for the Greens surged after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, it subsequently fell back to prior levels in the 2013 Bundestag election. This time the Greens’ ascent may be more enduring given that climate change, even if temporarily eclipsed by the coronavirus pandemic, will persist as a central concern to many German voters. On a general level, unlike the Christian Democratic parties and the FDP with origins stemming in part from the religious-​secular cleavage in Germany, and unlike the SPD with its roots in the class cleavage of the nineteenth century (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967), the Greens arose out of a materialist-​post-​materialist divide, which remains highly salient in contemporary Germany. After unification, the CDU/​CSU, SPD, and Greens each moved to the centre in order to attract voters, but in so doing alienated traditionalists. At this time, the FDP moved to the right on economic policy. Populists on the ideological wings have inflicted considerable electoral damage upon the mainstream parties. The CDU faced some of the same pitfalls as the SPD, but until 2021 had been able to compensate for its loss of loyal partisans by reaping the rewards of a ‘Chancellor bonus.’ In the early 1990s, the Bonn parties merged with Eastern ones to extend their reach to the new Länder. Yet Easterners today give them less support than do voters in the West. In 2021, the AfD finished first in Saxony and Thuringia and second, ahead of the CDU, in Brandenburg and West-​Pomerania. The ‘old five’ remain less well anchored in the Eastern Germany. Nonetheless, the CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP, and Greens have not relinquished political power, forming every German national government since the 1950s. They have built a strong centre that has provided Germany and Europe with stable and moderate

THE ‘OLD FIVE’    229 leadership in the face of global economic crisis and tensions over migration. Yet will the centre hold? The crisis of the catch-​all parties tests a political establishment that has exhibited greater resilience than that seen in neighbouring countries. Yet even as the Volksparteien experience relative decline, the party system fragments, and populists threaten, the ‘old five’ continue to ensure a remarkable degree of leadership, political and policy continuity in the Federal Republic.

Further Reading Jun, Uwe and Oskar Niedermayer (eds) (2020), Die Parteien nach der Bundestagswahl 2017 (Wiesbaden: Springer VS). Langenbacher, Eric (ed.) (2019), Twilight of the Merkel Era: Power and Politics in Germany after the 2017 Bundestag Election (New York: Berghahn Books). Mushaben, Joyce Marie (2017), Becoming Madam Chancellor: Angela Merkel and the Berlin Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) Walter, Franz (2018), Die SPD: Biographie einer Partei von Ferdinand LaSalle bis Andrea Nahles (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag). Wiesendahl, Elmar (2011), Volksparteien: Aufstieg, Krise, Zukunft (Opladen: Verlag Barbara Budrich).

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CHAPTER 14

GERM ANY ’S P OL I T I C A L PARTIES—​THE NEWC OME RS Hartwig Pautz

The German political party system seemed ‘frozen’ for around thirty years after the foundation of the Federal Republic (Lipset and Rokkan, 1990). Between 1961 and 1983 only the Christian Democrats (CDU and CSU), the Social Democrats (SPD), and the Free Democrats (FDP) held seats in the Bundestag. The federal nature of the country allowed more variation on the local and Länder levels, but even there parliamentary politics was dominated by these four parties. In the early 1970s and early 1980s, there was a sense of thawing. Newcomer parties, understood as parties ‘added to a country’s original party system’ (Harmel, 1985, p. 405), emerged as electoral volatility grew. The most noteworthy additions were the far-​Right National Democratic Party (NPD, 1973) and the Green Party (1980). The former very narrowly missed entry into the Bundestag in 1973, held back only by the 5 per cent electoral threshold, but has since had only sporadic electoral success on local and Land levels. The Green Party has become an established player with experience in local, Land, and federal government. The 1990s and 2000s saw the formation of additional parties with some electoral success at least at some point in their ‘lifespan’ (Pedersen, 1982). These are the Left-​of-​Centre Die Linke (‘The Left’), the libertarian Pirate party, and the Right-​wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Today, with a 2021 Bundestag of seven parties—​there is less diversity in Land parliaments—​the situation is one of unprecedented party competition. Such competition is influenced by supply and demand, but also by the framework which governs how parties participate in elections. Concerning this framework, Germany is not an easy territory for newcomer parties. While the federal structure, proportional electoral system, and public party financing are factors which promote ‘multi-​partism’ (Duverger, 1954, p. 239), the 5 per cent electoral threshold in elections to Land parliaments and the Bundestag makes ‘life’ for a new party beyond the ‘declaration’ and ‘authorisation’ phases (Pedersen, 1982) more difficult. Moreover, the electoral threshold reduces incentives to form a new party in the first place (Bolleyer, 2013).

GERMANY’S POLITICAL PARTIES—THE NEWCOMERS    235 The remainder of the chapter provides an overview of Die Linke, the Pirate party, and AfD and thus discusses one newcomer party which is now fully established, one which did not consolidate, and one whose fate is not clear yet, despite significant success, amidst programmatic shifts and leadership turmoil.

Die Linke—​A ‘Normal’ Left-​Wing Party? To some, Die Linke is anything but a newcomer party given that its roots lie in the Socialist Unity Party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR)—​the country’s ruling party until 1989. On its ruins, after unification, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) arose and remained, until its transformation into Die Linke in 2005, an exclusively East German party. Throughout its lifespan, the PDS was confronted with intense public scrutiny over whether it had made a clear enough break with personnel, ideology, and membership of the past. Such scrutiny, combined with the open contempt that it was met with by many in West Germany’s political and media circles, contributed to the party’s identity as a party ‘of and for the East’. In other words, the PDS became voice and Heimat for those East Germans who attributed economic troubles and high unemployment in the East to the failings of ‘the West’. As such, the PDS expressed a new cleavage in German politics, the East-​West cleavage. Considering its history, it was not surprising that the PDS did not clear the 5 per cent electoral threshold in the first all-​German elections to the Bundestag in 1990, despite a strong vote in the East. While the PDS failed to make much electoral impact in the West throughout the 1990s, in East Germany it regularly gained more than 20 per cent in Land elections and became the SPD’s official junior coalition government partner, for the first time, in Mecklenburg Western-​Pomerania in 1998. Such cooperation was difficult to get underway as, immediately after unification, the SPD had categorically ruled out working with the PDS. History, ideology, and policy differences stood in the way. Also, the SPD considered itself as the true party of the Centre-​Left, and many in the PDS saw their party’s rightful place in opposition and regarded anything else as betrayal of socialism and the GDR. The PDS’ few voters in the West were largely from the splintered and marginal communist Left (Bouma, 2016). The party’s continuing failure to expand its appeal to the West was demonstrated by the fact that the PDS in the West gained only 1 per cent of the vote in the 1994 federal elections while it won 4.4 per cent across the whole country. Only in 1998 did the party overcome the electoral threshold when it won 5.1 per cent of the vote. After these elections, under the leadership of Lothar Bisky, the PDS started to develop aspirations to be an electable democratic socialist party for the whole country. This included the realization that success in the West would require less focus on

236   Hartwig Pautz advocacy for ‘the East’ and also a more youthful and ‘alternative’ image. Nonetheless, in 2002 the PDS again failed to gain seats in the Bundestag. However, the following years saw a marked change in the party’s fortunes. In 2003, a new party, the Electoral Alternative Labour and Social Justice (WASG), was set up by disgruntled Social Democrats, disappointed trade unionists, opponents of globalization, and members of the old West German communist milieu. What united them was their rejection of the SPD-​Green Party federal government’s neo-​liberal labour market and welfare reforms, the ‘Agenda 2010’. For the 2005 federal elections the WASG agreed to cooperate with the PDS. The joint election result of 8.7 per cent, following a campaign with a focus on the SPD as the main enemy and not devoid of demagoguery, showed that there was room for an all-​German party Left of Social Democracy. Following these elections, PDS and WASG started a merger process which led to the formation of Die Linke in 2007. The process was characterized by friction between representatives from West and East, and between the hard Left and the soft Left of both parties. Figures such as Oskar Lafontaine (former SPD leader, WASG chairman, and future co-​leader of Die Linke) and Sahra Wagenknecht (representative of the communist wing of the party and future co-​leader of the party’s parliamentary group in the Bundestag) were controversial as they sought to combine Left-​wing populism with a focus on the SPD as the main enemy (Neugebauer, 2012). The proponents of this approach came to dominate the new party so that Die Linke, at least on the federal level, showed little office-​seeking behaviour (Hough, et al., 2007), considering that SPD and Die Linke were not very far apart in many policy positions. Die Linke adopted its first full party programme only in 2011. In the meantime, and despite the programmatic limbo and internal disputes about the party’s direction, the party did well electorally as it gained seats in most Land parliaments in the West and East. The 2009 federal elections were also successfully fought—​in the East, Die Linke gained just under 30 per cent of the vote, but even in the West it polled over 8 per cent resulting in a total of 11.9 per cent. Die Linke’s voters in the East and West remained different—​in the East, the party was a genuine catch-​all party, while in the West it was most successful among unionized blue-​collar workers, the unemployed, and, increasingly, an alternative-​Left milieu. In 2014, Die Linke for the first time filled the position of Minister President in a Land after receiving just over 28 per cent of the vote in the Eastern Land of Thuringia. This allowed Die Linke to form and lead a coalition with SPD and Greens as junior partners. In contrast to the involvement of the PDS in governmental responsibilities in the 1990s, this arrangement did not cause nearly as much public controversy and demonstrated that Die Linke in the East is far more office-​seeking than in the West as well as the party’s federal leadership. However, the coalition treaty contained a clause which designated the GDR an ‘Unrechtsstaat’—​a state conducting acts of injustice against its citizens (Koalitionsvertrag, 2014, p. 6). This was an admission that many in Die Linke—​ including some of its leaders—​resented, nearly twenty-​five years after unification, but it was an admission upon which the junior coalition partners, SPD and Greens, insisted (Meisner, 2014).

GERMANY’S POLITICAL PARTIES—THE NEWCOMERS    237 Overall, the electoral picture for Die Linke, since 2017, appears mixed. The 2021 Bundestag elections saw Die Linke’s vote reduce to under 5 per cent so that it only retained seats on the basis of special electoral rules. Since 2013, Die Linke has lost many voters, especially in East Germany, to the AfD which has trumped Die Linke in some of its old strongholds (Lang 2018). In East Germany AfD and Die Linke are now ‘populist competitors’ (Olsen, 2018) as they both vie for the voters with the most ‘populist attitudes’ (Vehrkamp and Merkel, 2018). Today, Die Linke may no longer be considered a cleavage party, neither with regards to East and West nor with regards to the socio-​economic cleavage. Its membership, however, still reflects the former cleavage—​most of the party’s 60,000 members live in the East (Die Linke, 2020). Where does Die Linke stand today with regards to ideology and policy? The party is not a programmatically monolithic block, and its Left-​wing and ‘pragmatic’ factions are often at odds with each other. In social policy areas, Die Linke has followed a course akin to ‘old’ Left-​wing social democracy while foreign policy—​in particular the question of NATO membership—​and economic policy are more contentious between the party’s factions. However, radical Left groupings such as the Communist Platform have lost influence over the party’s 2011 programme (Die Linke, 2011), and the policies it pursues where it holds governmental responsibility are characterized by the pragmatism of an office-​seeking party, so that claims that Die Linke is a ‘radical’ or ‘extreme’ party should be scrutinized over whether they are politically motivated. However, the positions of leading Die Linke figures do not always comply with its programme or how Die Linke governs. For example, Sahra Wagenknecht was attacked from within her party for her positions on the 2015/​2016 ‘refugee crisis’. They were seen as nearly interchangeable with those of the AfD and were understood as unpalatable attempts to regain voters from the AfD. In the run-up to the 2021 elections, Die Linke’s undecided position on the role of Germany’s military in the hasty evacuation of civilians from Afghanistan demonstrated to SPD and Greens that Die Linke was still not reliable in matters of foreign policy and Germany’s membership in NATO. The new party leadership, elected in early 2022, has the difficult task to continue the double balancing act between East and West and between left-wing populism and pragmatism.

The Pirate Party—​A Flash in the Pan The Pirate party came to prominence in 2011 when it gained seats in the Berlin Land elections. However, its fortunes have since then waned dramatically. The party was founded in 2006—​barely noticed by a wider public—​following the establishment of the first Pirate party in Sweden as part of a wider European ‘Pirate Movement’. The movement was the result of the consequences of the digital availability of film, music, text, and software and its global use—​or misuse, as the music industry in particular saw the sharing of music via the internet as ‘pirate activity’ (Bartels, 2013). When governments and the music industry started clamping down on copyright infringers,

238   Hartwig Pautz the issue of intellectual property rights in the digital age was brought to the fore by the Pirate movement, tapping into a policy area which had hardly featured on the radar of established parties. However, for the German Pirate party it was not the debate around copyright that led to its electoral ascent in 2011 but the discussion, beginning in 2009, about federal legislation developed to hinder access to internet child pornography. It was the Pirate party which protested—​with a very effective campaign—​against the planned legislation, denouncing it as ‘censorship’. This campaign alerted the media and public to the Pirate party and brought the issues of digital freedom of speech and information centre stage, at least for a moment. As established parties were slow in developing their own positions, the Pirates became the ‘go-​to party’ for those interested in civic rights in the digital age. The result of the anti-​censorship campaign was that the 2009 European elections saw the Pirates gain a surprising 0.9 per cent of the vote. While this did not translate into any seats, it helped the German Pirates to sustain some media presence until the local elections in North-​Rhine Westphalia which saw the party winning its first seats in local councils. At the 2009 federal elections, the Pirates gained 2 per cent of the popular vote, a strong showing for a new party (Bundeswahlleiter, 2009a). The Pirates’ first entry into a Land parliament occurred in 2011 when the party won 8.9 per cent of votes in Berlin (Landeswahlleiter, 2011). In 2012, the Pirates repeated their success by entering the parliaments of Saarland, Slesvig-​Holsatia, and North-​Rhine Westphalia. In each election the party gained between 7 and 8 per cent. Hopes were high for the 2013 federal elections when opinion polls suggested that the party could gain up to 10 per cent of the vote. But on election day, the Pirates were left with a disappointing 2.2 per cent (Bundeswahlleiter, 2013). By this point, the Pirates had lost one of its few prominent faces—​that of secretary general Marina Weisband. She resigned in 2011 after she found her party unable to deal with antisemitism, sexism, and the far-​Right tendencies of some of its members (Wittich, 2014; Niedermeyer, 2013b). After the failure at the federal elections, the party won its first seat in the 2014 European Parliament elections—​they were helped by the abolition of the electoral threshold earlier in the same year. However, since then it has lost all seats in the Länder, media interest has waned almost completely, and in the 2021 federal elections the Pirates only gained 0.4 per cent. At the 2019 European elections, the party defended its seat, but besides a few successes at local election the Pirates rarely have gained more than 1 per cent of the vote where they competed in Land election since. How can success and failure be explained? When appearing on the electoral scene in 2009, the Pirates’ focus on internet censorship and civic rights cut across established alignments. This meant that the party had the potential to appeal to many voters and non-​voters. The party’s newness, its very different approach to internal party democracy, and its unconventional personnel and appearance were also attractive to those who were tired of established parties or wished to register their protest against the ‘system’. In other words, the Pirate party, like many newcomer parties, attracted some

GERMANY’S POLITICAL PARTIES—THE NEWCOMERS    239 of its voters irrespective of programme or electoral promises. Data from the 2011 Berlin Land elections shows that only 31 per cent of Pirate voters opted for the party because of its programme (Niedermeyer, 2013a). Further evidence that the Pirates benefitted from protest voters and increased electoral volatility can be found in the analyses of the Pirates’ complete wipe-​out in the 2016 Berlin Land elections. Proportionally, the Pirates lost more votes than any other party to the AfD, the populist Right-​wing newcomer party (Pauly, 2016). A further reason for the Pirates’ decline after 2012 was their inability to sufficiently institutionalize. By late 2009, the party had quickly set up branches in all Länder, though hardly on the local level. The European elections led to a rise in membership from 840 in February 2009 to 7,400 in late 2009, reaching a high of 35,000 members in 2012 (Niedermeyer, 2013c). This surge made the administration of the quickly growing party and its policy and decision-​making processes more difficult. Regarding the former, the party was cash-​strapped and maintained a largely voluntarily-​run party machinery so that it did not institutionalize to a degree that would allow it to weather electoral setbacks and internal tensions. Regarding the latter, the Pirates insisted on their principled emphasis on transparency, participation, and flat hierarchies. However, this led to problems. For example, when the party streamed party meetings on the internet, the lively debates created the impression of a party rife with personal tension and disunity (Kühl, 2017). The party’s decision-​making via its delegate model of ‘liquid democracy’ also proved problematic. The model may have been radical in its participatory intent, but resulted in weak leadership and a cacophony of voices. In contrast to ‘normal’ parliamentary parties, the Pirates appeared rudderless in parliament and public (Niedermeyer, 2013b). Who are the supporters of the Pirate party? Its core voters are young, usually keen internet users, more likely to live in cities, and overwhelmingly male. While educational attainment is not a strong predictor for voting Pirates, during the party’s heyday its supporters were often previous non-​voters (Niedermeyer, 2013b). The party members—​ as far as the data permits a statement about this aspect, given that as a ‘post-​gender party’ the Pirates do not record the gender of party members—​are in their overwhelming majority male. A prime factor for joining the party is and was dissatisfaction with existing parties and worries about civic rights and privacy on the internet (Neumann, 2013). Today, the membership stands at 6,300 (Piraten, 2020). Programmatically, the Pirates developed quickly from a single-​issue party into one with positions on most policy areas. In the 2021 federal election manifesto (Piraten, 2021), transparency and openness of government and administration, and ‘informational self-​determination’ of the individual inform all policy ideas. Knowledge and information should be ‘open access’ or public domain to promote human progress. The Pirates seek a society with a decentralized state and economy and are in favour of relatively open borders and a liberal understanding of citizenship. In economic policy, the Pirates favour public ownership in some instances and want the state to hold back from

240   Hartwig Pautz interventionism in others. Full employment is rejected and instead an unconditional basic income proposed. While the Pirates’ stance on copyright, transparency, internet politics, and democratic participation meant the party developed within a policy space that was initially more or less unoccupied by other parties, some policy positions in more ‘traditional’ areas overlap with those of SPD, Die Linke, and the Green Party. No wonder that the public has always perceived the Pirates to belong to ‘the left’ (Haas and Hilmer, 2013, p. 76), a positioning that the party itself never endorsed.

The Alternative für Deutschland and the Gap on the Right Founded only in February 2013, the AfD just narrowly missed entry into the Bundestag when it gained 4.7 per cent of the popular vote in September 2013. Motivated by this success, the party made significant strides to institutionalize so that by May 2013 the AfD had branches in all Länder while remaining less well organized on the local level (Gross and Jankowski, 2020). In the 2014 European elections the AfD gained 7 per cent and continued to win seats in each Land election since then. In Mecklenburg-​Vorpommern, in 2016, with 20.8 per cent it became the second-​largest party, and gaining voters from all parties but also attracting many previous non-​voters (Infratest Dimap, 2016). The party’s greatest moment was the 2017 entry into the Bundestag. Its vote share of 13 per cent made it the third-​largest party in a seven-​party parliament. In 2021, it gained 10 per cent and became the fifth-largest party in the Bundestag. The AfD is the product of a long process of network building between a number of political forces. Among these were, first, ordo-​liberals who had rejected the Euro from its inception. Many of these were former members of CDU or FDP for whom the ‘rescue packages’ and ‘bank bailouts’ of the 2009/​10 Eurozone crisis, presented as ‘without alternative’ by Chancellor Angela Merkel, were the last straw. Second, some of the AfD’s founding members had gathered experience in small far Right parties such as Die Republikaner or the Bund Freier Bürger or in the circles of the New Right (Weiss, 2017). Third, the new party derives strength from Christian-​fundamentalist and ‘pro-​life’ campaigners (Althoff, 2018). The Zivile Koalition and the Initiative Familienschutz, set up by Beatrix von Storch who later took seats for the AfD in the European Parliament and the Bundestag, are examples for such organizations (Bebnowski, 2015). The Eurozone crisis was the moment when these disparate elements came together and formed what would become a highly successful newcomer party. Taking inspiration for its name by reversing Merkel’s 2010 dictum, the AfD has been labelled ‘populist’, ‘far Right’, and ‘extreme’ by opponents and analysts; its leaders and supporters have described themselves as ‘national liberal’, ‘conservative’, and ‘patriotic’. During the party’s ‘declaration’ and ‘authorisation’ phases (Pedersen, 1982), ordo-​liberalism, value conservatism, and a strong EU-​scepticism coupled with the rejection of the

GERMANY’S POLITICAL PARTIES—THE NEWCOMERS    241 Euro were more important than national conservatism, far-​Right ideology, or pro-​life stances. As all political parties—​apart from Die Linke—​supported the government’s course on the Eurozone crisis, the AfD found it easy to portray itself as an anti-​establishment party, speaking on behalf of the ‘common people’ against the ‘cartel’ of the other parties which had, according to the AfD’s first leader, created a ‘degenerate democracy’ (Lucke, 2013; see Pautz, 2021). The containment of the Eurozone crisis could have spelt the end of the AfD. However, just when this crisis lost its virulence, the ‘refugee crisis’, beginning in 2013 and peaking in 2015, provided a lifeline to the AfD. Some in the party’s leadership sought to use public concerns about immigration and the fear of Islamism as an opportunity to shift the AfD further to the Right, to the fertile ground of ‘nativist’ politics on culture and identity. This shift was successful, but required the removal of the AfD’s founder, Bernd Lucke, from his position as co-​chair in July 2015. While this was a fraught process, it did not seriously damage the party and is evidence that the AfD was already well institutionalized at this early point in its life. Under the new co-​leadership of Jörg Meuthen and Frauke Petry, the AfD took on a key role in the protests against refugees and immigration during the refugee crisis. It positioned itself as an advocate for Germans suffering economic hardship while ‘the banks’, ‘the Greeks’, and ‘the refugees’ were saved. The AfD pursued this course with vigour, leading to demands by Beatrix Storch (a leading AfD politician and then a Member of the European Parliament) that German border police fire at refugees illegally crossing the borders, including children (Der Spiegel, 2016). Others in the party were keen supporters of PEGIDA, the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident, so that some speak of the street movement and AfD as being ‘two sides of the same coin’ (Grabow, 2016). Since its foundation, all other parties have tried to ostracize the AfD as an ‘anti-​democratic’ danger to Germany. However, the AfD’s electoral performance only improved and all parties, apart from the Greens, lost voters to the AfD. Consequently, most parties adopted some of its discourse—​but not necessarily policy—​on immigration and refugees, something which they had not done during the Eurozone crisis (Pautz, 2021). The AfD’s success unsettled politicians on the Left so much that they even established a new organization to draw AfD supporters back into the ‘democratic fold’. In 2018, ‘Aufstehen’ or ‘Rise’ was set up—​one of its high-​profile founders was Die Linke’s Sahra Wagenknecht. The AfD itself welcomed Aufstehen as a bridge-​builder between Left and Right (Gauland, 2018)—​and, rightly, was not concerned about the organization’s impact on its electoral fortunes (Rucht, 2019). The 2016 party programme portrays Germany as being threatened by numerous forces. Amongst these are the European Union (EU) and the Euro, immigrants, and Islam, but also finance capitalism, demographic decline, and multiculturalism. The AfD bemoans a supposedly unrelenting dwelling on Germany’s Nazi past which leads to the degradation and disappearance of German culture and national identity. The AfD uses the programme for a general reckoning with Germany’s ‘political class’—​a ‘secret sovereign’ (AfD, 2016, p. 8)—​which it accuses of using media and educational institutions

242   Hartwig Pautz to trick ‘the German nation’. In populist fashion, the AfD claims that only more direct democracy can deal with these deep-​seated problems. The programme also gives an insight into some more detailed policy. Claiming to be the party of ‘common sense’ (AfD, 2016, p. 10), the AfD promotes conservative family policies, opposes same-​sex marriage, and takes a ‘pro-​life’ and natalist stance. The party envisages a rolled-​back, non-​interventionist state, an ordo-​liberal market economy as well as low taxes on income and wealth. Lastly, the AfD comes out as a climate change sceptic, rejecting the scientific evidence for such change and embracing the increase in CO2 emissions as a boon to agricultural production (AfD, 2016, p. 79). With its outstanding result at the 2017 federal election, the AfD became the official leader of the opposition in the Bundestag. However, the party’s arrival in parliament had a rocky start as party co-​leader Frauke Petry resigned immediately afterwards, citing the increasing influence of the far Right—​here, in particular, a group called Der Flügel—​ over the party and her inability to convince the party of her ‘pragmatic’ course that would establish it as a conservative force to the right of CDU and CSU (Fiedler, 2017), but as one that is open to cooperation with other parties. Under the leadership of Jörg Meuthen, Alexander Gauland, and Alice Weidel the party continued to shift further to the Right. Some East German party branches in particular developed strong links to the New Right. Here, the ‘Institut für Staatspolitik’, a New Right think tank, acted as an important bridge-​builder. It nurtured leading East German AfD politicians such as André Poggenburg and Björn Höcke and helped them to write the Erfurt Resolution, Der Flügel’s 2015 foundational document and a key moment in Bernd Lucke’s downfall (Bruns, et al., 2015; Pautz, 2020). Those wishing the AfD to be a ‘normal’ conservative party and coming from its ordo-​liberal wing were increasingly marginalized and today no longer play a role in the AfD. Since its 2017 entry in the Bundestag, the AfD has become increasingly confrontational, and some of its leading figures have sought to make a mockery of ‘establishment politics’. For example, the party’s leader in Thuringia, in early 2020, succeeded in upstaging the election of a new Minister President in the Land’s parliament, a stunt which sent shockwaves through the established parties and led to the resignation of the CDU’s party leader (Conolly, 2020). And while Der Flügel officially dissolved after the federal intelligence services started to monitor it as a ‘right-​wing extremist group’ opposed to the country’s constitutional order, its members have continued to build their influence over the party. In 2020, the coronavirus crisis and the ‘lockdown’ of much social and economic life gave the AfD new fodder to rail against ‘the establishment’—​and hope in the party’s battle against disappointing opinion polls (e.g. Forsa, 2020). As they did with PEGIDA, many prominent AfD figures openly sided with the Querdenken movement, a group denying the dangers of the coronavirus and the legitimacy and legality of lockdown measures, and themselves described the lockdown measures as a ‘corona dictatorship’ (Gauland, 2020). However, in late 2020 party co-leader Meuthen took a public stance against his party’s links with Querdenken and demanded that the AfD develop a more serious and moderate profile (Weiland, 2020). He was accused by many of splitting the party and kowtowing to the intelligence services ahead of the 2021 elections (FAZ,

GERMANY’S POLITICAL PARTIES—THE NEWCOMERS    243 2020). The reactions to his statements and his increasing isolation within the party led to Meuthen’s resignation in early 2022 and to his exit from the party, accusing the AfD of taking a ‘totalitarian’ course (Meuthen 2022). The party’s drift to the right may also have an impact on how the AfD uses its representation in Germany’s parliaments. So far, the AfD has often understood parliaments as a ‘stage’ to portray itself as a ‘victim’ of the supposedly concerted attempt of the established parties to silence it and has used them to gain media attention through well-​planned provocations (Hensel et al., 2017; Schroeder et al., 2018; Heinze, 2020). The AfD’s story is also a story about Germany’s electorate. Partisan de-​alignment has accelerated, and citizens are increasingly willing to experiment with their vote (Rohrschneider and Schmitt-​Beck, 2017). This is in particularly so in the East of the country, where the AfD has gained many more voters than in the West and can justifiably claim the status of a people’s party there—​in 2019, it became the second-​largest party in Saxony, Brandenburg, and Thuringia with between 24 per cent and 28 per cent of the vote. The AfD’s success also shows that a new cleavage has emerged, that of ‘nativism versus cosmopolitanism’. This may also explain why the AfD recruits its voters, contrary to clichés, not simply from the uneducated or poor: ‘neither workers nor unemployed persons were markedly more likely than other voters to choose this party. We also found no effect of lower levels of formal education’. AfD voters had often been non-​ voters, but also former voters of SPD, NPD, Die Linke, and CDU. What is important, too, is that in 2017 nearly two-​thirds of AfD voters chose the party not for its policy positions but out of disappointment with other parties (Schmitt-​Beck, 2017, p. 144). It seems that despite leadership turmoil and conflict about the direction of the party, the AfD has become a fixture in Germany’s party landscape and that the AfD, sitting to the Right of CSU and CDU, now fills a conspicuous gap in Germany’s party system.

Conclusion New political parties usually remain minor parties but nonetheless can have influence on established parties and party systems. This is so when they replace existing parties, change the arithmetic of electoral competition, influence other parties’ policy positions, or get other parties to adopt positions on new issues (Harmel, 1985). Newcomer parties are also relevant when they upset the political system, including the parliamentary process, by not only influencing the agenda but also by redefining political conflict lines and political conduct. They can do the latter when they disrupt established patterns of ‘doing politics’ and the former when they displace, for example, the traditional Left-​Right or authoritarian-​liberal cleavages. The description of Die Linke, AfD, and the Pirate party within this chapter demonstrate that these parties, in toto, have done all of these things. The chapter also shows that newcomer parties fall into different categories. Lucardie (2000) sees three types among the new parties: prolocutors, prophets, and purifiers. Prolocutors seek to represent a social group that has been neglected by established

244   Hartwig Pautz political parties. Prophetic parties seek to mobilize voters on a new political issue. Purifiers want to change the political system or the political culture. All three parties in this chapter share elements of these types—​perhaps the Pirate party is most clearly amongst the prophets, Die Linke belongs to the prolocutors, and the AfD combines elements of all three types. A further typology differentiates between mobilizers and challengers (Rochon, 1985). Die Linke has challenged in particular the SPD on its own turf, that of social justice, by claiming that the Social Democrats have abandoned their raison d’etre. The AfD is similar insofar as it has filled the gap on the Right of the political spectrum vacated by the CDU’s centrist drift under Angela Merkel. The Pirate party, in contrast, has mobilized voters on a new issue and has emphasized how their politics differ from those of the established competition. Not all newcomer parties are successful, as the chapter has shown. While predictions are not the political scientist’s task, the chapter ends with some speculations about how the three parties may develop. Apart from Die Linke, none of the post-​1990 newcomer parties has made it into government on the Länder level, let alone on the federal level. Die Linke, as discussed, ahead of the 2021 federal elections took up positions that made a coalition with SPD and Greens highly unlikely; the election outcome, in particular the weakness of Die Linke, meant that such a constellation was impossible anyway. The emergence of the AfD as a populist Right-​wing party, in a sense, has normalized the German party system if compared to that of other European countries. The AfD is currently neither office-​seeking, nor does any party wish to cooperate with the AfD. This may change if the CDU finds that by ruling out coalitions with the AfD they are, especially in the East, locked out of government by cooperation between Die Linke, Greens, and SPD. However, given the AfD’s continuous shift to the right and the growing suspicions over the constitutionality of the party, the CDU leadership is unlikely to risk such cooperation. The fate of the Pirate party in Germany mirrors that of its sister parties elsewhere as established parties have incorporated the Pirates’ core issues into their agenda. While the party still exists, it is in no position to expect any uptick in its electoral fortunes. The lack of electoral sustainability of the Pirates serves as a reminder that parties are ‘mortal organisations’ (Pedersen, 1982, p. 6) and that electoral volatility is both an opportunity and a lethal threat to newcomer parties.

Further Reading Bolleyer, Nicole (2013), New Parties in Old Party Systems. Persistence and Decline in Seventeen Democracies (Oxford: University Press). Campbell, Ross (2018), ‘Persistence and Renewal: The German Left Party’s Journey from Outcast to Opposition’, Contemporary Politics 24(2), pp. 153–​72. Heinze, Anna-​ Sophie (2020), ‘Zum schwierigen Umgang mit der AfD in den Parlamenten: Arbeitsweise, Reaktionen, Effekte’, Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaften. https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​s41​358-​020-​00245-​0.

GERMANY’S POLITICAL PARTIES—THE NEWCOMERS    245 Lees, Charles (2018), ‘The “Alternative for Germany”: The Rise of Right-​Wing Populism at the Heart of Europe’, Politics 38(3), pp. 295–​310. Olsen, Jonathan (2018), ‘The Left Party and the AfD. Populist Competitors in Eastern Germany’, German Politics and Society 36(1), pp 70–​83. Träger, Hendrik (2020), ‘Die Linke zwischen internen Konflikten, der ersten Koalition im Westen, Niederlagen im Osten und dem Ramelow-​Effekt’, in Uwe Jun and Oskar Niedermayer (eds), Die Parteien nach der Bundestagswahl 2017 (Wiesbaden: Springer VS), pp. 159–​186.

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Political Economy and Policy-​Making

CHAPTER 15

T HE GERMAN E C ONOMI C MODEL From Germany’s Social Market Economy to Neo-​Liberalism? Christian Schweiger

The German economic model has traditionally been presented as the hallmark of the alternative model to the market-oriented liberal form of capitalism, which can be predominantly found in the Anglo-​American sphere but also in parts of Asia and in East-​ Central Europe. Germany’s ‘coordinated’ social market economy represents a model which aspires to combine the focus on global competitiveness, particularly in the area of high-​quality manufacturing, by creating a consensus between market and non-​market actors (Hall and Soskice, 2001, p. 24). The German economy has its roots in the Bismarckian welfare tradition of the late nineteenth century, which introduced the social insurance system as the basic feature of the German welfare system. The parity in contributions to the social insurance system between employers and employees represents the deep-​seated solidarity culture of the Rhenish social market economy. It manifested itself in the West German Federal Republic after the Second World War. The West German social market economy was firmly grounded in the principle of protection against life risks, symbolised by the living standard guarantee offered by the welfare state through high levels of wage replacement rates for the unemployed. In the area of industrial relations the consensus principle and the focus on maintaining a large and well-​trained core workforce reflected the pillars of collective wage bargaining between employers and trade unions, the co-​decision principle between management and employees in work councils at the individual company level, and the right against unfair dismissal. In addition, company-​based apprenticeships and in-​house training represent an important cornerstone of a skill-​based manufacturing sector, which draws

252   Christian Schweiger its competitive export advantage from the reputation for high-​quality competitive products represented by the label ‘Made in Germany’. Germany’s social market economy is constitutionally entrenched in both Article 20 of the German Basic Law, which determines the social nature of the Federal Republic, and Article 28, which emphasizes that the rule of law also applies to the welfare state. The consensual nature of economic relations in Germany is closely linked to the consensual culture of the German polity, which is characterized by a relatively large set of veto players. The political process consequently is entangled in a dense web of actors on the local, regional, and federal levels. Executive government hence has to take into account a variety of vested interests if it wants to successfully implement policy changes. A particular feature of the German federal polity is the constant interaction between the federal and the regional levels represented by the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. In the latter, the regional governments of the Länder are represented and act as co-​decision-​makers in most strategic policy areas. This chapter outlines how the social market economy became the driving force for the post-​war West German economic miracle, followed by the profound challenges presented by German reunification and the subsequent Agenda 2010 reform package. On the one hand the Agenda 2010 and the Hartz labour market reforms paved the way for Germany’s recovery from its declining economic standing in the early 2000s. On the other hand, it also represented a profound transformation from the West German Bismarckian supportive welfare state culture towards the activation of individual responsibility. The main question discussed in this chapter, therefore, is whether or not the reforms have fundamentally weakened the social nature of the German economy.

The Foundations: Rhenish Capitalism in the Bonn Republic The West German Federal Republic, which was founded from the ruins of the Second World War in 1949, emerged as a semi-​sovereign polity under the supervision of the allied powers. It established a distinctive federal system with strongly devolved powers and the division of responsibilities between a multiplicity of actors and a large set of institutionalized veto players. Within this multi-​level system of governance, the West German social market economy displayed distinctive coordinated features between market forces, social actors, and the state with the purpose of establishing a consensual basis for export-​orientated growth. This distinctive brand of German ‘ordoliberalism’, therefore, places a strong emphasis on the state as the guardian of economic freedom and social cohesion, based on the fundamental equality of opportunity for all citizens (Funk, 2014, p. 110). Thus the success of the trade name ‘Made in Germany’ is grounded in an economy with a legal framework which resulted in relatively consensual industrial relations, the tendency to

THE GERMAN ECONOMIC MODEL    253 focus on high-​quality product innovation, niche production, and modest incremental changes to internal and external changes (Hall and Soskice, 2001, pp. 24–​7 and 38). The consensual network between the market, society, and the state which characterizes the German economy is also symbolized by the existence of semi-​public institutions and procedures in its industrial relations and welfare system. Prime examples are the financing of the health care system through semi-​public health care insurance providers (Krankenkassen) based on parity contribution from employers and employees, the system of industry-​wide wage bargaining between employer associations and trade unions, as well as the representation of workers on the management level in company-​ based work councils. The inherent consensus culture of the West German model of Rhenish capitalism became the backbone of its success as the locomotive for growth in Western Europe from the 1950s onwards. The era of Christian Democratic Union (CDU ) Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard (1949–​63) was known as the period of the post-​war West German Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) with average annual GDP growth rates of between 4 and 8 per cent during the 1950s and 1960s (German Federal Statistics Office, 2021a, p. 3) and record low unemployment levels below two million from 1951 until 1955 and even below one million during the years of the economic boom (1956–​75) (German Federal Statistics Office, 2021b). The 1970s brought about the first noticeable changes, with the first significant post-​war recession hitting West Germany in 1975 in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. While growth had already become volatile under the difficult external circumstances of the 1970s, it slowed down markedly in the early 1980s, when West Germany was hit by the second recession. The West German economy was framed by a conservative welfare state with strong corporatist characteristics, where state support is more orientated towards protecting the individual from the adverse effects of life risks such as unemployment, illness, and old age and less towards removing social divisions (Esping-​Andersen, 1990, p. 27). The constitutional foundation of the social nature of the market economy is determined by the 1949 Basic Law in terms of the requirement to guarantee a minimum standard of living for the disadvantaged without binding executive government to specific policies such as a minimum wage or pension levels (Kommers and Miller, 2012, p. 623). The same applies to the corporatist nature of the economy, where the state supervises the ordoliberal legal framework for the interaction between vested interests, most prominently between employer associations and trade unions. This is guaranteed most prominently by the constitutional right to establish associations, which are aimed at enhancing employment conditions and economic relations in Article 9, paragraph 3 of the Basic Law (Tarifautonomie). Trade union membership is hence an indispensable right of any employee in Germany. A core feature of the constitutionally guaranteed Tarifautonomie is the system of industry-​wide collective wage bargaining, which includes the right for trade unions to initiate strike action on behalf of the employees they represent and mediation through state representatives in case of fundamental disagreements. The corporatist interaction between the employers, trade unions, and the state has been a prominent characteristic

254   Christian Schweiger of Germany’s social market economy, where the focus lies on the coordination of interests through a consensus-​orientated approach (Streeck and Trampbusch, 2007, p. 62). The 1980s revealed that the generous West German welfare state with its Bismarckian principle of the living standard guarantee in the form of high replacement rates for the unemployed was potentially becoming a systemic problem. During the period of the Wirtschaftswunder West Germany could afford the generous levels of welfare provisions based on high growth and low unemployment. By the 1980s the promise of the caring welfare state with the focus on generous passive support for life risks such as unemployment had started to become unsustainable. Unemployment had steadily risen to one million by 1975 as a consequence of the economic downturn caused by the oil crisis. By 1985 the number of people registered as unemployed in West Germany had reached 2.25 million, which represented a significant critical junction in the post-​ war development of the social market economy (Röbenack, 2020). Total social insurance contributions had remained relatively steady until the 1970s at a combined rate of around 25 per cent for employees and employers but increased to 32.4 per cent in 1980 and to 35.3 per cent in 1990. Contributions to the unemployment insurance stood at between 1.3 and 1.7 per cent during the 1970s and subsequently increased to 3.0 and 4.3 per cent in the 1980s and in 1990, respectively (Baden-​Württemberg Statistisches Landesamt, 2021). In other words, the financial burden on working people and on the cost of labour generally was steadily rising. This contributed to the emergence of the domestic debate on the competitiveness of the West German model, the Modell Deutschland. Already in 1982 internal disagreements about the direction of economic and welfare policy in the government of West German Social Democratic Party (SPD) Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had resulted in the Free Democratic coalition partner Free Democratic Party (FDP) switching sides to the more reform-​orientated CDU/​CSU. The basis for the split in the social-​liberal coalition, which had governed West Germany from 1969 until 1982, was the profound disagreement over the proposals made by the FDP Economics Minister Otto-​Graf Lambsdorff in his famous Lambsdorff paper, in which he called for a fundamental change of direction in the economic and social policy of the Bonn Republic. Lambsdorff ’s call for tax cuts for businesses and substantial cuts in the welfare budget was fiercely rejected by the SPD who considered it an attempt to steer the social market economy into the neo-​liberal direction of Anglo-​Saxon liberal economies (Martens, 1982). An important factor in the manifestation of West Germany as the economic powerhouse of the European Community (EC) was its central bank model and the focus on ordo. The Bundesbank was founded under the Central Bank Law of 1957 on the basis of Article 88 of the Basic Law. Article 88 determines that the Federal Republic is required to install an independent central bank which is bound to the principle of price stability. The Article was revised in 1992 under the provisions of the Maastricht Treaty to enable Germany to participate in European Economic and Monetary Union by transferring powers to the European Central Bank (ECB), established in 1998. The focus of the Bundesbank on monetary stability turned the deutschmark into the anchor currency

THE GERMAN ECONOMIC MODEL    255 of the Common Market. Especially during the boom years, therefore, the Bundesbank became the safeguard of economic stability and strength by establishing a ‘framework within which the agents of the various social forces could act autonomously and co-​operatively’ (Pulzer, 1995, p. 131). At the same time the constitutional remit of the Bundesbank to maintain monetary stability frequently brought it into conflict with the federal government during times of European crises (Sturm, 1989). This was most prominently the case during the stock market crisis on 16 September 1992, which became known as ‘Black Wednesday’, during which the British Pound and the Italian Lira were forced out of the European Monetary System. The central bank then has frequently exercised what has been described as a shadow European policy (Bulmer, Jeffery, and Paterson, 2000, p. 15). From the domestic perspective the Bundesbank had consequently been regarded as the stability anchor and the guarantor of success of the Modell Deutschland. The resulting ‘D-​Mark patriotism’ encouraged citizens in the semi-​sovereign West German state to develop a feeling of community based on the strength of their economy and national currency (Streeck, 2013, p. 76). This intensified even further during the reunification process of Germany in 1989/​90, when the tide of D-​Mark patriotism swept East Germany (Hankel, 1990).

Reunification as Critical Juncture: Agenda Politics and the Recalibration of the German Welfare State towards Activation Reunification initially provided a breathing space for the domestic reform discussion but only delayed the structural problems which had already become obvious during the two decades preceding the fall of the Iron Curtain. The strategy of the Kohl government to swiftly integrate the territory of the formerly communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) into the West German state structure, including the solidaristic welfare state mechanisms of the social market economy, gained widespread electoral support, first at the first free election in East Germany on 18 March 1990 and subsequently at the first national election in the unified Germany on 2 December 1990. The path taken, however, deepened the problems that had already started to concern the Bonn Republic, particularly in two respects. First, reunification substantially undermined the competitiveness of the German mode. The assumption, after all, that East German industry could withstand the free-​ market competition of the EU Single Market turned out to be an illusion. The attempt to restructure industry in East Germany through the Treuhand agency, which the Kohl government commissioned as an agent of reform, resulted in the liquidation of many businesses and massive job losses in the East. It is estimated that the restructuring

256   Christian Schweiger initiated by the Treuhand was responsible for the loss of around 2.6 million jobs (Böick, 2019). This stood in stark contrast to Kohl’s promise that East Germany would experience ‘blooming landscapes’ in the short term, an assumption that was based on the flawed expectation that the privatization of East German industry would result in a profit for the state of around 600 billion Deutschmark when the real figure the Treuhand achieved stood at only 75 billion (Andersen, 1999, p. 373). The decline of East German industry pushed the unified Germany into recession in 1993. It was the first recession in a decade and occurred after a brief post-​unification boom during which the German economy had grown above 4 per cent. Secondly, the full transfer of the Bismarckian West German welfare state to East Germany completely overstretched its already strained resources. This situation was made even worse as a result of the steeply rising unemployment in the East in the wake of reunification throughout the 1990s. Chancellor Kohl had suggested that Germany’s economy would remain powerful enough to shoulder the financial burden of reunification, which initially had mainly consisted of the fact that 16 million East Germans had to be included in the West German social insurance system (unemployment, health care, and pensions) without having made any contributions. This was the result of the decision to introduce economic and monetary union between the two German states on 1 June 1990, even before the official reunification on 1 October. Social insurance expenditure consequently doubled between 1990 and 1995 (German Federal Health Ministry, 2007). At the same time unemployment in East Germany rose steeply from 2.6 million in 1991 to 4.4 million in 1997, which represented a historic watershed in the post-​war development of German society. In the five Eastern regions unemployment increased to double digits from 10.2 per cent in 1990 to 19.2 per cent in 1997 (Federal Agency for Employment, 2020). In East Germany over 1.5 million people were unemployed in 1997. At the same time annual GDP rates remained sluggish at an average of 1.6 per cent. Now the former locomotive of the Common Market was considered as a potential threat to the emerging Eurozone, ‘the sick man of the euro’ (The Economist, 1999). Reunification consequently has to be regarded as a ‘critical juncture’ as it is defined in the context of the historic institutionalism, which generally emphasizes the importance of path-​dependency based on the expectation that maintaining established institutional pathways will produce ‘increasing returns’ (Pierson, 2000, p. 252). The growing mismatch between rising levels of unemployment and welfare state expenditure, which ultimately threatened to undermine the long-​term competitiveness of the Modell Deutschland, fits into the category of a critical juncture as a new pathway taken ‘in response to changing environmental conditions and ongoing political manoeuvring but in ways that are constrained by past trajectories’ (Thelen, 1999, p. 387). Breaking the 4 million unemployment limit became the symbolic watershed for the post-​unification malaise which initially resulted in a profound political change from the Kohl era to a new progressive red-​green SPD/​Bündnis 90 coalition government under the leadership of Gerhard Schröder, who had committed himself to substantially reducing unemployment. Schröder famously stated shortly before the 1998 national

THE GERMAN ECONOMIC MODEL    257 election that he would not deserve to be re-​elected if he did not manage to substantially reduce the unemployment figures (Kröger 2002). He conducted a joint election campaign with his political rival, party leader Oskar Lafontaine, who represented the Left wing of the SPD and was a staunch supporter of maintaining the post-​war West German welfare status quo. In contrast Schröder advocated modest reforms to the German model with a particular focus on transforming the principle of passive welfare support towards helping the unemployed back into work. After Lafontaine had resigned as Finance Minister after only a few months in office in March 1999, Schröder published a joint position paper with the British Prime Minister Tony Blair in which both advocated a ‘Third Way’ economic reform course, which was targeted towards establishing an active welfare state. The paper clarified Schröder’s ‘Neue Mitte’ approach as a reformed Social Democratic approach, which was aimed at the transformation of passive welfare support towards an emphasis on active labour market policy . The paper spelled out, ‘Modern Social Democrats want to transform the security web of expectations towards a springboard of individual responsibility. For our societies the imperative of social justice consists of more than the distribution of money’ (Schröder und Blair, 1999, p. 7). Schröder’s aspiration to transform the German welfare state towards the focus on activation and individual responsibility, which is the main characteristic of liberal models, alienated many in the SPD who considered the party as the bulwark of the post-​war welfare state consensus orientated towards the passive life standard guarantee. Schröder realized that structural reforms were difficult to implement against firm opposition from vested interests in the German system of multi-​level governance which consists of various institutional and informal veto players (Schweiger, 2010). He therefore initially hesitated to initiate reform legislation. The adverse external environment for Germany’s export industry in the wake of September 11th, which resulted in recession and another steep rise in unemployment, however, overshadowed the 2002 elections to the Bundestag. Schröder’s profound disagreement with the George W. Bush administration in Washington, which was inclined to invade Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, also helped to increase the Chancellor’s popularity as did his successful, well-​advertised crisis management of the flooding of the river Elbe just a month before the election. Schröder managed to pull off another narrow victory for his red-​green coalition against poor poll ratings. After the 2002 election it became obvious that reforms could no longer be postponed, if the government did not want to risk Germany turning into the economic laggard of the European Union (EU), in stark contrast to the booming economies of the liberal models in the UK and Ireland. Schröder therefore initiated a ‘government by commission’ approach which attempted to both circumvent institutional veto players and opposition within his own party (Dyson, 2005, p. 288). After a failed attempt to revive the concerted action of the ‘Alliance for Jobs’ in 1999, which had operated for some time during the 1960s and 1970s, in 2002 Schröder commissioned Peter Hartz, chief executive of human resources at car manufacturer Volkswagen, to draft a reform agenda for the German labour market. At the same time,

258   Christian Schweiger he asked the economist Bernd Rürup to establish an expert commission to develop reform proposals for the health and pension system. The fact that Schröder abandoned the consensus-​orientated approach of a national dialogue through concerted action confirmed that the long-​term effects of reunification had pushed the German social market economy towards a tipping point where reforms could no longer be achieved through coordinative action. The gravity of the situation opened the pathway for Schröder to not only implement an unprecedented approach of political agenda-​setting through expert advice; the diminishing returns of the German model also opened the door for Schröder to adopt a crisis narrative in which he essentially argued that the fabric of the social market economy would vanish if the country was not willing to adopt best practice from other models (Dyson, 2005, p. 120). The logic of flexibility in the labour market and the lowering of passive welfare benefits by adopting the principle of self-​responsibility and strict means-​testing mechanisms into the welfare system, which is characteristic for liberal market economies was hence combined with the active labour market policies found in Scandinavian models. The combined principles of ‘Fördern’ (support) and ‘Fordern’ (demand) for the unemployed became the hallmark of the reform agenda named Agenda 2010, with which Schröder aspired to make Germany fit to cope with the effects of globalization and return to its post-​war role as the leading economy in Europe within a decade. Schröder’s argument in this respect was that Germany could not afford to delay reforms to the labour market and welfare state if it wanted to maintain not only the competitiveness of its economy but also avoid being pushed towards more radical reforms at a later stage. In his speech in the Bundestag on 14 March 2003 Schröder defended the proposed Agenda reforms by arguing that the aim was to preserve the German social market economy through modest reforms: To live up to our German responsibility in and for Europe we have to be ready for domestic change. Either we modernise as a social market economy or we will be modernised by the unlimited forces of the market, who want to push the social aspect out of the way (Schröder, 2003).

At its core the Agenda 2010 implemented structural changes to the German labour market, and the welfare and pension systems. On 17 October 2013 Schröder managed to get the bill passed in the Bundestag with the red-​green government majority. It gained consent in the Bundesrat on 9 July 2014. The reform package, which came into effect on 1 January 2005, transformed the former unemployment centres in Germany into Employment Agencies with the task of providing individual support for jobseekers. The basis for the active labour market policies became the reform of the formerly generous unemployment benefit system. Chapter IV of the Hartz labour market reform laws divided unemployment benefits into two categories: the first category has since been limited to a maximum duration of twelve months for jobseekers under 50 years of age and to a maximum of twenty-​four months for those who are older. If still unemployed

THE GERMAN ECONOMIC MODEL    259 after two years, jobseekers would then move into the second category of unemployment benefit (ALG II or colloquially Hartz IV). It is set at the level of social benefits (currently €432 per month for a single person). The strictly means-​tested ALG II (Hartz IV) is based on the assessment of a household-​based community concept, which takes into account any income and savings available to support jobseekers in a particular household. Spouses, unmarried partners, and even children of working age who live in the same household as the unemployed person are all liable to support the claimant with their income and savings before the unemployment benefit is granted. On the other hand, a household community without any substantial income and savings is eligible for additional support, such as social benefit for each child, and additional payments for clothing, heating, and for supporting the education of the children (Federal Employment Ministry, 2020). Hartz IV consequently represents a clear break with the social transfer state, which the Bonn Republic had established on the basis of a living standard guarantee for the unemployed. The substantial weakening of the former principle of the living standard guarantee system via turning it into welfare is reflected by the strict exclusion of combining welfare support under the second chapter of the German Sozialgesetzbuch (SGB II)—​which now contains the legal provisions for the activating welfare state (‘Fördern und Fordern’)—​and the SGB XII, which regulates income support. Before Schröder’s Agenda 2010 reforms the living standard guarantee was maintained through a combination of unemployment benefits and income support (Walwai, 2019). The Agenda 2010, however, has strictly separated these two areas. SGB II (‘support and demand’) is now applied to any benefit claimant who can work at least three hours per day and the SGB XII (income support) is applied only to those who are considered to be permanently incapable of taking up employment. The parallel introduction of flexibility to the labour market under Hartz IV, with the introduction of so-​called ‘mini jobs’ has undoubtedly resulted in the liberalization of the German employment model (Seeleib-​Kaiser, 2014, p. 231) and the overall rationalization of welfare support. ‘Mini jobs’ are currently renumerated at €450 per month and remain free from income tax and from social insurance contributions for the employee. Linked to this was the raising of the age of retirement from 65 to 67 and the introduction of a new pillar of a private pension scheme with public support and tax incentives for savers (Riester Rente) (Busch, 2009, p. 71). The reform of the pension system was pursued on the basis of the proposals made by the Rürup Commission, which recommended introducing a two-​pillar system of public and private pension contributions and raising the official age of retirement. The Rürup Commission proposals also resulted in the outsourcing of health care operations and reducing the services covered by the semi-​ public health care providers (Krankenkassen). The Commission had originally proposed moving either towards a universal health care insurance for all citizens, which would have ended the current two-​tier system between semi-​public Krankenkassen, or private health care insurance, which is only available for the self-​employed and employees with higher incomes (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2003).

260   Christian Schweiger

The Effects of the Agenda Reforms: Regaining Strength at the Expense of Cohesion? Almost two decades since the Agenda reforms were implemented, the public debate in Germany continues to diverge over the effects of the changes implemented by the Schröder government. Proponents of the reforms point out that the Agenda was the essential basis for Germany’s economic recovery and the reduction of unemployment since 2006 (Funk, 2014). It is indeed the case that unemployment in Germany has steadily fallen since 2006, with the exception of slight temporary increases in intervals during the peak of the Eurozone crisis in the period 2009–​13 and the most recent increase under the conditions of the Covid pandemic. Since its peak of 4.8 million people out of work in 2005, unemployment gradually decreased to 2.2 million in 2019. Even during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 unemployment only slightly increased to 2.6 million, the same figure as during the peak of the Eurozone crisis in 2009 (Federal Statistics Office, 2022). GDP growth has also been relatively steady since Germany recovered from the slump of the early 2000s. By 2006 annual GDP growth had returned to 3.8 per cent, followed by recession of minus 5.7 per cent and recovery to around 4 per cent in 2010–​11. Since 2013 growth has remained rather sluggish between 0.4 and a maximum of 2.2 per cent (Federal Statistics Office, 2020, p. 6). This once again shows the volatility of Germany’s export-​orientated economy, which is strongly based on the manufacturing sector and neglects the digital economy as well as domestic demand as a factor for instilling growth. As such, the success of Germany’s export-​dependent economic model, which the former head of the influential Ifo Institute Hans-​Werner Sinn famously branded as a ‘bazaar economy’ (Sinn, 2005), depends strongly on an export-​friendly external environment. The volatility of the global economy in the face of persistent crises, particularly the Covid pandemic, which has already had a profound effect on economies in Asia, Europe, and now also in the US and in Latin America, hence represents a major risk to Germany’s economic success. The Agenda reforms definitely helped Germany to transform itself from the seemingly uncompetitive problem case of the Eurozone towards the leading ‘hegemonial stabilizer’. In that capacity, Germany steered the Eurozone through the effects of the triple banking, economic, and sovereign debt crisis with a reformed governance architecture which strongly bears the hallmarks of the German ordoliberal stability culture (Bulmer and Paterson, 2013; Schweiger, 2016, p. 108). The critics of the reforms argue that they have essentially eradicated the social fabric of the German model and replicated the social inequalities which are characteristic of liberal market economies (Butterwege, 2015). It is indeed the case that the substantial reduction of unemployment in Germany since the introduction of the Hartz labour market reforms has come at the price of a substantial rise in precarious employment,

THE GERMAN ECONOMIC MODEL    261 with an increasing number of jobs in the low-​wage services industry and a general trend towards limited contracts. Since 1991 the number of people who are in so-​called atypical employment (i.e. not in full-​time employment with secure contracts) has risen by over 70 per cent, with the largest share working part-​time or under limited-​term contracts (Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 2019). This substantially increased flexibility of the employment model has on the one hand made it easier for jobseekers to get back into work. The downside is the growing lack of security for individuals, and particularly for families, in terms of ensuring their livelihood through stable employment. The result of this can be seen in the doubling of the number of people who are employed but still considered to be at risk of poverty (at around 10 per cent) in the decade following the introduction of the Hartz reforms (Eurostat, 2021). Germany has experienced a long period of wage stagnation. The growing problem with the mismatch between the rising cost of living, especially in the rental sector in bigger cities, and stagnating wages resulted in the repeated adaption of the ALG II rates and the introduction of the minimum wage by the CDU/​CSU-​SPD grand coalition in 2015. There have also been repeated periods where many employees were put on reduced working hours (Kurzarbeit; short-​time work) with state-​subsidies to augment wages by up to 80 per cent, first during the Eurozone crisis in 2009/​10, and again since the onset of the Covid pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns in the spring of 2020 and the autumn/​winter of 2020/​21 (Zolnhöfer, 2011, p. 36). While Kurzarbeit can only be a short-​to medium-​term tool to avoid job losses and does not avoid the existential problems of the affected employees, it shows that the coordinative mechanisms of the German social market economy remain intact. Although wage coordination has generally become more decentralized (Bosch, 2008) both the Eurozone crisis and the Covid pandemic have shown that Germany’s coordinative mechanisms in the form of a sustained interaction between government, companies, and trade unions continue to work (Hassel, 2014, p. 142).

Conclusion The Agenda 2010 has modified the German social market economy, especially its employment and welfare state models, which have developed greater flexibility, individual responsibility and also increasing levels of inequality, which are typical for liberal models. At the same time the changes to the German economic model have been incremental and remained solidly within the ordoliberal framework of the post-​war Rhenish model of capitalism. The crises of the early 2000s and the subsequent controversial reforms represent a tipping point towards the modification of the traditional focus on maintaining living standards through predominantly passive welfare support. The public rejection of more profound systemic change at the 2005 Bundestag election, which was proposed by then opposition leader Angela Merkel as part of the

262   Christian Schweiger neo-​liberal reform agenda the CDU had passed at the 2003 party conference in Leipzig, shows that the essential path-​dependency of Germany’s post-​war model remains intact. Merkel’s subsequent shift towards becoming the defender of the status quo during her sixteen-​year reign as Chancellor from 2005 until December 2021 and the emerging debate about the adverse social effects of the policies of the Agenda 2010 reflect the fact that there is no public consensus to move Germany towards a systemic convergence with liberal models. This development had been predicted by many during the crisis two decades ago, but it has not materialized. As the coordination mechanisms of Germany’s social market economy continue to deliver increasing returns even under repeated crisis conditions, such as the severe economic dislocations that occurred during the Covid-​19 pandemic in 2020/​21, a profound neo-​liberal turn today seems more remote than ever.

Further Reading Behringer, Jabn, et al. (2020), ‘Inequality in Germany: A Macroeconomic Perspective’, German Politics 29(3), pp.479–​97. Bosch, Gerhard and Steffen.Lehndorff (2019), ‘The German “Reforms”—​ No Model for the EU’, in M.C. Marcuzzo, A. Palumboand, P. Villa (eds), Economic Policy, Crisis and Innovation: Beyond Austerity in Europe (London/​New York: Routledge), pp. 51–​66. Jacoby, Wade (2020) ‘Surplus Germany’, German Politics 29(3), pp. 498–​521. Rothstein, Sidney A. and Tobias Schulze-​Cleven (2020), ‘Germany After the Social Democratic Century: The Political Economy of Imbalance’, German Politics 29(3), pp. 297–​318. Young, Brigitte (2020) ‘From Sick Man of Europe to the German Economic PowerHouse. Two Narratives: Ordoliberalism versus Euro-​Currency Regime’, German Politics 29(3), pp. 464–​78.

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CHAPTER 16

GERMANY ’S T RA DI NG SYSTEM AND E X P ORT -​ DRIVEN EC ONOMY Andreas Busch

The German economy is one of the largest measured by GDP, ranking fourth in the world (after the US, China, and Japan) and first in Europe (World Economic Outlook Database. International Monetary Fund, October 2020).1 One of its hallmarks is its strength in international trade (i.e. exports of goods and services), of which its global share in 2019 was 7.4 per cent, while its share in GDP was only 3.1 per cent and share in population merely 1.1 per cent (International Monetary Fund, 2020, p. 108). In 2018, Germany exported goods and services worth €1.318 billion while its imports were valued €1.090 billion. Germany thus has an export to GDP quota of 38.9 per cent, which in international comparison is very high for a country of its size (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2019, ch. 16). A country’s export quota usually varies inversely with the size of its domestic market: thus in 2019, the export quota was 7.7 per cent in the US, 13.7 per cent in Japan, and 78 per cent in the Netherlands. Germany’s quota, however, clearly exceeds that of France or the UK (21.1 per cent and 15.7 per cent, respectively) and almost meets that of far smaller Austria (40.1 per cent) (OECD, 2021, p. 57). The German economy is thus particularly strongly interwoven with the global economy. Its most important trading partners (ranked by export share) are the US, France, the People’s Republic of China, the Netherlands, and the UK. But although this sounds global, the focus of German international trade is clearly on Europe: In 2018, 59.1 per cent of its exports went to the European Union (EU) (and 57.2 per cent of its imports came from there), while the numbers for the Eurozone were 37.4 per cent and 37.2 per cent, respectively (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2019).

1 This

article is dedicated to the memory of Wade Jacoby and Henrik Enderlein, two political economists who had to leave in their prime.

266   Andreas Busch The precise composition of the ranking of import and export varies from year to year. But the international competitiveness of the German economy as well as its continuing rise in export success have been an enduring feature of the decades since the middle of the twentieth century. With exports usually surpassing imports, Germany has often run quite substantial current account surpluses. The country has thus over the years often managed to use its competence in international trade as a domestic ‘growth engine’ (Loschky and Ritter, 2007). But quasi permanent current account surpluses also have downsides because they increase the domestic economy’s dependence on the world economy; furthermore, running surpluses means foregoing domestic consumption for accruing foreign assets—​which may lose value if their exchange rate depreciates. But beyond the economic, there are also political consequences: because there can be no surpluses without other countries running current account deficits, the issue is one that from time to time triggers political controversies with the trading partners as well as debates in the domestic policy community (see below). Still, inside Germany the international trade performance is mainly seen as a success story. It is one of the tenets of West German post-​war history that both the strong integration into the world economy as well as the permanent current account surpluses have been a source of economic growth, full employment, and rise in living standards since the 1950s (Abelshauser, 2011, p. 259). Between 1950 and 1960, the value of exported goods had risen fivefold, with a further two-​and-​a-​half fold rise up to 1970 (Deutsche Bundesbank, 1988, p. 254). By the end of the 1980s, the Federal Republic of (West) Germany’s share of world trade had risen to 12 per cent and surpassed even that of the US (Busch and Goldbach, 2011, p. 277). Pre-​unification Germany had thus developed from a country destroyed by defeat in the Second World War to an ‘économie dominante’ in Western Europe; and the key to that success story could be found in its strategy of export expansion (Kreile, 1977, p. 776).

The Historical Trajectory of the German Economy To understand the development of the structures enabling this strategy, a look at the historical trajectory of the German economy is indispensable. Over the last century and a half, it shows substantial elements of continuity despite a degree of radical political regime changes unique among developed liberal democracies. Largely agricultural in character up to the middle of the nineteenth century, the decades after 1871 turned ‘an agricultural people into an industrial people’ (Stolper et al., 1966, p. 27). The leading sectors were the heavy industries, and growth was both pushed and facilitated by drastic expansion of the country’s railway network and merchant fleet. The international stock market crash of 1873 was followed by years of a ‘great depression’ lasting until 1896, which ended experiments with free trade liberalism and led to a policy of

GERMANY’S TRADING SYSTEM AND EXPORT-DRIVEN ECONOMY    267 protectionism and tariffs in the marriage of iron and rye. However, the latter remained contentious, as new coalitions of export-​oriented West German industrialists and urban consumers established themselves around the turn of the century (Torp, 2011). Domestic depression and deflation prompted an orientation towards the export of goods, services, and capital as well as a reconfiguration of the social system of production. Its organizational framework and institutions changed, with a new focus on cooperation/​cartelization in the field of competition policy, on productive mobilization rather than laissez-​faire in Ordnungspolitik, on corporatist self-​administration in social policy, the development of a sophisticated system of liberal-​corporatist representation rather than a monopoly for parliamentarism, and ‘enlightened’ protectionism replacing free-​trade ideology (Abelshauser, 2011, pp. 28–​44). The ‘new’ industries (machine building, chemical and electro-​technical with firms like Siemens and AEG) led the way by utilizing scientific knowledge innovatively and productively. Thus, they were well positioned to take advantage of the enormous upswing in world trade that occurred between 1895 and 1914, when world exports grew more than threefold (ibid., p. 35). After defeat in the First World War and the democratic revolution, Germany was in political turmoil. The globalist world trade regime broke down, reparations and hyperinflation placed huge burdens on the German economy. But the war-​time corporatism forged out of the mobilization effort continued, with employers and trade union leaders pragmatically cooperating and the state actively supporting this especially in the field of social policy (Wehler, 2003, pp. 268–​7 1). The Nazi dictatorship with its planned economy, supervision of associations by the state, and focus on economic autarky constituted a break, but nevertheless defeat in 1945 was no ‘zero hour’; while political breakdown was complete, the situation was different for the economy. Although cities like Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne lay in ruins, production capacity was in far better shape than could be gleaned from superficial assessment. The allied bombing campaigns only had limited effect: Industry gross production capacity was some 20 per cent higher in 1945 than it had been in 1936 due to massive investment during the armament boom, and much of the machinery was quite new (Abelshauser, 2011, pp. 69ff.). Supply of skilled labour was excellent—​17 per cent higher in the Bizone (of future West Germany) in 1948 compared to 1936—​due to refugees from the former Eastern territories and a continued influx from the Soviet Occupation Zone, until the building of the Berlin Wall stopped it in 1961. These factors helped the most strongly industrialized Western part of Germany to restart its economic engine; it could do so now without consideration of the structurally weaker, mainly agrarian East that had been a burden during the Weimar Republic. Having lost access to a substantial part of its market, its industry had to (re-​)focus on markets beyond Germany, and it did so successfully. Therefore, balance-​of-​payments surpluses became a characteristic of the (West) German economy from the early 1950s onwards, explained by economists through a combination of inflation abroad, a well-​ suited export structure, labour docility, and a high public and private propensity to save (Kindleberger, 1965).

268   Andreas Busch

Formative Influences since 1945 Several factors have contributed to the formation of the distinctive trading system of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) since 1945. While many are interdependent, analytically they can be decomposed into external and internal influences. As external influences we can describe those factors shaping the policy profile of the Federal Republic after the Second World War that emanate from the international situation. Having come into existence as a result of the bipolar competition following the end of cooperation between the former war allies, the West German Republic became part of the Western camp. This manifested itself both as a military alliance and ideologically as the group opting for market economies rather than centrally planned economies. Strengthening the West meant turning down early US ideas to demilitarize and deindustrialize Germany (Morgenthau plan) in favour of a strategy of shoring the country up to be part of the US-​led alliance. The primary tool for this, the European Recovery Program (or Marshall plan), not only provided food, goods, and capital to sixteen West European countries, it also changed the perception within Germany of the US from occupier to supportive partner. In exchange, the European countries set up the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) as a coordinating body, a first step towards the closer integration to follow, and they started to liberalize their foreign trade regimes, for which the new European Payments Union provided a further facilitator (Stolper et al., 1966, pp. 270–​75). These early decisions are decisive junctures setting the West German Republic on its path towards the newly emerging liberal Western model. It was the combination of endogenous growth potential unleashed by domestic economic policy decisions and the fundamentally changed international set-​up of a liberal trade order that enabled the unexpected ‘economic miracle’ of West Germany in the years after 1950 (Wehler, 2008, p. 53), with a first manifestation in the boom triggered by the Korean war. Mutual liberalizations of foreign trade conditions took place in the 1950s and 1960s under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and although the FRG under Erhard pursued a clear liberal strategy of reducing tariffs and trade quotas, it also upheld them in areas of domestic interest like coal, textiles, and agricultural produce (Gröner, 1975). The Außenwirtschaftsgesetz (Foreign Trade Act) of 1961 anchored the principle of free trade in legislation. European integration, beginning in 1951 in the areas of coal and steel and deepened in 1957 with the Treaties of Rome in the areas of nuclear and economic cooperation, meant that national legislation had started to play a less important role. Competences for setting trade policy moved to the European level by 1970, but the field remained complex and characterized by different national interests reflecting national economic structures. The Federal Republic, however, able to capitalize on the liberalizations through its internal economic structures (see below), developed an instinctive multilateralism that was characteristic for the positions it took on the international stage.

GERMANY’S TRADING SYSTEM AND EXPORT-DRIVEN ECONOMY    269 Throughout the decades it has kept to that position, both with respect to further steps in European integration (especially in the period after unification) and on the global level. Among the internal structures formative for the Federal Republic’s economic policy profile, those of a comparatively weak role of the state and a strong role of associations stand out. The weakness of the state after defeat in 1945 originated from occupation and a bottom-​up rebuilding of German statehood initiated by the Länder. After its founding, the Federal Republic remained characterized by deliberate fragmentation through federalism and the dominant mode of coalition government as well as a number of influential non-​majoritarian institutions such as the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Constitutional Court) and the Bundesbank, the country’s independent central bank. The result was a relatively weak state that has been termed ‘semisovereign’ (Katzenstein, 1987; Green and Paterson, 2005). No zero hour existed, however, in terms of the associations of economic life such as employers’ organizations and trade unions. West Germany’s rapid post-​war growth has been attributed to the abolishment of their ‘distributional coalitions’ by totalitarian government or foreign occupation (Olson, 1982, p. 75ff.). But in reality, both sides of industry regrouped very quickly after having been dismantled during the Nazi era and became strong and influential. The trade union movement opted for a system of organizing unions by industry (sixteen in all), meaning that in each firm there would only be one union to represent workers’ interests. In 1949 these unions jointly set up the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (German Trade Union Association) as an umbrella organization, albeit with most competences remaining with the individual unions. By 1950, 36 per cent of workers were union members (Schönhoven, 2014, p. 71). Opting for a unity approach rather than being split into communist, socialist, and Christian unions, they drew lessons from their defeat in the Weimar Republic. The trade unions understood their role primarily as part of a ‘social partnership’ with the employers rather than being conflict-​oriented, but they were also highly capable of using their power resources to underline their demands if necessary. This helped them win co-​determination rights, continued pay during times of illness, better working conditions, and shorter work weeks over the years. In wage negotiations, they generally adopted a long-​term view, resulting in productivity-​oriented agreements that protected competitiveness. Unlike the trade unions, the employers’ associations had not been abolished by the Nazis but been put under strict regime control in a kind of authoritarian corporatism. The organizational structures of business associations had thus survived relatively unharmed and could be reactivated after 1945. From the Korean crisis on, the peak associations and umbrella organizations of German business took over important responsibilities and readily cooperated and coordinated with the government, which helped to fulfil domestic and foreign requirements. Thus, a liberal-​corporatist system came into being (Abelshauser, 1984). Contrary to the Olsonian perspective mentioned above, the case of the Federal Republic demonstrated in the decades to follow the positive potential that involving highly centralized interest groups can contribute to economic outcomes. So the Federal Republic was characterized early on by a highly organized system of interest groups with capable peak associations plus influential

270   Andreas Busch banks—​which had played an important role in funding and advising German businesses since its industrialization via capital-​hungry coal and steel industries in the mid-​nineteenth century (Gerschenkron, 1962). Observers spoke of a case of ‘organised private enterprise’ (Shonfield, 1965, p. 239).

Theoretical Perspectives Looking at the issue of a state’s trade performance from a theoretical point of view, different studies from both the international relations literature and the literature on comparative politics and comparative political economy suggest themselves. In the international relations literature, both the concepts of the ‘trading state’ and the ‘civilian power’ have been put forward with special (if not exclusive) reference to the German case. The theory of the ‘rise of the trading state’ (Rosecrance, 1987) reflects on the changes in the international system after 1945, pointing out that theories of international relations still saw borders, territory, sovereignty, independence, and military power as key concepts and had neglected to reflect the rising importance of trade. Evidence showed, however, that many smaller (e.g. European) states had achieved substantial economic growth by following a strategy of expanding their share of foreign trade relative to GDP. Rosecrance argues that a shift of relative costs lay at the heart of this new strategy—​an increase in the (political and financial) costs of warfare and armament and a lowering of the costs of attempting trade success through the introduction of a well-​functioning liberalized world trade regime after 1945. While the author emphasizes the dynamic nature, the openness and the potential reversibility of that process, he also points out the success that countries like Japan and Germany have made of following a strategy of concentrating on trade and reducing spending for the military.2 Contrary to the shifting relative costs argument advanced by the theory of the ‘trading state’, the concept of the ‘civilian power’ is rooted in the constructivist school of international relations and focuses on foreign policy role concepts that states have. Put forward by scholars such as Hans W. Maull (1990, 2007), the focus (with reference to the work of Norbert Elias) is on attempts to civilize policy and in particular international relations. In the case of the FRG, the foundation for this fundamental shift lies in the decision for Westbindung during the East-​West conflict following the Second World War and a conscious break with the German past. Military security was no longer to be organized nationally, but multilaterally through NATO and inclusion in European integration—​an idea that has strong support both in the foreign policy elites and the general population. The successful unification of Germany was seen by many as the empirical proof of the appropriateness of this strategy. However, the author makes clear that this 2  The period in which this theory was developed—​the 1980s—​was one in which the US experienced economic problems (stagflation, rising budget and trade deficits), while Germany and Japan were economically much more successful.

GERMANY’S TRADING SYSTEM AND EXPORT-DRIVEN ECONOMY    271 concept requires a supportive international context, such as a commitment to multilateralism by the country’s most important partners (who partly co-​guarantee the military security of Germany). Theoretical approaches to the German trade profile from comparative political economy take a different perspective and focus on institutions. From this perspective, the German ‘variety of capitalism’ as well as its trade profile are strongly influenced by specific characteristics of the country’s political economy and its institutional characteristics. Many authors have described and analysed the specificities of the German political economy over the decades (Shonfield, 1965; Katzenstein, 1987; Albert, 1993; Hall and Soskice, 2001; Hassel, 2017). An overarching theme is the existence of non-​market mechanisms of coordination among firms and the complementarity of sub-​ systems in the ‘Rhenish capitalism’ or ‘coordinated market economy’ of which Germany is a typical case. Banks are the main source of funding for firms, and they provide ‘patient capital’ in return for influence through seats in supervisory boards. Independent of the need for maximizing short-​term profits, firms can pursue long-​term strategies, which allow them to offer employment security to their employees. This in turn provides an incentive to the workforce to invest in their own human capital through constant re-​skilling. Cooperation between firms through powerful associations ensures that training standards provide employees with a good mix of general and firm-​specific skills, which enables firms to offer them secure employment, to focus on quality and pursue a strategy of incremental (rather than disruptive) innovations. ‘Diversified quality production’ (Streeck, 1991) is the hallmark of their products, which compete on quality rather than price. They are highly competitive in a wide range of international markets because of reliability in quality and price stability, the latter being achieved by tight monetary policy and moderate trade unions which know that stable unit labour costs is a precondition for (export) success. Governance mechanisms of the social insurance system stabilize the characteristics further by binding powerful political coalitions to it. Such a system displays several strengths that can be understood as institutional advantages when compared with those of other countries. German trade performance can thus be understood as the exercise and nurturing of a specific comparative institutional advantage. The model of the German political economy has not been static. Over the decades, it has developed in reaction to changes and challenges from the environment. The most substantial of these have been German unification in 1990 and the introduction of the Euro in 1999.

The ‘Old’ Federal Republic up to 1990 The first decade after 1949 was a period of reconstruction for the Federal Republic in which the ‘social market economy’ established itself as a successful model. The conscious limitation of the role of the state advocated by the Freiburg School lay at its root.

272   Andreas Busch The draft of its magna carta, the ‘Gesetz gegen Wettbewerbsbeschränkungen’ (law against restraints of competition) contradicted deep-​seated traditions regarding cartels as an element of order in the economy. Getting it onto the statute books took almost a decade, and Ludwig Erhard (at the height of his reputation) had to fight against opposition from industry, normally a staunch ally of his own party. Major modifications were the result (and a political defeat for Erhard), but eventually the Cartel Office was set up to maintain competition, with a potential veto against firm mergers it deemed anti-​competitive being its strongest weapon (Katzenstein, 1987, p. 88). The influence of European economic integration after 1957 on German competitiveness and export performance was very strong. But this was not the result of strategic action by the business community: in fact, it only tentatively supported political initiatives in that direction, and consequently its influence on the Treaties of Rome was (despite the existence of an ‘External Economic Relations Advisory Board’ at the Economic Ministry since 1947) ‘surprisingly small’ (Piel, 1975, p. 213). Competitiveness also benefitted from the direct and indirect effects of abundant labour supply: some 10 mio. workers had migrated from Eastern territories and the German Democratic Republic (GDR); after the building of the Berlin Wall stopped that inflow, foreign workers (‘Gastarbeiter’) were recruited, who by 1971 accounted for 10.3 per cent of the labour force (Kreile, 1977, p. 777). This exerted downward pressure on wages, while inflation awareness legitimized the Bundesbank’s restrictive monetary policy. Both factors contributed to an undervaluation of the Deutschmark which in turn promoted rising export surpluses, a conscious goal for the central bank from an early stage (Holtfrerich, 1998). By 1974, exports constituted 23.1 per cent of GDP (1950: 8.5 per cent, 1960: 15.9 per cent)—​roughly one in five jobs depended on it. The end of the Bretton Woods system led to a substantial revaluation of the Deutschmark in the early 1970s, while the oil price shock triggered a rise in both inflation and unemployment. Yet compared to other, similar countries, the Federal Republic weathered that storm quite well regarding its economic outcome profile (Scharpf, 1991). Already in years before, the German government had been willing to accommodate US wishes regarding the big ally’s balance of payments problems, both for strategic reasons and because the country was interested in the maintenance of an open and liberal world economic system. It was thus also prepared to cooperate in a joint programme agreed at the Bonn summit of 1978 to undertake a fiscal stimulus in exchange for an American commitment to fight inflation and the accompanying decline of the US dollar (Putnam and Bayne, 1987). German economic policy thinking, these years made clear, differed from that of its partners: Keynesianism had gained little influence in academia and policy making (Allen, 1989); instead, a discourse on competitiveness and repeated debates on the competitiveness of ‘Standort Deutschland’ (Germany as a location for business) characterized discussions about economic policy (Dyson, 2005). After suffering through the effects of the second oil price shock at the beginning of the 1980s, however, competitiveness improved again if measured against

GERMANY’S TRADING SYSTEM AND EXPORT-DRIVEN ECONOMY    273 the country’s current account: a brief period of deficits towards the beginning of the decade turned into substantial surpluses in the second half of the 1980s, peaking with a surplus of 57 billion DM in 1989. Germany again showed itself to be an ‘extraordinary trader’ (Hager, 1980).

Post-​Unification German unification, happening as a total surprise in less than one year and completed by late 1990, changed the situation substantially. Change took place both regarding the structures of the political economy and in terms of international trade. The political and economic collapse of the GDR left the Federal Republic with no choice but to pick up the pieces. They manifested themselves as high unemployment, a drastic need for investment in the East of united Germany and hence a requirement for massive internal transfers from West to East Germany. The persistent current account surpluses of West Germany turned to a deficit position for a whole decade (1991–​2001) in united Germany. These results were partially the effects of the political choices made during unification, especially the chosen exchange rate between the Deutschmark and the GDR Mark of 1:1 in the face of drastic productivity differences (the official exchange rate had been 5:1 since January 1990). Opting to increase the consumption power of East German citizens (and raise incentives for them not to migrate to West Germany) implied a revaluation for firms in East Germany of some 300 per cent, pricing them out of the market. Massive transfers from West to East became necessary, resulting in huge burdens for the government budget and the whole system of social policy (Ritter, 2006; Busch and Goldbach, 2011). Apart from these immediate consequences, unification also contributed to a transformation of the established German system of industrial relations (Streeck and Hassel, 2003). The wholly different economic situation in the East meant that an expansion of existing employer associations was only possible if membership was decoupled from adherence to the collective wage agreements. Trade unions had similar problems: eager to integrate trade union members from the East into their organization, they first achieved an all-​time high of 11.8 mio. members in 1991, only to slowly lose about half their members in the twenty years to follow (Schönhoven, 2014). Being less encompassing, a weakened social partnership was of little help in bridging the problem of persistent productivity differences, and the consequential ongoing wage differentials between West and East undermined both sides’ ability to stabilize their membership and delegitimized the system of highly-​centralized wage negotiations. By the turn of the century, the crisis of the ‘German model’ was widely debated and its viability doubted by some (Streeck, 1997; Busch, 2005).

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The Euro Era Not even nine years after German unification, the introduction of the Euro in 1999 was another sea change in economic context. Germany, with about 60 per cent of its exports going to EU member states, had a huge interest in eliminating exchange rate risks. But the views of its government (intent on signalling an ongoing commitment to European integration after German unification) and the Bundesbank (hesitant to give up its independence and its leading role in European monetary policy) had diverged in the negotiations (Dyson and Featherstone, 1999). Agreement was eventually reached, although differences in economic thinking persist between the member states (Brunnermeier et al., 2016). The immediate consequences of the Euro proved ambiguous for the German economy: While the country had largely managed to assert its preferences with regard to the institutional set-​up, the goals, and the independence of the new European Central Bank (ECB), it had also lost its advantage as reputation leader in low inflation. The latter brought the benefit of the lowest interest rate (measured as ten-​year government bond rates), with beneficial consequences for business. In the run-​ up to the introduction of the Euro, however, interest rates in all future member states had converged towards the German level, providing them with a substantial economic boost, while Germany lost a relative advantage. In addition, Germany’s traditionally low inflation now turned into a disadvantage, because it turned the ECB’s nominal interest rate into a higher real interest rate than in countries with higher inflation, and thus hampered economic growth (Busch, 2014). After a couple of years, however, the Euro also showed positive effects for the German economy. Now low inflation conveyed comparative advantages: While other, more quickly growing Eurozone countries had seen wages rise during their economic upswing and surpass increases in productivity, German unit labour costs had remained largely stable, impacting international competitiveness favourably (Busch, 2014). And the country’s competitors were now locked in, no longer having the option to compensate via currency devaluation. Germany’s cooperative model of industrial relations displayed its strengths again in the ‘Great Recession’ after 2008. In the face of a drastic decline in orders, not least from export markets, employers and trade unions alike were determined to defend export success, requiring the protection of the highly skilled workforce from unemployment. The existence of working time accounts as well as a subsidy scheme for retaining surplus workers (Kurzarbeit) helped achieve those goals; employers refrained from lay-​offs, while unions agreed to wage moderation and more flexible working time rules (International Monetary Fund, 2010, pp. 71–​81; Unger, 13 March 2010). Overall, a substantial liberalization of industrial relations and wage moderation characterize the German economy in the last twenty years, with considerable increases in flexible working and wage bargaining power moving to works councils and thus the factory level (Baccaro and Benassi, 2017). The weakening of trade unions and employer

GERMANY’S TRADING SYSTEM AND EXPORT-DRIVEN ECONOMY    275 association membership density, which had started as a result of the economic situation after German unification, had thus eventually (and in complex ways) contributed to increases in competitiveness under conditions of the single currency. The country that had started the new century as the ‘sick man of Europe’ had thus enjoyed an ‘exceptional recovery’ (Marin, 2018), led substantially by export performance. The German economy’s export orientation and success not only have economic advantages as well as disadvantages, they also are politically ambiguous, as they are both the source of political influence and dispute. Internationally, the massive current account surplus Germany has been running since the early years of this century have led to criticism and calls for change.

The Political Debate about Trade Imbalances The Federal Republic has traditionally been a country of current account surpluses, from which in recent decades there was only an exception in the 1990s (Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, 2020, p. 59). After averaging around 6.5 per cent of GDP per year between 2005 and 2016 and reaching a peak in 2015 at 8.6 per cent, Germany’s current account surplus has declined recently, but still remains above 6 per cent (European Commission, 2020, p. 19; see also Figure 16.1). Both domestically and internationally, this has led to debates about whether the surplus needs correction, and if so, what shape it should take. The domestic debate about the current account surplus has been lively, but strongly influenced by the orthodox position taken both by the Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung (SVR; Council of Economic Advisers) and the Bundesbank. Both essentially argue that surpluses are no problem since they reflect decisions by the private sector both in Germany and abroad. As the result of market processes, they do not constitute distortions by economic policy and hence there are no grounds for policy intervention. The SVR also refutes arguments that a weakness of public investment exists in Germany and cannot agree with the criticisms brought forward by the European Commission regarding the surplus (Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, 2014, ch. 6). The SVR enjoys a lot of authority in German public discourse, and it has been pursuing this line of argument consistently over the years, as statements from the late 1980s (when then West Germany also had large surpluses) show. The Bundesbank argues similarly that developments of the current account reflect a multiplicity of developments and decisions, among them demographic change, and the high level of competitiveness German firms enjoy on world markets. Attempts at policy intervention are disapproved of, since they are seen as unlikely to succeed and might even be counterproductive (Deutsche Bundesbank, 2013, pp. 43–​65).

276   Andreas Busch 10 9

8,5

8

7,0

6,7

7

5,6 5,7 5,6

5,7

6

8,3

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6,1

4,5 4,6

5

per cent of GP

4 3 1,9

2

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–1,2 –1,0

–0,4

–0,7 –0,5 –0,7 –1,5

–1,2

–1,4

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–2 –3 –4 –5 –6 –7

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

Year Country CAN GBR

DEU ITA

2015 Source: OECD

FRA

EA19 JPN

USA

Figure 16.1  Current account in per cent of GDP, 1990–​2016

Some respected economists have shared their disagreement with that position. They argue that the orthodox position downplays the influence of fiscal policy on the surplus, but that change above all is necessary for foreign policy reasons, to avoid the perception of Germany trying to dominate Europe by economic means (Hellwig, 21 May 2017; see also Bernanke, 2015). Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt also repeatedly emphasized the negative foreign policy consequences of the surpluses, especially against past European experiences with Germany. The surpluses, he pointed out, contradicted the Stability and Growth Act of 1967 which calls for a balance in foreign trade. If continued, they might lead to German isolation, not least because the flipside of surpluses are deficits in other countries (Schmidt, 2011). The latter is a position shared by many on the political Left who (in varying degrees) make German export successes responsible for economic problems in deficit countries and thus (e.g. the Left party) call for an abolishment of state export credit guarantees. Academic analyses critical of the status quo have interpreted the surplus as indicative of disruptive trends in the world economy and pointed to problems it is causing to other countries, such as unemployment. Seeing it as principally amenable to political action, its continuation is interpreted as a sign that

GERMANY’S TRADING SYSTEM AND EXPORT-DRIVEN ECONOMY    277 German elites willingly ignore the negative consequences they often even celebrate as proof of economic success (Jacoby, 2020). International organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) acknowledge the economic success of Germany but argue that adjustments are necessary. The IMF sees strong employment growth, low unemployment, output growth, and a strengthening fiscal position as positive, but wage growth and core inflation as ‘too low’. While acknowledging that demographic factors play a role in the surplus, more public investment, less personal saving (which is linked with a pension reform it suggests Germany should introduce), and rising wages are seen as necessary antidotes. The IMF also points out that German authorities time and again emphasize the market origin of the surplus, which they see as not being caused by political distortions (IMF, 2017). The OECD drew attention to the necessary correction of ‘unsustainable imbalances’ in the Euro area early on, but (like the IMF) acknowledged that in the case of Germany, fundamental factors such as demographic change can account for part of the imbalance (OECD, 2010). Other analyses do not advocate change, but rather cautiously note that suggested policy changes would ‘also reduce its external imbalance to some extent’ (OECD, 2016, p. 22). The EU took up the issue of the current account surplus and conducted an In-​Depth Review (IDR) of the German economy in 2013/​14. IDR is a part of the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP) that the EU had introduced after the financial markets crisis to improve the monitoring of national situations. With an average current account surplus of 6.5 per cent between 2010 and 2012, Germany had triggered the warning level of 6 per cent. If the MIP diagnoses an ‘excessive imbalance’, the Commission can take steps in the form of an Excessive Imbalance Procedure. However, this was not the result in the German case. The Commission’s report conceded that ‘a current account surplus is in line with the structural characteristics of the German economy’ but points out that its pace of accumulation and its persistence even during a time of adjustment are unusual and may be a sign that imbalances ultimately detrimental to German economic welfare may exist (European Commission, 2014). However, taking the position that current account surpluses are less worrying than deficits (because there are no problems of funding them), the Commission had already decided in 2011 that they should not be sanctioned. In its 2020 European Semester country report, however, the Commission pointed out that Germany had ‘taken some important policy steps to address its macroeconomic imbalances’, but that ‘more efforts will be needed in the coming years to fully address them’ (European Commission, 2020, p. 19).

The German Government’s Position The German federal government must relate to this debate in some way, but taking sides is somewhat difficult. If one maps the positions described above on a continuum

278   Andreas Busch between a ‘market’ perspective (which sees the surplus as caused by private sector market decisions against which little can—​or should—​be done) and a ‘policy’ perspective (which sees the surplus as, in principle, amenable to influence by policy decisions), both extremes bring problems with them: Subscribing to the ‘policy’ position would imply taking responsibility for the surplus. Consequently, the government would have to heed calls for a changed policy stance with respect to investment and wages, even though it might have difficulties implementing them—​given how German federalism works and that the government’s influence on wage setting in the private sector is small. Emphasizing the ‘market’ position might be politically popular (stoking pride in being ‘export world champion’), but risks antagonizing especially the European partners whose patience might run out at some point. In addition, the surplus might create serious problems in the future, so that taking some measures for balancing it might be advisable both economically and politically. So far, the German government has opted to pursue both positions to some degree. Reacting to US pressure—​such as claims that the German surplus meant a ‘deflationary bias for the euro area, as well as for the world economy’ (US Department of the Treasury, Office of International Affairs, 2013) or suggestions by the Trump administration of exchange rate manipulation—​, the government has emphasized the market nature of the surplus, the competitiveness of German firms, and has pointed out that most of the causes (such as the exchange rate, demographic factors, an advantageous structure of goods produced, etc.) are beyond the influence of government action (e.g. Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie, 2019). However, at the same time the government has used the more recent versions of its annual ‘National reform program’ (started in 2011) as a reaction to the EU Commission’s complaints about the current account surplus. In this programme, it reports that measures have been taken to strengthen domestic demand, thus working to lower the surplus. Measures like the introduction of the minimum wage are also mentioned, as are alleged increases in public investment which are claimed to have risen by 40 per cent on the federal level during the 2013–​17 parliament (e.g. Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie, 2017a). For any observer of German politics, however, these claims and numbers leave the impression of having been put together in the most favourable light and mainly for foreign consumption. Evidently the question of preserving or rebalancing the current account surplus is a deeply political one. Different groups have different interests and preferences regarding this topic. Any substantial change is going to impose costs on some actors, and thus it can be interpreted as a distributive struggle (Frieden and Walter, 2017). How these costs will be distributed between different domestic groups or whether they can be externalized remains to be seen. Given the overwhelming interest of Germany to preserve the existence of the Eurozone, the government will need to balance competing domestic interests and find a policy mix that can avoid the worst possible outcome for all, namely a breakup of the Eurozone.

GERMANY’S TRADING SYSTEM AND EXPORT-DRIVEN ECONOMY    279

Conclusion The German economy can be understood as a model with specific characteristics. After the first two decades of the twenty-​first century it is in good shape—​having undergone substantial challenges in the decades before, the economy weathered the financial markets crisis well. But while it can now be considered stable and successful, new challenges will likely test its adaptability in the future as well. The economy of the Federal Republic has a clear profile, both in terms of its output and in terms of the interaction of its constituent parts. Especially in manufacturing (automobiles, machines and machine tools, chemicals, etc.), ‘Made in Germany’ is an established and attractive brand around the globe. Its export success has left a strong mark on the structure of the German economy, where the manufacturing sector accounted for 22.3 per cent of value added in 2018, about twice the share found in most other G7 countries: 11.7 per cent in the US, 10 per cent in the UK, and 11.1 in France. Only Japan (20.8 per cent) is in similar territory (OECD, 2021). This profile is closely linked with the institutional components of a specific variety of capitalism, that can be described as a ‘coordinated market economy’ (Hall and Soskice, 2001), operating in a ‘semi-​sovereign state’ (Katzenstein, 1987) and pursuing a high-​quality manufacturing, export-​led growth model (Hassel and Palier, 2021). Its characteristics have somewhat changed over the course of the last fifty years, but fundamentally we can diagnose stability: A state that neither sees activist economic policy as its task nor would it be capable of it due to aspects of fiscal federalism. Employers and trade unions that adhere to an approach of social partnership, are committed to the pursuit of economic growth and competitiveness, but also the fair sharing of its proceeds. A business structure where not only the large firms, but also small and medium-​sized ones (the famous Mittelstand) have an international outlook, with the latter often dominating niche markets on a global scale. A generous system of insurance-​based social protection shielding against uncertainties emanating from high exposure to the cycles of the international economy—​into the administration of which both sides of industry are deeply involved, thus creating a powerful political coalition interested in the stabilization of a system which favours an export-​led growth model. The system’s export strengths have been demonstrated by the fact that for much of the period since the Second World War it has produced current account surpluses. Again, we find substantial continuity: if we look at the causes to which the (recently especially large) surpluses have been attributed, it is fascinating to see the parallels between the situation in the early 2020s and the analysis of the late 1950s and early 1960s: lower inflation than in competitor countries, an attractive export goods structure, little wage pressure, and a high savings ratio (Kindleberger, 1965). The combination of these capabilities constitutes a comparative advantage that Germany continues to reproduce and to pursue.

280   Andreas Busch The high degree of exposure to the vagaries of international trade also brings with it the need to adapt to changing circumstances. So far, the German system has managed to cope with a variety of them. But new challenges can arise both from within the system and from outside. Inside the political system, the consensus about the pursuit of an export-​oriented economic strategy may fray. Although Germany’s manufacturing sector is comparatively large, its share as well as its employment have been going down substantially over the last fifty years, reducing its electoral weight. At the same time, a growing politicization of foreign economic policy can be observed, critical of trade liberalization and independent of the country’s concrete economic interests (Falke, 2011). It has manifested itself in protests against actual or planned trade agreements such as CETA or TTIP, which were particularly pronounced in Germany, and spilled over into criticism of the EU’s handling of negotiations (Beck and Scherrer, 2014). These criticisms are popular in parts of the political Left: Social Democrats (mainly the Left-​wing) and Greens are debating them, while the Left party has announced its opposition to free trade agreements. As Germany’s party system is fragmenting further, a protectionist voice from the Right could further complicate maintenance of the pro trade status quo, which at the moment is given unqualified supported only by the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats. From outside Germany, challenges come on the one hand in the shape of a new protectionism and the threat to the multilateral system of ‘embedded liberalism’ dominant since the post-​Second World War era, on the other hand as threats to the future development of European integration, given the rise of Eurosceptic parties across the EU and their growing influence. It is difficult to predict future developments and outcomes in both areas, but it is clear that Germany would be disproportionately affected by any negative outcomes in either. It would thus seem likely that both the German government and the German business community will do their utmost to prevent them.

Further Reading Busch, Andreas (2014), ‘Germany and the Euro’, in Stephen Padgett, William E. Paterson, and Reimut Zohlnhöfer (eds), Developments in German Politics 4 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 188–​210. Hall, Peter A. (2021), ‘How Growth Strategies Evolve in the Developed Democracies’, in Anke Hassel and Bruno Palier (eds), Growth and Welfare in Advanced Capitalist Economies. How Have Growth Regimes Evolved? (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 57–​97. Jacoby, Wade (2020), ‘Surplus Germany’, German Politics 29(3): pp. 498–​521. OECD (2020), OECD Economic Surveys: Germany 2020, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://​ doi.org/​10.1787/​91973​c69-​en (a biannual publication) Patel, Kieran Klaus (2011), ‘Germany and European Integration since 1945’, in Helmut Walser Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 775–​94.

GERMANY’S TRADING SYSTEM AND EXPORT-DRIVEN ECONOMY    281

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282   Andreas Busch Dyson, Kenneth (2005), ‘Economic Policy Management. Catastrophic Equilibrium, Tipping Points and Crisis Interventions’, in Simon Green and William E. Paterson (eds), Governance in Contemporary Germany. The Semisovereign State Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 115–​37. Dyson, Kenneth and Kevin Featherstone (1999), The Road to Maastricht. Negotiating Economic and Monetary Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press). European Commission (2014), Macroeconomic Imbalances. Germany 2014. European Economy. Occasional Papers 174, March 2014. Brussels: European Commission. http://​ dx.doi.org/​10.2765/​7919. European Commission (2017), Country Report Germany 2017. Including an In-​Depth Review on the Prevention and Correction of Macroeconomic Imbalances (Brussels: European Commission). https://​ec.eur​opa.eu/​info/​sites/​info/​files/​2017-​europ​ean-​semes​ter-​coun​try-​ rep​ort-​germ​any-​en.pdf. European Commission (2020), Country Report Germany 2020 (Brussels: European Commission). https://​eur-​lex.eur​opa.eu/​legal​cont​ent/​EN/​T XT/​PDF/​?uri=​CELEX:5202​ 0SC0​504&from=​EN. Falke, Andreas (2011), ‘Einflussverlust. Der Export(vize)weltmeister im Welthandelssystem des 21. Jahrhunderts’, in Thomas Jäger, Alexander Höse, and Kai Oppermann (eds), Deutsche Außenpolitik. Sicherheit, Wohlfahrt, Institutionen und Normen (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften), pp. 296–​322. Frieden, Jeffry and Stefanie Walter (2017), ‘Understanding the Political Economy of the Eurozone Crisis’, Annual Review of Political Science 20, pp. 371–​90. Gerschenkron, Alexander (1962), Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. A Book of Essays (New York: Praeger). Green, Simon and William E. Paterson (2005), Governance in Contemporary Germany. The Semisovereign State Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Gröner, Helmut (1975), ‘Die westdeutsche Außenhandelspolitik’, in Hans-​Peter Schwarz (ed.), Handbuch der deutschen Außenpolitik (München u.a.: Piper), pp. 405–​37. Hager, Wolfgang (1980), ‘Germany as an Extraordinary Trader’, in Wilfried L. Kohl and Giorgio Basevi (eds), West Germany. A European and Global Power. [Based on papers presented at a conference held at the Bologna Center of Johns Hopkins University, 5–​7 October 1978] (Lexington Mass.: Lexington Books), pp. 3–​43. Hall, Peter A. and David Soskice (2001), ‘An Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism’, in Peter A. Hall and David Soskice (eds), Varieties of Capitalism. The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 1–​68. Hassel, Anke (2017): ‘No Way to Escape Imbalances in the Eurozone? Three Sources for Germany’s Export Dependency: Industrial Relations, Social Insurance and Fiscal Federalism’, German Politics 26, pp. 360–​79. Hassel, Anke and Bruno Palier (2021), ‘Tracking the Transformation of Growth Regimes in Advanced Capitalist Economies’, in Anke Hassel and Bruno Palier (eds), Growth and Welfare in Advanced Capitalist Economies. How have Growth Regimes Evolved? (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 3–​56. Hellwig, Martin F. (21 May 2017), ‘Leistungsbilanzüberschüsse: Bitte nicht großdeutsch’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. http://​www.faz.net/​aktu​ell/​wir​tsch​aft/​wir​tsch​afts​ poli​tik/​sorge-​um-​umw​andl​ung-​der-​euroz​one-​15014​236.html. Holtfrerich, Carl-​ Ludwig (1998), ‘Geldpolitik bei festen Wechselkursen (1948–​ 1970)’, in Deutsche Bundesbank (ed.), Fünfzig Jahre Deutsche Mark. Notenbank und Währung in Deutschland seit 1948 (München: Beck), pp. 347–​438.

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CHAPTER 17

GE R MANY ’S BA NK I NG A ND FINANCIAL SYST E M Janine Jacob

The long history and unique structure of the German financial system, along with the nation’s key position in Europe, has led to significant interest from those concerned with financial regulation and the legal framework. Characterized by a large, three-​pillar banking sector that dominates the way financial business is being conducted in the country, Germany’s financial system has for a long time been considered archetypal of a bank-​based system.1, 2 Though it has undergone significant changes since the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in 19493, the foundational element of the three-​pillar banking sector has remained remarkably intact and continues to define the entire financial system. This chapter primarily focuses on the banking system, its central characteristics, and its role in the German financial system. The first section describes the three-​pillar banking structure in Germany, including its historical roots, legal basis, and characteristic structural features. The chapter continues with a description of three essential periods that have shaped the modern 1 

In the comparative political economy literature, financial systems have typically been characterized as predominantly bank-​based or market-​based—​see, for example, Zysman (1983), Hall and Soskice (2001), Allen and Gale (2000), Schmidt, Hackethal, and Tyrell (2002). Aside from Germany, Japan has also been considered a typical bank-​based case, whereas the US and the UK have typically been categorized as market-​based financial systems. 2  Though the concept of a financial system can be defined as the ‘interaction between the supply of and demand for the provision of capital and other finance-​related services’ (Schmidt and Tyrell, 2004, p. 21) and thereby naturally comprises many more actors other than banks, the focus of this chapter is on the banking system as banks are the dominant intermediaries of financial services in the German financial system. For a detailed discussion of the concept of financial systems, see, for example, Schmidt and Tyrell (2004). 3  Naturally, Germany has a much longer and more complex history dating back to the middle ages and even before that. For the sake of clarity, however, I will be discussing Germany in its most recent formation. The relevant historical roots for Germany’s banking groups are referred to in the section on “The Structure of Germany’s Banking Sector” .

286   Janine Jacob German financial system: the age of the ‘traditional’ bank-​based system between the foundation of the FRG and the 1980s; the movement away from a bank-​based system towards a hybrid model between the late 1980s/​early 1990s until the 2008 global financial crisis; and finally, the post-​financial crisis period. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the challenges that lie ahead and the potential future development of the financial sector.

The Structure of Germany’s Banking Sector As a historically bank-​based system, Germany is dominated by a large banking sector. Though the number of banks has been declining steadily over the past thirty years (see Table 17.1), Germany is still considered to be ‘overbanked’, with room for further reductions and enhanced efficiency. All banks in Germany are subject to federal legislation and require a banking licence, which must be authorized by the federal banking supervisory authority, the Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin). Regulatory oversight is the shared responsibility of the BaFin and the Deutsche Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank. Since the establishment of the European single supervisory mechanism (SSM) in 2011 and the European Central Bank (ECB) as the European supervisory authority, national authorities work closely with the ECB regarding the regulatory oversight of national banks. In some instances, the ECB even directly oversees banks deemed ‘significant’, which in Germany includes for example, Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, many Landesbanken,4 and the central cooperative bank DZ Bank.5 There are three major banking groups: the private commercial banks, the savings banks and Landesbanken, and the cooperative banks. Together, these three pillars account for approximately 97 per cent of all banks in Germany. The remaining 3 per cent is made up of special purpose banks (such as the German ‘Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau’ (KfW, ‘Credit Institute for Reconstruction’), mortgage banks, and others, such as building and loan associations, housing enterprises with savings facilities, guarantee banks, etc. Most banks are universal banks, i.e. they engage in classic bank activities such as deposit-​taking, lending, discounting bills, providing securities brokerage services and trust services, factoring financial guarantees, funds transfers, and payment services. Over the years, they have also increasingly extended their investment banking services, such as underwriting, wealth and asset management, and proprietary 4  Landesbanken are regionally organized banks owned by the German government; see elaborate explanation in this section under ‘Pillar II: Savings Banks Group’. 5  For the definition of how the ECB defines significance, see European Central Bank (2020).

GERMANY’S BANKING AND FINANCIAL SYSTEM    287 Table 17.1 Number of German reporting credit institutions Pillar I

Pillar II

Year*

All banks

Private commercial banks

Landesbanken

1950

3621

281

15

Pillar III

Others

Savings banks

Cooperative banks**

Mortgage banks

882

2310

38

95

Others

1960

3796

336

14

866

2259

49

272

1970

3601

314

12

832

2180

46

217

1980

3334

243

12

599

2289

39

152

1990

4638

365

12

772

3416

37

36

1995

3622

335

13

626

2595

35

18

2000

2740

294

13

562

1796

31

44

2005

2089

252

12

463

1296

24

42

2010

1919

280

10

429

1140

18

42

2015

1775

271

9

414

1025

16

40

2020**

1526

258

6

377

839

10

36

*December values of the respective years **August 2020 value ***The Deutsche Bundesbank’s categorization of banks included the regional institutions of credit cooperatives in the ‘cooperative banks’ group up until June 2006; after that, only one regional institution was left, which has since been included in ‘others’ Source: own representation based on Deutsche Bundesbank’s macroeconomic time series data Retrieved: 26 October 2020

trading. Furthermore, they provide insurance products through subsidiaries or closely connected insurance firms (Schmidt and Tyrell, 2004, p. 31).

Pillar I: Private Commercial Banks The private commercial banks group in Germany consists of the three big banks (Deutsche Bank AG, Commerzbank AG, and UniCredit Bank AG6), the regional banks, and other commercial banks, as well as the German branches of foreign banks. Overall, institutions classified as private commercial banks currently make up almost 17 per cent of the total number in Germany.

6 Formerly

known as Bayerische Hypo-​und Vereinsbank. Since 2005, UniCredit Bank AG is a German subsidiary of the Italian UniCredit Holding.

288   Janine Jacob The emergence of private commercial banks dates back to the sixteenth century, when the first ‘banks’ were established as firms that dealt with freight forwarding, trading goods, and currency exchanges (Pohl, 1976, p. 12). Banking itself was only later separated from other business activities. The first true private commercial banks emerged at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and remained the dominant form of banking business in Germany until the industrialization of the late 1880s. Private banks were typically smaller regional firms that met the financial needs of local businesses. However, with the advent of the industrial revolution and the subsequent rapid increase in the number and size of industrial firms, those private banks could no longer effectively meet the financial needs of those bigger firms (Hackethal, 2004, p. 75). The need for institutions that could manage industrial firms’ financial requirements resulted in the foundation of large private banks organized as joint stock companies, among them Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, and Dresdner Bank.7 With some reorganization during and after the Second World War, the big banks continue to dominate private commercial banking in Germany to the present day. In fact, their balance sheets today make up about 60 per cent of the entire private commercial banks group’s balance sheet.8 Though a number of regional private banking institutions (such as B. Metzler seel. Sohn & Co. AG, Bankhaus Max Flessa KG, Berenberg Bank) continue to operate today, their number has decreased considerably, due to industrialization in the nineteenth century, two World Wars, and the German banking crisis of 1931. Over the years, many institutions were taken over by larger commercial banks, merged with other regional institutions, or were liquidated altogether, as with banks owned by those of Jewish descent during the Aryanization process in Nazi Germany. Overall, the private commercial banks group is rather diverse, consisting of both small and big banks, banks active both globally and regionally, as well as universal and specialized banks. Banks in this group are largely privately owned credit institutions (Behr and Schmidt, 2015, p. 1).

Pillar II: Savings Banks Group The savings banks group, made up of savings banks, Landesbanken, shared settlement units, and joint ventures (e.g. DekaBank), is numerically the second largest banking group after the cooperative banks group, to be discussed next. Like the large private commercial banks, savings banks primarily arose during the late 1880s and quickly spread across Germany. In contrast to private commercial banks, 7 

Dresdner Bank existed until 2009 and was then merged with Commerzbank AG. The three private commercial big banks’ balance sheet total amounts to €2,309.458 billion; the entire private commercial banks’ balance sheet total amounts to €3,864.893 billion (both June 2020 values); Deutsche Bundesbank macroeconomic time series data 2020. 8 

GERMANY’S BANKING AND FINANCIAL SYSTEM    289 Table 17.2 Savings deposits market shares by bank category All categories of banks

Private big banks

Year

in billion €

in billion €

in % of total

in % in % of in billion of in billion € total € total

in billion €

in % of total

2020*

568.95

82.62

14.5

279.90

15.13

2.66

Savings banks

49.2

Credit cooperatives

184.34

32.4

Regional banks

*June 2020 value Source: own representation and calculations based on Deutsche Bundesbank’s macroeconomic time series data

savings banks were founded primarily to encourage and incentivize saving money across the German population, in particular among the poorer population (e.g. agricultural workers, servants, day labourers, etc.). Savings banks were therefore set up as institutions where people could deposit whatever money they could spare in savings accounts in return for interest (Mura, 1995, p. 88). Neither the hyperinflation of the 1920s, and subsequent devaluation, nor the shocks of the two World Wars did much to discourage saving, which remains deeply rooted in German culture to the present day. Whereas other countries have strong capital markets where people actively engage in various stock market activities, the vast majority of the German population prefers conservative financial decisions and continues to put their money into savings deposits, savings accounts, savings plans, building loan contracts, life insurances, and the like. Of all monetary investment vehicles, savings deposits and savings accounts remain the most popular choice.9 In this area, savings banks occupy the largest market share by far—​almost 50 per cent (see Table 17.2). In contrast to private commercial banks, and with the exception of a few independent institutions, savings banks are institutions under ‘public law’, meaning that the ‘trustee’ of a savings bank is a German municipality or district (Deutscher Sparkassen-​ und Giroverband, 2018, p. 12). They are regionally organized entities, a requirement stipulated by the regional savings banks’ acts of the German states. According to this so-​called ‘regional principle’, savings banks ‘only service a clearly defined business area, which is specified as the administrative region of the municipality or district in

9  According

to a survey conducted by Statista Inc. in 2020, 40 per cent of the sampled population stated that they were using savings account, 37 per cent stated they were using savings deposits and savings plans, and 28 per cent stated they were using insurance contracts (top 3 choices), see Statista (2020).

290   Janine Jacob which it was founded’ (Deutscher Sparkassen-​und Giroverband, 2018, p. 13). With savings banks focusing on their own local households, companies, and the public sector, they generally have excellent knowledge of their customers and the local economic conditions. However, since the regional principle was established with the clear intention of avoiding competition among local savings banks (Hackethal, 2004, p. 79), it has been viewed critically by competition regulators such as the German Monopolies Commission (Monopolies Commission, 2014, p. 676). In addition to the regional principle, the regional saving banks acts prevent the banks from seeking to maximize profit.10 Therefore, savings banks usually are able to provide relatively favourable terms to customers and engage in a wide range of charitable community activities. In addition to savings banks, there are currently six Landesbanken operating in Germany. Landesbanken were established in the mid-​nineteenth century and developed into central banks for the German savings banks of a given region, becoming an important provider of local government finance. When Germany’s federal states needed help financing their economic and infrastructure projects after the Second World War, it was the Landesbanken in particular that took on this role (Jacob, 2015, p. 25). Landesbanken are owned by their respective state, by other Landesbanken, and/​or by regional savings associations. They generally serve as the primary Hausbank of their state by providing cash management services and granting loans, which are primarily refinanced through public mortgage bonds and public sector bonds (Hackethal, 2004, p. 80). They are allowed to conduct any legal banking business and hence have been operating as regular universal banks for years. Landesbanken and savings banks cooperate on a number of issues: whereas savings banks focus on doing business with small and medium-​sized enterprises and retail banking, Landesbanken primarily focus on doing business with large companies, wealthy private customers, and institutional customers (Klein, 2003, p. 165). Until 2005, both Landesbanken and savings banks enjoyed particular kinds of quasi-​ state guarantees called ‘guarantor’s liability’ and ‘maintenance obligation’, which were abolished following an EU Commission decision in 2001.11 The abolishment of those state guarantees had far-​reaching consequences for the Landesbanken’s business strategy (see section ​on “The Transformation Process from a Bank-​based Financial System to a Hybrid Model”). Due to their connection to the states and municipalities, both Landesbanken and savings banks are inherently political institutions with strong political ties. It is important to consider this when trying to understand why many decisions regarding these banking groups are not made on purely economic grounds. 10 

See, for example, the Savings Banks Act of North Rhine-​Westphalia, section 2(3). Guarantor’s liability made the public founding entity unrestrictedly liable in case its bank defaulted, de facto acting as a guarantor for third-​party lenders, while the maintenance obligation required the same public founding entity to ensure the bank’s solvency, for example by providing capital or liquidity if needed (Hackethal, 2004, p. 78). 11 

GERMANY’S BANKING AND FINANCIAL SYSTEM    291

Pillar III: Cooperative Banks The third pillar and largest banking group in the German banking system is made up of the cooperative banks, which—​as with the other banking groups—​look back upon a long history and tradition. Whereas the private commercial big banks focused on the financing of the growing industrial manufacturing and transportation companies, and savings banks focused on providing the poorer population with savings mechanisms, cooperative banks emerged as institutions to support and help agricultural businesses and craftsmen. Before the industrial revolution, farmers and craftsmen were able to work for and supply their local markets and take orders in exchange for a down payment. Later, however, they were required to produce products in advance for the general market and for storage (Pohl, 1976, p. 35). This new arrangement essentially led to a gap between production and sales, which could only be bridged by loans. Since both commercial banks and savings banks were unable to provide these loans or required collateral which small agricultural workers and craftsmen were unable to provide, the idea of cooperative thinking on the grounds of ‘self-​reliance, self-​aid, and self-​responsibility’ took root (Hackethal, 2004, p. 83). This means that cooperatives transferred deposits and savings from members of the cooperative group to other members of the group with financing needs. Profits were then distributed among its members once a year (Hackethal, 2004, p. 83). This principle has remained unchanged until today, although non-​members are now also allowed to receive loans. The underlying idea of cooperative bank institutions was and still is to support the ‘acquisitions or business activities of their members or their social and cultural interests through cooperative business operations’.12 Like savings banks, credit cooperatives are typically small institutions that operate locally and refrain from creating competition within the cooperative banks group. They too are very much tied to their respective regions and have a comprehensive understanding of their local economies and customers. Due to the small size of credit cooperatives, however, they often operate inefficiently. Hence, the cooperative banks group is the group that has registered the most consolidations and mergers over the past decades (see Table 17.1). Unlike savings banks, credit cooperatives are generally member-​owned, as regulated in the respective cooperative banks’ bylaws. They are restricted to raising equity from the cooperative members only and are usually legally organized as registered cooperatives. In case of a bank’s insolvency, the respective members of that bank are liable with their shares in the bank and potentially an additional guaranteed amount defined in the bylaws (reserve liability). Each cooperative member has only one vote, regardless of their number of shares. In addition to the credit cooperatives, the cooperative banks group includes one central institution, DZ Bank. It acts as the clearing organization for the primary institutions, 12 

Cooperative Societies Act, ‘Genossenschaftsgesetz’, own translation.

292   Janine Jacob provides them with access to national and international financial markets, asset liability management, and support, and offers centralized back-​office functions (Hackethal, 2004, p. 83).13

The Traditional German Bank-​Based Financial System The first phase of Germany’s financial system is personified by the so-​called ‘Hausbank principle’, a term that reflects the close relationship between the banking and corporate sectors, as well as the banking sector and private households. Banks knew their customers and their local economic environments well, provided services and products to private households and the corporate sector if needed, and generally took care of all financial needs.14 In turn, the corporate side stuck to their one or two Hausbanken by conducting the majority of all financial business with their respective bank, be it loan business, foreign operations, M&A business, or other business. Altogether, this set-​up constituted a mutually beneficial relationship. The vast majority of German companies are small and medium-​sized companies, many still family-​owned, and are not publicly traded. Hence, there was (and still is) little interest in satisfying one’s financing needs through outside investors, capital markets, or the like, for fear of losing management control. The entire legal and corporate setting in the German financial system contributed to this arrangement. For example, the German corporate two-​tier board system, i.e. comprising an executive board and a separate supervisory board, furthered the close interest alignment between banks and corporations, as many corporate representatives held seats on the supervisory board of banks and vice versa. German corporate law further reinforced this culture. The German Commercial Code is very conservative in its accounting approach and provides very little information for outside investors and little investor protection. This, in turn, reinforced the weak capital market situation.15 The same principle applied to private households. Generally, a household would entrust all financial business to a single bank, depositing savings and receiving loans for private investments. This meant that all banks had a stable customer base—​private

13  There used to be a second central institution, WGZ Bank AG, which was merged with DZ Bank AG in 2016. 14  For more detailed information on the ‘Hausbank principle’, see, for example, Ziegler (2000), Elsas (2001), Elsas and Krahnen (2004), or Hackethal (2004). 15  For a more elaborate discussion on these contributing features, see, for example, the chapters ‘Corporate Governance: Legal Aspects’ by Oliver Rieckers and Gerald Spindler; ‘Corporate Governance in Germany: An Economic Perspective’ by Reinhard H. Schmidt; ‘Investor Protection’ by Eric Nowak’ and ‘Role of Accounting’ by Christian Leuz and Jens Wüstemann in Jan. P. Krahnen and Reinhard H. Schmidt (eds), The German Financial System.

GERMANY’S BANKING AND FINANCIAL SYSTEM    293 banks tended to focus on large corporations, Landesbanken on public entities and large businesses, savings banks, cooperative banks, and smaller private banks tended to focus on small and medium-​sized companies and private households—​and pursued predominantly ‘safe’ and conservative business strategies. However, this strategy also meant that the financial system was considered dull and scarcely profitable internationally.

The Transformation Process from a Bank-​based Financial System to a Hybrid Model When the US and the UK, which had traditionally been more market-​oriented than Germany, began to further liberalize their financial markets in the 1970s and 1980s, Germany’s financial sector fell even further behind in terms of profitability and economic growth. It sought ways to catch up, presuming that greater market orientation would lead to greater prosperity. During the 1990s, a number of legislative changes were implemented aimed at making the financial sector more competitive and the capital market more accessible.16 Some of these legislative changes intended to make German corporate governance more transparent and thus more open to investors. The peak of this development was reached with the implementation of a law ‘that made the sale of long-​term equity stakes held by firms and banks in other firms and banks tax-​free from 1 January 2002’ (Deeg, 2010, p. 8). This would effectively break up the traditional ‘Deutschland AG’ (‘Germany Inc.’).17 Consequently, many firms sold their shares and were then replaced by other investors, such as insurance companies or hedge funds. Other regulatory changes included measures that altered the practices of the Frankfurt stock exchange, such as the introduction of an electronic trading platform for stocks, futures, and options. A New Economy platform, modelled after the American NASDAQ, was established to support young and innovative sectors in raising equity via the capital market. At the same time, the German population was encouraged to get more involved on the capital market, and former publicly owned companies were privatized (e.g. Deutsche Telekom). Many banks shifted their focus from the simple loan business, in which income is derived from maturity mismatch transformations, to M&A advisory business, raising equity for companies, and deriving more income through commissions instead of

16  See, for example, Jacob (2015, annex II) for an overview of the German financial and capital market regulations between the late 1990s and 2015. 17  ‘Deutschland AG’ is a term used for the network of entanglements between banks, insurance companies, and industrial companies. This network was based on mutual equity participations and a concentration of supervisory mandates of leading German managers, unionists, and politicians (Boerse. de 2020, own translation).

294   Janine Jacob 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Balance of other operating income and charges

Net result from the trading porfolio

Net commissions received

Net interest received

Figure 17.1 Major income items for all German banking groups as percentage of operating income

interests (see Figure 17.1). Overall, the mutual dependency between the financial sector and the corporate side considerably loosened. These changes in the relationship between the financial sector and industrial companies have been summarized in the literature as the ‘corporate financialization phase’, also described as the ‘growing influence of financial actors over the real economy and the growing portion of corporate revenue and profits deriving from financial transactions’ (Deeg, 2011, p. 121). This corporate financialization was followed by a second phase of change referred to as ‘banking financialization’. This was characterized by increasing exposure by German banks to foreign customers and risks on the banks’ asset sides, predominantly the asset side of the private big banks and Landesbanken, while the liability sides remained fairly domestic (see Table 17.3). Though the transition from the corporate to the banking financialization phase is rather fluid, the banking financialization phase is generally considered to run from the late 1990s/​early 2000s until the 2008 global financial crisis (Jacob, 2015, p. 40, Hardie and Howarth, 2013). In this period, a clear difference becomes apparent between Landesbanken and private big banks on the one hand, and savings, cooperative, and small private banks on the other hand. The balance sheets of private big banks and Landesbanken grew excessively in relation to GDP: the balance sheet total of private big banks increased by roughly 78 per cent between 1999 and 2008, that of Landesbanken by 52.3 per cent. In the same period, German GDP had only increased by 23.7 per cent (Jacob, 2015, p. 40). This also masked considerable growth in the foreign exposures of those banking groups, whereas the exposure of savings, cooperative, and small private banks remained fairly constant. German Landesbanken and big banks also engaged in asset trading. In fact, Germany’s banking system was among the most heavily exposed to ‘shadow banking’.

GERMANY’S BANKING AND FINANCIAL SYSTEM    295 Table 17.3 German banks’ foreign exposure Bank group’s lending to foreign banks and non-​banks as share of the bank group’s overall lending to banks and non-​banks (%)

Bank group’s lending to foreign banks as share of the bank group’s overall lending to banks and non-​banks (%)

1995

1995

2000

2005

2000

2005

Big banks

23.69

33.64

51.9

18.61

21.54

33.16

Landesbanken

15.03

21.83

30.87

11.28

12.22

21.01

Savings banks

1.68

2.61

4.07

0.69

0.79

1.73

Credit cooperatives

1.47

2.42

5.06

0.49

0.97

2.62

Source: Jacob 2015: 41, Table 6

Securitization markets in Germany grew in importance, primarily driven by private big banks and Landesbanken (Ricken, 2008, p. 58). Essentially, the hybrid financial system evolved on two levels. On the one hand, the German financial system as a whole began to incorporate more market-​based elements, whilst retaining many elements of the former bank-​based system: for example, private households and firms continued to prefer bank financing over alternative forms of financing, and the institutional set-​up and legal structure of the three dominant pillars as private, cooperative, and public law institutions stayed the same. On the other hand, there was a growing difference among the various banking groups. Whereas small savings banks, cooperative banks, and small private banks continued largely as before, private big banks and Landesbanken more significantly changed their business models to one of greater foreign exposures and risky transactions on a global level, as described above. This poses the following question: what factors drove the differences between the banking groups? Was it simply a preference for different business models? Was it pure ‘greed’ by some banking groups? Or were there underlying factors that made some banks and banking groups act differently from others? Clearly, many contextual forces were also acting upon the German banking system as a whole. Germany was struggling economically at the turn of the century and was considered ‘the sick man of Europe’ (The Economist, 1999), falling behind other global financial centres like New York City and London. The already ‘overbanked’ banking sector then faced even more competition from international rivals, a problem which was exacerbated by the advent and spread of the World Wide Web, thus making international business activities even more common. These circumstances resulted in lower interest margins and weak profitability in the German banking sector. In addition, the European Union (EU) started to demand a more liberal approach to its single financial market in order to be able to compete with the other financial centres. These growing forces had different effects on the various

296   Janine Jacob groups according to their unique structures, leading to significant divergence between the banking groups. There are two main reasons why private big banks and Landesbanken followed different paths from the smaller regionally oriented banks. For one, big banks and Landesbanken experienced greater pressure to increase profitability. As big banks were structured as private legal entities, the poor profitability ratios became an acute issue once the historical connections between German banks and corporations began to loosen in favour of international investors. At the same time, the harsh contemporary global and domestic economic conditions and the sinking returns from existing financial services and products led investors and banks to seek better returns on their investments. Private banks felt an ever-​increasing pressure from international investors to improve profitability. German Landesbanken were most affected by one specific event at the turn of the century: the EU Commission’s 2001 decision to abolish maintenance obligation and guarantor’s liability to public law institutions.18 However, these state guarantees were not abolished immediately, but following a multi-​year transition period which allowed Landesbanken to soak themselves with liquidity under the still favourable market conditions. This ‘soaking up’ of liquidity, then, needed meaningful investment in assets. Landesbanken also needed to find a profitable business strategy for the future to compensate for the loss of the state guarantees.19 In contrast to the two other banking groups, savings banks and cooperative banks largely continued to focus on their traditional businesses of local deposit-​taking and lending. Although the difficult economic conditions at the turn of the century also affected the savings and cooperative banks, neither felt the same pressure to fundamentally change their business models like the private big banks and Landesbanken. Both cooperative and savings banks are not publicly traded companies and therefore do not face pressure from private shareholders to maximize profits. Both banking groups have bylaws outlining their non-​profit nature in fulfilling their public or cooperative mandate. The owners of cooperatives were therefore shielded from the drive to increase profits. Adding to this was the fact that their specific legal status protected cooperative and savings banks from (hostile) takeovers through private (foreign) banks. The tools available to tackle the profitability issue varied greatly among the different banking groups. The potential to cut costs through mergers within the respective 18  An understanding between the German authorities and the European Commission regarding the two state guarantees was reached on 17 June 2001 (European Commission, 2002). 19  Up until then, the Landesbanken’s business model had involved making use of the favourable ratings due to these state guarantees to refinance cheaply on capital markets and in turn offering more favourable conditions to the public body and companies, thus ensuring considerable market shares. With the state guarantees then gone, the favourable ratings for Landesbanken were expected to drop as their financial strength evaluations had been much worse than the ratings with the state guarantees still in place had suggested.

GERMANY’S BANKING AND FINANCIAL SYSTEM    297 banking groups and the possibility to outsource activities and centralize business functions via the regional associations or the national associations (i.e. the German Savings Banks Association or the Association of German Cooperative Banks) was far greater for savings and cooperative banks than for private big banks. Though the income side had suffered through low interest rates, flat yield curves, and general economic problems, both cooperative and savings banks had considerable market share in the traditional retail sector with a secure and loyal customer base. Thus, they possessed great market power, which allowed them to generate sufficient income. While most of the manageable cost-​cutting options had been exploited by the private big banks, such as closing branches and cutting personnel, streamlining business functions, reducing risk-​weighted assets, or letting go of unprofitable business segments, most of the more cost-​effective measures, such as cutting costs through consolidations, had been barred to a large degree. For example, though private big banks can merge with one another, the merger of any of the big banks was politically difficult and largely undesirable, as big mergers were expected to result in major job losses. Mergers of big banks with smaller private regional banks, on the other hand, mostly did not create sufficient synergies to be economically sensible. More importantly, savings banks, cooperative banks, and Landesbanken could not be acquired and/​or merged with private banks due to their legal restrictions. Landesbanken faced similar constraints—​most mergers that could have helped increase the market share for individual Landesbanken were politically and legally blocked: mergers between Landesbanken and cooperative or private banks were not allowed, and the political interests of the respective states were such that they did not want to give up ‘their own’ bank, preventing mergers amongst Landesbanken. In sum, while cost-​cutting measures were largely sufficient for savings and cooperative banks, Landesbanken and private big banks had to find new sources of income to deal with low profitability.20 Looking at the income side, a similarly difficult picture appeared. It was almost impossible for private banks to grow and gain market share in the traditional German banking segment (i.e. retail banking). Landesbanken faced the same issue for similar reasons (limited M&A options and no room for aggressive pricing strategies since savings and cooperative banks would be able to undercut those). The only remaining option was to find alternative sources of income, for example, in investment banking, accompanying corporate IPOs and M&As, investment advisory services, etc. Banks moving into this market nonetheless faced tough competition from the more experienced American investment banks which had also entered the German market via subsidiaries or branches in the internationalization process. Because of this, proprietary trading seemed to offer the highest yields. It was presumed to be a safe investment due to the favourable ratings and because securitized products were state of the art at the time. 20 

For an elaborate discussion of the reasoning and pros and cons of various action possibilities for the different banking groups, see Jacob (2015).

298   Janine Jacob

The German Financial System Post-​2008 With the global financial crisis of 2008, it quickly became clear that the evolved hybrid structure of the German financial system had created an environment conducive to ‘moral hazard’ on the part of some banking groups.21 Consequently, and to the surprise of many, Germany’s banking sector ended up being particularly affected by the crisis; Landesbanken and private big banks were especially prominent in their write-​downs due to the financial crisis (Hüfner, 2010, p. 4; IMF, 2016, p. 9). However, due to rapid and comprehensive government support for the financial sector in the form of capital injections, recapitalization measures, guarantees on liabilities, asset purchases, and others, the system quickly stabilized and rebounded. Total costs of government support for the German banking system amounted to €59 billion as of 2017, possibly even rising to 68 billion eventually (Sueddeutsche Zeitung, 2018). The scale of the problem and the consequent amount of public money spent on stabilizing these banks and the wider financial sector meant that the Landesbanken and private big banks’ reputations suffered greatly in the eyes of the public. On the other hand, savings and cooperative banks are considered the beneficiaries of that development and have gained public support. Interestingly, although the crisis had affected Germany relatively harshly considering its presumed stability and prior conservatism, the structure of German banking system emerged from the crisis relatively unscathed, with the exception of some further consolidations since 2008 (see Table 17.1). Nevertheless, the situation the German banking sector finds itself in is far from ideal, and it is now facing continuous pressure for three major reasons: 1. Stricter European and domestic regulatory requirements and increased regulatory costs imposed on all banking groups; 2. An unfavourable interest rate environment due to the ongoing sovereign debt crisis in the EU, which challenges the ‘classic’ banking business of deposit-​taking and lending; 3. Increased competition due to a (still) overbanked domestic market and new market entrants.

Increased Regulatory Costs The consequences of the 2008 global financial crisis were severe. Many countries came together not only to agree on an immediate response to alleviate the economic impact 21  The hybrid financial system had retained its strong bank dominance in financing the German economy, and thus its traditional banking structure and creditor protection schemes, while at the same time having introduced market-​based elements such as increased investor protection. This led to an ‘over-​protected system’ that incentivized excessive risk-​taking by some banking groups. See Jacob (2015).

GERMANY’S BANKING AND FINANCIAL SYSTEM    299 of the crisis, but also to agree on various international standards to tighten financial regulation in order to prevent future crises, such as in various G20 summits that took place in the years following the crisis (Jacob, 2015, p. 169). The EU in particular has since introduced a vast number of directives and regulations for the banking sector, accompanied by an even greater number of level II and level III measures.22 The political atmosphere in Germany was such that despite the comprehensive EU framework, most political parties and the public called for an even tighter regulatory scheme, especially greater consumer protection measures. This environment led Germany’s legislature to pass a number of additional national initiatives that either anticipated European legislative developments (such as the German law on high frequency trading, which would later be dealt with similarly in the European MiFID 2 directive, or the German restructuring law, which anticipated the development of the EU single resolution mechanism) or provided additions to the already growing number of regulatory requirements. New regulatory measures continue to be implemented, although at a slower pace than in the aftermath of the crisis. Nevertheless, there remains in the public psyche a resentment of the financial industry and an unfavourable image of banks and financial institutions. For this reason, many political parties continue to call for tighter regulation of the financial sector. The result of this increase in regulatory measures is, unsurprisingly, a considerable increase in costs for all banking groups, particularly for smaller institutions with little capacity to deal with extensive legal requirements (Bundesverband Öffentlicher Banken Deutschlands, 2017; Hackethal and Inderst, 2015).

Reduced Income Another consequence of tighter regulatory requirements was the discouragement of ‘risky’ business models. By introducing greater capital requirements, such as through the Basel III regulatory framework, investment banking, and proprietary trading—​ which had been a profitable alternative to ‘classical’ banking in the past—​were made much more expensive for banks and thus much less attractive. The natural consequence for banks would have been to return to and focus on the ‘traditional’ business model of deposit-​taking and lending, as it is considered almost risk-​free and has been favoured

22 

In 2001, the EU introduced the ‘Lamfalussy process’—​a four-​level legislative approach in financial services regulation used to speed up lengthy and complex legislative procedures. On the first level, EU institutions only adopt the framework legislation, i.e. the directive or regulation, whereas the technical and usually very comprehensive details and further guidelines on regulatory practices are specified in so-​called level II and level III measures by the EU Commission in corporation with the European supervisory authorities. On the fourth level, the EU Commission then checks for compliance of the regulatory measures in the EU member states. For details see, for example, the European Commission’s website (European Commission, 2017).

300   Janine Jacob and encouraged by the public and the political parties. However, due to the lasting low interest rate environment in the EU, in part because of the sovereign debt crisis and most recently the Coronavirus crisis, this business model generates too little income for banks to be sustainable, returning to the old profitability problem of the German banking sector.

Increased Competition Despite significant consolidation, the German market remains overbanked. New competitors outside of the classic bank domain have now also entered the market: FinTech firms and internet banks provide services and products that rival classic banks, or render them unnecessary. This drives down prices and profits and further worsens the already difficult situation in the financial market. In sum, this unprecedented combination of high competition, high costs, and low income leaves the German banking sector in a challenging position. The same legal and political constraints that have prevented major consolidations and mergers in the past remain in place and thereby also prevent a significant easing of the tense situation in the financial system (Jacob, 2015). While many banks are increasingly trying to collaborate with FinTech firms or even introduce similar new and innovative products and services to open new sources of income, only time will tell if this will be sufficient. Since it is unlikely that the European or German public perception will shift enough so as to allow a considerable loosening the financial regulatory environment again and thereby a reduction in costs, and interest rates are likely to remain low for years to come, the only option left is to tighten the cost side even more. This means creating more and better synergies by fostering consolidations.

Conclusion Though the German banking system with its distinctive three-​pillar structure has undergone a few changes over the years and certainly experienced some bumps in the road, the essential structure of the banking system has remained remarkably constant. Nevertheless, the restrictive environment due to consistently low interest rates, competitive domestic and foreign markets, a tight legislative environment, and the various political interests at play, pose a serious problem for the German banking sector in the years ahead which needs to be addressed. While banks across all sectors must find new ways to keep up with technological advancements and their immediate (non-​bank) competitors, a question remains as to whether the large group of public law institutions can and should be maintained in the years to come. Although the political interest in maintaining the status quo may be understandable, and a large number of local banks may be preferable to the public for cost and convenience reasons, the system remains

GERMANY’S BANKING AND FINANCIAL SYSTEM    301 woefully uneconomical and creates serious problems for the entire banking sector, which will dominate political and economic discussions in the future.

Further Reading Allen, Franklin and Douglas Gale (2000), Comparing Financial Systems (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press). Detzer, Daniel et al. (2017), The German Financial System and the Financial and Economic Crisis (Basel: Springer Verlag). Hall, Peter A. and David Soskice (2001), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Krahnen, Jan-​ Pieter and Reinhard H. Schmidt (2004), The German Financial System (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Schmidt, Reinhard H. (2019), ‘On the Change of the German Financial System’, SAFE White Paper No. 61 (Goethe University Frankfurt and Research Center SAFE, Frankfurt am Main). Vitols, Sigurt (2004), ‘Changes in Germany’s Bank-​Based Financial System: A Varieties of Capitalism Perspective’, Discussion Paper SP II 2004–​03 (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Berlin).

Bibliography Allen, Franklin and Douglas Gale (2000), Comparing Financial Systems (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Behr, Patrick and Reinhard H. Schmidt (2015), ‘The German Banking System: Characteristics and Challenges’, White Paper No. 32 (Frankfurt am Main: House of Finance at Goethe University). Boerse.de (2020), ‘Deutschland AG’. https://​www.boe​rse.de/​boe​rsen​lexi​kon/​Deut​schl​and-​AG (Accessed 9 December 2020). Bundesverband Öffentlicher Banken Deutschlands (2017), ‘Zusammenspiel von Regulierung und Profitabilität—​ eine quantitative Impact-​ Studie für die deutschen Top-​ 17-​ Banken’. https://​www.voeb.de/​de/​publik​atio​nen/​fachpu​blik​atio​nen/​zusamm​ensp​iel-​regu​lier​ung-​ prof​i tab​ilit​aet (Accessed 11 December 2017). Deeg, Richard (2010), ‘Industry and Finance in Germany since Unification’, German Politics and Society 95(28), pp. 116–​29. Deeg, Richard (2011), ‘Financialisation and Models of Capitalism: A Comparison of the UK and Germany’, in Christel Lane and Geoffrey Wood (eds), Capitalist Diversity and Diversity within Capitalism (London: Routledge), pp. 121–​49. Deutsche Bundesbank (2020), ‘Macroeconomic Time Series’. https://​www.bun​desb​ank.de/​ dyna​mic/​act​ion/​en/​sta​tist​ics/​time-​ser​ies-​databa​ses/​time-​ser​ies-​databa​ses/​743​796/​743​ 796?tre​eAnc​hor=​BAN​KEN&statis​ticT​ype=​BBK_​ITS&ope​nNod​eId=​BANKE​NBAN​KEN (Accessed 26 and 28 October 2020). Deutscher Sparkassen-​und Giroverband (2018), ‘Inside the Savings Banks Group’. https://​ www.dsgv.de/​ bin/ ​ s ervl ​ e ts/ ​ sparka ​ sse/ ​ d ownl ​ o ad?path=​ % 2Fcont​ e nt%2Fdam%2Fd​ s gv-​ de%2Fen​g lis ​che-​inha ​lte%2FSavi​ngs_​B ank​s_​Gr​oup_​2018​_​EN.pdf&name=​Ins​ide%20 the%20Savi​ngs%20Ba​nks%20Gr​oup.pdf (Accessed 9 December 2020).

302   Janine Jacob Elsas, Ralf (2001), Die Bedeutung der Hausbank: Eine ökonomische Analyse (Wiesbaden: Deutscher Universitätsverlag). Elsas, Ralf and Jan Pieter Krahnen (2004), ‘Universal Banks and Relationships with Firms’, in Jan-​Pieter Krahnen and Reinhard H. Schmidt (eds), The German Financial System (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 197–​232. European Central Bank (2020), ‘What makes a bank significant?’. https://​www.ban​king​supe​ rvis​ion.eur​opa.eu/​bank​ing/​list/​crite​ria/​html/​index.en.html (Accessed 9 December 2020). European Commission (2002), ‘Germany agrees on the implementation of the understanding with the Commission on State guarantees for Landesbanken and Savings Banks’. http://​eur​ opa.eu/​rapid/​press-​rel​ease​_​IP-​02-​343​_​en.htm?loc​ale=​en (Accessed 9 December 2020). European Commission (2017), ‘Regulatory Process in Financial Services’. https://​ec.eur​opa.eu/​ info/​busin​ess-​econ​omy-​euro/​bank​ing-​and-​fina​nce/​financ​ial-​refo​rms-​and-​their-​progr​ess/​ reg​ulat​ory-​proc​ess-​financ​ial-​servi​ces/​reg​ulat​ory-​proc​ess-​financ​ial-​serv​ices​_​en#the-​lam​ falu​ssy-​archi​tect​ure (Accessed 9 December 2020). Hackethal, Andreas (2004), ‘German Banks and Banking Structure’, in Jan-​Pieter Krahnen and Reinhard H. Schmidt (eds), The German Financial System (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 69–​105. Hackethal, Andreas and Roman Inderst (2015), ‘Auswirkungen der Regulatorik auf kleinere und mittlere Banken am Beispiel der deutschen Genossenschaftsbanken’, Gutachten im Auftrag des Bundesverbandes der Deutschen Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken—​BVR. https://​www.bvr.de/​p.nsf/​0/​9E961​A8C2​1A26​B1BC​1257​ED10​0309​950/​$file/​GUTACH​TEN-​ BVR2​015.pdf (Accessed 9 December 2020). Hall, Peter A. and David Soskice (2001), ‘An Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism,’ in Peter A. Hall and David Soskice (eds), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 1–​68. Hardie, Iain and David Howarth (2013). Market-​Based Banking and the International Financial Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press).. Hüfner, Felix (2010), ‘The German Banking System: Lessons from the Financial Crisis’, OECD Economics Department Working Paper 788 (OECD Publishing: Paris). https://​doi.org/​ 10.1787/​5kmbm​80pj​kd6-​en (Accessed 9 December 2020). IMF (2016), ‘Germany—​Financial Sector Assessment Program,’ IMF Country Report (No. 16/​195). https://​www.imf.org/​en/​Publi​cati​ons/​CR/​Iss​ues/​2016/​12/​31/​Germ​any-​Financ​ial-​ Sec​tor-​Ass​essm​ent-​Prog​ram-​Syste​mic-​Liquid​ity-​and-​Bank-​Fund​ing-​Techni​cal-​4 4019 (Accessed 9 December 2020). Jacob, Janine (2015), ‘From Bank-​Based to Hybrid System: A Political Science Perspective on the Transformation Process of the German Financial System During the 2000s’, Dissertation (Berlin: Hertie School of Governance). Klein, Jochen (2003), Das Sparkassenwesen in Deutschland und Frankreich (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot). Krahnen, Jan Pieter and Reinhard H. Schmidt (2004), ‘Taking Stock and Looking Ahead: The German Financial System at the Crossroads?’, in Jan-​Pieter Krahnen and Reinhard H. Schmidt (eds), The German Financial System (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 485–​515. Krahnen, Jan Pieter and Reinhard H. Schmidt (2004), The German Financial System (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Leuz, Christian and Jens Wüstemann (2004), ‘The Role of Accounting in the German Financial System’, in Jan-​Pieter Krahnen and Reinhard H. Schmidt (eds), The German Financial System (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 450–​77.

GERMANY’S BANKING AND FINANCIAL SYSTEM    303 Monopolies Commission (2014), ‘Chapter VI—​ Competition in the Financial Markets’, Excerpt from the XXth Biennial Report (2012/​2013). https://​www.monopo​lkom​miss​ion. de/​ima​ges/​PDF/​HG/​HG20/​HGXX_​C​hapt​er_​V​I_​Fi​nanc​ial_​Mark​ets.pdf (Accessed 9 December 2020). Mura, Jürgen (1994), Entwicklungslinien der deutschen Sparkassengeschichte (Stuttgart: Deutscher Sparkassenverlag GmbH). Mura, Jürgen (1995), ‘Zur Geschichte des Sparkassengeschäfts der Sparkassen von den Anfängen bis 1945’, Sparkasse 2(1995), pp. 88–​94. Nowak, Eric (2004), ‘Investor Protection and Capital Market Regulation in Germany’, in Jan-​Pieter Krahnen and Reinhard H. Schmidt (eds), The German Financial System (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 425–​49. Pohl, Manfred (1976), Einführung in die Deutsche Bankengeschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Fritz Knapp). Ricken, Stephan (2008), Verbriefung von Krediten und Forderungen in Deutschland (Düsseldorf: Hans-​Böckler-​Stiftung). https://​www.boeck​ler.de/​pdf/​mbf_​finanzin​vest​oren​_​ ric​ken_​verb​rief​ung.pdf (Accessed 9 December 2020). Rieckers, Oliver and Gerald Spindler (2004), ‘Corporate Governance: Legal Aspects’, in Jan-​ Pieter Krahnen and Reinhard H. Schmidt (eds), The German Financial System (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 350–​85. Schmidt, Reinhard H. (2004), ‘Corporate Governance in Germany: An Economic Perspective’, in Jan-​Pieter Krahnen and Reinhard H. Schmidt (eds), The German Financial System (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 386–​424. Schmidt, Reinhard H., Andreas Hackethal, and Marcel Tyrell (2002), ‘Convergence of Financial Systems in Europe’, Schmalenbach Business Review,Special Issue 1-​02, pp. 7–​54. Schmidt, Reinhard H. and Marcel Tyrell (2004), ‘What Constitutes a Financial System in General and the German Financial System in Particular’, in Jan-​Pieter Krahnen and Reinhard H. Schmidt (eds), The German Financial System (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 19–​67. Statista GmbH (2020), ‘Welche Möglichkeiten der Geldanlage nutzen Sie aktuell?’. https://​ de.stati​sta.com/​statis​tik/​daten/​stu​die/​13314/​umfr​age/​aktu​ell-​genut​zte-​geld​anla​gen-​der-​ deutsc​hen/​ (Accessed 9 December 2020). Sueddeutsche Zeitung (2018), ‘Jede Familie zahlt 3000 Euro für Finanzkrise’ (18 September 2018). https://​www.suedd​euts​che.de/​wir​tsch​aft/​fina​nzkr​ise-​kos​ten-​deut​schl​and-​1.4126​273 (Accessed 10 January 2021). The Economist (1999), ‘The Sick Man of the Euro’ (3 June 1999). http://​www.econom​ist.com/​ node/​209​559 (Accessed 9 December 2020). Ziegler, J. Nicholas (2000), ‘Corporate Governance and the Politics of Property Rights in Germany’, Politics and Society 28(2), pp. 195–​221. Zysman, John (1983), Governments, Markets, and Growth: Financial Systems and the Politics of Industrial Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).

CHAPTER 18

THE GERMA N WELFARE STAT E Peter Starke

This chapter asks what characterizes the German welfare state today and to what extent it has been fundamentally transformed during the last thirty years since reunification. Looking further back, we can see that the history of the German welfare state has always been one of striking institutional continuity in the face of massive political and economic turbulence (Kaufmann, 2013). The pioneering Bismarckian reforms introduced social insurance for industrial workers in case of sickness (1883), work accidents (1884), and old age and invalidity (1891). The subsequent welfare state expansion over the course of almost a century tended to follow a path of increasing generosity and incremental extension of that initial institutional template to new groups and new kinds of risk (at least in West Germany). All major reforms before 1990—​apart from universal child benefits and social assistance—​took place within the framework of male wage earner-​oriented and mostly status-​preserving social insurance. Bismarck’s imprint survived two World Wars, three regime changes, and several massive economic shocks. Even the retrenchment after the oil price shocks remained—​compared to what happened in Britain under Thatcher, for example—​gradual: a ‘smooth consolidation’ (Offe, 1991) within the confines of the dominant social insurance path.1 At that time, (West) Germany continued to be the prototype of Gøsta Esping-​ Andersen’s ‘corporatist’ or ‘conservative’ welfare regime, which is to be distinguished from the egalitarian ‘social democratic’ regime of Nordic countries and the more market-​oriented and residual ‘liberal’ regime mostly of English-​speaking countries (Esping-​Andersen, 1990). Social policy in the conservative model is not aimed at reducing but preserving traditional status differences in society via social rights linked to previous earnings and occupational status (and status as male breadwinner). Scholars

1  The

post-​Second World War overhaul of the welfare state in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) can serve as a counterexample to the story of institutional path dependence.

THE GERMAN WELFARE STATE    305 of political economy research, moreover, have highlighted the complementarities of status-​preserving arrangements with the ‘coordinated’ nature of post-​war German capitalism (Hall and Soskice, 2001; Manow, 2020). Redistribution in this regime is therefore limited and ‘stratification’ by the welfare state is high, notably according to occupation. Moreover, the conservative model does not assign welfare production solely to the state, but to a significant degree also to the family (via unpaid female care work) and to non-​ profit, including faith-​based organizations. Other conservative welfare states are France, Belgium, and Italy. However, the literature is divided on what happened after 1990. Some scholars emphasize continuity (Anderson, 2015; Clasen and Goerne, 2011; Leisering, 2016), others transformation and paradigm change (Bleses and Seeleib-​Kaiser, 2004; Bosch, 2015; Hinrichs, 2010). I will argue that policy changes since 1990 combine continuity and change in the specific sense that, while the inherited ‘shell’ of a Bismarckian order still seems intact, it no longer delivers on its traditional goals, or has been charged with new tasks. Part of this is the product of ‘policy drift’ (Hacker, 2004), that is, insufficient updating to harsher social and economic realities. Deliberate reforms since 1990, as will be shown, have sometimes reinforced, sometimes alleviated such outcomes. The chapter is structured as follows. To set the scene, I will start with locating the German welfare state within the group of Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) democracies, using the latest available data. I will then describe the most important welfare state changes since 1990, tracing a sequence of problem-​ solving attempts. By no means does this imply that problems are beyond contestation and somehow objectively given, nor that the solutions offered were without alternative or always effective. On the contrary, political actors likely perceive problems and choose solutions based on their ideological leanings and cognitive biases and their problem-​ solving is part of an interaction with others within a specific institutional setup, a dominant discourse and shifting public opinion. Starting with German reunification, the narrative is loosely chronological, dealing subsequently with welfare state reforms that responded to mass unemployment, demographic change, female labour market participation, and a succession of crises. I will then briefly address the question of whether the German welfare state delivers on key social and economic outcomes before concluding.

The German Welfare State: A Portrait in Key Figures The German welfare state at first sight looks strikingly unremarkable when compared to its peers (for similar assessments, see Alber, 1998; Obinger, 2014). In terms of social expenditure, it is clearly above average, but not among the very top spenders in the group of rich OECD countries (see Figure 18.1). With 25.9 per cent of GDP, current German social spending is slightly lower than at its peak in 2009 (26.8 per cent).

306   Peter Starke 35 30 25 20 15 10 0

Mexico Chile Turkey Korea Colombia Ireland Switzerland Netherlands Israel Latvia Lithuania Australia Iceland Slovak Republic Estonia Canada Hungary United States Czech Republic New Zealand OECD - Total United Kingdom Slovenia Poland Luxembourg Japan Portugal Greece Spain Norway Sweden Germany Austria Italy Denmark Belgium Finland France

5

Figure 18.1  Social spending as a percentage of GDP, 2019 or latest, 32 OECD countries Source: OECD Social Expenditure Database (OECD, 2020b)

Incapacity

Family

Survivors

Unemployment

ALMP

Housing

Other

Total

Germany 8.4 (33.0)

8.2 (32.2)

2.3 (9.0)

2.3 (9.0)

1.8 (7.1)

0.9 (3.5)

0.7 (2.7)

0.6 (2.4)

0.3 (1.2)

25.5 (100.0)

OECD mean

5.6 (28.3)

2.0 (10.1)

2.1 (10.6)

0.8 (4.0)

0.6 (3.0)

0.5 (2.5)

0.3 (1.5)

0.5 (2.5)

19.8 (100.0)

Old age

Health

Table 18.1 Composition of public social spending, spending on different branches in per cent of GDP and in per cent of total social spending (in brackets), 2017

7.4 (37.4)

Source: OECD social expenditure database (OECD, 2019b) Note: ALMP is active labour market programmes, rounding error to 100 per cent not reported

The composition of public social spending (see Table 18.1) is again close to the average OECD country, except for survivors’ benefits and the health care branch which, relative to the size of the economy, is among the most expensive public health systems in the OECD. Perhaps surprisingly, given Germany’s demographics and its ‘conservative’ welfare state legacy, social spending is not particularly biased towards the elderly (Vanhuysse, 2013) and the relative spending share going towards old age is below average. How generous are individual benefits? The Comparative Welfare Entitlements Dataset reports comparative net replacement rates, that is, the average share of previous income typically replaced when unemployed, sick, or retired. Most of the data extend no further than the year 2010, but the OECD reports unemployment benefit replacement rates up until 2019. Note that these data must be interpreted with caution, because they

THE GERMAN WELFARE STATE    307 Table 18.2 Net replacement rates (net benefits as a percentage of an average production worker’s net wage), selected benefits, 2010 (sickness and pensions) and 2019 or latest (unemployment) Programme

Replacement rate

Country mean

Rank (out of)

Unemployment after 2 months

59

66

27 (41)

Unemployment after 1 year

59

47

12 (40)

Sickness insurance: Single

88

65

7 (33)

Sickness insurance: Family

90

69

5 (33)

Minimum pension: Single

19

31

28 (33)

Minimum pension: Family

25

43

28 (33)

Standard pension: Single

64

57

8 (22)

Standard pension: Family

48

63

19 (22)

Source: Unemployment benefits: OECD Benefits and Wages Data (OECD, 2020a); all others: Comparative Welfare Entitlements Dataset (Scruggs, Jahn, and Kuitto, 2013). Note: Unemployment benefits for single households only.

are based on model households and do not reflect the actual distribution of generosity across all households. Table 18.2 demonstrates that Germany occupies a somewhat incoherent position with respect to benefit generosity. Clearly in the top group for sickness insurance and still quite high up in standard pensions for singles, Germany is average at best when it comes to providing for the unemployed and distinctly ungenerous in pensions, apart from singles (OECD, 2019a). This suggests a welfare state characterized by serious horizontal inequities in terms of risks and household situations, a characteristic I will come back to below.

Problems and Policy Responses, 1990–​2020 Over the last thirty years, the German welfare state has dealt with a number of distinct challenges, that is, problem complexes that were dominant in the public discourse for several years. In what follows I will discuss these dominant problems and reforms in roughly chronological order.

Reunification, Globalization, and Welfare State Funding The single most important event for the German welfare state during the last decades was the reunification of 1990. Its significance remains somewhat underappreciated by

308   Peter Starke the comparative literature. Prior to reunification, social policy in East and West had evolved in different directions for forty years. Compared to West Germany, the socialist GDR provided ‘basic security at an austere level’ (Manfred G. Schmidt, 2005, p. 132), accompanied by a multitude of special schemes, privileging certain occupations and politically important groups. In addition, female employment was actively supported through comprehensive child care. Low public spending masks a great deal of ‘welfare production’ provided by firms and via subsidies and price controls. A de facto job guarantee coupled with rising minimum wages also lowered the need for working age benefits—​and explains why the GDR did not have an unemployment insurance scheme. Reunification of the two states was executed through the wholesale accession of the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) which required the mammoth task of transferring the entire body of law to the East. In the case of social legislation, this largely happened already in the summer of 1990. Moreover, to prevent mass migration from East to West, the new rules were rolled out with only few transitional provisions. An important strategic decision of the Christian democratic-​liberal coalition of Chancellor Helmut Kohl (in office: 1982–​98) was to finance reunification to a large extent through the social insurance system. This happened partly because the new citizens in the East were immediately entitled to benefits equivalent or near-​equivalent to those available in the Western part.2 In addition, special labour market schemes were set up to deal with the virtual collapse of the no longer competitive East German industry, with the consequence that social expenditure in Eastern Länder peaked at a staggering 68 per cent of (East German) GDP in 1992 (Manfred G. Schmidt, 2005, p.147). Active labour market policy spending alone reached 18 per cent of GDP in the East (Ritter, 2013, p. 233).3 Although the effectiveness of many retraining and job creation schemes is doubtful, to say the least, the welfare state became the key shock-​absorbing institution to compensate for the tremendously disruptive process of extending the West German economic and monetary system eastward within such a short period of time. As if reunification alone was not a herculean task, several external shocks and domestic debates converged in the early 1990s to seriously challenge the status quo. In 1992–​93, the initial unification boom turned into a recession. Deepened European integration increasingly revealed the missing ‘social dimension’ of that process. The 1990s also saw the beginnings of the globalization debate (see Seeleib-​Kaiser, 2001 on the origins), discussed in Germany under the headline ‘Standort Deutschland’ (‘Germany as an investment location’). High non-​wage labour costs were soon singled out as one of the key competitive disadvantages. And as wages or productivity are difficult to influence directly, high social contributions became the prime indicator of a need for radical reform. 2  Due to the large gap in wages and living standards creating ‘equivalence’, especially in pensions, has been a politically contested issue to this day. 3  To compare, in 2013 the ‘top spender’ Denmark devoted 1.8 per cent of GDP to ALMP (OECD, 2016b).

THE GERMAN WELFARE STATE    309 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

2020

Figure 18.2  Total social (employer +​employee) contributions as a percentage of the gross wage, 1970–​2020 Source: Sozialpolitik aktuell (2020) Note: total social contribution rate for statutory pension, health care (average rate), unemployment, and long-​term care (from 1995) insurance. West Germany before 1990.

Figure 18.2 shows the development of total social contributions—​jointly paid by employers and employees—​since 1970.4 While rising social contributions were nothing new (Manow, 2020), the level quickly increased in the 1990s. Reunification alone probably added 3 percentage points (Bönker and Wollmann, 2000, p. 517) and the addition of Long-​term Care Insurance in 1994 another 1.7 points (see the section on demographic change below). In the context of the ‘Standortdebatte’ about globalization and European integration arguments about excessively high contributions proved particularly powerful (Scharpf, 2000; Streeck and Trampusch, 2005). At the same time, political problem-​solving capacity was at a low point. The traditional ‘welfare state consensus’ between the main political parties, employers, and trade unions fractured, as evidenced by the Kohl government’s failure to negotiate a quasi-​ corporatist social pact in 1996 (the first ‘Alliance for Jobs’). What is more, the relationship between government and opposition became increasingly adversarial, which led to frequent stalemate due to the many veto points of the German political system. Still, change did happen. And while the Centre-​Left opposition fiercely fought most reforms, especially the 1997 pension reform, once in office they nonetheless largely continued on the path of ‘revenue-​oriented fiscal policy’ initiated by Kohl. Figure 18.2

4 

This overview leaves out work accident insurance which is solely paid for by employers and has seen decreasing contributions.

310   Peter Starke shows that, from the late 1990s onwards, benefit cutbacks, increased tax subsidies, and a more favourable economic situation eventually stabilized and then lowered contributions.

Unemployment, Activation, Liberalization, and Retrenchment As social contributions rose, so did unemployment (see Figure 18.3). Starting at a level of just over 5 per cent, the harmonized unemployment rate peaked at 11.3 per cent in the mid-​2000s (and almost twice that in the East). At the same time, the US and Denmark—​ two key reference countries—​were experiencing labour market ‘miracles’ with rates around only 5 per cent. Accordingly, unemployment was clearly the single most salient political issue in opinion surveys from 1993 up to 2010 (Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, 2017). The picture after the Global Financial Crisis (see the section on crisis management below) was starkly different, even though the turnaround already started in 2005. Traditionally, Germany had a two-​tier unemployment benefit system: the first tier (Arbeitslosengeld) was a contribution-​funded, earnings-​related benefit at 63–​68 per cent of previous income. The second tier (Arbeitslosenhilfe) was aimed at the long-​term unemployed no longer eligible for Arbeitslosengeld. As an earnings-​related, but tax-​funded and means-​tested benefit (replacing 53–​58 per cent of income) it was a strange hybrid between an insurance and assistance benefit. It nevertheless embodied the conservative notion of status preservation—​linked also to Germany’s skills system (Estevez-​Abe,

12 10 8 6 4 2

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

0

Denmark

Germany

United States

OECD - Total

Figure 18.3  Annual harmonized unemployment rates, 1990–​2017 Source: OECD Short-​term Labour Market Statistics (OECD, 2018b).

THE GERMAN WELFARE STATE    311 Iversen, and Soskice, 2001)—​because long-​term unemployed could receive earnings-​ related benefits indefinitely. This made it a route to de facto early retirement so that, in the 1990s, the number of beneficiaries in the second tier grew massively. Below the second tier social assistance (Sozialhilfe) existed as a benefit of last resort. In 1996, the Kohl government proposed significant structural reforms limiting access to Arbeitslosenhilfe, redefining acceptable employment, decentralizing employment services, and rolling back some of the public employment measures used in Eastern Germany. The opposition tried to block these measures in the Bundesrat, the second chamber of parliament, with only partial success (Hassel and Schiller, 2010, pp. 100–​6). However, partisan conflict (and to some extent conflict between the federal level and the Länder) still impeded more far-​reaching change. During its first years in office, the government of Gerhard Schröder (1998–​2005) initially reversed cuts in sick pay and labour market deregulation. Yet these early expansionary decisions masked a deep conflict within the Social Democratic Party (SPD). When the Left’s figurehead Minister of Finance Oskar Lafontaine stepped down in 1999 (and founded the party The Left), things started to turn. After a second tripartite social pact (also called ‘Alliance for Jobs’) failed, Schröder seemed to have come to the conclusion that unilateral action would be preferable to consensual decision-​making (read: trade union support). A public scandal in 2001 that the Federal Employment Service’s placement statistics had been grossly misleading created a rare opportunity for such action. The Hartz reforms of 2003–​05 comprised four laws with focus areas from governance of the public employment service, through the deregulation of so-​called ‘mini-​jobs’ to a restructuring of unemployment and social assistance benefits. Sidelining traditional concertation with social partners, the reform was prepared in a series of expert commissions (Dyson, 2005), the most important of which was chaired by Volkswagen top manager Peter Hartz (for details, see Hassel and Schiller, 2010). The aim was to activate the long-​term unemployed through the ‘carrot and stick’ of individual support and obligations—​or Fördern und Fordern, as the slogan went at the time. The duration of the first-​tier insurance benefit was reduced from a maximum of thirty-​two to eighteen months (later extended to twenty-​four months). The second-​tier Arbeitslosenhilfe was abolished as it was merged with social assistance. The consequences were wide-​ranging. Benefit rates decreased especially for long-​term unemployed with relatively high previous earnings, but they increased for others, especially families with children and low-​ income earners. Ironically, the number of registered unemployed rose at first (Bosch, 2015, p. 188) because social assistance beneficiaries who were able to work were being ‘activated’ and because take-​up was higher than for the older social assistance. The definition of an acceptable job offer was widened and long-​term unemployed received extra support for starting a business. Along with reforms on the benefit side came massive organizational restructuring and the attempt to outsource parts of employment services to private providers (reversed in 2008). Interestingly, the reforms also led to a reduction in active labour market spending per unemployed (OECD, 2016b) which shows that for the most part ‘stick’ trumped ‘carrot’.

312   Peter Starke In addition to activation and some benefit retrenchment, the German labour market was deregulated in the 1990s, especially at the margins, that is, for temporary agency work and marginal part-​time jobs (so-​called ‘mini jobs’ which fall below legally defined earnings thresholds and are not subject to social contributions). The OECD’s 5-​point ‘employment protection legislation’ index for Germany shows almost perfect stability at a moderately high level for regular contracts (moving only from 2.58 to 2.68 on a five-​point scale between 1990 and 2013) but a massive drop in the regulation of temporary contracts (from 3.25 to 1.13 during the same period). This deregulation came in several incremental steps, under both Kohl and Schröder (Eichhorst and Marx, 2011). The result was a considerable ‘dualization’ of the German labour market, further fuelled by the deepening segmentation of German industrial relations into a well-​covered manufacturing core and a weakly organized service sector. To what extent the Hartz reforms were successful is still debated. Many observers emphasize low unemployment and one of the highest employment rates in the OECD (currently at 76 per cent), others criticize rising inequality, a low-​wage sector of Anglo-​ Saxon dimensions, and the ineffectiveness of certain parts of the Hartz package. Moreover, the ‘job miracle’ that followed the Hartz reforms happened in the context of an exceptionally favourable world economy (for Germany at least) and a decade of wage moderation. It is important to note that in response to some of these negative effects and political discontent there have been numerous part-​reversals after 2005. Benefit duration was extended, private placement services largely discontinued, and start-​up grants made more stringent. Since 2015, there is even a statutory minimum wage, previously anathema in German labour market policy (Marx and Starke, 2017).

Demographic Change: Pensions, Health Care, and Long-​Term Care Reforms With an elderly population share of 21 per cent, Germany is now among the ‘oldest’ countries in Europe (OECD, 2018a), with the number of people needing care projected to rise from 2.6 million currently to 3.5 million by 2030. Not surprisingly, such outlooks—​ combined with the immediate concern about rising contributions—​dominated the German pensions debate of the 1990s and early 2000s. The extent of policy change in pensions during that period is perhaps underrated by the wider public, especially compared to the Hartz reforms. A first major structural reform limiting future spending increases was, ironically, passed by the Bundestag on 9 November 1989, the day of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Soon, it was considered insufficient and more radical ideas were put on the agenda. The politics of old age care became more conflictual, and the old pension consensus came to an end. The next reform step was the 1997 pension reform, which introduced a ‘demographic factor’, again to dampen future pension increases. The opposition of Social Democrats and Greens criticized and then repealed the provision in 1998, only to reintroduce it under a different name shortly afterwards. But not only that.

THE GERMAN WELFARE STATE    313 A series of major reforms between 2001 and 2004 changed the pension formula in a dramatic, but highly technical way. As a result of these reforms, pension increases no longer follow wages so that the standard pension level5 decreased from about 53 per cent of previous gross earnings6 to 48.2 per cent currently and without further policy changes is expected to hit 44.6 per cent by 2031 (Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales, 2017). This is widely seen as a break with the status preservation goal, the ‘primary legitimation basis’ of the German old age pension system (Leisering, 2016: 227). And yet, the government’s reasoning was that much, if not all, of that drop could be offset with additional private provision. Retrenchment in the public pension pillar was thus accompanied by subsidized, yet voluntary private pensions in the form of the so-​called ‘Riester-​Rente’ (unofficially named thus after the Minister of Social Affairs). Expectations were not met, however—​far from it. Over 16 million eligible pension contracts are currently in place, but it is also estimated that perhaps as many as a fifth of these are currently inactive due to lack of ongoing contributions. These were just the more prominent reforms of that period, together with the rise in the statutory pension age to 67 years (phased in until 2029)—​clearly one of the least popular decisions of Angela Merkel’s first coalition. Numerous further changes were introduced, from organizational changes to the closing of early retirement opportunities. Germany, one-​time champion of early retirement now has one of the highest older employment rates in Europe. A key result of all these reforms is that public old age spending against global trends has been decreasing for a number of years—​from 11.3 per cent of GDP in 2003 to 10.2 per cent in 2017—​which, given continued demographic ageing is remarkable (Manfred G. Schmidt, 2012). Yet sharp cutbacks have, predictably, led to gaps in the adequacy of old age benefits especially for women, some self-​employed, and marginal workers. While the current situation looks manageable at first sight with old age poverty still below average—​although significantly ‘gendered’ (OECD, 2017)—the number of older social assistance recipients is rising and prospects for many, especially those at the margins of the labour market, look decidedly bleak. Political parties have begun to address these worries incrementally. The first break with the purely contribution-​oriented strategy was the decision to temporarily loosen scheduled pension level ‘brakes’ (which prevent benefits to rise in line with wages) in 2008 and 2009 and introduce a protection against nominal pension cuts. In 2014, even early retirement at age 63 (under certain conditions) was reintroduced and women with employment gaps due to child-​rearing received additional pension top-​ups. After protracted negotiations, a minimum pension was legislated in 2020 which tops up low pension benefits, but eligibility is tied to having a relatively long, but ultimately insufficient contribution record in the public pension insurance.

5  The standard pension level is a fictive value calculated based on having continuously worked for 45 years at the average wage—​not an easy feat. 6  This initial level still translated into about 70 per cent net income replacement of net wages.

314   Peter Starke There is no space to delve into the highly complex changes in health care and long-​ term care. A few key trends and events must suffice. Traditionally, German health insurance was the epitome of a highly stratified ‘conservative regime’ with more than 1,000 occupationally-​based funds with different contribution rates by the early 1990s. Only white-​collar workers could choose between funds. An additional stratifying feature of German health insurance was—​and still is—​that high-​earning employees have an exit option out of statutory insurance and into a separate private insurance system. The corporatist, non-​interventionist character of the German system lies also in its degree of self-​regulation by insurance funds and provider representatives. Since the 1990s, this system has come under threat due to a simultaneous increase of competition and hierarchical regulation (Rothgang, Schmid, and Wendt, 2010). The market mechanism entered with the Health Care Structure Act of 1993 which broke with occupational stratification and introduced free choice of insurance funds (with an accompanying system of risk redistribution between insurers). The number of insurance funds consequently fell to just under 100 (mostly through mergers). Reforms in the 2000s brought in new forms of cost control for hospital care (e.g. via diagnosis-​related groups) and experiments with differentiated service packages, but also benefit cuts and new co-​payments. Public health spending had massively increased after 1990, from 6.1 per cent of GDP to 8.1 per cent by 1996 (OECD, 2016b). And again, rising contribution rates became a focal point of reform. In 2005, employer contributions were de-​coupled from increases to control non-​wage labour costs.7 In 1994, after complex negotiations, the Kohl government introduced the Long-​term Care (LTC) Insurance. As with health reforms, demographic changes (as well as rising female labour market participation) loom large in explaining that reform, but the key proximate cause was the overburdening of municipal and state budgets with costs for eldercare (Götting, Haug, and Hinrichs, 1994). Social assistance was increasingly used to cover the cost of long-​term care of the elderly and municipalities and state governments lobbied the federal government for a bail-​out. The solution, a mandatory social insurance scheme funded from social contributions and with free insurance of family members, at first sight confirms the strong normative power of ‘Bismarckian’ ideas (Evers, 1998). However, underneath the hood, LTC insurance is much more of a hybrid. In contrast to health insurance, it covers needs only partially, through capped benefits. Recipients have the right to choose at two levels. First, benefits can either be paid out in cash to informal caregivers (often family members) or provided in kind by residential or home-​care providers. Second, those providers—​which are overwhelmingly for-​profit and non-​profit private organizations—​compete for care contracts with consumers. They are reimbursed by the LTC insurance funds, but significant private co-​payments remain, forcing many to resort to social assistance. To sum up, in the spirit of 1990s social policy, the universal LTC insurance was designed as a partial insurance embedded within a market. Its flat-​rate benefits are a far cry from the status-​preserving ideal of the

7 

This parity was restored in 2018.

THE GERMAN WELFARE STATE    315 ‘conservative welfare regime’. Still, LTC insurance was an important innovation and, at the time, ‘virtually unparalleled in Western welfare states after 1975’ (Götting et al., 1994, p. 288). Since 1994, spending and contribution rates have increased and issues like cost and quality of eldercare have moved up the political agenda.

Female Employment and the Expansion of Family Policies The conservative welfare regime traditionally depends on informal and unpaid female care work and the narrow role of the father as the principal wage earner. The state has a hands-​off role and support for families comes through cash transfers rather than services. In Germany, gender roles were remarkably resilient to cultural change and rising female education levels for a long time. Early reforms in the 1980s introduced a parental leave scheme with low flat-​rate benefits, but the changes were still in line with the male breadwinner model. By the 1980s female participation rates were seriously lagging the trend in other OECD countries at least in West Germany—​East Germany looks very different in that respect. The child care services gap was particularly serious for under-​3-​year olds, whereas provision for children from about age 4 had been expanded significantly already from 1970s onwards. Attendance rates for that age group were high even by international standards. A right to child care from age 3 until 6 was legislated in 1992 in parallel to a reform of abortion rights and also influenced by much higher acceptance of public child care in East (Meyer, 1996). However, kindergartens often had short and inflexible opening hours, which—​combined with one of the largest gender wage gaps—​prevented mothers from working full-​time. Things began to move only in the 2000s and, to the surprise of many, it was a Christian democrat-​led government that implemented major reforms. Angela Merkel’s grand coalition government designed the new parental leave benefit (Elterngeld) as an earnings-​ related benefit, replacing 67 per cent of former income up to a limit of €1,800, for twelve months. It was deliberately intended to be attractive for well-​educated middle-​class families. An extra two months are granted if care is shared between both parents. To achieve lasting change, public child care, especially the gap in provision below age 3 in West Germany, needed to be addressed, too. The constitution prevents direct provision by the federal level so that special grant schemes to the states and municipalities were used, from 2013 onwards also complemented by a right to child care for small children. As a result, enrolment rates of under-​3 year olds have soared from 13.6 per cent in 2006 to 32.9 per cent in 2015 (Bundesministerium für Familie, 2016a). What explains the puzzle that Christian Democrats, the traditional champions of the male breadwinner model, in concert with Social Democrats led family policy towards the ‘adult worker’ model? The literature highlights the role of party competition for the female, urban vote in the 2005 election as the trigger of this change of heart (Fleckenstein and Lee, 2014; Morgan, 2013). Moreover, an element of policy learning from Nordic countries which combined high employment rates with high fertility is evident, as the Elterngeld is closely modelled on the Swedish policy of the time. Much of the oft-​cited cultural shift in

316   Peter Starke favour of working mothers, however, has to do with reunification rather than changing individual attitudes, as socialization in East Germany still has a large effect on gender-​egalitarianism and support for public child care (Goerres and Tepe, 2012). Total spending on families has not really changed since 1990, fluctuating around 2 per cent of GDP (OECD, 2016b). Yet the share of service spending has increased, from about a quarter to a half, reflecting a shift in the role of the state from passive income support to provision of education and care. As a result, we can see movement towards the dual earner/​dual carer family model in Germany, but within limits. While maternal employment in 2014 stood at 69 per cent, only 30 per cent of German mothers with children below age 14 worked full-​time. For Denmark, the rates were 82 and 72 per cent, respectively (OECD, 2016a). And while fathers’ leave-​taking before the introduction of the new parental leave law was below 5 per cent, a third of fathers now take at least some of their entitlement. Yet 79 per cent of fathers who take leave go back to work after two months or less, which indicates that the new norm is to only make use of the two bonus months, not more (Bundesministerium für Familie, 2016b).

The German Welfare State as Crisis Manager: 2008–​2020 Welfare state development in recent years was shaped by the succession of transnational crises, beginning with the Financial Crisis and the Great Recession, through the Eurocrisis and the 2015 Refugee Crisis to the Covid-​19 pandemic. During each of these shocks, the German welfare state has played a major direct or indirect role. Especially in the Great Recession and the Covid-​19 crisis, that role has been one of a stabilizing crisis management tool (Blum and Kuhlmann, 2016; Starke, 2014). The built-​in automatic stabilizers of the social insurance system were on both occasions complemented with discretionary stimulus packages and improved access to social benefits. One policy tool, in particular, needs to be highlighted as it has become the epitome of German crisis management: short-​time work (STW) (Kurzarbeit). STW has become the vehicle of choice, also because it fits well with the German ‘coordinated’ production model. It allows for sweeping working time reductions at the company level and partly compensates employees for the ensuing loss of income. This buys employers time to adjust production while avoiding mass layoffs—​especially of workers with sector or firm-​ specific skills. In 2008 and early 2009 trade unions and employers in the manufacturing sector successfully lobbied the government to expand the scheme, so that take-​ up soon peaked at 1.5 million or 5.1 per cent of the labour force (Brenke, Rinne, and Zimmermann, 2013). In 2020, the use of STW even surpassed these levels, also thanks to relaxed eligibility requirements (Eichhorst, Marx, and Rinne, 2020). Part of the effect was that the rise in unemployment (both in 2009 and 2020) was small compared to the US, for example. The decisive welfare state-​based crisis response limited the immediate social fallout from the crisis so far: Incomes have been stabilized to a remarkable extent, counteracting a rise in inequality (Bruckmeier et al., 2021).

THE GERMAN WELFARE STATE    317

Does the German Welfare State Deliver? While it rarely competes with the Nordic countries for the top spots in international rankings, the German welfare state achieves decent outcomes on several dimensions. The latest Social Justice Index Report by the Bertelsmann Foundation ranks Germany in tenth place in the EU and OECD, based on a wide range of indicators (Hellmann, Schmidt, and Heller, 2019). But upon closer inspection the picture is quite mixed, also when looking at changes over time. The most remarkable positive development of the last decade, without doubt, concerns labour market performance. The times of ‘welfare without work’ (Esping-​Andersen, 1996) are over. Yet there are visible cracks in social cohesion. Relative poverty rates have increased from 11.6 to 15.8 per cent of the population between 1995 and 2014 (Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales, 2015, p. 551) with a high concentration among, for example, single parents. Moreover, twenty-​eight years after reunification, many indicators of socio-​economic deprivation look significantly worse in East Germany. Income inequality is also on the rise, which is mostly due to sharp rises in market inequality (now reaching US levels!), not welfare state cutbacks. If anything, the German welfare state has become more, not less redistributive over time, measured in terms of ‘Gini-​reduction’ (Caminada, Goudswaard, and Wang, 2017), thus defying its ‘conservative’, status-​preserving heritage. Against the background of the extremely expensive German health care system, broad health outcomes in the population are fortunately comparatively good (Eurostat, 2017). The resulting picture is one of a highly interventionist and equalizing welfare state within the context of an increasingly unequal political economy. When it comes to legitimacy of the German welfare state, surveys show that the German public overwhelmingly (i.e. 80 per cent and higher) supports state intervention in economy and society for social policy goals (Andreß and Heien, 2001; Ullrich, 2008). Citizens in the Eastern Länder are particularly interventionist. At the same time, perceived flaws and injustices of the existing welfare state are seen critically so that the support of the status quo is remarkably low (Ullrich, 2008). Little evidence, however, can be found of the often evoked ‘generational conflict’ in attitudes towards pensions or family policy (Goerres, 2008).

Conclusion Is Germany still a conservative welfare state? It is fair to say that Germany remains a ‘social insurance state’. The five big insurance schemes—​pensions, health, work accident, unemployment, and long-​term care—​are still dominant in terms of coverage and fiscal weight and social contributions provide most of the funding. And yet, while the ‘shell’

318   Peter Starke of the social insurance state is intact, policy drift as well as deliberate policy innovation have changed its nature and impact—​arguably much more so than in the other ‘conservative’ welfare states such as Austria, Belgium, and France. New goals and instruments have either replaced or supplemented the traditional aims of the conservative welfare state. First, the status preservation of the male breadwinner is in demise. The Hartz reforms in unemployment benefits, pension reductions, and flat-​rate benefits in eldercare are cases in point. Second, while stratification based on occupational categories has disappeared in health care and pensions, new horizontal inequities have emerged, based on varying generosity of different benefits and the differential treatment of the marginal (but numerically quite large) group of labour market outsiders. Third, traditional governance based on hierarchical and corporatist mechanisms has been supplemented with internal markets and/​or regulated private provision, notably in health and eldercare as well as in pensions. Fourth, the welfare state has shed its conservative non-​interventionism in family matters and shifted from a purely transfer-​based to a more service-​based model with incentives for female employment. Finally, higher redistributive effort may also be counted as a sign of new priorities and of a move away from ‘security’ as the overarching goal of the welfare state and towards minimum protection and ‘social investment’. The wave of market-​liberal ideas in social policy—​across all major political parties—​ clearly left its mark on reforms up until the mid-​2000s. Not only labour market policy, but also a good deal of family policy and even pensions are increasingly redesigned to raise the employment rate. Together with policy drift stemming from a liberalized economy and labour market, and an increasingly segmented wage-​setting system, we are dealing with what has been termed an ‘exclusive Bismarckian model’ (Bosch, 2015), which allows for a much higher degree of inequality in the labour market and, despite considerable redistribution, tends to reproduce divisions between labour market insiders and outsiders. However, there is no reason to think that this model is stable, either. Since the late 2000s, the neo-​liberal wave has rolled back, prompted by some of the negative consequences of earlier reforms combined with a stronger economy The introduction of a statutory minimum wage—​also a decidedly pro-​insider policy—​in 2015 was an important example of self-​correcting dynamics (Marx and Starke, 2017) as was the basic pension of 2020. The German welfare state is no longer politically under attack as it was in the 1990s and is seen more as a part of the solution than a part of the problem. And yet, this seeming stability should not be taken for granted. More than any other German institution, the welfare state has been handed the enormous task of holding an increasingly fragmented and unequal society together.

Further Reading Bosch, Gerhard (2015), ‘The German Welfare State: From an Inclusive to an Exclusive Bismarckian Model’, in Daniel Vaughan-​Whitehead (ed.), The European Social Model in Crisis: Is Europe Losing Its Soul? (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar), pp. 175–​229.

THE GERMAN WELFARE STATE    319 Eichhorst, Werner, and Paul Marx (2011), ‘Reforming German Labour Market Institutions: A Dual Path to Flexibility’, Journal of European Social Policy 21(1), pp. 73–​87. Kaufmann, Franz-​Xaver (2013), Thinking about Social Policy: The German Tradition (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer). Manow, Philip (2020), Social Protection, Capitalist Production: The Bismarckian Welfare State in the German Political Economy, 1880–​2015 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Schmidt, Manfred G., and Gerhard A. Ritter (2012), The Rise and Fall of a Socialist Welfare State: The German Democratic Republic (1949–​1990) and German Unification (1989–​1994), vol. 4 (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer).

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THE GERMAN WELFARE STATE    321 Hinrichs, Karl (2010), ‘A Social Insurance State Withers Away. Welfare State Reforms in Germany—​Or: Attempts to Turn Around in a Cul-​de-​Sac’, in Bruno Palier (ed.), A Long Good-​Bye to Bismarck? The Politics of Welfare Reforms in Continental Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press), pp. 45–​72. Kaufmann, Franz-​Xaver (2013). Thinking about Social Policy: The German Tradition (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer). Leisering, Lutz (2016), ‘Nach der Expansion. Die Evolution des bundesrepublikanischen Sozialstaats seit den 1970er Jahren’, in Anselm Doering-​Manteuffel, Lutz Raphael, and Thomas Schlemmer (eds), Vorgeschichte der Gegenwart. Dimensionen des Strukturbruchs nach dem Boom (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), pp. 217–​44. Manow, Philip (2020), Social Protection, Capitalist Production: The Bismarckian Welfare State in the German Political Economy, 1880–​2015 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Marx, Paul and Peter Starke (2017), ‘Dualization as Destiny? The Political Economy of the German Minimum Wage Reform’, Politics & Society 45(4), pp. 559–​84. Meyer, Traute (1996), ‘Ausgerechnet jetzt. Über die Einführung des Rechtsanspruches auf einen Kindergartenplatz in der Krise des Sozialstaates’, Diskurs 6(2), pp. 62–​7. Morgan, Kimberly J. (2013), ‘Path Shifting of the Welfare State: Electoral Competition and the Expansion of Work-​Family Policies in Western Europe’, World Politics 65(1), pp. 73–​115. Obinger, Herbert (2014), ‘Deutschland im Vergleich zentraler Sozialstaatsindikatoren’, in Peter Masuch, Wolfgang Spellbrink, Ulrich Becker, and Stephan Leibfried (eds), Sozialrecht Und Sozialpolitik: Grundlagen Und Herausforderungen Des Deutschen Sozialstaates. 60 Jahre Bundessozialgericht. Vol. 1 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag), pp. 47–​72. OECD (2016a), OECD Family Database (Paris: OECD). OECD (2016b), Social Expenditure Database (SOCX) (Paris: OECD). OECD (2017), Pensions at a Glance 2017 (Paris: OECD). OECD (2018), Labour Force Statistics (Paris: OECD). OECD (2019a), Pensions at a Glance 2019 (Paris: OECD). OECD (2019b), Social Expenditure Database (SOCX) (Paris: OECD).​ OECD (2020a), Benefits in Unemployment, Share of Previous Income (Indicator). (Accessed on 30 June 2020). OECD (2020b), Social Spending (Indicator). (Accessed on 17 December 2020). Offe, Claus (1991), ‘Smooth Consolidation in the West German Welfare State: Structural Change, Fiscal Policies and Populist Politics’, in Frances Fox Piven (ed.), Labour Parties in Postindustrial Society (Cambridge: Polity Press), pp. 124–​146. Ritter, Gerhard A. (2013), ‘The Politics of German Unification. Social, Economic, Financial, Constitutional and International Issues’, in Manfred G. Schmidt and Gerhard A. Ritter (eds), The Rise and Fall of a Socialist Welfare State—​The German Democratic Republic (1949–​1990) and German Unification (1989–​1994) (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer), pp. 167–​288. Rothgang, Heinz, Achim Schmid, and Claus Wendt (2010), ‘The Self-​Regulatory German Healthcare System between Growing Competition and State Hierarchy’, in Heinz Rothgang, Mirella Cacace, Lorraine Frisina, Simone Grimmeisen, Achim Schmid, and Claus Wendt (eds), The State and Healthcare (Heidelberg and Berlin: Springer), pp. 119–​79. Scharpf, Fritz W. (2000), ‘The Viability of Advanced Welfare States in the International Economy: Vulnerabilities and Options’, Journal of European Public Policy 7(2), pp. 190–​228. Schmidt, Manfred G. (2005), Sozialpolitik in Deutschland: Historische Entwicklung und internationaler Vergleich (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften).

322   Peter Starke Schmidt, Manfred G. (2012), ‘Wirklich nur Mittelmaß? Deutschlands Sozialstaat im Spiegel neuer, international vergleichender Daten’, Zeitschrift für Staats-​und Europawissenschaften (ZSE)/​Journal for Comparative Government and European Policy 10(2), pp. 159–​95. Scruggs, Lyle, Detlef Jahn, and Kati Kuitto (2013), Comparative Welfare Entitlements Data Set 2 (Storrs and Greifswald: University of Connecticut & University of Greifswald). ​ Seeleib-​Kaiser, Martin (2001). ‘Globalization and the German Social Transfer State’, German Politics 10(3), pp. 103–​18. Sozialpolitik Aktuell (2020), Beitragssatzentwicklung in der Sozialversicherung 1970–​2020. http:// ​ w ww.sozialpolitik- ​ a ktuell.de/ ​ t l_ ​ f iles/ ​ s ozialpolitik- ​ a ktuell/ ​ _ ​ Politikfelder/​ Finanzierung/​Datensammlung/​PDF-​Dateien/​tabII6.pdf Starke, Peter (2014), ‘Krisen und Krisenbewältigung im deutschen Sozialstaat: Von der Ölkrise zur Finanzkrise von 2008’, in Peter Masuch, Wolfgang Spellbrink, Ulrich Becker, and Stephan Leibfried (eds), Grundlagen und Herausforderungen des Sozialstaats: Denkschrift 60 Jahre Bundessozialgericht, vol. 1 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag), pp. 241–​62. Streeck, Wolfgang and Christine Trampusch (2005), ‘Economic Reform and the Political Economy of the German Welfare State’, German Politics 14(2), pp. 174–​95. Ullrich, Carsten G. (2008), Die Akzeptanz des Wohlfahrtsstaates (Heidelberg and Berlin: Springer). Vanhuysse, Pieter (2013), ‘Intergenerational Justice in Aging Societies: A Cross-​National Comparison of 29 OECD Countries’, Sustainable Governance Indicators paper, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung.

CHAPTER 19

THE IMM IGRAT I ON SYST E M AND THE RUL E OF L AW Dietrich Thränhardt

The German constitution, framed in 1949 in opposition to two totalitarian systems, speaks clearly and inclusively about immigration and citizenship. Reacting against Nazi practices, it states that ‘No German may be deprived of his citizenship’, and that ‘Persons persecuted on political grounds shall have the right of asylum’. ‘Former German citizens who between 30 January 1933 and 8 May 1945 were deprived of their citizenship on political, racial or religious grounds, and their descendants . . . have their citizenship restored.’ ‘Refugees and expellees of German ethnicity’ who ‘have been admitted . . . as a refugee or expellee of German origin or as the spouse or descendant of such person. are declared citizens’. Even after generations, these articles are operative. One recent example was the rising numbers of British Jews of German descent who took up German citizenship because of Brexit (Connolly, 2018). More than 100,000 Israelis have restated German citizenship, and about 20,000 live in Berlin. The constitution is binding and enforced. Judges limit the government’s hand to control or limit immigration if they try to navigate around the constitution. It was only after a severe political crisis that the asylum article was modified in 1993. Since then, asylum seekers can be turned away if they come from a safe country and have found asylum there. Still, Germany today grants asylum to refugees arriving from countries like Hungary or Greece.

The Constitutional Court and Immigration Germany’s powerful Constitutional Court has given judgments on a broad range of issues with respect to immigrants’ rights. Article 1 is an umbrella article protecting human rights, not only for citizens, but for everybody in the country: ‘Human dignity

324   Dietrich Thränhardt shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.’ In 2012, this was the basis for a decision about welfare benefits for asylum seekers, in context with the ‘social state’ clause (Article 20). ‘Human dignity’, said the Constitutional Court, ‘cannot be qualified politically by migration arguments’ (Bundesverfassungsgericht, 2012). The decision resulted in raising the basic welfare benefits for asylum seekers on the citizens’ level. Thus, the level of social benefits is not at the disposal of the German government. The allowance is twice as high as it is in Britain, and motivates refugees to choose Germany. Another historic decision affected the inheritance of citizenship not only from the father but also from the mother, in 1973. It was based on Article 3: ‘Men and women have equal rights’. The judgment opened the way towards dual citizenship for a growing number of children from international marriages, and their offspring. In 1987, the Court protected family immigration. When two Southern states let spouses wait for three years before they could join their partners in Germany, the Constitutional Court decided in 1987 that the practice was unconstitutional because of Article 6: ‘Marriage and the family shall enjoy the special protection of the state’ (Bundesverfassungsgericht, 1987). These examples could be complemented by hundreds of other decisions over a broad range of subjects. The Constitutional Court is highly respected, it interprets the constitution dynamically, its judgments are accepted in public without much discussion, and without being subject to the usual strife between political parties. If a decision goes against the government, they retreat, and the case is settled. Besides the Constitutional Court, Germany has a system of administrative courts where every administrative act can be challenged. This is done extensively, particularly in asylum cases, often taking years and delaying decisions. Asylum, immigration, and other legal cases concerning foreigners have developed into an important field of legal expertise, with more and more lawyers engaging. European law supersedes German law more and more, and limits the German government’s free hand in many respects. European citizens enjoy a status that matches that of German citizens, and have even more rights than Germans in a few respects, leading to ‘reverse discrimination’ (Verbist, 2017). Turkish citizens are protected under the EU association treaty, and they can appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg and the EU Court of Justice (CJEU) in Luxembourg. Since there are many binding legal norms, and judges have a final say, political conflicts are often shaped as legal conflicts.

Cooperative Federalism and the Asylum Crisis Under the German constitution, the federal level holds most legislative powers, whereas the states implement the laws and control most of the administrative

THE IMMIGRATION SYSTEM AND THE RULE OF LAW    325 apparatus. Local government is regulated by the states and enjoys autonomy. In this system of ‘cooperative federalism’, the three levels of government share responsibilities in many processes. Thus, the naturalization law is enacted by the federal parliament, administrative decrees are issued by the states, and case-​by-​case implementation is done by cities and counties. Since the states are in charge of the administrative process, they proceed differently. Most states let local governments implement, some reserve certain cases for themselves, the state of Hesse administrates naturalizations by regional state authorities, and Berlin delegates implementation to the city districts (Thränhardt 2017). Humanitarian immigration depends on the cooperation of all three levels. When Germany invites refugees on humanitarian programmes, the federal level deals with the external actors (country of residence, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR), the states accept a certain number of refugees and local governments organize the settlement. Deportations need a similar amount of cooperation. The federal level has to secure the acceptance of the receiving country, and to decide upon the possibility in principle to deport. The state must organize the deportation procedure, and the local foreigners’ office has to arrange the juridical papers, and to deal with the courts if the deportation is contested. Decisions are mostly taken consensually, and policies discussed in Bund-​Länder conferences, the ministers of the sixteen states conferring with their federal opposite. They then give recommendations which can be taken up by parliament. If ministers agree across party lines, such recommendations are highly likely to lead to legal action. If they disagree along party lines, conflicts can continue for years. Since state governments are also sitting in the Bundesrat, the federal legislative chamber, the whole political process is interconnected. Non-​economic immigrants, like asylum seekers, resettled refugees, ethnic Germans, or Jews from Russia are distributed between the states along a fixed quota system, the ‘Königstein key’, based on the economic potential of the states (two-​thirds), and the population (one third). Decisions to host refugees are often taken consensually. In some cases, only some states cooperate, for example, with Leftist Chilean refugees after the Pinochet coup in the 1970s who were shunned by Conservatives. When state governments want to host special groups of refugees, they need the consent of the federal government. An example are the 1,100 Yezidi women from Iraq who were invited by the government of Baden-​Württemberg after they had escaped their enslavement by the Islamic State (IS) in Northern Iraq (Heffner, 2018). In 2020, 174 local governments and many states wanted to resettle a sizeable number of refugees from the Greek islands, but the Minister of the Interior consented only to resettle 1,553 people, arguing that no other EU country acted likewise (Hardenberg 2020, p. 7). However, the majority of asylum seekers arrive in Germany unplanned. They cross the border and then can apply for asylum with the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). State and local government are obliged to accommodate them under the Federal Asylum Seeker Benefits Act (AsylbLG). When BAMF grants asylum, the responsibility passes over into the hands of the federal government’s labour agency, and the refugees are then treated like citizens. Moreover, they are provided with special

326   Dietrich Thränhardt language and integration courses. If asylum is denied and they appeal at the courts, AsylbLG continues. If the court decision is negative, but the applicants do not leave the country and cannot be extradited due to humanitarian or practical reasons (e.g. death penalty, torture, or non-​cooperation with issuing a passport by the home country, illness, transport problems), they get a ‘toleration status’ (Duldung) and continue further under AsylbLG. In a major reform in 2005, BAMF was enlarged and instituted as the central agency for asylum and integration. In addition to asylum decisions, it was mandated with integration courses, consisting of language instruction and country orientation, with counselling for immigrants, the central register of foreigners, and as EU liaison point. Creating a central agency for immigration, the government hoped to organize the administrative processes more effectively. Despite Germany’s constitutional federal system, there is a strong unitarian bias in the political culture, and it is often expected that central agencies are more efficient than the complex federal system. Contrary to these expectations, BAMF became the weak point in the asylum crisis of 2015/​16. Whereas states and local governments, closely working with charities and millions of engaged volunteers, successfully accommodated the asylum seekers, at first in provisional arrangements and tents, and then in permanent accommodations, BAMF became the bottleneck of the whole system. A backlog had been built up as early as 2013. From January 2015 on, BAMF was not even able to register the asylum seekers, and at the end of 2015 one million unresolved cases lay on the desks of the agency. Asylum seekers waited for a decision and were not allowed to work or to begin a language course. Volunteers, local governments, and employers were frustrated, as their engagement was thwarted. Soon there was a feeling of loss of control, as criminals could register under different names in various places. Terrorist acts first in France and later in Germany demonstrated that extremists and criminals had used the open borders to arrive under the disguise of seeking asylum (Thränhardt, 2019, pp. 23–​25). In the crisis, the Chancellor, conferring with the minister presidents of the sixteen states, reacted by assigning her chancellery with the coordination of asylum policies, instead of the Ministry of the Interior, by replacing the head of BAMF, and by pushing three ‘law packages’ through parliament, to streamline the asylum process (Alexander, 2018). The states were refunded. All in all, the expenses amounted to the size of the defence budget. Asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Eritrea, and Somalia were entitled to language courses before an asylum decision and allowed to work after three months. BAMF has more staff to speed up the recognition process. In 2018, the bottleneck moved to the courts where asylum seekers challenge negative decisions. At the end of June2021, 165,367 cases were still unresolved in the courts (BT-​Drs. 19/​ 32678;Thränhardt, 2021). Against the background of the effective work at local levels and the BAMF disaster, critics now argue that integration and language course management should become the responsibility of local governments, and BAMF should be limited to asylum decisions and curriculum development (Bogumil et al. 2018).

THE IMMIGRATION SYSTEM AND THE RULE OF LAW    327

German Migration in the Cold War Era Germany’s post-​war history started with 12 million Germans fleeing or being expelled from the territories ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union at the Potsdam conference, and from Czechoslovakia—​an immense economic and humanitarian problem in the destroyed and isolated country. At the same time, millions of forced foreign workers and prisoners of war left the country. In the end, 100,000 of them stayed, either because they did not want to return to their home country, now communist; were not accepted by any other country, mostly because of illness or age; or had married a German. Emigration was popular in devastated Germany, and German war brides were accepted in the US from 1947 on (Zeiger, 2010, p. 157), as the memory of the Second World War was overshadowed by the Cold War and the Berlin blockade. Up until the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, people could move between communist East Germany and liberal West Germany, ‘voting with their feet’, as a popular slogan put it. The movement of three million people towards the West between 1949 and 1961 was regarded as a moral victory for democracy. High growth rates and efficient welfare programmes laid the basis for the economic and social integration of the expellees and the East Germans during the 1950s and 1960s. One in four people in West Germany had moved in. On the other hand, East Germany’s population shrank from 18 to 14 million people between 1949 and 1989. Only by building a wall could the communists prevent more flight. Aristocrats, entrepreneurs, richer farmers, and oppositionists of all sorts were frightened, arrested, and sometimes expelled. Many aspiring and qualified people left while they still could. The society became homogenous, or, as the official slogan said, ‘national in form, socialist in essence’. Even if East Germany invited contract workers from Vietnam and other communist ‘brother countries’ in the late 1980s, it did not experience internationalization like West Germany but was isolated behind the Berlin Wall. The memory of West Germany’s ‘economic miracle’, the rebuilding of the country and the successful integration of the incoming people is deeply rooted in the collective memory. When Chancellor Merkel said in the 2015 asylum crisis, ‘We have accomplished so much up to now, we can accomplish this’ (Wir haben schon so viel geschafft, wir schaffen das), she appealed to this experience. Whereas the situation was not easy in the post-​war years, with compulsory sharing of insufficient housing and hunger, it has become less fraught in the public memory, even if some books speak about the harsh realities for the expellees from the East of that time (Kossert, 2009). After the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, East German migration trickled down. Only pensioners were allowed to leave. The West German government paid for the release of oppositionists from prison into freedom. In the permanent struggle against people trying to find holes in the Wall and security arrangements, the oppressive East German regime was largely successful, even if it did not succeed in securing the loyalty of most people since they were able to watch West German television and listen to West

328   Dietrich Thränhardt German radio. The East German population would ‘move to the West every evening at eight o’clock’ for the evening news, was a popular comment. The downfall of the communist regime in East Germany came with the interplay of exit and voice in 1989 (Hirschman, 1993). When Hungary opened its borders, and East Germans gathered in the garden of the West German embassy in Prague, people dared to protest in the country itself, and in the end the regime collapsed. Thus, the reunification of Germany was closely related to migration, and the migration regime changed step by step after reunification. Even before the fall of the Wall in 1989, détente policies led to a softening of the relations with the neighbours to the East and a loosening of controls in the communist countries. People in mixed German-​Polish regions had opted for Poland directly after the war when they could and tried to stay instead of being expelled and losing everything. In later years, however, with difficult living conditions and discrimination in Poland, and reports about a better life in West Germany, many tried to leave. The Polish government let Germans go in the crisis of 1956–​58, hoping that the unrest would die down. However, this expectation was futile, as the resettlers reported back about life in West Germany. During the course of détente, the West German government made a deal with Poland in 1975. They offered a billion Deutschmark (German Mark, the West German hard currency) credit, and Poland consented to let 100,000 Germans leave. The people moved, the credit was lost, and new applicants wanted to leave (see ­figure 19.1). Likewise, Germany paid the Romanian government 12,000 German Marks per person they would let leave into freedom. Germany used her economic clout, and every liberated person was welcomed as a victory over communism. Germany provided an ‘ethno-​humanitarian welfare state’ (Panagiotidis, 2019), giving privileged access to the Germans under communist rule. When the communist bloc disintegrated, people could travel freely, first in the satellite countries and then in the Soviet Union itself. In 1990, most Romanian Germans left, disillusioned by chaos and insecurity. All in all, 397,000 Aussiedler (out-​settlers) arrived in that year—​in a country in the process of unification and internal mobility from East to West. Welcome enthusiasm dwindled, the country felt overwhelmed, and the government limited the inflows incrementally. Since Poland and Romania were now democratic, the Aussiedler status was discontinued for these countries in 1992 with the ‘Law to settle the consequences of the war’ (Kriegsfolgenbereinigungsgesetz). At the same time, a Polish-​German treaty secured minority rights for the small German minority in Poland. Ethnic Germans from Russia and other former Soviet Republics were still allowed to resettle but the numbers were limited over time, language tests were introduced, and social security privileges cut (Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2001). In the end, the resettlement programme was abolished in 2005, except for a few cases. The resettlement was successful in the Cold War climate, and it allowed people to escape communism. It was conditioned on German ancestry and discrimination of Germans (‘Vertreibungsdruck’, expulsion pressure). Ranking communist functionaries, anti-​Democrats, and criminals were excluded. In the end, most ethnic Germans left the communist countries, and the process which had begun as ethnic cleansing continued

THE IMMIGRATION SYSTEM AND THE RULE OF LAW    329 Aussiedler Immigration since 1950 250000

200000

150000

100000

50000

0 1950

1955

1960

1965

1970 USSR

1975

1980

Poland

1985 Romania

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

Others

Figure 19.1  Aussiedler immigration since 1950 by country of origin Data: Bundesverwaltungsamt; Figure: Jannis Panagiotidis and Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung

through voluntary emigration. Even when many younger resettlers did not even speak German, the integration process worked smoothly, and prejudices of the early 1990s are largely forgotten in the collective memory.

From Guest Workers to European Citizens Following other European countries, Germany recruited workers for its industries in 1955–​1973 (Thränhardt, 1996). A first treaty was concluded with Italy in 1955, to balance the country’s trade deficit with Germany, complementing the rising tourism towards the Adriatic beaches. Recruitment treaties with Greece and Spain followed in 1960, with Turkey in 1961, with Portugal in 1964, and with Yugoslavia in 1968. Germany developed a European-​only strategy, declining offers from India and many other countries. Exceptions were made for Tunisia and Morocco, to appease them as they had not cut diplomatic relations in the 1965 crisis with the Arab countries after Germany’s arms deliveries to Israel. The European recruitment strategy was related to the process of European integration. Italy was a founding member of the European treaties, and her citizens were the first to enjoy free movement. In 1961, Greece and Turkey entered association treaties with the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the EU, which led to Greece’s membership in 1981, and the EU-​Turkey customs union in 1995. Germany’s economic dynamic led to rapid recruitment flows, so that 11.5 per cent of the Greek population lived in Germany in

330   Dietrich Thränhardt 1972 (Rass, 2012, p. 63). Turkish migration to Germany became the largest single flow in Europe, leading to 2.8 million people of Turkish origin in 2020. Besides economic interests and needs, diplomatic and strategic issues were important in the decision-​ making process, particularly the political stability of Mediterranean NATO allies and the relations with bloc-​free Yugoslavia (Oswald et al., 2002). ‘Guest worker’, the usual colloquial labelling, referred to the temporary character of the immigrants from the Mediterranean countries. Indeed, most workers moved to Germany for a few years, and then returned home. Some moved back and forth several times. A growing number, however, stayed, and became part of the core workforce, for example, in the car industry (Hinken, 2018). When Germany stopped the recruitment in 1973, due to the oil crisis and its economic disruptions, many immigrants returned to their home countries whereas others decided to stay. In 1974, 17.8 per cent of all children born in Germany had a foreign passport (Thränhardt, 1996, p. 297). Under EU regulations, the immigrants had equal rights, and the German welfare state included them in its health, unemployment, pension, and social housing systems. With respect to citizenship, however, Germany was a latecomer. Despite the evident ongoing settlement processes, the German government under Chancellor Kohl (1982–​ 98) stuck to the doctrine that Germany was ‘not an immigration country’. With equal rights, everybody got used to permanently living in Germany with a foreign passport. EU citizens do have voting rights in local elections and for the European Parliament since 1992, but not in national and state elections. Naturalization rates of EU citizens are traditionally low, and only Brexit in 2020 made British citizens in Germany change their minds. The introduction of jus soli for children born to foreign parents in 1999 is changing the patterns in the long run. At least one parent must have resided in the country for eight years. With the enlargement of the EU, mobility jumped up again. In 2004, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Baltic states (E8), Malta, and Cyprus joined the EU. Romania and Bulgaria (E2) followed in 2007, and Croatia in 2013. After a transition period of seven years, E8 and E2 citizens got full rights to work and settle in 2011 and 2014. This resulted in a large new EU immigration to Germany, in contrast to low mobility rates among the older EU member countries after 1973. Poles were the largest European immigrant group in 2011–​15, and Romanians since. The migrants are easily absorbed in the German labour market. The new European immigration has an ‘hour glass’ structure, encompassing highly qualified and low qualified people (Kovacheva, 2019).

Asylum in Germany Asylum was uncontroversial in Cold War contexts. Despite pressing problems in the destroyed country, Hungarian refugees were accepted after the crushing of the uprising in 1956, and the Philharmonica Hungarica, an emigré orchestra, was funded by the

THE IMMIGRATION SYSTEM AND THE RULE OF LAW    331 German government up to 2001. Likewise, refugees from the Prague spring in 1968 were accepted, as well as ‘boat people’ from Vietnam in 1979–​83. Asylum policies became controversial when Turkey went through a crisis and a military coup in 1980. As the Turkish immigrants in Germany had established connections, seeking asylum in Germany was attractive for oppositionists and an easy way to enter Germany. Germany introduced visa requirements in 1980, to curb the inflows. Discussions about the legitimacy of asylum demands became a political issue. Other groups like Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka followed, and the discussion about bogus asylum intensified. Several restrictions were put in place, limiting the right to work, and restricting free movement during the application process. When the communist bloc broke down, people could leave freely. In 1992, Germany registered 492,000 asylum applications, more than the rest of Europe combined. Chancellor Kohl spoke of a ‘state crisis’. In the end, the constitution was amended, and since that time asylum seekers can be turned away if they come from a ‘safe country’ or have passed a country where they can find asylum. Since Germany is surrounded by countries who have signed the Geneva refugee convention, many refugees would be expected to ask for asylum elsewhere. In practice, visa restrictions and sanctions played a much more important role in the reduction of the number of asylum claims. Even if Germany tried to limit all sorts of immigration during the time of reunification and the collapsing walls, there was one exception. In the spring of 1990, the newly elected East German democratic government invited Jews from the Soviet Union, due to reports about rising anti-​Semitism there. After reunification, the parliament of united Germany confirmed this invitation in an emotional debate. In the following years more than 200,000 Jews from Russia and other ex-​Soviet republics moved to Germany (Harris, 1998; Panagiotidis, 2019). The programme was downsized in 2005. Since that time, immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union is limited to people who are accepted into a Jewish congregation in Germany. The attestation is issued by the Central Welfare Office of Jews in Germany (BAMF 2021). After the turn of the century, the EU enacted the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) to equalize asylum standards and procedures. Germany and other countries with established asylum systems successfully uploaded their standards onto the new system (Zaun, 2017). Since all EU countries had agreed to CEAS, they expected all partner states to receive refugees. This, however, did not happen. Border countries like Greece and Italy failed to create effective asylum support systems, even when they received EU funding, and Hungary and other new member states refused to host refugees at all in 2015. With the ongoing civil war in Syria, the breakdown of state structures in Iraq and in Libya, in part because of Western interventions, refugees asked for asylum in Europe. When Greece had ended the pushbacks in the Aegean Sea in 2015 but did not provide a hospitable environment, the refugees continued their way towards central Europe. Against the background of stark images of refugees suffocated in a lorry at an Austrian motorway, the negative stance of the Hungarian government, and a wave of goodwill in the German public, Chancellor Merkel, acting jointly with the Austrian Chancellor, decided to let them enter Germany. At the same time, she supported an EU

332   Dietrich Thränhardt resolution to distribute the refugees over the EU (Thränhardt, 2019). However, as some countries refused to accept refugees at all and others were reluctant, this resulted in an EU crisis with Germany, Austria, and Sweden accepting most refugees. The asylum seekers were distributed across Germany, and civil society and local government cooperated successfully to accommodate them. Volunteers from different strata of society became engaged, caring for the refugees when they arrived, and providing sustained assistance afterwards through multiple initiatives and in many different forms. From the beginning, however, there was also resentment and even attacks against asylum homes and shelters and attempts to prevent them from being built or opened. Given the spontaneous arrival of 1.6 million asylum seekers in 2014–​17, experts expected a slow integration process. Reports show, however, that half of the refugees have found work in 2020, and the integration process has been faster than expected. This is explained by the intense communications activity of so many volunteers who bridged the gap between the immigrants and entrepreneurs in Germany, and the dynamic labour market (Brücker, 2020). Core family members of recognized refugees can apply to join them in Germany. In addition, there are resettlement programmes for vulnerable people from the refugee camps in the Middle East and from Greece and Italy.

From Laggard to Frontrunner in Immigration Birth rates in Germany declined earlier than in other countries, and immigration compensated for the birth gap. Despite Germany’s demographic deficit since 1972, the population grew a little because of immigration. Germany’s population balance stands between high growth in Switzerland, Britain, and France, and severe decline in Eastern Europe. In 2001, the Süssmuth commission, chaired by the former president of parliament, argued that Germany must compete for the ‘best brains’ worldwide, and the quest for skilled personnel is now commonplace in Germany. Little by little, legislation has opened up for economic immigration, and Germany has changed from a restrictive laggard to a liberal frontrunner in immigration (SVR, 2014). In 1998, inter-​company transfers were facilitated. In 2001, a special programme for IT engineers was promoted with great public fanfare, under the misnomer ‘Green Card’ (Kolb, 2002). In 2005, a new migration law brought about an inter-​party compromise on a more pragmatic immigration and integration policy. In 2010, ‘welcome centres’ and ‘one stop government’ centres were opened in Hamburg and other cities, to facilitate the immigration of skilled people. In December 2018, the grand coalition reached a consensus about a ‘skilled labour immigration law’, going through all levels of the work force and including a half-​year visa

THE IMMIGRATION SYSTEM AND THE RULE OF LAW    333 to look for a job. This is another step in opening up the labour market for immigration at a time when countries like the US and Britain have become more restrictive. The opening began cautiously and selectively, as Germany was described as the ‘sick man of the Euro’ in 1999 (The Economist, 3 June 1999). The economic outlook changed to the ‘engine of growth’ a few years later (Financial Times, 14 August 2017). Employers complained about problems with finding qualified personnel. The legislation was changed, and Germany is more attractive than ever. Since labour can move freely in the EU, and credentials are accepted EU-​wide, EU mobility is clearly easier to organize than any immigration from third countries. Thus, experts expect that EU mobility will continue until it peters out in the coming decades since birth rates in the new EU member countries are low, the population is declining, and employment opportunities are improving in Poland and the Baltic countries. In 2017, 1.55 million people migrated to Germany while 1.14 million left, resulting in a net immigration of 416,000 people , and 400,000 people in 2018. Most migrants come from the EU, and particularly new member countries. The most intense migration hails from Croatia, an EU member since 2013.10.6 % of all Croatian nationals are now living in Germany. In 2019, net immigration decreased to 327,000, due to data corrections. The authorities had sent voting information to all EU citizens for the European elections in 2019, and omitted people who had not been found by postal services from the statistics. The balance for 2020 is 220,000, due to the Covid crisis. The change in German policies is particularly evident in relation to debates in the EU. When the EU discussed its ‘Blue Card’ immigration scheme in the early 2000s, to compete with the US for the best migrants, Germany put on the brakes, and wanted the income threshold to be high. In 2012, however, the climate had changed, and the German implementation law became very liberal (Kane, 2019). The result is quite a high proportion of Blue Cards in Germany: 26,995 out of 32,678 EU Blue Cards were issued in Germany in 2018. 27.7 per cent of the Blue Cards were issued for Indians. Indian immigration of students and specialists is rising year by year, albeit the movement is still small compared to Indian migration to the US. Germany has a positive migration balance with most countries in the world. Mobility is growing, particularly with neighbouring countries. Switzerland is the only destination with a relevant net out-​migration from Germany. After a pause between 2006 and 2014, immigration from Turkey is back again, due to the political and economic crisis there, and facilitated by the established links. Since 2017 more people have moved from the US to Germany than the other way around -a historic change.

‘Migration Background’ Statistics In 2005, statistics about ‘migration background’ were introduced, to get a clearer picture of immigrants and their progeny, irrespective of the citizenship status. This

334   Dietrich Thränhardt Table 19.1 ‘Migration background’ statistics in 2019 people in thousands

% of all migrants

21,246 11,125 10,121 5,125 6,000

100% 52.4% 47.6% 6.3% 7.3%

EU Poland Romania Italy

7,487 2,237 1,018 837

35.2% 10.5% 4.8% 3.9%

Other European Turkey Russia

6,302 2,824 1,388

29.7% 13.3% 6.5%

Asia Middle East Kazakhstani

4,600 3,219 1,245

21.7% 15.2% 5.9%

Africa America

988 568

4.7% 2.7%

Parents from several countries

659

3.1%

3,524

16.6%

Migration Background Total German citizens Foreigners Immigrated themselves born in Germany

Former Soviet Union

Source: Federal Statistical Office, own calculations

includes everybody who was born outside Germany (if not born to two German parents), or whose father or mother is born outside Germany, plus all foreign nationals. A third of all ‘migration backgrounders’ originate in EU countries, with Poland and Romania as the most important source countries, another third stem from non-​EU European countries including Russia and Turkey, and non-​European countries comprise the other third (see Table 19.1).

Immigration, Labour Relations, and the Welfare State In contrast to the US, Germany has a corporatist system of labour relations and an inclusive welfare state. In the guest worker era, immigrants were strictly included in the collective bargaining and wage system, and trade unions were assured that there would be no undercutting or displacement effects, even if immigration had a moderating effect on

THE IMMIGRATION SYSTEM AND THE RULE OF LAW    335 wages. In 1972, foreigners got full voting rights in the workers’ councils, and immigrants are well represented there (Hinken, 2018). The councils safeguard equal treatment of all employees and represent employees on the company boards. Immigrants are also well represented in the trade unions, particularly the two-​million-​member IG Metall (Karakayalı et al., 2017). In the core industries and in the public sector wages are sufficient and industrial relations highly organized. Many immigrants recruited decades ago are still working in the same firm, and have succeeded in getting their sons or daughters taken on as apprentices in their plant, as recruitment procedures often favour family members (Hinken, 2018). With neo-​liberal reforms and deregulation since 1990, trade unions lost influence in some sectors, and subcontractors and temporary work agencies gained ground. New immigrants often work in deregulated sectors of the economy and at low wages, for example, in the booming transport sector and the hotel and catering industry. Wages in these industries are low, unions weak, and illicit practices widespread. The introduction of a minimum wage in 2014 and more controls at factories are supposed to counter these tendencies, however with limited effects. The Covid-​19 crisis spurred a new effort to end the exploitative practices at meat-​packing factories. Migrants are included in the comprehensive German welfare system if they work under a German contract or have found asylum. If they work for Polish or other subcontractors, the foreign system is responsible. In sectors like transport, this constitutes a competitive advantage and undercuts German wages. However, it is legal under EU rules, though it is debated among EU governments and the public. High-​wage countries try to make their wage system mandatory for everybody working on their territory while low-​wage countries are interested in finding work for their people and holding on to their competitive advantage. Another discussion refers to ‘exporting’ welfare benefits, and the attraction of the German welfare system for EU citizens and for asylum seekers. Some politicians demand lower children’s allowances for children living in other countries, even if the parent works in Germany. This practice had been followed earlier, before the European Court of Justice ruled against such discrimination in 1999. However, these discussions mask the strong contribution of immigrants to the functioning of the German welfare system. As German medical doctors move to richer Switzerland, Germany attracts more and more doctors from other EU countries. Nurses and care givers are also in high demand. Elderly Germans who want to stay in their homes employ Polish or Romanian women on a private basis. In the ‘guest worker’ era, most immigrants worked in industry. During recent decades, services have become more important, mostly in little-​regulated sectors, such as cleaning, logistics, and food production. The percentage of immigrants in the government and public sector is much lower, and close to the percentage of naturalized people with migration background. All in all, we find them well-​represented throughout the labour market, contrary to the widespread image of immigrants as being less qualified (table 19.2).

336   Dietrich Thränhardt Table 19.2 People with migration background in labour market sectors (per cent, 2019) Employment total

24.4%

Cleaning Postal services, logistics, storage Food production

55.1% 38.2% 37.7%

Industry total Construction

29.4% 26.9%

Natural sciences, informatics Language. media, art, culture, social sciences

22.8% 20.6%

Agriculture Military School teachers

14.5% 12.1% 11.1%

Federal parliament Police, justice system

8.2% 7.2%

Source: Federal Statistical Office, adapted

Conclusion For decades and even today, Germany’s immigration system has been shaped by the legacies of Nazi totalitarianism and the challenges of the East-​West division. More than many other countries, Germany accepts asylum seekers and is challenged by asylum problems. Beginning in 1955, recruitment of workers followed a clear European perspective, in the end making them European citizens. De facto, Germany was an immigration country during all of its post-​war history, even if it only passed an explicit immigration law (Einwanderungsgesetz) in 2019. Structurally, the demographic deficit will require more immigration in the future, from other European countries, and more and more worldwide. After much soul-​searching and political turmoil, the country has reached a common consensus to accept immigration and to integrate the newcomers on the basis of the established welfare state, thereby helping to stabilize it. The coalition treaty for 2021-​2025 foresees further opening steps in naturalization, immigration, and a more efficient and welcoming asylum system.

Further Reading Eurostat: Migration and migrant population statistics (rich material in English, every year) Fachkommission Integrationsfähigkeit (2020), Shaping Our Integration Society Together, Report of the Federal Government Expert Commission on the Framework for Sustainable Integration (Berlin: Federal Chancellery).

THE IMMIGRATION SYSTEM AND THE RULE OF LAW    337 Hollifield, James F., Philip L. Martin, Pia Orrenius, and François Héran (eds) (2021), Controlling Immigration (4th edn, Stanford University Press). Sachverständigenrat für Integration und Migration (2021), Normalfall Diversität? Wie das Einwanderungsland Deutschland mit Vielfalt umgeht (Berlin: Sachverständigenrat). Spieker, Michael and Christian Hofmann (eds) (2020), Integration, Teilhabe und Zusammenhalt in der Integrationsgesellschaft (Baden-​Baden: Nomos).

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CHAPTER 20

THE M ERK E L E RA Environmental Politics and the ‘Energiewende’ (Energy Transition) Carl Lankowski

The energy transition (Energiewende) in Germany is an important facet of the country’s environment policy, but it is one of a broad palette of policy campaigns and sectors animating politics over decades. Nevertheless, it has attained the status of primus inter pares in the environmental policy spectrum. The Energiewende has its roots in the anti-​ nuclear power movement of the 1970s. There is a certain poetry in that a nuclear accident in 2011 provided the occasion for the term to be elevated to informally rebrand Germany’s official energy strategy. In 1990, on the eve of the unification of the two post-​war Germanies, the Federal Republic had an energy system that relied primarily on coal for the generation of electricity, supplemented by nuclear reactors and natural gas. East Germany (the German Democratic Republic (GDR)) was even more reliant on coal. Before and after unification Germany was nearly totally dependent on oil imports for transportation and heating. By the end of 2019, while oil continued to be imported at high levels, the power sector in the unified country had been transformed by policy decisions. Non-​nuclear renewable sources, primarily solar and wind, now account for the single largest producer of electricity. Binding commitments have been undertaken to decommission all remaining nuclear power plants and completely discontinue the use of coal in the coming decade. Natural gas remains as the bridge fossil fuel as Germany navigates a course to reach net-​zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the year 2045. Energy consumption in Germany has become more efficient over the same period. As a result, Germany’s GHG emissions have declined by 36 per cent below the 1990 level, even as gross power consumption increased by 5 per cent, primary energy consumption declined by 14 per cent, and the economy grew by 54 per cent (Appunn et al., 2020). Though the clean-​up of the East German economy contributed much to this impressive picture, the transformation was just as marked in the West German Länder and counted for the greater part.

340   Carl Lankowski Energy is a highly regulated industry in Germany and Europe. Legislative interventions have played a decisive role in determining the country’s energy mix as well as patterns of energy consumption. There is an indigenous supply of coal/​lignite, but all other fossil fuels are imported and the country imports over 60 per cent of its energy. In some ways, energy import dependence has made Germany’s energy mix comparatively more political, and that on two levels, as strategic choices involve both bilateral relations and policy regimes of the European Union (EU). Policy-​making rarely takes the form of radical departures in Germany, thanks to the checks and balances in its system of governance: a strong form of federalism, the necessity for party coalitions, and the establishment of para-​public institutions (Katzenstein, 1987). Katzenstein also provides a comprehensive account of the manner in which the EU reinforces this pattern (Katzenstein, 1998). A key consequence of these arrangements is that major policy change requires substantial prior political and societal consensus. Accordingly, the focus of this chapter concerns the forces and strategies that resulted in widespread support for Germany’s Energiewende. The central argument of this chapter is that the main, though not exclusive, driver of this consensus is the climate change agenda. Discussed in the following sections are the origins of that consensus and the debates surrounding key steps advancing that agenda in Germany. They include the EC legislation on industrial plant emissions, the decision on automobile emissions standards, the commitments under the Kyoto Protocol (1997), the Renewable Energy Sources Act (2000), the EU 2020 climate package (2007), commitments under the Paris accords by UN FCCC-​COP21 (2015), the Climate Action Law (2019), and the EU European Green Deal decisions of 2020.

The Challenge Germany had become the most industrialized economy in Europe. Germany’s greening implied that its industrial culture—​extant in different ways in both post-​war Germanies—​had to be transformed. The energy sector came to be understood as the leading edge of the broader challenge. After all, the issue was not just about the supply side of the energy economy. The demand side required attention as well. The automobile industry with its iconic brands has arguably been the lynchpin and trademark of German economic performance. That industry and its supporting sectors (metal, glass, chemicals, machine tools) showcased and served as the anchor for the country’s engineering prowess. It also gave rise to an interest constellation whose institutional articulation—​trade unions, trade and employers’ associations—​defined the industrial relations component of Germany’s social market economy. The story of the Energiewende is significantly connected to the reaction of these actors to vectors of change. The challenge came to be conceived as systemic. But the economy was deeply dependent on external markets from the beginning of the post-​war period. West Germany had to develop as a trading state, successfully

THE MERKEL ERA    341 competing against suppliers in an increasingly global market. Though already a major exporter from the beginning of the twentieth century, the West German economy was challenged by changing borders that deprived firms of formerly internal markets. The 1950s Wirtschaftswunder relied on multilateral efforts to open and protect markets beyond Germany. Successful economic reintegration—​and the status of Exportweltmeister—​offered the Germans a source of pride when any manifestation of nationalism was tabu. So, the challenge was not just about transforming Germany—​ it was at the same time about transforming the world. There could be no greening of Germany without greening all international supply chains. There was only one route to that end for Germany: the EU. From one perspective, the EU started as an energy crisis cartel. The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in part to manage overproduction of coal as Europe was transitioning to imported oil. The ECSC set the precedent for social policies to deal with regional and sectoral problems in the common, then internal market. EURATOM was formed in part to allow Germany to develop nuclear technology in a manner that did not alarm its European partners or the US. Coal production played a central role in building Germany’s industrial prowess. The substitution of oil for coal in the heating sector initiated restructuring and state support from the late 1950s. By the mid-​1980s the level of subsidization was highest in the EU in absolute terms and in cost per ton (Frondel et al., 2006). The dozens of individual support programmes aimed at supporting employment and ostensibly to guarantee continuing supply for the power sector were costly. They were supported by mine operators, power generators, and trade unions and had sacrosanct status politically in the Länder where mines were located. They also supported an energy source that increasingly drew the critical attention of a growing public demanding environmental remediation.

Change Agents Appear in the 1960s and 1970s The general pattern of political change in the 1960s and 1970s involved the profusion of social movements in an increasingly post-​industrial setting. Precise country origins are less important than the uptake in Germany, Europe’s largest economy and, aside from the then Soviet Union, the most populous nation. What moved Germany inspired and reinforced movements elsewhere especially in Western Europe. The new social movements were especially appealing to the burgeoning middle class in a society benefitting from the vertiginous economic growth of the 1950s. The post-​war generation was growing up in a milieu that challenged the political Lager (camps) that were elements of Germany’s industrial culture. Increasingly, jobs moved out of the assembly line and into the office; workers no longer lived in close proximity to factories; suburbanization took hold. There was an exceptionally rapid growth in the share of the

342   Carl Lankowski younger cohort studying at post-​secondary institutions. Not surprisingly, it was increasingly the case that people were especially involved with campaigns organized independently of political parties. In addition to the campaign topics, participation itself was a value. By 1969, more people were participating in Bürgerinitiativen (citizens initiatives) than were members of political parties (Baker, Dalton, and Hildebrandt, 1981). In Germany the environmental movement was one part of a constellation of overlapping movements that also included a separate anti-​nuclear power campaign, an alternative economy movement, a squatter movement, ‘third world’ or anti-​imperialist campaigns, and a peace movement (Lankowski, 2001). While political mobilization of the post-​war generation was a common feature of advanced capitalist societies in the 1960s and 1970s, some special characteristics of West Germany are worthy of note. Germany’s military defeat brought territorial rearrangements, military occupation, the stigma of war crimes and genocide pronounced by the Nürnberg tribunal, and the division of the country and vestigial presence of the four occupying powers in the Cold War context. Germany was a post-​ fascist society. As a result of these special circumstances, mobilization by the young on new themes, while supporting Republican virtues, contained a systemic critique of German political culture and institutions and a yearning for a genuinely new point of departure. Out of this concatenation emerged the German Green party in the 1970s. Its early activists purposely juxtaposed a claim to represent the extra-​parliamentary movements in the political system they inherited. Activists attacked the party (die anti-​Partei Partei) system as such and condensed their stance into the four conceptual pillars: more grassroots democracy, ecology, a more social order (against insufficiently regulated market forces), and non-​violence. The environmental message resonated across the political spectrum. One indicator was the broad and positive reception of CDU MdB Herbert Gruhl’s book Ein Planet wird geplündert (1975), which was a bestseller criticizing unqualified economic growth. The Evangelische Kirche Deutschlands amplified the message with its invocation Frieden, Gerechtigkeit und Bewahrung der Schöpfung (peace, justice, and preserving the creation, i.e. the environment). The anti-​ nuclear movement dramatically expanded after the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear reaction in the US in March 1979, but was entrenched in a much wider public after the shock of the Soviet Chernobyl meltdown in April 1986, reconfirmed by the meltdown in Fukushima in Japan in March 2011. Tellingly, their first electoral breakthrough in one of the large Länder was Baden-​ Württemberg, where their appeal extended well beyond university towns into rural districts where some farmers also opposed nearby nuclear power plant construction. The Greens first attempt at the national level was the list they assembled for the first direct election of the European Parliament in 1979. Their 2.4 per cent of the vote was not sufficient to gain any seats, but enough to motivate the founders to intensify their efforts. The Greens became a regular party under German law and elected twenty-​ seven members to the Bundestag with 5.1 per cent of the national vote in the 1983 election.

THE MERKEL ERA    343 Over the following fifteen years, the Greens evolved from a party of protest to a party of government. Both before and after unification of the two German states in 1990, the Federal Republic has had a competitive multi-​party system with a relatively high turnout at elections with seats awarded on the basis of a mixed member proportional representation system. At the national level, there is only one example of one-​party government (1957–​61); all other national governments have been coalitions. In the German system, small shifts in votes can determine which parties form the government. Electoral success also fostered a process of maturation for the Greens. Activists were drawn from across the political spectrum and across varied social milieux. Stadtindianer and Ökosozialisten, Wertkonservative and nationalists, youth abandoning the Social Democrats, university students, and young professionals—​especially teachers and clergy—​encountered each other in an eclectic mix at party congresses. Gradually, a deeply reformist, distinctly middle-​class Republican ethos came to define the collective identity; this was not unlike the progressive movement in America from approximately 1890–​1920. This anti-​party party’s early slogan was Weder links noch rechts aber vorn (neither Left nor Right but forward). Two tendencies congealed in the Greens. There was an increasingly dominant realistic-​pragmatic wing (realo) ready to enter government with either of Germany’s two main parties to advance a broad agenda of societal reform. There also existed a more fundamentalist Leftist wing that emphasized the social as much as the green dimension of that agenda. Greens served as a channel for expertise especially on environmental issues and also proved adept at monitoring the government and clarifying its positions from their seats in the opposition.

Political System Drives Change The Greens’ electoral success in 1983 immediately led to adaptation strategies by the other parties. The Greens were appealing because they reflected the widespread concern about deployment of a new generation of nuclear weapons on German soil and because they represented concerns about the natural habitat via unchecked pollution from industrial plants and vehicular traffic. Through the tightening auto emission standards, the Kohl government (1982–​98) hoped to shore up electoral support manifested by the Greens political breakthrough. The first test came in Hessen, where the Greens joined a coalition with the SPD in 1985 and realo Joschka Fischer became the first Green Minister, receiving the portfolio for energy and reactor safety. Barely one year later the nuclear power plant disaster in the Ukrainian Chernobyl traumatized Germany and Europe. Fischer won credibility for the Greens and their agenda in a measured and effective response to the crisis. From that point on, public opinion in Germany shifted unalterably in opposition to nuclear power. The government in Bonn led by Chancellor Kohl reacted by creating Germany’s first environment ministry at the national level. Here the American equivalent was the Nixon administration launching of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.

344   Carl Lankowski Unification of the two Germanies taught the Greens that they had to look beyond environmental issues. One of their poster slogans in the 1990 and first all-​German Bundestag election was ‘Alle reden von Deutschland . . . Wir reden vom Wetter!’ (everyone is talking about Germany . . . we talk about the weather)—​cute, but inattention to the challenges of unification cost them all their seats. By 1993, the party adjusted in two ways: first, Die Grünen merged with Bündnis 90, the East German list that did send representatives to the Bundestag after the 1990 election. Second, the party came to terms with the EU at its 1993 congress in Aachen, recognizing that this was the arena that was most likely to amplify and realize their agenda (Lankowski, 2002).

The EU and the Green Agenda They were right. Policy dynamics involving the three main EU institutions—​Commission, Parliament, and Council—​favoured and led to a significant expansion of the scope of EU competences. New treaty articles giving the European Communities (EU precursor) competence in environment policy were adopted in the Single European Act of 1986. Both Commission and Parliament pushed to fill the articles with content and were able to drag the member states into the expansive logic. Often enough, for instance in the case of Germany advocating automobile fuel standards requiring installation of catalytic converters, member states used the EU to affect the domestic political constellation. This was the Kohl government’s response to the agitation, promoted by the Greens, to do something about air pollution. The call for action against Waldsterben (forest dieback caused by acid rain) resonated also in traditionally conservative circles. EU environmental policy design evolved from a regulatory approach to a more comprehensive project conceptually underpinned by a focus on market dynamics. Two general factors drove this process. The first was the realization that a ‘third industrial revolution’ was required in order to achieve environmental policy goals. The second factor was the realization that the complexity of any such transition would necessarily be mediated at lower levels of governance than the EU. The unanticipated result was that market-​based formulas and EU directives establishing the values to be achieved while making each member state responsible for achieving the result. The scientific community developed empirically based real-​time insights on global ecology, led by climatologists who substantiated the anthropogenic causes of global warming. Europe elevated Norway’s former three-​term Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland as its spokesperson. She represented the post-​colonial narrative Europeans were busy creating about what Europe aspired to globally. The June 1992 Earth Summit in Rio di Janeiro was in some ways the apotheosis of Europe’s reimagining. Its Agenda 21 defined a global partnership for sustainable development. Also to emerge from Rio was the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). While it was clear that the energy sector would be key to any strategy of ecological transformation of the economy, this was complicated at the European level in that the EU had no competence to dictate the energy mix of its member states. So, Germany’s

THE MERKEL ERA    345 nuclear moratorium after Chernobyl was not matched in France, which persisted with its high reliance on nuclear technology to produce electricity. That fact created added pressure for Germany to address its fossil fuel economy. Action at the EU level was also hampered by decision-​making rules. Some sort of carbon tax would have been a rational measure, but taxation measures required unanimity in Council, making that approach unworkable. Following the 1994 Bundestag election Angela Merkel was appointed Environment Minister. Four months later, Merkel advanced the climate agenda as Environment Minister when Germany hosted the first FCCC Conference of Parties (COP 1) in March 1995 in Berlin. Its conclusions led to the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol to the FCCC in which she played a central role. The protocol committed a lead group of countries to cut their GHG emissions and set the stage for the EU Emissions Trading System. Setting a price for carbon via a cap-​and-​trade system addressed multiple issues of policy design. It could channel the energy behind the environmental movement, while also conforming to German post-​war ordoliberal economic culture, in which economic agents operated freely within the policy guidelines set by public law. Moreover, the mechanism would be attractive to other EU member states and subject to adoption by qualified majority in Council. Despite these advantages, the EU Commission did not introduce a formal carbon trading proposal until 2001.

Red-​Green Accomplishments The 1998 Bundestag election brought a Social Democratic-​Green government into existence, consummating the Greens’ status as a policy-​maker at the national level. It was made possible by the shift in the party’s position on the use of force in international relations after the July 1995 massacre of thousands of Muslim men and boys in Bosnian Srebrenica by Serbian units. And it enabled the Greens to demonstrate competence in fields outside of environment policy. Fischer was sworn in as Deputy Chancellor and Foreign Minister. Greens were also given ministerial portfolios for environment and health. One of its earliest acts in the environmental field was the adoption of a set of taxes on electricity and fossil fuels. Deferring to its Social Democratic senior coalition partner, they were framed as employment enhancing measures. They were designed to be revenue-​neutral, offsetting a reduction in business costs to hire labour. At the same time Germany was adopting its eco-​tax, it was assuming its turn as EU Council President. Especially for the largest member states by population and GDP, the rotating presidency offers a key opportunity to affect the development of the EU. In the first half of 1999, the riveting issues were the launch of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the war in Kosovo. The introduction of an eco-​tax in Germany provided no traction for a European one. And Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin was directed by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to slow the introduction of an EU-​wide car buyback scheme aimed at putting a more environmentally friendly fleet on the roads, in order to satisfy complaints by German automobile producers.

346   Carl Lankowski Cosy relationships between business leaders and politicians in and out of government are universal. Even in systems with well-​functioning regulatory and judicial institutions balancing encouragement and oversight can be fraught. Schröder was Minister President of Lower Saxony before becoming Chancellor with an ex officio seat on Volkswagen’s supervisory board. As a Social Democrat, he defended the industrial relations system featuring labour representatives on the board and works council, a core institution of Germany’s social market economy. In July 2013 Chancellor Merkel, now heading a coalition government with the FDP, intervened in the Irish Council presidency again to slow the long process of tightening auto emission standards. By the same token, the auto industry is global and jurisdictions compete for locating jobs in their territories. The ‘dieselgate’ scandal illustrates the implications in a sector particularly relevant for the energy mix. Discovery in 2015 of cheating mechanisms in Volkswagen models designed to defeat tailpipe emissions testing and affecting millions of units was damaging not only to that producer, but to the permissive consensus about the functioning of the economy. The scandal could even be considered salutary insofar as it demonstrated that combustion engines burning fossil fuels, diesel or not, were a dead end and clarified the shifting social consensus on the salience of environmental goals in Germany. The national specificity of European politics despite policy discussions at EU level was starkly on display in France in 2018–​19. A modest increase in fuel tax was the occasion of a new movement mobilizing tens of thousands against the national government. Demonstrators, many from rural areas, wore the yellow emergency vests (gilets jaunes) that are required in every car to identify themselves. In 2000, against the background of significant popular support for ending power generation with nuclear plants and ongoing demonstrations aimed at transportation of nuclear waste within the country, an agreement was reached with the companies operating Germany’s nuclear power plants that they would all be decommissioned by 2022. That decision was reversed by the second Merkel government, under the influence of the FDP, deploying the argument that reducing reliance on coal required the continuation of nuclear generation.

Breakthrough in Renewables In retrospect, the most consequential achievement of the first red-​green government was its breakthrough in renewable energy. In 2000, the 1991 law allowing small renewables producers to access the electrical grid was updated in a way that transformed solar and wind industries. Installations were subsidized by guaranteeing the rate for electricity provision (feed-​in tariff) for twenty-​five years. Germany is not a particularly sunny country, but this policy innovation made Germany the world leader in installed solar panels for a decade, driving down prices and leading to emulation abroad, especially in China. Germany does not lack wind and a parallel process of even greater magnitude occurred in that sector. The Renewable Energy Sources Act was fashioned with

THE MERKEL ERA    347 cumulative reductions of the subsidy in mind, leading to a fully competitive industry that by some estimates employed more people than coal/​lignite. Most important, this programme clearly demonstrated that reducing toxic emissions did not necessarily imply economic hardship. To the contrary, it suggested a cleaner and more profitable economic development path. Beyond the economic success was the enthusiastic uptake by many thousands of households across Germany. Encouraged by the 100,00 Roofs feature of the EEG, a sizeable portion of German society was literally invested in the energy transition.

Coal and Gas Legacies Meanwhile, the red-​green government had to react to the EU Commission proposal for a carbon market at the European level. The European Trading System (ETS) was adopted in 2003. Implementation required allocating reduction targets to the then twenty-​five EU members. As Europe’s largest industrial economy, this process was fraught in Germany. Even under a red-​green government the major emitters had to be bought off with free emission allowances, a major point of contention in the governing coalition. As a result, the Greens could not achieve much progress in ending Germany’s reliance on coal/​lignite. Already haemorrhaging support to the Greens, the Social Democrats were determined to hold their traditional support, including in the mining sector. Indeed, Chancellor Schröder failed in his attempt to thread the needle in his ‘neue Mitte’ (new middle) strategy, when the party split and some of the SPD’s former electorate voted for Die Linke (The Left) party in the 2005 election. The SPD’s electoral defeat marked the transition to the return of the Christian Democrats to government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel. The other legacy of the Social Democrats in the energy economy was an abiding commitment to sourcing gas from Russia. This link has been a constant theme since the Ostpolitik of the 1960s. It is telling that Chancellor Schröder retired from politics in 2005 and went to work immediately for a Russia-​based consortium building the Nord Stream I pipeline connecting the two countries via the Baltic Sea. This was the last time the SPD led a national government. The party’s vote share continued on its downward path: 1998, 40.9 per cent; 2002, 38.5 per cent; 2005, 34.2 per cent; 2009, 23.0 per cent; 2013, 25.7 per cent; 2017, 20.5 per cent. Some of the losses could be explained by Merkel’s centrist policy positions and thus the appropriation of SPD (or FDP) positions. But this explanation misses more than it reveals. The overall direction of Merkel’s policy is indicated by attention to the climate issue. Climate, as this analysis of Germany’s Energiewende demonstrates, is a protean issue. The ‘environment’ is also about industry, innovation, decentralization of power and Republican values (‘democracy’), migration, geopolitics, and generally about modernity, about orientation to the future. Tied to the legacy of the workers’ movement and the industrial economy, the SPD could not capture the imagination of new generations. Subsidizing coal and

348   Carl Lankowski importing gas from Russia even after Putin’s attacks on Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine six years later made it appear distinctly old-​fashioned.

The Merkel Chancellorship When Angela Merkel became Federal Chancellor in 2005, she inherited the feed-​in tariff legislation (the Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz or Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG)) adopted under the red-​green government (1998–​2005) in 2000 as well as the European Emissions Trading System (ETS), which began operations in 2005. It was clear from her years as Environment Minister that she advocated ambitious climate polices and understood the necessity of proceeding in a European framework in order to affect the outcome where it mattered: at the global level. The Merkel years display remarkable continuity in this orientation, checks along the way related to changing coalition partners notwithstanding. Merkel led a CDU/​CSU-​SPD coalition in 2005–​09, one with the FDP (2009–​13), and two more with the SPD (2013–​17, 2017–​21). As advocate-​in-​chief of the Kyoto Protocol, Merkel knew better than anyone what its limitations were. The Clinton administration advocated adherence to the protocol but faced a nearly unanimous rejection in the US Senate, in large part because the biggest GHG emitters of the future—​above all, China—​had no commitments under the instrument. Therefore, Europe had to lead the effort to bring in China and others into any post-​ Kyoto arrangement. By the same token, Germany would have to set its own example to bring the rest of Europe along. Germany would have two special opportunities to shape the European climate policy in rotations as President of the EU Council. The first opportunity came in the first half of 2007; the second came in the second half of 2020.

The First Merkel EU Council Presidency (January–​June 2007) As the government took the helm as EU Council President in January 2007, the Commission released ‘An Energy Policy for Europe’, which entered the field to advocate a more competitive and interconnected European energy system aimed at delivering security of supply and affordability. The Commission paper linked all these issues to GHG reductions (Commission, 2007). Against that background, Germany’s flagship contribution during its 2007 Council presidency lay in linking energy and climate policy at EU level. This was an important moment, insofar as it opened the path to making energy policy in the member states, responsive to signals from Brussels. It proposed the catchy 20-​20-​20 climate/​energy programme aiming at joint action to keep average annual global temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-​industrial levels. The March 2007 European Council

THE MERKEL ERA    349 Conclusions advertised the EU’s aspiration to lead the effort to define a global response by 2009 (Council, 2007). Finalized in March 2009, Directive 2009/​28/​EC required the EU by the year 2020 to reduce GHG emissions by 20 per cent, increase the portion of renewables in the overall EU energy mix to 20 per cent, and improve energy efficiency by another 20 per cent. Beyond these headlines, the package also included a tightening of the ETS by drastically reducing free emission allocations. Member states were assigned different targets that together would achieve the headline goals and each member state was required to produce a corresponding national action plan. Germany undertook to reduce its GHG emissions by 40 per cent against the 1990 baseline. All this effort was aimed at binding GHG reduction targets and shared facilitating measures at COP 15 in Copenhagen, in December 2009. Not only did this effort fail—​ the conference produced a non-​ binding agreement, the Copenhagen Accord—​ it undermined the premise of EU leadership in the process, as the decisive deal in the conference was worked out between Obama and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao. For the dealmaker of the Kyoto Protocol—​to this day the only binding decarbonization agreement with global reach—​this was a stinging setback. What COP 15 did achieve was agreement on the need to limit the average global temperature increase over the pre-​industrial period to 2 degrees Celsius. That, at least, was something to build on.

Nuclear Phase-​Out Reconfirmed Meanwhile, in the ensuing period industrial interests were able to revive the debate about nuclear power, undoing the red-​green commitment to decommission all nuclear power plants under the new CDU/​CSU-​FDP government. This resulted in a decision to extend the service life of the plants. The Fukushima meltdown in March 2011 brought that overture to an end and reconfirmed the prior decision to take nuclear power out of the German energy mix, now set for 2022. From the point of view of climate policy, the logic of that move was acceleration of a general retreat from all fossil fuels. No later than this point it was clear that Merkel’s CDU was more in alignment with the Greens than with any other Germany political party.

Russian Gas Gas as a bridging energy source to quickly replace coal should have been an option. One can only speculate about the strategic calculus at this moment. But the international implications are clear enough: ‘If a country like Germany is not willing or able to phase out coal for de-​carbonization, why should China or India do it?’ (Dickel, 2014, p. 120). Gas did indeed figure in Germany’s energy strategy. Gas was a central element in Germany’s geopolitical posture vis-​à-​vis Russia, the giant neighbour to the east with whom it had to cooperate. Szabo (2015) provides a compelling statement of Germany’s major economic engagement in post-​Soviet Russia, justified by hopes for Wandel durch

350   Carl Lankowski Handel (societal change through trade and thus interaction with the West—​an echo of the Ostpolitik of the 1970s). Merkel’s government has consistently argued that the pipeline is a commercial venture, despite the obvious political dimension, especially given Gazprom’s status as a parastatal controlled by the Kremlin. Nor did Russia’s gas embargo in 2006 in Ukraine, which affected that country and Eastern European EU members, deflect Germany. That orientation has been a costly proposition for Germany’s—​and Merkel’s—​leadership brand. Preparations for a pipeline directly connecting Russia and Germany go back to the 1990s and culminated in a consortium led by Gazprom with European partners in 2006. Nord Stream’s first line was turned on in November 2011. Nord Stream has an annual capacity of 55 billion cubic metres (BCM). Following completion, it carried barely half that amount. Therefore, questions immediately arose when Gazprom announced plans for a second pipeline of equal capacity. As the level of ambition of climate policy increased in Germany and the EU, so, too, did criticism of German official support for the project from environmental circles. On the eve of a Merkel-​Putin meeting at Schloss Meseberg in August 2018, the German Green MEP, Reinhard Bütikofer stated that Nord Stream 2 ‘is . . . a battle about the strength and clarity of Germany’s European inclination . . . Merkel has maneuvered herself into a difficult spot. If she now wants to move in the right direction, the first step could be the announcement that the German government will now stop blocking the necessary reform of the EU’s gas directive. That should send the right signal to Moscow and Washington’ (Bütikofer, 2018, p. 1). This was by no means the only opposition to the project. Already in 2006, Polish Foreign Minister, Radek Sikorski, compared the deal to the 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. If hyperbolic in the moment, the statement articulated what turned out to be a justified concern about providing Russia with a means to divide and weaken the EU. And in the aftermath of Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014, the US Congress passed legislation aimed at halting construction of Nord Stream 2.

Green Breakthrough in Baden-​Württemberg and Bayern In the period from 2009–​12, when the national ruling coalition government struggled to contain the sovereign debt crisis, the Greens were able to burnish their credibility in the environmental policy space. As Nord Stream neared completion, the Fukushima nuclear disaster set the stage for the Greens electoral success in Baden-​Württemberg in October 2011, resulting in the first Green Minister President of a German federal state. The Greens’ appeal to conservative voters was to be reaffirmed in the 2016 elections, with Winfried Kretschmann’s re-​election at the head of the first state-​level grün-​schwarz government. Later, in the wake of the crisis that brought nearly a million refugees to Germany in 2015, the Greens scored an impressive result in Bavaria’s October 2018 Landtag election when they won 18.3 per cent of the vote, accounting for the CSU first-​ ever loss of its outright majority. Arne Jungjohann, a German political scientist and

THE MERKEL ERA    351 Green activist, summed up the appeal: ‘The Greens are the only German party today in which the pro-​European, refugee-​friendly, liberal-​democratic attitude is undisputed’ (Stam, 2018). The FDP’s dismal showing in the 2013 Bundestag election presaged the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and set the stage for another CDU/​CSU coalition with the SPD. The CDU/​CSU-​SPD coalition agreement is a remarkably comprehensive document that offers valuable insight into the ambition and neuralgic points of Germany’s Energiewende. The agreement specifies an energy mix that would win acceptance in the population: without nuclear power and based on the criteria of environmental sustainability, security of supply, and affordability. Renewable sources should be cost-​effective; conventional sources for reliable base-​load management were needed, as was the strengthening of trans-​European grid connections. The text also includes a passage warning the EU Commission to pay attention to competitiveness of industrial firms when reforming the ETS. Subsidies in the renewables sector were slated for elimination because the system resulted in significant price increases for businesses and households. An entire section of the agreement is devoted to energy efficiency measures to be introduced in the heating/​cooling sector. The parties committed to a 40 per cent reduction of greenhouse gases over 1990 levels by 2020 and an 85–​90 per cent reduction by 2050, which led to Germany’s 2020 Climate Action Plan. And they look forward to working out a general strategy for global collective action on climate with COP 21 scheduled for December 2015 in Paris in mind. All that said, the agreement states that ‘conventional power sources (lignite, coal, and gas) will continue to be needed as components of the national energy mix for the foreseeable future’. There is no mention of Nord Stream gas pipelines in the document. Of the four pages devoted to transport, electric cars merited two short paragraphs, one of which reaffirms the goal of registering one million of them by 2020 (Koalitionsvertrag, 2013).

Gas Test in Ukraine In December 2014 the government published a Climate Action Programme 2020 (BMU, 2014) that reflected the priorities of the coalition agreement. The main weight of the measures designed to keep Germany on track to meet its GHG reduction targets focused on energy efficiency measures. Energy sourcing played little role. The main intervening factor was Russian aggression in Ukraine as the Ukrainians embraced the EU-​Ukraine association agreement. That action made it impossible for Ukraine’s new government also to embrace Russia’s counter-​offer. The EU and Russian offers were not necessarily mutually exclusive in principle, but the Russian move shifted Ukrainian opinion decisively westward. It is remarkable that despite German participation (and indeed, Merkel’s leadership) in the imposition of EU economic sanctions in coordination with Washington on various actors and entities in Russia, the flow of gas, at the time that a second Nord Stream pipeline was in planning, was not affected.

352   Carl Lankowski

Energy Union, COP 15 The recurrent themes of energy supply, the functioning of the EU internal market, and the environment prompted the EU to deepen its involvement in energy policy with an integrated plan for an ‘energy union’ early in the Juncker Commission (Commission, 2015). In parallel, the EU sought to assume a leadership role globally by announcing early, in March 2015, its level of ambition for the FCCC COP 21 (Framework Convention on Climate Change; December 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris), a 40 per cent GHG reduction over 1990 levels by 2030. That watershed meeting produced a treaty binding 196 countries—​including China and the US—​to produce plans (Nationally Determined Contributions, NDCs) advancing the collective commitment to keep global average temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius and preferably not more than 1.5 degrees above the pre-​industrial level. The EU and all twenty-​eight member states signed this undertaking at a ceremony in April 2016. The Council of the European Union adopted the treaty on 30 September and the European Parliament gave its assent on 4 October by a majority of 610 in favour, 38 against, and 31 abstaining. Almost all the opponents came from the far Right parties grouped in the EFDD (Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy) and ENF (Europe of Nations and Freedom). Now the agreement required further specification in National Energy and Climate Plans for the period 2021–​30. Germany was one of the first countries to submit a plan. The November 2016 Climate Action Plan 2050 promised a GHG reduction of 55 per cent over 1990 levels and carbon neutrality by 2050 (BMU, 2016).

2017—​Almost Schwarz-​Grün In Germany, these commitments transformed the debate about the energy mix. The results of the 2017 Bundestag election were bad for the ruling coalition, which together lost 105 seats. All other parties gained, with the AfD in the lead with 94, followed by the FDP with 80, Linke with 69, and the Greens with 67. Negotiations began for a ‘Jamaica’ coalition—​CDU/​CSU with the Greens and the FDP (Wehrmann, 2017). Although the Greens election campaign featured the demands that 2030 must be the year when Germany ceases to mine and burn coal and ceases to register any new cars with a combustion engine, their negotiator softened them in the interest of reaching a compromise. Merkel seemed ready for such a settlement, but the FDP’s Christian Lindner was not and pulled his party out of the coalition talks. That move forced the CDU to appeal to the SPD to continue their coalition, despite the scorching electoral verdict. With a quarter century of climate policy behind it, the German population had become accustomed to the issue. The financial crisis and associated economic recession were receding memories and immigration pressure slackened after the spike in

THE MERKEL ERA    353 2015–​16. Meanwhile, the Brexit referendum and tortured EU-​UK negotiations that followed were generally understood as an act of self-​harm by the UK, in consequence of which, the EU enjoyed rising popularity ratings. By 2018, opinion across the EU and in Germany particularly was especially favourable to EU action on climate-​related matters (Eurobarometer, 2020). The green project was well anchored in EU Europe. Indeed, arguably, it served as a key element of affective connection to the project of regional integration more broadly.

Coal Phase-​Out This situation encouraged policy-​makers to advance ever more ambitious GHG reduction goals. Non-​governmental organization (NGO) activity focused on challenges in the decarbonization agenda, particularly aimed at coal. The SPD would be critical in enabling further progress advancing the Energiewende. Merkel’s final government featured SPD ministers for environment, finance, and foreign affairs. Nine years of experience as the junior partner in Merkel-​led governments demonstrated the difficulties in establishing an independent profile. Many party members favoured the SPD joining the opposition benches after the 2017 election. The decision to remain in government meant that the only chance to improve the party’s political fortunes lay in projecting a forward-​looking vision and governing competence. After decades of supporting heavy subsidies to the coal industry and importing supplies of coal from Russia, and in light of the persistent popularity of climate policy, the time had finally come to put an end to Germany’s coal industry. At the time, there were forty plants burning hard coal and thirty using lignite. By 2018 they were importing 94 per cent of their hard coal. Russia was the main supplier, accounting for 40 per cent. Lignite comes from open cast mines in Germany, some in the area between Aachen and Köln in the West and the region surrounding Cottbus in the East. A commission made up of representatives from six Länder, trade unions, trade associations, and environmental NGOs was formed in 2018 to study how this might be accomplished. The commission made its report in 2019 and the government shepherded legislation through the Bundestag and Bundesrat on 3 July 2020. Under the Act on the Phase-​ out of Coal-​ fired Power Plants and Structural Adjustment Act coal mining and coal-​fired power generation will gradually wind down and cease altogether by 2038 at the latest. Operators are to be compensated €4.35 billion in addition to the €40 billion that will go to displaced mine workers and regional economic support. The Greens voted against the phase-​out law because the term would undermine Germany’s ability to meet its GHG reduction commitments under the Paris 2015 Accord. They also objected to the cost, which amounted to an unmerited prolongation of an uncompetitive industry already in terminal decline. Implementation of the plan began, even as the EU was reviewing the legislation for conformity with its state aid rules.

354   Carl Lankowski

EU Goes Green In 2019, the EU electoral cycle ushered in a new European Parliament. At its constitutive session, the four party groups most supportive of the EU occupied 518 of the Parliament’s 751 seats. The European Greens had seventy-​four of them, which reflected marked success with environmental themes in the campaign. Turnout was 51 per cent with wide variation across the EU. The turnout in Germany was over 61 per cent of Germany’s ninety-​six seats, the Greens won twenty-​five of them and the combined total of EU-​supportive parties was seventy-​seven. Only eighteen went to EU-​sceptical party groups, eleven to the Right-​wing populist Identity and Democracy group. Synchronized with this was the appointment of new leading officials in all main bodies of the EU. Ursula von der Leyen, minister in three Merkel governments, was installed as Commission President, and a new college of commissioners was appointed. Christine Lagarde took over from Mario Draghi as ECB President. The Belgian, Charles Michel, was made President of the European Council. Von der Leyen and her team capitalized on the popularity of climate policy by making it the leitmotiv for the Commission’s five-​year term in office. The European Green Deal was introduced with fanfare in von der Leyen’s speech to the European Parliament on 11 December 2019. Reorganization of the college of commissioners made manifest that this initiative was more than just a public relations chapeau. Dutchman Frans Timmermans, himself a social democratic candidate for Commission President, was installed as the Commission’s executive Vice-​President for the European Green Deal with executive authority and a mandate to coordinate the Commission’s efforts to steer the EU towards carbon neutrality by 2050.

Climate in the Time of Covid As the Coronavirus pandemic gripped Europe in the spring of 2020, it was initially unclear how measures marshalled to meet the challenge would affect the climate agenda. The EU went into crisis management mode. Shuttering the economy by decree meant coordinating policy responses to sudden mass unemployment and severe supply chain disruptions, all complicated by the fact that the progression of the disease was not spatially uniform. Moreover, despite the fact that the treaties governing the EU do not confer to it strong public health competences, von der Leyen’s team played a central role in managing vaccine development and rollout, including participation in COVAX, the agency set up to allocate the new vaccines globally. In the midst of this crisis, far from dissipating as it did to some extent with the onset of the Great Recession a decade earlier, the appetite for advancing the climate agenda remained intact. Various theories have been suggested to explain this. The sudden Covid rupture of normal life could be likened to climate scenarios, reinforcing the willingness to act. In contrast to 2009–​12, steps were taken to insulate populations from the

THE MERKEL ERA    355 worst immediate economic effects. It could be that the many millions now working remotely had greater opportunity to think about the consequences of not acting to address climate issues. Germany’s turn to preside over the Council came at an opportune moment in the second half of 2020. It coincided with two major developments bearing on the climate agenda. The seventy-​fifth session of the UN General Assembly in September featured an appearance by Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose speech included the momentous announcement: ‘We aim to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060’. This was surely adroit diplomacy that highlighted the contrast with the Trump administration and presaged a hopeful global alignment on the climate issue with an eye to the November US general election. Joe Biden’s victory was followed by an executive order on his first day in office rescinding Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord. These events had a catalytic effect in Europe, affecting the calculus in Warsaw and Rome, hastening the final adoption of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and green recovery package, and inaugurating a new phase of the climate agenda. The European Council endorsed a further elevation of the EU GHG reduction target to 55 per cent over 1990 levels by 2030. Facilitating the transition, the EU did what it does best: make side payments to achieve the desired result. With its grant of authority to generate funds on the bond market to finance the EU Recovery Act, it broke the spell of the fiscally frugal member states, representing an enduring policy pillar in the architecture of the European Monetary Union (EMU). Point 14 of the conclusions addresses energy: ‘The European Council acknowledges the need to ensure interconnections, energy security for all Member States, energy at a price that is affordable for households and companies, and to respect the right of the Member States to decide on their energy mix and to choose the most appropriate technologies to achieve collectively the 2030 climate target, including transitional technologies such as gas’ [author’s italics] (European Council, 2020). Alongside the NextGenEU programme, resolution of issues embedded in the renewal of the EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), its seven-​year budget for the period 2021–​27, was due. The two programmes were linked by strategic intent and therefore also in political wrangling—​a €1.8 trillion package to ‘help repair the economic and social damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic and aid the transition towards a more modern and sustainable Europe’ (Commission, 2020). The European Council agreed that 30 per cent of the NGEU and MFF funds were to be deployed with the specific intent of achieving the climate goals (European Council, 2020). Knotty problems had to be overcome and several EU policy strands needed to be reconciled to program the EU in this way. Germany had to overcome its Schuldenbremse (debt brake) to set the European stage for spending and borrowing. Its Social Democratic Finance Minister, Olaf Scholz, signaled the policy shift in February 2020, but he and the SPD Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, though sympathetic to helping Italy, Spain, and other member states, spoke out against authorizing the EU to issue debt for that purpose. Another priority of the von der Leyen Commission concerned

356   Carl Lankowski member states whose governments stand accused of actively undermining democratic institutions the EU was designed to support. At issue was granting funds to Poland, a key offender which, according to EU rules, would be the largest recipient of EU budget transfers under the new MFF. The December 2020 European Council conclusions led with a statement confirming that the criterion of conditionality would be applied to disbursement of funds. Warsaw was also at loggerheads with Berlin on Nord Stream. And the Polish government was not happy with the increase in the 2030 GHG reduction target.

Energy Policy with Russia and the US As the Merkel era drew to a close, one unresolved facet of the Energiewende involved Russian gas. Unification of the two Germanies brought legacy challenges as well as modernization opportunities. Legacies included widespread use of lignite coal and nuclear power in the energy mix. A different relationship to Russia and the US in the eastern Länder was also a factor. These differences were also reinforced by the presence of a large Russia diaspora, which became a key constituency of the AfD. How much gas does Germany need as the country aspires to net-​zero emissions in the medium term? Pipeline politics are a Dauerbrenner in US-​German relations. The geopolitical logic is clear enough. German governments have aimed at establishing the country as Europe’s energy hub. This policy anchors the enduring aspiration to stabilize relations with Russia. It is also good for the roughly 6,000 German firms active in that country. The new issues are Putin-​Russia’s relationship to Ukraine, solidarity with Poland, and Germany’s decarbonization strategy. As for Ukraine, the issue is increased Russian power to use pipelines already running from Russia through that country for political purposes. And there is also the question of lost transit revenues, should the Ukrainian pipeline be closed down in preference to Nord Stream. The German federal government has supported redistribution benefitting Ukraine in that case. In the meantime, with the adoption of sanctions against targets in Russia following Russia’s 2014 subversion in and annexation of Crimea, continuing support for separatists in the Donbass region, and periodic massing of armed forces on Ukraine’s Eastern border, all that is left of Germany’s preferred policy of rapprochement with Russia is the Nord Stream pipelines. Germany’s support for Nord Stream has also awakened Washington’s warnings about the risks associated with over-​dependence on Russian gas, especially controlled by the parastatal company, Gazprom, in the prevailing circumstances of the Putin regime. In 2019 and 2020 two acts of Congress mandated sanctions against companies working on Nord Stream 2. The Biden administration’s policy is not fundamentally different from that of Trump, though perhaps not with the same level of self-​interest advertised by Trump’s blandishments of liquified natural gas (LNG) from . . . America. In order to

THE MERKEL ERA    357 reduce German-​American tensions over the extraterritorial reach of sanctions imposed on companies participating in the project, Biden temporarily waived them in May 2021. The EU had its own equities to defend in the policy debate over Nord Stream. At the most general level, the EU is about process and law. These rank very high on the rhetorical scale of German foreign policy and spokespeople have liked to refer to the country as a Zivilmacht, a civilian power, supporting a rules-​based international order (Kirste and Maull, 1996). It appears that energy policy has exposed a serious tension between that role and reversion to its former role as Europe’s Zentralmacht, or at least what Szabo has referred to as a ‘geo-​economic shaping power’ (Szabo, 2017). One would have thought that supporting EU competition policy would be a central commitment. The EU legislated the Third Energy Package in 2009 after Gazprom’s second gas embargo. It aimed at diversifying supply (inter alia, greater reliance on the global spot market for gas in the burgeoning LNG market segment), creating an independent regulator, and unbundling producers from distributors (Commission, 2009). And yet Berlin under Chancellor Merkel, who has made Nord Stream a Chefsache—​and thus an issue to be dealt with at the top level—​has in effect overridden the EU Commission’s position on allowing Gazprom access to the EU’s regulated market space.

Outlook and Conclusion European integration was launched as a visionary project to repair the continent’s broken system of nation-​states. It has evolved into an experiment in transnational democracy. The EU legitimizes itself in large part by being a force-​multiplier for a subset of the world’s small and medium-​sized countries for taking on and offering plausible solutions to common problems that its members cannot effectively tackle separately. It has had great success with economic integration. Post-​war generations have asked it to do more. They have asked the EU to save the planet. Germany’s Energiewende is an artifact of upgrading a newly discovered common interest in staking out a leadership role in climate policy globally. Success in climate policy could only ever be achieved by mobilizing support in the EU. The converse proposition is equally valid: given Germany’s economic structure and weight along with its voting power, the diffusion of green sentiment across the EU would be far less potent in climate policy without German backing. Merkel’s achievement in this matter is twofold. Any EU policy depended a priori on the robustness of the EU as an arena in which to align disparate interests and then to deliver on decisions, once made. Merkel took on board the European orientation of her mentor, Helmut Kohl, and worked assiduously at supporting the institutions of regional integration, animated by the will to find Germany’s interests in the European interest—​consistent with Article 23 of the Basic Law. In that context, Merkel led Germany and the EU in adopting ambitious statements of intent on the project of decarbonizing the economy, bending to specific industrial

358   Carl Lankowski interests at times, but willing to support measures that would advance the agenda when political circumstances permitted. Building on two decades of EU experience—​Kyoto, Lisbon Treaty, Council presidency in 2007, Euro sovereign debt crisis, Russia-​Ukraine, the migrant wave—​history will probably judge Merkel’s Meisterstück to be Germany’s handling of its Council presidency in the second half of 2020. Her government was able to transform the Coronavirus public health and associated economic crisis into an opportunity to frame a Europe-​wide green reconstruction project. Forging the domestic political support to advance the greening of Europe is also part of the Merkel legacy. Already in the immediate aftermath of the 2013 Bundestag election, Merkel broke the ice with the Greens by sounding out possible coalition negotiations, a signal that helped pave the way for Kretschmann’s Green-​led coalition government with the CDU in Baden-​Württemberg in 2016. The next year the 2017 Bundestag election offered an opportunity to consolidate this by supporting negotiations for the formation of a so-​called Jamaica coalition. How enduring Merkel’s political legacy is will be tested by the evolution of CDU/​CSU positions. To what extent will there be a reversion to an industry-​oriented Interessenpolitik? From the point of view of party coalitions, the fullest consummation of societal consensus for launching an economic transformation would be one between the CDU and the Greens. At the time of this writing, just over three months in advance of the September 2021 Bundestag election, with the initial surge of the Greens in opinion polls waning, the outcome is unclear. CDU Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet observed that the FDP is closer to the CDU than the Greens. Coalition calculations will be affected by the effectiveness of the Spitzenkandidaten/​in in communicating the message. The Greens’ first Chancellor candidate, 40-​year-​old Annalena Baerbock, has held her own in the rhetorical cut and thrust of the campaign representing a party advancing credible ideas for transformation. The party manifesto explicitly embraces the EU European Green Deal and the campaign has offered specific measures involving state/​industry partnerships to tackle difficult economic sectors. (Burbrowski and Kafsack 2021; Bündnis 90-​Die Grünen, 2021). Climate policy as the leitmotiv of the Energiewende is a story about evolving political alignments in the Federal Republic and the fate of the CDU/​CSU as catch-​all parties in an increasingly heterogenous political landscape. In the three decades since the unification of the two Germanies, the main achievement was the promotion of economic modernization through climate policy. This would likely not have been on offer in the absence of the many producers, consumers, and citizens who found it attractive. If this dynamic is common among the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, Germany provides one example of success in finding the support to realize the project. At least since 2007 the EU has been an important factor in strengthening the societal coalition in Germany advocating a low carbon economy. Additional wind in their sails was provided by the April 2021 judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court, which invalidated part of the 2019 climate law. It held that the government assigned too much of the adjustment costs in reaching net-​zero to the successor generation. The result was

THE MERKEL ERA    359 an amendment to Germany’s climate law that advances the net-​zero date five years to 2045 and increases the 2030 GHG reduction goal to 65 per cent. The scheduled phase-​ out of coal will need to be brought forward as a result. But success is by no means guaranteed. Adoption of more stringent targets in the 2019 climate law means that urgent action is needed beyond the power sector, the focus of this chapter. With that in mind, the National Emissions Trading Scheme was introduced in January 2021, in effect extending the ETS into the fuel sector and imposing significant price increases at the pump and for household heating. The scheme is serving as a model for an EU-​wide rollout. It remains to be seen whether Germany will experience its own version of the French gilets jaunes protests after all (icap, 2021; Khan, 2021). This has implications for Nord Stream as well. The environmental argument advanced by Nord Stream proponents is that gas is a necessary and cleaner bridging fuel on the road to net-​zero. The Greens have opposed this line of argumentation from the start, insisting instead that more gas will only slow down the process of energy transition and make it very much more expensive, thanks to the pipeline infrastructure, which must be amortized somehow. On 28 April 2021 five groups in the European Parliament introduced a motion for a resolution demanding cessation of work on the pipeline, adducing bad behaviour by Russia vis-​à-​vis Ukraine (massing of troops on its border), the Czech Republic, and Russian politician Alexei Navalny. But on 4 June the Russian President announced completion of Nord Stream 2’s first line. Europe has a much more willing partner in climate policy in the Biden administration. In its early months, it has worked assiduously on repairing relations damaged during the Trump years, especially with Germany. A month in advance of Biden’s scheduled meeting with Putin in June 2021, the administration sent word to Germany that it was waiving sanctions on Nord Stream 2 AG. Official Silence surrounded this issue in Biden’s engagement with the G7, NATO, the EU, and Putin. Ukraine’s leaders were not invited to the events. The June 2021 G7 meeting in Cornwall committed to a Nature Pact with a strong climate component (European Council, 2021). Meantime, transatlantic discussions were ongoing on a carbon border adjustment mechanism to prevent too much leakage as the price of carbon is raised within the EU. One reading of this pattern is that the reduction of demand for gas in the medium term will shrivel the Nord Stream elephant in the room. But Biden’s Euro-​week also fits into a broader geopolitical narrative in which reinvigoration of transatlantic relations and pragmatism in the Russian relationship form the predicate for an overall shift of focus to China. In this reading, deferring to the Germans on Russia may enable a ‘reverse Kissinger’, by detaching Russia from its recent rapprochement with China (Luce, 2021). Only time will tell.

Further Reading Åslund, Anders (2021), ‘What will the impact be if Nord Stream 2 is completed?’ Atlantic Council of the U.S. (Washington, 27 April): https://​www.atla​ntic​coun​cil.org/​in-​depth-​ resea​rch-​repo​rts/​issue-​brief/​what-​will-​the-​imp​act-​be-​if-​nord-​str​eam-​2-​is-​comple​ted/​ (Accessed 27 April 2021).

360   Carl Lankowski European Commission (2021), ‘A European Green Deal. Striving to be the first climate-​ neutral continent’. https://​ec.europa.eu/​info/​strategy/​priorities-​2019-​2024/​european-​ green-​deal_​en Lankowski, Carl (2015), ‘Germany: Architect of Europe’, in Eleanor Zeff and Ellen Pirro (eds), The European Union & the Member States (3rd revised edn, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers), pp. 37–​56. Mackintosh, Stuart (2021), Climate Crisis Economics (New York: Routledge). Sloat, Amanda (2020), ‘Germany’s New Centrists? The Evolution, Political Prospects, and Foreign Policy of the German Green Party’ (Washington: Brookings Institution, October). https://​www.brookings.edu/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2020/​10/​FP_​20201020_​germanys_​new_​ centrists_​sloat.pdf.pdf Szabo, Stephen F. (2017), ‘From Civilian Power to a Geo-​economic Shaping Power’, German Politics and Society 35(3), pp. 38–​54.

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362   Carl Lankowski Karapin, Roger (2012), ‘Climate Policy Outcomes in Germany: Environmental Performance and Environmental Damage in Eleven Policy Areas’, German Politics and Society 30 (Autumn 2012), pp. 1–​ 34. https://​academ​icwo​rks.cuny.edu/​cgi/​view​cont​ent.cgi?arti​cle=​ 1702&cont​ext=​hc_​p​ubs (Accessed 2 June 2021). Katzenstein, Peter (1987), Politics and Policy in West Germany. The Growth of a Semisovereign State (Philadephia: Temple University Press). Katzenstein, Peter (1998), Tamed Power: Germany in Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). Kirste, K., and H. Maull (1996), ‘Zivilmacht und Rollentheorie’, Zeitschrift Für Internationale Beziehungen 3(2), pp. 283–​312. Retrieved 15 June 2021, from http://​www.jstor.org/​stable/​ 40844107 Koalitionsvertrag (2013), Deutschlands Zukunft gestalten. Koalitionsvertrag zwischen CDU, CSU und SPD. 18. Legislaturperiode. https://​arc​hiv.cdu.de/​sites/​defa​ult/​f iles/​media/​ dokume​nte/​koalit​ions​vert​rag.pdf (Accessed 2 June 2021). Langenbacher, Eric (ed.)(2019), Twilight of the Merkel Era: Power and Politics in Germany after the 2017 Bundestag Election (New York: Berghahn Books). Lankowski, Carl (1997), ‘Poetry on Palimpsest: Germany, the Greens, and European Integration’, in Alan Cafruny and Carl Lankowski (eds), Europe’s Ambiguous Unity. Conflict and Consensus in the Post-​Maastricht Era (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers) pp. 155–​87. Lankowski, Carl (2001), ‘Soziale Bewegungen in den USA und in der Bundesrepublik: Die Friedensbewegung und die Umweltbewegung’, in Detlef Junker (ed.), Die USA und Deutschland im Zeitalter des Kalten Krieges 1945–​1990. Ein Handbuch. Band II 1968–​1990 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-​Anstalt), pp. 644–​54. Lankowski, Carl (2002), ‘A Post-​Westphalian Party: The German Greens’, in Sabine von Mering and Sarah Halpern-​Meekin (eds), International Green Politics (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University), pp. 9–​19. Luce, Ed (2021), ‘America is back—​and wants everyone to focus on China’, Financial Times (18 June). https://​www.ft.com/​cont​ent/​f029b​a6a-​2b4c-​45c0-​b423-​74089​d953​173 (Accessed 20 June 2021). Stam, Claire (2018), ‘Green party ends conservative CSU’s 61-​year dominance in Bavaria’, Euraktiv.com (5 December), pp. 38–​54. https://​www.eurac​tiv.com/​sect​ion/​electi​ons/​news/​ green-​party-​ends-​conse​rvat​ive-​csus-​61-​year-​politi​cal-​domina​nce-​in-​bava​ria/​ (Accessed 25 May 2021). Szabo, Stephen F. (2015), Germany, Russia, and the Rise of Geo-​Economics (New York: Bloomsbury). Szabo, Stephen F. (2017), ‘From Civilian Power to a Geo-​economic Shaping Power’, German Politics and Society 35(3), 38–​54. Thielges, Sonja (2019), ‘U.S. and German energy policy at a crossroads. The transatlantic partners and the future of energy cooperation’, Washington: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. https://​www.aicgs.org/​publ​icat​ion/​u-​s-​and-​ger​man-​ene​ rgy-​pol​icy-​at-​a-​cro​ssro​ads-​the-​transa​tlan​tic-​partn​ers-​and-​the-​fut​ure-​of-​ene​rgy-​coop​erat​ ion/​(Accessed 15 May 2021). Von der Leyen, Ursula (2019), Speech to the European Parliament. https://​ec.eur​opa.eu/​com​ miss​ion/​pres​scor​ner/​det​ail/​en/​spe​ech_​19_​6​751 (Accessed 3 June 2021). Wehrmann, Benjamin (2017), ‘Greens ready to make climate policy concessions in coalition talks’, Clean Energy Wire (Berlin, 7 November). https://​www.clea​nene​rgyw​ire.org/​news/​gre​ ens-​ready-​make-​clim​ate-​pol​icy-​conc​essi​ons-​coalit​ion-​talks (Accessed 2 June 2021).

THE MERKEL ERA    363 Wehrmann, Benjamin (2020), ‘The Bumpy Conclusion to Germany’s Landmark Coal Act Clears Way for Next Energy Transition Chapters’, Clean Energy Wire (Berlin, 3 July). https://​ www.clea​nene​rgyw​ire.org/​news/​bumpy-​con​clus​ion-​germa​nys-​landm​ark-​coal-​act-​cle​ars-​ way-​next-​ene​rgy-​tra​nsit​ion-​chapt​ers (Accessed 4 June 2021). Wen Jiabao (2009), ‘Commentary on COP 15’ (Copenhagen: Chinese Embassy) https://​www. fmprc.gov.cn/​ce/​cedk/​eng/​zdgx/​t646​842.htm (Accessed 5 June 2021). Wettengel, Julian (2020), ‘Germany’s dependence on imported fossil fuels’, Clean Energy Wire (Berlin). https://​www.clea​nene​rgyw​ire.org/​fac​tshe​ets/​germa​nys-​dep​ende​nce-​impor​ted-​fos​ sil-​fuels (Accessed 15 May 2021). Xi Jinping (2020), Speech in the general debate of the 75th UNGA (CGTN, 23 September). https://​en.wikipe​dia.org/​wiki/​German_​R​enew​able​_​Ene​rgy_​S our​ces_​Act#Renewa​ble_​ Ener​gy_​S​ourc​es_​A​ct_​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​(2000) (Accessed 5 June 2021).

Culture and Society

CHAPTER 21

DEMO GRAPH I C S A ND GE NERATIONAL T RA NSI T I ON AND P OLI T I C S Reinhold Sackmann

Two key elements for a good understanding of the current state of German society are its demographic structure and generational politics. Both are quite unusual in comparison to other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. With regard to demographic ageing, Germany is on average one of the oldest societies in the world: The median age of its population is, according to United Nations (UN) estimates, 45.7 years (in 2020). Only Japan, Italy, Portugal, and Martinique have an older population. Germany is also characterized by a low fertility rate that is well below replacement level. With a total fertility rate of 1.59 children (in 2015–​20, according to UN estimates), the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) is only equalled or undercut by a group of thirty countries worldwide. Equally important for an analysis of generational politics is the discontinuous historical process Germany experienced during the late twentieth century. Three system changes have prepared the ground for a very specific generational landscape, which is only partially paralleled in other countries in the world. These system changes were the transition from the Nazi regime to democracy in West Germany in 1945, as well as the shift from fascist to a communist government in East Germany in the same year, and a change from communist one-​party rule to a democratic market economy in East Germany in 1990. What have been the effects of these extraordinary historical and demographic transitions? In this chapter the specific demographic and generational situation is analysed by a) clarifying the concepts of generation and cohort; b) giving an overview of the developments and causes of fertility, mortality, and migration patterns in Germany; c) describing the major societal generations after 1960; d) typifying major discourses on demographic subjects in recent decades; and e) analysing the effects these developments have had on generational politics.

368   Reinhold Sackmann

Generational Concepts The sociological concept of generation has three distinct meanings (Alwin and McCammon, 2004): a) a position in a linear family order, such as father and son; b) a group sharing a common starting-​point in a societal temporal order, for example, birth cohort 1990; and c) a group of birth cohorts being characterized by similar topics, values, and practices, such as exemplified generation 1968. In this chapter the focus will lie on b) and c), that is, societal generations. Usually, members of generations do not act independently of each other. They form either ‘generational ties’—​they cooperate with known persons in networks—​or they are embedded in ‘intergenerational relations’ set by social structures (Klimczuk et al., 2015). An example of an intergenerational relation in a society is its age and cohort pattern: Despite not knowing most people in a given city, large birth cohorts quite often have to endure larger classes in school and more competition in finding a first job. Intergenerational relations can also be the object of institutionalized collective efforts to achieve common goals. These can be called ‘generational politics’. One of the most important parts of these politics are pension schemes, which in the case of pay-​as-​you-​go systems systematically allocate the payments of a current working generation to a contemporary generation of retirees. The noteworthiness of these schemes refers to money and people: Not only do the vast majority of Germans either pay or receive money from the scheme, but also 10.1 per cent of the GDP (in 2015) is spent on this public retirement system (OECD, 2019, p. 201). One can conclude in a parsimonious model that the effects of the specific demographic and generational conditions of Germany should influence societal generations and their intergenerational relations. It remains to be tested whether existing or adaptive generational politics worsened or alleviated these effects.

Demographic Situation and Change The demographic structure is determined by three fundamental processes: fertility, mortality, and migration. Table 21.1 gives an overview of key indicators measuring these processes, adding two central features (total growth volume and median age) that represent the result of these processes. In order to give a first impression of the generalizability and specificity of German developments, corresponding UK data were added. Fertility usually is measured by the total fertility rate, spelling out the calculated average number of children born to women of childbearing age in a certain year. In 2019, the total fertility rate of German women was lower than in the UK with a value of 1.5 (vs. 1.7). From a longer-​term perspective, German fertility rates have fluctuated around 1.4 since the mid-​1970s, so in West Germany at least there is a rather persistent pattern.

DEMOGRAPHICS AND GENERATIONAL TRANSITION AND POLITICS    369 Table 21.1 Total fertility rate, life expectancy at birth, net migration balance, population growth, and median age in Germany and the UK (1990–​2019) Year

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

2019

Germany: Total fertility rate

1.4

1.2

1.4

1.3

1.4

1.5

1.5

UK: Total fertility rate

1.8

1.7

1.6

1.8

1.9

1.8

1.7 (2018)

Germany: Life expectancy at birth, male

72.0

73.3

75.1

76.7

78.0

78.3

79.0

UK: Life expectancy at birth, male

–​

74.0

75.5

77.0

78.6

79.2

79.5 (2018)

Germany: Life expectancy at birth, female

78.5

79.9

81.2

82.0

83.0

83.1

83.7

UK: Life expectancy at birth, female

–​

79.3

80.3

81.3

82.6

82.8

83.1 (2018)

Germany: Net migration balance (in thousands)

646

398

213

79

152

1233(e) 310(e)

UK: Net migration balance (in thousands)

–​

–​

87(e)

–​

252

332

312(e)

Germany: Population growth (in thousands)

640

279

96

–​63

–​51

704

187

UK: Population growth (in thousands)

181

151

214

438

512

513

376

Germany: Median age

38

38

40

42

44

46

46

UK: Median age

36

36

37

39

39

40

40

(e) =​estimate Sources: Eurostat (2022), Online Data, demo_​fer; demo_​grind; demo_​pjanind; demo_​mlexpec; migr_​imm8; migr_​emi2

During communist rule in East Germany there was a slight variation insofar as similar values at the start of the 1970s were countered by a pro-​natalist policy which slightly increased numbers up to 1.6 children before unification. Data analysis shows that in nearly all modern societies a rise in the level of education of women, in combination with an increase in female employment on the one hand (Becker, 1981), and a shift towards a dominant parental value of children in the form of an emotional pleasure (as opposed to work or insurance value) on the other hand, are the main determinants that reduce the number of children born (Nauck, 2014). Beside these general patterns, there are some more specific German variables holding the number of children born slightly below the European average. First, the (especially West) German cultural and institutional pattern of a division of labour within families that was oriented towards a (modernized) male bread winner model hindered family formation. As the model required women after childbirth to interrupt labour market participation and/​or to reduce working hours to part-​time work, highly educated women in particular wanted

370   Reinhold Sackmann to avoid this incompatibility between family creation and career. Therefore, the percentage of women who never gave birth to children was higher than in other countries. This pattern is similar to family-​oriented countries like Italy and Spain (Sobotka, 2008). Second, in communist countries like East Germany before 1990 the life course sequence of education, family formation, and labour market entry was different. In order to gain access to allowances for flats, the first child was often born to mothers who were aged between 20 and 25, frequently during education spells or at labour market entry. After the change of system in 1990, the age of women giving birth increased rapidly (Sackmann, 2000) and in 2015 was, at 28.6 years, nearly as high as that in West Germany (29.8 years) (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2017). The very low German fertility rate in the first half of the 1990s is mainly a result of this shift of fertility timing, which is falsely represented as a permanent drop in fertility by ‘total fertility rates’ as opposed to more reliable ‘cohort fertility rates’ (Goldstein et al., 2009). In the last decade, German total fertility rates have been rising slightly as both the speed of the shifting age of the mother at first birth in East Germany decreased and the incompatibilities between family formation and career were reduced in West Germany. Thereby the rates are coming closer to other Western European fertility rates like those in Britain (Table 21.1). Indicators of mortality (Table 21.1) show an increasing life expectancy in Germany as in most advanced societies. This process is a typical product of modernization in the shape of better living conditions, improved hygiene, a greater availability of medical care, and a shift in lethality from contagious diseases like tuberculosis to chronic diseases like cancer and cardiovascular illnesses. Specific to the German development in the last decades are two components: Although it ended in 1945, the Second World War had a long-​lasting influence on mortality numbers of persons who were either wounded, or affected as a child or teenager by trauma, famine, and other poor living conditions during the war or immediately afterwards (Luy, 2004; Haudidier, 1996). Still in the 1990s, a portion of the higher mortality rates of males can be explained by a greater exposure to war in the 1940s. A second contributor to a lower German life expectancy in the 1990s, compared for example to Britain (Table 21.1), are diverging mortality patterns in communist and capitalist countries. Whereas life expectancy after age 60 increased after 1970 in West Germany, like in most Western countries, in contrast respective figures in communist East Germany fell back, as in other communist countries. Therefore still in 1993/​95 the life expectancy of men after age 60 was only 16.45 years in Mecklenburg-​Western-​ Pomerania (the federal state with the lowest life expectancy in East Germany), which was one whole year less than in Saarland, the equivalent federal state with the lowest life expectancy in West Germany. Both special German effects levelled off in the last decade: Cohorts affected by the Second World War died away, whilst an equalization of living conditions in East and West Germany led to the two federal states sharing in 2017/​19 a similar male life expectancy after age 60 of 20.91 years vs. 20.96 years; in other words, the variance of East and West German mortality patterns had diminished. Transnational migration is an important third element influencing the size and composition in a population. In general, in most years since the 1970s in West Germany the loss of population, caused by deaths outweighing births, was countervailed by a positive

DEMOGRAPHICS AND GENERATIONAL TRANSITION AND POLITICS    371 migration balance. From the 1960s to the 1980s the largest immigrant group consisted of citizens coming from Turkey, whilst after 1990 immigrants from the East, especially Poland, gained importance. As Table 21.1 shows, migration balances are not as regular as fertility and mortality numbers. This is due to three factors, which are important for explaining a specific German path: Immigration to communist East Germany was far lower than immigration to West Germany. Up until today the percentage of immigrants living in East German federal states is lower than in the West. Second, both immigration and emigration patterns are influenced by economic cycles in a pro-​cyclical way. For example in times of recession, like 1995 and 2005, immigration decreases and emigration (quite often in the form of remigration) increases. Third, migration numbers are influenced by political decisions that hinder or alleviate immigration. Therefore the German freeze on admissions in 1973 and the restrictive ‘asylum compromise’ in 1992 led to a lowering of immigration for a longer time period, whereas the belated start of free movement of labour from Eastern EU countries in 2011 and 2014 increased immigration rates, as did the extraordinary opening of frontiers to refugees in 2015. In combination with these effects, migration is a highly volatile demographic process (with a German net migration balance range in form of a bust of only 75,000 in 2005 and a boom of an estimated 1.2 million in 2015). In combination, the demographic processes of fertility, mortality, and transnational migration produce two major trends: The German population is ageing. Whereas the age median of the German population was 38 years in 1990, it was already 46 years in 2015. In comparison to the UK, Germany has not only an older population, it has also a faster greying population than Britain, as the median difference between the two countries increased by four years in this fairly short interval of twenty-​five years (Table 21.1). Therefore, one challenge for generational politics in the last decades was how to cope with this process of fast demographic ageing. A second trend is less pronounced: Whereas in the 1990s Germany still had a growing population, despite its low fertility rate, in the first decade of the twenty-​first century Germany entered a period of negative population growth, which ended when it increasingly opened its borders after 2011. A second challenge for generational politics was therefore to decide whether to cope with a shrinking population or to counteract negative growth with policies with regard to fertility or migration.

Generations after 1960 Demographic size is just one factor influencing the worldview and actions of a generation. According to Mannheim (1970), the generational formation of consciousness is shaped by three different processes: The given social-​historical position in a certain society; developmental fractions such as revolutions or wars; and the formation of mostly young, sometimes opposing, generational units which take different views on new historic constellations like groups of Romantics and Jacobins, evolving after

372   Reinhold Sackmann the French revolution in Germany. For the analysis of German cultural change, this non-​linear perspective on generations is useful as it stresses the uniqueness and unpredictability of generations, without neglecting the analysis of general mechanisms producing generations. Despite the fact that Mannheim emphasizes political and cultural generations, recent generational theories after Ryder (1965) and Elder (1998) also incorporate economic and technological disruptions in its generational accounts. In an ideal-​typical way, one can distinguish four social-​historical generations in Germany in the last decades: the post-​war generation; the generation of 1968; the generation of the transition; and an internet generation. The post-​war generation (roughly cohorts born between 1930 and 1940) is characterized by the end of the Second World War, the end of fascism, and economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s. They react towards the change of political systems with a stance of indifference. Therefore, Schelsky (1957) describes them as a sceptical generation avoiding identification with political ideologies, strengthening the values of family and diligence. Interviews with adult members of this generation (Bude, 1987) confirm this interpretation, despite the fact that Schelsky, in his generational analysis, downplayed ambivalent continuities with some Nazi worldviews. The generation of 1968 (roughly cohorts born between 1940 and 1948) is on the one hand a first international generation (François et al., 1997), influenced by the new media of television and individualized music in the context of the American civil rights and youth movements as well as music-​oriented youth cultures. On the other hand, it has a distinct German flavour insofar as it is the first re-​educated generation after fascism, which criticized Nazi continuities in German everyday life. Therefore, it changed dominant education values to ‘personal independence’ as shown by surveys (Klages, 1993) and gave A.S. O’Neill’s anti-​authoritarian utopia its largest audience worldwide. Surveys conducted at a later time demonstrate that this shift towards more liberal education values produced cultural differences in comparison to similar advanced countries like Japan, the US, or France (Köcher and Schild, 1998). Despite the small size of the cohorts of the generation of 1968, and the very small number of activists originally involved, the cultural influence of this generation on habits and worldviews was profound. One reason for this was that this generation entered the labour market in a period in which the welfare state expanded rapidly, which allowed its members to take positions in the education system especially. Another source of its influence rests on the fact that it was the first generation that was able to transform heterogeneous social movements into a new political party, the Greens, establishing itself in parliament. The generation of the transition (‘Wendegeneration’) refers to a second major system discontinuity in recent German history, the revolution in East Germany in 1989/​90. It is applicable only to East Germans born from about 1960 to 1975. During the times of division, communist East Germany had developed its own generational pattern (Martens and Holtmann, 2017): After cutting down upward mobility by freezing educational expansion in the 1970s, younger groups dissociated from the communist state and were protagonists of the revolution (Mayer and Solga, 1994). However, after

DEMOGRAPHICS AND GENERATIONAL TRANSITION AND POLITICS    373 the transformation of the East German revolution into a re-​unification process with West Germany, most discourses were dominated by West German media and elites, even the rarely used term ‘generation of 1989’ was coined in the West (Leggewie, 1995). Accordingly, in contrast to most other post-​communist countries, no major (generational) cleavage separated pro-​ revolutionary parties1 from former communist parties. Different generational units refer to the revolution. Two units used the political form of protest of the revolution by copying the practice of Monday demonstrations. Paradoxically, it was used in 2004 by the post-​communist party PDS (now Die Linke) to oppose labour market reforms. In 2014, a new mainly East German wave of demonstrations (Pegida) used the Monday format to widen the audience of the new populist Right-​wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). From an economic perspective, the term the ‘generation of the transition’ (Wendegeneration) refers to the economic transformation after 1990. As the German change from a communist economy to a market economy was very fast and very profound, in the early years only brief time windows of opportunity opened up (Windzio and Rasztar, 2000). After their original companies were dismantled, the majority of young people had to quickly adapt by changing employers and often by switching occupations. The experience of youth unemployment was normal. In a comparison with West German cohorts in the same historical situation, young male East Germans changed companies five times and occupations twice up until age 34, whereas the respective figures for the West Germans were four and once (Mayer and Schulze, 2009). In reaction to these challenges a pragmatic generation was formed. Values of adaptability and prudence were kept up as well as realism as a way of confronting aspirations with objective situations. This form of pragmatism was already characteristic of the young West German baby boomers (born 1955–​64), which had to enter the labour market in the late 1970s and 1980s, being confronted with rising unemployment rates. This kind of pragmatic self-​adaptation is still a characteristic trait of current youth as surveys illustrate (Shell, 2015). The internet generation (roughly cohorts born between 1980 and 2000) are another international generation. Generations can be constituted by disruptions in basic technologies (affecting their logic and their behaviour) that may produce differences in the adaptation to technological transformations (Sackmann, 1996). The internet, especially its communalizing form of social media, accentuated a digital divide (Sackmann and Winkler, 2013). One unit of this generation strongly identifies with the new technology. Qualitative marketing research, like that carried out by the SINUS institute, demonstrates that elite groups of this generation, so-​called performers, develop broad lifestyle conceptions by forming self-​reliant, flexible production units exploiting the new technological possibilities. At present it is unclear whether, contrary to the internationally-​oriented, tolerant performers, new anti-​globalized generational units will form themselves. Recent youth 1  Groups like ‘Neues Forum’ or ‘Bündnis 90’ were integrated into existing West German parties, the former communist party ‘Die Linke’ could consolidate itself by integrating Western electorates after 2005.

374   Reinhold Sackmann surveys indicate growing support for traditional values of family and security; patriotism is gaining weight (Shell, 2015). Summing up the analysis of socio-​cultural generations in Germany, one can state that one specific element of German history in the twentieth century, namely its polarized, discontinuous structure, was transformed by generational exchange in recent decades. Among its political elite, dominant generations were the post-​war generation and the pragmatic generation of transition. Whereas the post-​war generation reflected the collapse of Nazi dictatorship through distancing itself from political ideologies, the pragmatic generation transferred personal experiences in coping with economic turmoil onto rather pragmatic orientations towards economic systems. In this constellation, neo-​liberal extremism, which polarized parties and ideologized content in the Anglo-​American discourse, was levelled out in German politics (Prasad, 2006). The generation of 1968, despite its smaller size and lesser participation in ruling parties, transformed German culture into a quite liberal anchor within international discourses.

Discourses on Demography Demographic developments were broadly discussed in public discourses in Germany after the 1970s. There were three waves of demographic topics developments, which were succinctly summarized by the following slogans and questions: ‘Are the Germans dying out?’ in the 1970s, ‘War between generations’ in the late 1980s, and ‘Shrinking society’ in the first decade after 2000. These discourses proceed chronologically but accentuate different demographic issues. In part, they also participate in international discourses. The first wave of public demographic discourse refers to the drop in fertility rates below replacement levels in the early 1970s. The weekly Der Spiegel entitled its issue of 24 March 1975 ‘Sterben die Deutschen aus?’ (Are the Germans dying out?), exaggerating the situation, but the question mark brought in a note of caution. One effect of the demographic discourse in the 1970s was that a basic demographic infrastructure (such as a Federal Institute for Population Research and a small number of professorial university chairs) was established, but still at a lower level than in most other industrial countries. The second wave of public demographic discourse was initiated in the 1980s by the US. In the early days of the Reagan administration, a ‘generational equity debate’ referred to welfare state-​produced inequalities between age groups, which privileged the elderly over children. This debate was instrumental in the US to help private insurance schemes compete against the existing pay-​as-​you-​go system (Quadagno, 1991). German scientists, politicians, and the media imported the discussion to Germany (Klundt, 2008). The weekly Der Spiegel gave its issue of 31 July 1989 the title: ‘Jung gegen Alt: Kampf der Generationen’ (Young vs. Old: Battle of the Generations), dramatizing the debate insofar as neither in everyday life nor in politics had the two age groups formed strong interest groups which were fighting against each other. However, this debate influenced

DEMOGRAPHICS AND GENERATIONAL TRANSITION AND POLITICS    375 the reforms of the public pension system, which tried to include the new aims of ‘demografiefest’ (resilience with regard to demographic change) and ‘generationsgerecht’ (generational fairness). The third round of public debates on demography started after 2000. Whereas the bestseller Das Methusalem Komplott (Schirrmacher, 2004) by a publisher of the leading German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung mainly sharpened the generational equity debate, a new topic in the form of a ‘shrinking society’ (Kaufmann, 2005) was taken up by scientists, journalists, and politicians. It referred to negative population growth, using also data on outmigration from East Germany and illustrating it with vacant housing estates. This shrinkage discourse was less connected with international debates, as only Japan and post-​ communist countries had similar demographic situations. Within the European Union (EU), Germany tried to put this new topic on the agenda. After the resurgence of immigration in 2011 public attention for a decrease in population lost weight. Characteristic of all German debates on demography was that population projections were used for the description of future dystopias in order to raise attention to immediate reforms (Messerschmidt, 2017). In this ‘demographization’ of social problems sometimes other interests were served, like that of companies offering private pensions or an interest in covering up mistakes in housing policy. One major reason for the more specific topic of shrinkage catching on more in Germany than in other post-​communist countries with a decreasing population, as for instance in Poland, was that in Germany a large amount of redistributed tax money between municipalities and federal states is steered by population indicators, which makes a demographic framing of problems more likely than in other countries (Sackmann et al., 2015).

Generational Politics As it is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss all political measures taken with regard to the demographic and generational issues raised, only the general developments of changes in family policy, long-​term care, retirement insurance, and public debt are sketched. As demographic problems were mainly interpreted as being caused by low fertility rates, changes in family policies were strongly influenced by this. One impulse was to reward the number of children a couple had through an increase in child allowances and tax reductions. Between 1993 and 2003 the German expenditure for families was increased by 196 per cent, placing it well above the OECD mean (Blome, Keck, and Alber 2008, p. 94). As the effects of this policy measure were very limited, gradually the regime of labour division within families was modified in the direction of a more ‘modern’ East German pattern: Because the West German prolongation of parental leave introduced in the 1980s sometimes still had prohibitive effects on female employment, recent readjustments introduced rewarded gender-​equality components. Most influential was

376   Reinhold Sackmann the guarantee of public preschool and kindergarten in the early 1990s for children aged 3–​6 years, which was later extended to children above the age of one. Leading in the same direction of a working mother model, half-​day schooling and preschools were in most regions replaced by full-​day schooling and kindergarten. One major result of these measures was a rise in German female employment. Its rate rose to 76.6 per cent, according to Eurostat in 2019 which, after Sweden and Lithuania, is the third highest in the EU. Whether these reforms will be able to increase fertility rates is still an open question, but fertility rates have only increased slightly which indicates slow progress. Demographic ageing was a second major issue in the German demographic discourse. One problem addressed was long-​term care, with the demand for long-​term care for people above the age of 80 in particular, increasing. To counter this, in 1994 a completely new public insurance system was introduced. Against the international neo-​liberal trend at that time, the conservative government chose a traditional public pay-​as-​you-​go-​system, adding innovative elements like near universal contributions, case-​based lump sums, a private care market, and a subsidiary structure centred on families (Rothgang, 2010). In hindsight, this reform was rather efficient, despite having to adapt to conflicting aims (Angermann and Eichhorst, 2012). It served as a blueprint for similar reforms in Japan. One of the most difficult fields of generational politics with reference to demographic ageing is constituted by public pensions. Politicians have experimented in this field for a long time. Since the 1970s, early retirement was a major instrument intended to reduce unemployment with governments pushing the use of early retirement incentives in times of rising unemployment rates. After the rapid liquidation of East German companies and a quick transformation from a communist planned economy to a market economy, unemployment rates rocketed in East Germany in the early 1990s. One of the most important coping strategies used by the conservative Kohl government was the massive use of early retirement schemes. Since the 1970s contribution rates to public old age insurance had to be continually raised as by far the largest share was used to finance early retirement schemes. At that time, policies were contradictory as already reforms passed at the end of the 1980s aimed at postponing the entry age to retirement. However, the effective age of retirement not begin to rise before the introduction in 1995 of permanent pension reductions for those retiring before the legal age (cf. Brussig, Knuth, and Mümken, 2016). These reforms—​accompanied by equalizing formerly gendered retirement age—​turned out to be quite effective: According to Eurostat, the German employment rate of older workers (aged 55–​64) increased from 35.8 per cent in 1993 to 72.7 per cent in 2019, now the second highest rate in the EU. Less successful was the introduction of subsidized private capital retirement schemes (‘Riester Rente’) after 2000. Intended to counter the reductions of the level of pension payments out of the public pay-​as-​you-​go-​system, they were mostly used by higher-​income groups, leaving low-​income groups with a rising risk of old-​age poverty. Old-​age poverty rates are still below the European average, but they have continued to increasing over the last decade. It is unclear whether these social imbalances of demographic ageing will be tackled in future reforms.

DEMOGRAPHICS AND GENERATIONAL TRANSITION AND POLITICS    377 Generational policies addressing issues of fertility and demographic ageing frame the issue as a ‘demographic problem’. Nowadays demographic causes or consequences are seen as being important for family policies and old-​age insurance systems. However, there are other ways of framing the issues. In conceptualizing family policies, gender equality problems also need to be considered, as well as the effect of unemployment on old-​age insurance policies. Measures referring to the problem of a ‘shrinking population’ lend themselves particularly to a multitude of different framings of the issues. Whereas in some policy fields like vacant housing, solutions in the form of the subsidized demolition of old houses were consistently pushed for in demographic terms, other areas are not as clear. As noted, a major inroad for employing demographic framing concepts among public authorities was the coupling of tax redistribution schemes to population numbers. One indirect effect of demographic discourses after 2000 was to base public expenditure cuts on arguments of generational equity and sustainability: later generations should not be burdened with high debts. Similar arguments had already been raised in the American generational equity debate in the 1980s; they were followed more systematically by Eastern German public authorities after 2000. Therefore, one of the reasons for the German preference for austerity policies in solving the Euro crisis after 2009 was already established subnationally in Germany’s effort to counter population shrinkage. Summing up the results, we can state that demographic and generational issues have had a fairly significant impact on generational politics in the last decades. The dissonant public debates focussing on exaggerated dystopias were not paralleled by extremist policies. We saw that they initiated profound reforms in family and old-​age policies. While the dominant un-​ideological and pragmatic post-​war generation kept Germany away from extreme neo-​liberal approaches (even by introducing new public insurance schemes), pragmatic reform experiments looked for new ways to solve demographic problems of ageing and low fertility. Openness towards cultural revolutions, exemplified by the generation of 1968 which was influential during Chancellor Schröder’s government, allowed the country to embark on a course of reform. Today, both in the fields of family policy and old-​age insurance policy, the recognition of the value of working mothers and employed old-​age workers is shared by conservatives and modernizers alike. This reflects the values of the Swedish welfare regime in the 1970s rather than the more traditional West German values of the 1980s. It is an open question whether the internal tensions of these generational policies will be preserved from ideological polarization.

Conclusion and Outlook In recent decades, demographic indicators single out Germany as being unique with regard to demographic ageing and low fertility. Therefore, it seems obvious that this topic was highlighted in three discourses of extinction (1970s), generational war (1980s), and shrinkage (2000s). However, media attention is given to deterministic dystopias, neglecting the crucial response of (institutional) actors.

378   Reinhold Sackmann The consciousness of the dominant German societal generations was formed by the turmoil of extremes in twentieth-​century Germany, both major parts of the post-​war generation and the generation of transition reacted to the rupture by developing an anti-​ ideological stance, stressing pragmatism. The generation of 1968, despite its small size, added to this a preference for cultural openness. The response of these generations to the challenges of demographic change was an adaptation of generational politics. After a number of trial and error sequences, both family policies and old-​age pension schemes were effectively reformed in a way to dampen and alleviate structural demographic risks. German measures were embedded in international discourses towards demographic ageing. In parts, Germany was not only a frontrunner of demographic risks, but also in coming up with ways of coping with demographic change, like the introduction of long-​ term care insurance or in policies for the prolongation of working life. However, as the large social inequalities in the prolongation of life (Therborn, 2013) are still not reflected in old-​age insurance schemes, the likelihood of old-​age poverty is increasing, which needs to be addressed by future reforms. In the first decade of 2000, Germany also experienced the more singular situation of a decreasing population. As this problem was overcome by increasing immigration in the second decade of the twenty-​first century, the period was too short to be able to evaluate whether the measures taken towards these challenges were adequate. Due to a global fall in fertility rates, in the next decades there is an increased likelihood that a growing number of countries will experience periods of stagnating or receding populations. Therein lies the challenge for societies to experiment in coping with this new situation (and future social scientists observing and analysing their effects). The German responses of first austerity policy, then increased immigration, seem to be just two, rather risky, ways of tackling that challenge.

Further Reading Klimczuk, Andrzej et al. (2015), Generations, intergenerational relationships, generational policy: A multilingual compendium (Konstanz: Bepress). Sackmann, Reinhold, Walter Bartl, Bernadette Jonda, Katarzyna Kopycka, and Christian Rademacher (2015), Coping with Demographic Change: A Comparative View on Education and Local Government in Germany and Poland (Cham: Springer). Sackmann, Reinhold and Oliver Winkler (2013), ‘Technology Generations Revisited: The Internet Generation’, Gerontechnology 11(4), pp. 493–​503. Schelsky, Helmut (1957), Die skeptische Generation (Düsseldorf: Diederichs Verlag). Therborn, Göran (2013), The Killing Fields of Inequality (Cambridge: Polity Press).

Bibliography Alwin, Duane F. and Ryan J. McCammon (2004), ‘Generations, Cohorts, and Social Change’, in Jeylan T Mortimer and Michael J. Shanahan (eds), Handbook of the Life Course (New York: Springer), pp. 23–​49.

DEMOGRAPHICS AND GENERATIONAL TRANSITION AND POLITICS    379 Angermann, Annette and Werner Eichhorst (2012), ‘Unterstützende Dienstleistungen für ältere Menschen im europäischen Vergleich’, IZA Research Report No. 45. Becker, Gary S. (1981), A Treatise on the Family (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Blome, Agnes, Wolfgang Keck, and Jens Alber (2008), Generationenbeziehungen im Wohlfahrtsstaat (Wiesbaden: VS). Brussig, Martin, Matthias Knuth, and Sarah Mümken (2016), Von der Frühverrentung bis zur Rente mit 67 (Bielefeld: Transcript). Bude, Heinz (1987), Deutsche Karrieren (Frankfurt/​M.: Suhrkamp). Elder, Glen H. (1998), Children of the Great Depression (Boulder: Westview Press). Eurostat (2022): Database. [https://​ec.eur​opa.eu/​euros​tat/​web/​main/​data/​datab​ase] (Accessed 4 January 2022) François, Etienne, Matthias Middell, Emmanuel Terray, and Dorothee Wierling (eds) (1997), 1968—​ein europäisches Jahr? (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag). Goldstein, Joshua R., Tomáš Sobotka, and Aiva Jasilioniene (2009), ‘The End of “Lowest-​Low” Fertility?’ Population and Development Review 35, pp. 663–​99. Haudidier, Benoît (1996)‚ ‘Vergleich der Sterblichkeitsentwicklung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und in Frankreich 1950 bis 1989’, in Reiner Hans Dinkel, Charlotte Höhn, and Rembrandt D. Scholz (eds), Sterblichkeitsentwicklung—​unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Kohortenansatzes (München: Harald Boldt Verlag), pp. 139–​52. Kaufmann, Franz-​Xaver (2005), Schrumpfende Gesellschaft (Frankfurt/​M.: Suhrkamp). Klages, Helmut (1993), ‘Value Change in Japan and (West-​)Germany’, Japanstudien 4, pp. 199–​208. Klimczuk, Andrzej et al. (2015), Generations, Intergenerational Relationships, Generational Policy: A Multilingual Compendium (Konstanz: Bepress). Klundt, Michael (2008), Von der sozialen zur Generationengerechtigkeit? (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag). Köcher, Renate and Joachim Schild (eds) (1998), Wertewandel in Deutschland und Frankreich (Wiesbaden: Springer). Leggewie, Claus (1995), die 89er. Portrait einer Generation (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe). Luy, Marc (2004)‚ ‘Verschiedene Aspekte der Sterblichkeit in Deutschland von 1950 bis 2000’, Zeitschrift für Bevölkerungswissenschaft 29, pp. 3–​62. Mannheim, Karl (1970), ‘The Problem of Generations’, Psychoanalytic Review 57, pp. 378–​404. Martens, Bernd and Everhard Holtmann (2017), “Aber hier lebten Menschen, und die waren sehr individuell“. Die DDR und die deutsche Einheit im Gespräch der Generationen (Halle: Universitätsverlag Halle-​Wittenberg). Mayer, Karl Ulrich and Eva Schulze (2009), Die Wendegeneration (Frankfurt/​M.: Campus). Mayer, Karl Ulrich and Heike Solga (1994), ‘Mobilität und Legitimität’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 46, pp. 193–​208. Messerschmidt, Reinhard (2017), ‘Demografischer Wandel und gesellschaftliche Zukunft—​ Deutsche Alterungsdiskurse der Gegenwart und die wachsende Kritik an deren medialer Dramatisierung’, in Henrik Gummert, Jelena Henkel-​Otto, and Dirk H. Medebach (eds), Medien und Kulturen des Konflikts (Wiesbaden: Springer VS), pp. 117–​51. Nauck, Bernhard (2014), ‘Value of Children and Fertility: Results from a Cross-​cultural Comparative Survey in Eighteen Areas in Asia, Africa, Europe and America’, Advances in Life Course Research 21, pp. 135–​48. OECD (ed.) (2019), Pensions at a Glance (Paris: OECD). Prasad, Monica (2006), The Politics of Free Market (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

380   Reinhold Sackmann Quadagno, Jill (1991), ‘Interest-​Group Politics and the Future of U. S. Social Security’, in John Myles and Jill Quadagno (eds), States, Labor Markets, and the Future of Old-​Age Policy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), pp. 36–​58. Rothgang, Heinz (2010)‚ ‘Social Insurance for Long-​term Care: An Evaluation of the German Model’, Social Policy & Administration 44, pp. 436–​60. Ryder, Norman B. (1965), ‘The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change’, American Sociological Review 30, pp. 843–​61. Sackmann, Reinhold (1996), ‘Generations, Inter-​Cohort Differentiation and Technological Change’, in Heidrun Mollenkopf (ed.), Elderly People in Industrialised Societies (Berlin: Edition sigma), pp. 289–​308. Sackmann, Reinhold (2000)‚ ‘Geburtenentscheidungen und Lebenslaufpolitik. Am Beispiel des ostdeutschen Transformationsprozesses’, in Walter R. Heinz (ed.), Übergänge –​ Individualisierung, Flexibilisierung und Institutionalisierung des Lebensverlaufs. 3. Supplement of Zeitschrift für Soziologie der Erziehung und Sozialisation, pp. 146–​63. Sackmann, Reinhold, Walter Bartl, Bernadette Jonda, Katarzyna Kopycka, and Christian Rademacher (2015), Coping with Demographic Change: A Comparative View on Education and Local Government in Germany and Poland (Cham: Springer). Sackmann, Reinhold and Oliver Winkler (2013), ‘Technology Generations Revisited: The Internet Generation’, Gerontechnology 11(4), pp. 493–​503. Schelsky, Helmut (1957), Die skeptische Generation (Düsseldorf: Diederichs Verlag). Schirrmacher, Frank (2004), Das Methusalem Komplott (München: Blessing). Shell Deutschland Holding (2015)(ed.): Jugend 2015. Eine pragmatische Generation im Aufbruch (Frankfurt/​M.: Fischer). Sobotka, Tomáš (2008), ‘Overview Chapter 6: The Diverse Faces of the Second Demographic Transition in Europe’, Demographic Research 19, pp. 171–​224. Statistisches Bundesamt (2017), Alter der Mutter. [https://​www.desta​tis.de/​DE/​Zahle​nFak​ten/​ Gesell​scha​ftSt​aat/​B evoe​lker​ung/​Gebur​ten/​Tabel​len/​Gebu​rten​Mutt​erBi​olog​isch​esAl​ter. html (Accessed 9 December 2017). Therborn, Göran (2013), The Killing Fields of Inequality (Cambridge: Polity Press). Windzio, Michael and Matthias Rasztar (2000)‚ ‘Gelegenheitsstrukturen beruflicher Mobilität’, in Reinhold Sackmann, Ansgar Weymann, and Matthias Wingens (eds), Die Generation der Wende (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag), pp. 89–​112.

CHAPTER 22

RELIGION A ND THE CHURC H E S Detlef Pollack and Olaf Müller

The question of what religion is has always been the subject of intense debate in the disciplines that deal with the phenomenon (Pollack, 1995; Krech, 1999, pp. 26ff.). There seems to be unanimity at most in the claim that the contours and borders of the religious have become increasingly blurred during modern times, and that the different meanings of religion have drifted apart in theology, religious studies, and the social sciences (Kaufmann, 1989, p. 121). In order to address the questions in this essay, we deem it sufficient to confine ourselves to how the social sciences understand religion, and to make an initial distinction here between two dimensions: institutionalized religion and individual religiosity. The typical institutionalized social form of the religious was long associated in Germany with the concept of the church, or more precisely with the two main Christian churches. The term church represents in the social sciences the prototype of a complex, bureaucratically structured religious organization that makes a claim to universality, and is used in discussion today primarily to distinguish it from other forms of organization such as sects, denominations, and cults (Krech, 1999, pp. 54ff.). By far the largest organizational types of this kind in today’s Germany are the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD)), with about 25 per cent membership of the total population. Despite all the symptoms of crisis that they display, we should not underestimate the importance of the two main churches, both of which see themselves as ‘people’s churches’ (Volkskirchen). Their importance can be seen not only in the number of members that they have, but also in their position and function in the structure of society, as well as in the cultural self-​understanding of the majority of the population. Thus, it is still true today what Franz-​Xaver Kaufmann stated at the end of the 1980s: ‘Religion in public opinion is what the two “main churches” are’ (Kaufmann, 1989, p. 122). The prominence of the two major Christian churches is not to be confused, however, with the existence of a state church. In Article 140 of the Basic Law of the

382    Detlef Pollack and Olaf Müller Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) (Grundgesetz (GG)), which, in conjunction with the articles of the Weimar constitution (Weimarer Reichsverfassung (WRV), Articles 136–​9, 141) incorporated there and with Article 4, contains the central constitutional principles on the subject of religion, it is stated unequivocally: ‘There is no state church’ (‘Es gibt keine Staatskirche’). It follows therefore that German constitutional law, or the law governing the relations between church and state, mentions not ‘churches’, but religious ‘associations’ (Religionsgesellschaften) or ‘communities’ (Religionsgemeinschaften). Compared to the concept of ‘church’, the term ‘religious community’ can be understood in broader and more general terms: in this sense, every religious group or organization that has devoted itself to the general religious practice of its members can be regarded as a religious community (Gabriel, 2000, p. 380; von Campenhausen and de Wall, 2006, p. 116). According to the German Grundgesetz, the state is obliged to behave in a neutral and tolerant manner towards all religious and ideological communities, and to treat all groupings equally on principle (Article 140 GG; Article 137 WRV). This does not mean, however, that specific historical and social situations are excluded: even today, the classification of religious communities under constitutional civil law follows a ‘two-​tier system of graduated parity’ (‘Zwei-​Klassen-​System gestufter Parität’) that is permeable in both directions (von Campenhausen and de Wall, 2006, p. 129). The two religious organizations with the most members (namely, the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church), as well as some Protestant free churches, Orthodox churches, Jewish communities, and a number of other smaller religious communities, enjoy the privileged status of a corporation under public law (Körperschaft öffentlichen Rechts). Unlike many other religious communities that possess a status only under civil law (usually in the form of a registered association (eingetragener Verein)), these denominations are granted a number of privileges—​for example, the right to impose taxes, to be exempt from certain taxes and fees, and to arrange the employment relationships with their staff either under private or public law. The structural change to society, which is dealt with in the social sciences under the keywords of pluralization, privatization, and individualization, has also increasingly changed the religious landscape in Germany. Thus, besides a stronger presence of the other world religions (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism) caused mainly by immigration movements, there has also emerged over the last few decades a highly volatile scene in the area of so-​called ‘new’ religions, a scene in which there is a myriad number of movements that are often only loosely organized and have rarely more than a few dozen or a hundred followers. Because of these developments, discussions flare up again and again over the legal classification and handling of these groupings, whose formal organizational orientation, and goals, are the subject of debate. On the one hand, it is questionable whether a union of a sufficient number of members can be considered an association; and, on the other, whether these communities are in fact, and predominantly, dedicated to the shared religious practices of their members.1 1 The

first problem is reflected, e.g., in the discussions about the granting of the right to offer religious instruction or the granting of the status of a corporation under public law to Muslim religious

RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES     383 The prevailing opinion amongst contemporary (Western) European sociologists of religion is that the situation today in the field of religiosity is marked by the dissolution not only of the hegemony of the major Christian churches, but also of any form of institutionalized religion (Luckmann, 1967; Davie, 1994). To capture completely religious change in Germany and to avoid misinterpretations of certain developments, we also need to consider people’s ‘private’ religiosity. Here, religiosity is to be interpreted in the manner of Charles Glock (1954; 1962)—​namely, as a multi-​dimensional phenomenon uniting affiliation to a religious grouping (church membership or links to a religious grouping or tradition), ideas and convictions (contents of beliefs), and their manifestation in practice (attending church services, praying, and so on). Given the background of the above-​mentioned tendencies, it makes sense to distinguish between ‘traditional’ and ‘alternatively spiritual’ religiosity.

Historical Background The origins of the religious landscape of modern-​day Germany reach far back into the past, both in terms of social history and the history of mentalities. The foundations of today’s religious culture and church organization can be traced back partly to the Christianization of the Germanic tribes between the fourth and eighth century AD—​a conversion that was often forcefully imposed ‘from above’ (Höllinger, 1996, pp. 133–​43). The historic events, however, that resulted from the schism of 1517 were without doubt of crucial importance, too. Since the Religious Peace of Augsburg in 1555, Lutheranism and Catholicism have co-​existed as equal religions within the Empire as a whole—​a constellation whose ultimate consequence was stability after many religious conflicts, such as the Thirty Years’ War (1618–​48). The closely interlocking relationship between the religious hegemony and secular authority that had existed since the Middle Ages was initially preserved by the prevailing principle that the religion was determined by the territorial authority (cuius regio, eius religio). The Napoleonic wars not only radically changed Germany’s territorial and political shape, but also marked a new phase in the history of the denominations and the churches: the regions on the left bank of the Rhine were assigned to France and, as a result, the larger Imperial estates on the right bank of the Rhine were compensated for by the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803. As a result, the Catholic Church lost not only a large portion of its wealth, but also its temporal power. The collapse of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation also saw the end once and for all of the principle of the mono-​denominational regional church. Against the background of the guarantee communities (so far (as at December 2017), the only Muslim community that has achieved this status is Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat in Hesse); the second, in the debate about whether the Scientology Church can appeal to the protection of religious freedom guaranteed under Article 4 GG (von Campenhausen and de Wall, 2006, pp. 83ff.).

384    Detlef Pollack and Olaf Müller of territorially independent religious freedom, and as a result of the intermingling of denominations among the population, a bi-​or multi-​denominational landscape now began to emerge even at the regional level (Höllinger, 1996, p. 181). The sudden surge of modernization experienced in late nineteenth-​century Germany, and the tendencies towards industrialization, urbanization, and societalization, had quite different consequences for the two main denominations. Although in terms of social structure, politics and culture, the Catholics found themselves once again on the losing side in the Kulturkampf in an empire that was becoming increasingly dominated by Prussian Protestantism, what ultimately ensued from this was not its organizational weakening but a stronger formation of organization and milieus, a more powerful focus on Rome as its centre (ultramontanism), and a high level of churchification of further parts of the Catholic population (Gabriel, 2000, p. 383; Kaufmann, 1979). Protestantism, whose ties with the church had endured for some considerable time and ended only with the basic separation of church and state in the Weimar constitution (1919), retained its traditional regional authority over the church. The formation of milieus remained relatively weak on the whole, which was also reflected in a lower affiliation to the church as compared to Catholicism and an earlier onset of secularization (Liedhegener, 2001, pp. 204–​7). On the other hand, Protestantism soon gave rise to the first ‘free’ religious movements, which, in turn, can be regarded as the forerunners of today’s ‘new’ religious scene (Nipperdey, 1988; Gabriel, 2000, p. 383).

The Post-​Second World War period until 1989/​90 The Federal Republic of Germany The religious situation in the post-​war Federal Republic was still characterized by the cultural hegemony of the two major Christian churches: 96 per cent of the population belonged to one of the two major churches (with virtual parity between the two), the number of regular churchgoers was, up to the early 1960s, over 50 per cent for Catholics, and around 15 per cent for Protestants (Köcher, 1987, pp. 199, 221). The number of people exiting the church remained at its lowest level since it had been legally possible to do so (Gabriel, 1992, p. 47). At the end of the 1960s, however, in conjunction with the student movement, the anti-​Vietnam campaign, and a general criticism of civilization, there was a change of orientation in values, the causes of which were rooted in the rise in material standards of living. The values of order and acceptance lost their validity, while the values of self-​realization increased in significance. The social milieu, and until then its relatively intact morals, now gradually began to dissolve, and here it was especially the Catholic milieu that was affected (Gabriel, 1992, pp. 124ff.). As a result of these developments, there was a dramatic exodus from the churches in West Germany that

RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES     385 reached its pinnacle in the mid-​1970s, when, in a single year (1974), 216,000 Protestants and (1975) 89,000 Catholics turned their back on the church (Eicken and Schmitz-​ Veltin, 2010, p. 589). The turning away from the two main churches manifested itself not only in massive movements of withdrawal, but also in declining church practice: the proportion of regular churchgoers among Catholics fell within ten years from 55 per cent (1963) to 35 per cent (1973), and among Protestants from 15 per cent to 7 per cent (Köcher, 1987, p. 221). The use of sacraments also decreased dramatically during this period: between 1953 and 1979, the number of participants in the Communion declined by about 20 percentage points, and the number of church marriages declined to a similar degree. To a lesser extent than with church affiliation and practice, but nonetheless clearly and continuously, it is also possible to see for this period a weakening of many indicators of ‘private’ Christian faith, such as belief in God, in the resurrection and miracles of Jesus, and in heaven and hell (Meulemann, 2000, p. 565; Pollack, 2003, p. 165). This decline in Christian religiosity tied to the church then weakened again until the end of the 1980s (Gabriel, 1992, p. 60; Pollack, 2003, pp. 161ff.). Parallel to the dechurchification and de-​traditionalization of religion, the Federal Republic also experienced in the 1970s and 1980s an increasing pluralization and individualization of the religious landscape. This was partly due to increased immigration, but partly also because of the social, economic, and cultural changes mentioned above. Here, the Muslim population especially was important, since it grew in the space of twenty-​five years from a small, exotic fringe group to the third largest religious group in the Federal Republic (1962: 16,000; 1971: 250,000; 1987: 1,650.000; REMID, 2009). In addition, in the course of the general change in values, ‘alternative’ religious ideas and groupings, such as New Age, esotericism, and so-​called ‘youth religions’, gained a certain popularity (Nientiedt, 1986).2

The German Democratic Republic Unlike the ‘old’ Federal Republic, the territory of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was for the most part Protestant. When the GDR was founded (in 1949), 80.5 per cent of the population belonged to the Protestant Church and approximately 11 per cent to the Catholic Church. In the four decades that followed, this constellation was to change dramatically: by the end of the GDR era, the Protestant Church had lost 70 per cent of its members, and there was an almost 60 per cent decline in numbers in the case of the Catholic Church. Whereas the proportion of the GDR population that had denominational ties dwindled to just 30 per cent shortly before reunification (approximately 24 2 How many people are actually attracted by these new offers is difficult to estimate because of the more individualized nature of these forms of religion. In any case, the scene of the so-​called New Religious Movements was never able to grow to a quantitatively or culturally significant size, and was always ignored or rejected by the majority of the population (Daiber, 1995, p. 59).

386    Detlef Pollack and Olaf Müller per cent Protestants and 5 per cent Catholics), the number of those without any denomination rose to approximately 70 per cent in the same period (Pollack, 1994, p. 374). The extent to which the churches were excluded from society and people’s lives will only be shown here by way of statistical data for the Protestant Church: the proportion of parish members who, on a normal Sunday, went to church was already very low in the 1950s, and then fluctuated between just under 3 and 4 per cent. The rites of passage and other rituals overseen by the church—​usually a trump used by churches in times of crisis, too—​became something that only a small minority made use of: the proportion of church weddings among all marriages decreased between 1950 and 1989 from 57.4 per cent to 5.6 per cent, and the proportion of church funerals among total numbers of deaths, from 74.1 per cent to 36.6 per cent. Especially problematic for the further development of the religious landscape was primarily the fact that the younger generations had from their childhoods onwards less and less chance of coming into contact with anything to do with church or religion. This was reflected not only in the greatly reduced rate of baptisms (in 1950, 76.9 per cent of newborns were still baptized, while that figure was only 17.4 per cent in 1989), but also in the steadily decreasing number of those attending Christian teaching (1955: 67.9 per cent of all 6–​12-​year-​olds; 1989: 12.4 per cent), and participating in the confirmation (1950: 80.9 per cent of all 15-​year-​olds; 1989: 14.7 per cent; Pollack, 1994, pp. 384, 388, 407, 412ff.). It is therefore hardly surprising that the ever-​decreasing involvement in religious communities and the associated loss of concrete religious experience and religious knowledge eventually also eroded individual beliefs: in 1990, only one in three East Germans still believed in God; only a 6 per cent of those who had left the church and nearly 2 per cent of those who had never been church members described themselves as religious; and at most one in three regarded religion as having an important role in their lives (EVS, 1990; Pollack, 1994, p. 417). During its forty years of existence, the GDR changed from a predominantly Protestant society to one of the most secularized countries in the world. The causes for this development are also to be found in the framework conditions of society, with the nature and weighting of various factors differing greatly from those in the Federal Republic. Economic, social, and cultural aspects and developments undoubtedly played a role here, too; but the crucial factor is to be found ultimately in the political transformation of the entire society by the ruling Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED). However, if we look at the entire period of the GDR, then the state-​church relationship cannot be reduced to a simple formula. Depending on the respective internal and external political, economic, and social constellations, phases of massive disputes and repressions (especially in the Stalin era of the 1950s) alternated with periods of relative relaxation (such as in the socially and economically relatively successful phase at the beginning of the 1970s; Pollack, 1994, pp. 78–​372). Faced with these circumstances, the two churches decided on very different ‘strategies for survival’. While the Catholic Church was largely politically abstinent and focused its actions on the core area of pastoral care (Kösters and Tischner, 2005), which was also due to its marginal position, the Protestant Church saw itself as a social force and tried

RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES     387 to influence social developments. However, on account of the general power imbalance between church and state, the Protestant Church was forced to anticipate possible state responses to its actions and to adapt to the current conditions, which resulted in a constant change between proximity to, and distance from, the ruling party. It is difficult to decide whether its decision to avoid an open power struggle with the state after the construction of the Berlin Wall and also to cooperate under certain conditions ultimately helped or hindered the development of the religious landscape. By trying to shape and participate in society, the Protestant Church was at least able to prevent its complete isolation from the life of society. And to the extent that the GDR reached its political, economic, and moral end from the mid-​1980s, it was the only socially relevant institution that was not completely compromised, then gained greatly in prestige and importance, and was able to become a platform and shelter for the growing number of people dissatisfied with the regime, and for the forces of political opposition. However, its willingness to take on political functions could also not prevent the ever-​ growing exodus of the GDR population from the churches and from religion as a whole.

Churchliness and Religiosity in Unified Germany With the accession of the former GDR to the Federal Republic, the entire religious and denominational landscape in Germany changed significantly due not least to the changed demographic conditions. At the time of reunification, only about one-​third of the German population belonged to the Protestant Church, about one-​third to the Catholic Church, and the proportion of those without a denomination had grown to almost the same level. It soon became clear that the widely expressed expectation that there would be a religious upswing after the end of political repression in the East would not be borne out. On the contrary, the number of church exits rose dramatically once more in the first years after reunification: a total of 274,787 East Germans left the Protestant Church between 1991 and 1993, which was more than 3 per cent of the membership; the Catholic Church witnessed 83,342 exits from the church in East Germany between 1990 and 1993. However, the wave of church exits at the beginning of the 1990s affected not only the territory of the former GDR, but also the ‘old’ federal states, where in 1992 alone 240,000 people left the Protestant Church, and 180,000 the Catholic Church. After the exit rates declined again in the following one and a half decades (although they still exceeded the number of people joining the church many times over), there has been another increase since 2008, which culminated in 2010 in the fact that for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic the number of exits from the Catholic Church (181,193) exceeded the number of exits from the Protestant Church (145,250). Finally, in 2019, 1.2 per cent of church members (272,771) left the Catholic Church, more

388    Detlef Pollack and Olaf Müller than ever before in the history of the Federal Republic. The number of church exits also reached a new high point in the Protestant Church (1.3 per cent of church members, or 270,000 people; DBK-​Eckdaten; EKD-​Zahlen und Fakten; EKD 2020). Thus, the two churches recorded more than half a million church exits in 2019—​a total that has only been exceeded once before, immediately after unification (1992). Given these developments, the group of people without a denomination equalled the numbers of each of the two major Christian churches (see REMID, 2011), and now surpasses it quite clearly: in 2019, 27.1 per cent of the population belonged to the Catholic Church, and 24.9 per cent to the Protestant Church, while approximately 35 per cent did not belong to a denomination or could not be assigned to a denomination. After these main groups (Catholic, Protestant, ‘nones’), Muslims make up the third largest religious group, accounting for more than 6 per cent of the total population; all other religions amount to just over 6 per cent (Table 22.1). Although certain other regional differences (such as a south-​north divide) are not to be ignored, the crucial dividing line in matters of churchliness and religiosity still runs between the territory of the ‘old’ Federal Republic and that of the former GDR. The proportion of Catholics is slightly higher than that of Protestants in West Germany, whereas just about 20 per cent of the population in the East belong to the Protestant Church, and 4 per cent to the Catholic Church. The proportion of non-​religious people is well over 70 per cent in East Germany and about 25 per cent in West Germany. In the West of Germany, about 6 per cent of the population go to church regularly every Sunday, while that figure is only about 3 per cent in the East (GESIS 2019; Table 22.1). The East-​West differences are also reflected in other dimensions of religiosity: while in 2017 about every second person described herself as religious in the West of Germany,

Table 22.1 Adherents of churches/​religious communities in Germany Total (in millions)

% of population

Roman Catholic Church

22.6

27.1

Protestant Church (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland; EKD)

20.7

24.9

1.8

2.2

Protestant Free Churches/​‘Sondergemeinschaften’ Orthodox/​Oriental churches

2.0

2.4

Jewish communities

0.1

0.1

Islam

5.3–​5.6

6.4–​6.7

Hindu

0.1

0.1

Buddhist

0.27

0.3

Yazidi

0.1

0.1

New Religions/​Esoteric Without denomination/​not classified

0.9 29.0–​29.3

Source: REMID 2018; DBK-​Eckdaten; Pfündel et al. 2021; authors’ own calculations

1.1 35.0–​35.3

RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES     389 Table 22.2 Churchliness and religiosity in West and East Germany, 1990–​2017/​18 Church attendance (weekly)

Belief in God

Religious self-​assessment

Religion important for one’s own life

West

East

West

East

West

East

West

East

1990

11

3

64

33

54

32

36

29

2017

*6

*3

63

30

56

28

36

20

Sources: GESIS 2014 (reference year: 1990), *GESIS 2019 (reference year: 2018); EVS 1990, 2017

less than 30 per cent made the same claim in the East. 36 per cent of West Germans said that religion is an important part of their life, while only 20 per cent of East Germans said the same. When it comes to belief in God, about two-​thirds profess a belief in God in the West of Germany, whereas that figure is only 30 per cent in the East (EVS, 2017).3 It is striking that the downward trend since reunification has continued in East Germany in those kinds of ‘private’ religiosity, too (Table 22.2). A certain individualization of the religious sector is evident in the emergence of non-​ church forms of religion that are often Far Eastern and syncretistic, such as esotericism, occultism, New Age, Zen Buddhism, and reincarnation therapy. All of these new religious practices attach great importance to the immediacy of mostly body-​related individual religious experiences that transcend the everyday; they offer greatly simplified interpretations of self and world that are easy to learn; and they are in tension with the interpretation of reality provided by the major Christian churches. The proportion of those who have at some point experienced New Age or Zen meditation is between 2 per cent and 5 per cent. Body techniques and alternative therapies in the medical or wellness area are more prevalent and undoubtedly on the rise: 40 per cent report on experiences with homeopathy, about one in four have already had experience with yoga, tai chi, or chi gong, and about 18 per cent have already dealt in a practical way with Ayurveda, Reiki, or Shiatsu (GESIS, 2014, reference year 2012). Even if there are processes of individualization and pluralization in the religious landscape, religious pluralism remains limited in terms of its social relevance. The body techniques mentioned above are probably appreciated mostly as healing practices and body-​awareness exercises. More meaningful for assessing the significance of non-​ Christian religiosity is therefore the question of whether people believe in the efficacy of alternative religious methods. Unfortunately, this question has only rarely been asked in

3  At the same time, belief in God in East and West is less accepted among the more educated, among younger people, and among those living in cities than it is among the average population. Moreover, there has for decades been a tendency to make the idea of God less concrete, leading to a steadily growing proportion of deists who can no longer imagine God as a person, but only as a higher being.

390    Detlef Pollack and Olaf Müller representative surveys. In the study Church and Religion in an Enlarged Europe (Pollack et al., 2007), 25 per cent of West Germans said they thought there was at least something to the argument that amulets, stones, or crystals can be helpful, 12 per cent said that they believed in the efficacy of magic, spiritualism, and occultism, and 18 per cent said that they believed in astrology and horoscopes. Despite the boom in esotericism often claimed by the mass media, belief in these ideas and practices remains far below the ‘traditional’ belief in God.4 The number of followers of New Religious Movements or esoteric groupings is estimated at barely more than 1 per cent of the total population (REMID, 2018; see Table 22.1). As a source of ideas and a resource for practical behaviour, alternative religiosity and esotericism have a certain influence, but only a minority accept esoteric ideas and practices. The churches are still the crucial religious institutions that determine what religion is. While churchliness and ‘private’ religiosity are not identical, they are still closely related. The probability of believing in God, of seeing oneself as religious, or of considering religion as important at all, is all the greater the more one attends religious service, participates in church life, or feels connected to the church (Müller, Pollack, and Pickel, 2012, pp. 111ff.). The causes of the processes of dechurchification, individualization, and secularization experienced by both parts of Germany over the past few decades are manifold. Besides the specific factor of the political oppression of the churches and religion by the communist rulers in the GDR, processes of social-​structural modernization also play a central role in East and West. These include processes of functional differentiation, on the basis of which the individual sub-​sections of society have increasingly gained a functional autonomy independent of religion, and religious values and norms have increasingly lost their validity across society. Social-​structural modernization also includes processes of the urbanization, mobilization, and tertiarization of society, which have contributed to the abatement of well-​developed milieus and to the rejection of corporative and industrial-​social ideals. Finally, social-​structural modernization also includes the development of the constitutional state, and its attendant rule of law, of the welfare system of social security and insurance, of the education system, and of the system of medical care, all of which reduced the demand for the services that religion could offer in these areas. Furthermore, the process of dechurchification and secularization are also affected by processes of cultural change, for example, the rationalization of the worldview (which opens up religious myths and symbols to critical reflection), the pluralization of interpretations of the world (which relativizes the claim to validity of religious explanations of the world), 4  While according to the data of the Religion Monitor 2012 (Bertelsmann Stiftung), 47 per cent of West Germans believe strongly, and a further 13 per cent believe quite firmly, that God or something divine exists, and yet a further 13 per cent are moderately convinced of His existence, the proportion of those who believe strongly in magic, spiritualism, occultism, and Nirvana is only 3 per cent, and of those who believe moderately, 9 per cent.

RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES     391 and the spread of a leisure and experiential culture (which provides more and more competing alternatives to religious offerings).

Conclusion The two major churches in Germany occupy a position between institution and organization. Their privileged legal position—​justified historically and culturally—​and their presence in the public sphere, and their embedding (at least as far as the ‘old’ federal states are concerned) in the social context make them socially valued institutions with a high degree of legitimacy. However, the relationship that people have to the churches has become increasingly sober, individualistic, and instrumentalist: 85 per cent of members of the Protestant Church consider baptism to be an unconditional component of being a Protestant, but only 46 per cent believe that this also involves their demonstrating their faith in public, 39 per cent that it means they participate in the Communion, and only 31 per cent that it involves reading the Bible. 75 per cent of members of the Protestant Church say that, apart from attending church service, they do not participate in church life at all. If a person does remain loyal to the church, then it is apparently no longer primarily because she wishes to be involved in it, but simply because she is looking for the church to accompany her in the important phases of life. Asked why they are in the church, members of the Protestant Church most often give as the reason that they wish one day to have a church funeral (73 per cent); 66 per cent, that having a church wedding is important to them. Also important for church membership are reasons of family tradition (71 per cent) and sharing the same values as the church (65 per cent), but less the fact that the church provides inner support (55 per cent) or what the church can offer in terms of community (50 per cent; EKD, 2012). At the same time, church membership is increasingly losing the self-​evidence of its validity. A person can leave the church, and more and more people are making use of this option. In the concert of public opinion, the church is only one voice among many, and its message barely reaches beyond the church faithful. In addition to other functional areas, the churches must take up performance relationships that force it into processes of internal differentiation, rationalization, and professionalization. The churches are increasingly turning from being communities of belief to being companies offering services (Ebertz, 1998), but without abandoning the aspect of conviction and faith, and merging into their performance structures. There seems at present to be no clear concept for their specific function across society (Herms, 1989). The churches and religion appear to have largely delegated their traditional function of integration and orientation to other functional systems of society, to the educational, legal, insurance, and economic systems, as well as to the mass media and politics. Religion in Germany as a whole has a more traditional, conventional, and underdetermined character, which has not changed fundamentally in the

392    Detlef Pollack and Olaf Müller wake of tendencies of individualization. Religion and church represent for the majority a kind of background to life, which is occasionally, and primarily in the case of biographical turning points or in situations of personal crisis, re-​actualized, but otherwise largely hidden. We cannot conclude from all this, however, that religion and the churches have lost their social and cultural significance in society altogether: even though the extent of personal involvement in the church has weakened significantly, and many sections of the population have become more distanced from church dogmas and rules of behaviour, the churches are still ascribed a number of important social functions—​we need only think here of their prominent position in the social-​charitable field or in the area of daycare facilities and schools. Thus, with a total of more than 1.3 million employees (Caritas: 693,082 full-​time employees in 25,064 institutions, as of 31 December 2018; see Deutscher Caritasverband 2020; Diakonie: 599,770 employees in 33,031 institutions, as of 1 January 2020; Diakonisches Werk der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland, 2021), the charitable associations of the two major churches are among the largest employers in Germany. 9,370 daycare centres (95,331 employees) are run by the Catholic Church, and 8,748 (167,061 employees) are run by the Protestant Church. The 904 Catholic and 632 Protestant schools include all possible school forms, from primary school to grammar school, but also special-​needs schools, vocational schools, and boarding schools (DBK, 2017; Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD): Zahlen und Fakten, reference year 2017). As the vehement public reactions to the so-​called ‘crucifix judgment’ of the Federal Constitutional Court in 19955 showed (Prantl, 2015), the preservation of civil religious elements is still expressly desired in some parts of Germany and especially by the majority of the West German population. Despite the incalculable processes of dechurchification, many citizens still regard Germany as a society shaped by the Christian tradition, a society that should not relinquish its cultural specificity. For example, about 75 per cent of West Germans agree with the statement that Christianity is the foundation of our culture, while a little more than 50 per cent of East Germans think the same (Pollack et al., 2010). This attitude, however, sees itself as increasingly threatened by the growing religious minorities, especially Muslims. For example, in a poll conducted by the University of Münster in 2010, 58 per cent of West Germans and 62 per cent of East Germans said that they tended to harbour negative feelings towards Muslims. Only about one in five felt that Islam fitted into our Western world; 65 per cent (West) and 75 per cent (East) were of the opinion that the migration of Muslims to Germany should be limited (Pollack et al., 2010).6 Such attitudes on the part of the ‘majority society’ lead in turn to the fact 5 

With the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court of 16 May 1995, the passages of the Bavarian Volksschulordnung of 1983, according to which a crucifix or cross was to be visible in every primary school classroom in Bavaria, were, with reference to Article 4.1 GG (‘freedom of belief and conscience’), deemed incompatible with the Basic Law and declared null and void. 6  As findings of the Bertelsmann Foundation suggest, reservations about Islam have increased in Germany even more in recent years. More and more people see Islam as threatening, and the proportion of those who consider Islam incompatible with the Western world—​now over 60 per cent—​has also risen (Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2015, p. 3).

RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES     393 that many Muslims living in Germany feel misunderstood, attacked, and devalued in their cultural and religious ties (Müller and Pollack, 2017). Against the background of increasing cultural and religious diversity in Germany, the socio-​political challenge of the coming years is therefore not only the improvement of social and economic integration, but also the cultural recognition and integration of these population groups into society.

Further Reading Großbölting, Thomas (2013), Losing Heaven. Religion in Germany since 1945 (New York/​ Oxford: Berghahn). Müller, Olaf, Detlef Pollack, and Gert Pickel (2012), ‘The Religious Landscape in Germany: Secularizing West—​Secularized East’, in Detlef Pollack, Olaf Müller, and Gert Pickel (eds), The Social Significance in the Enlarged Europe: Secularization, Individualization and Pluralization (Farnham/​Burlington: Ashgate), pp. 229–​55. Pollack, Detlef and Gergely Rosta (2017), Religion and Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press), chs 4 and 8. Stolz, Jörg, Detlef Pollack, and Nan Dirk De Graaf (2020), ‘Can the State Accelerate the Secular Transition? Secularization in East and West Germany as a Natural Experiment’, European Sociological Review 36 (No. 4), pp. 626–​42.

Bibliography Bertelsmann Stiftung (2012), Religion Monitor 2012: Data Set (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung). Bertelsmann Stiftung (2015), Religionsmonitor—​verstehen, was verbindet: Sonderauswertung Islam 2015: Die wichtigsten Ergebnisse im Überblick (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung). Campenhausen, Axel von and Heinrich de Wall (2006), Staatskirchenrecht (4th edn, Munich: Beck). Daiber, Karl-​Fritz (1995), Religion unter den Bedingungen der Moderne: Die Situation in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Marburg: Diagonal). Davie, Grace (1994), Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing Without Belonging. Oxford: Blackwell. Deutsche Bischofskonferenz (DBK) (several years), Eckdaten des kirchlichen Lebens in den Bistümern Deutschlands: Annual Statistics (Bonn: Deutsche Bischofskonferenz). Deutsche Bischofskonferenz (DBK)(2009), Katholische Kirche in Deutschland: Statistische Daten 2007 (Bonn: Deutsche Bischofskonferenz). Deutsche Bischofskonferenz (DBK)(2017), Katholische Kirche in Deutschland: Zahlen und Fakten 2016/​17, Arbeitshilfen (No. 294) (Bonn: Deutsche Bischofskonferenz). Deutscher Caritasverband e.V. (2020), Die katholischen sozialen Einrichtungen und Dienste der Caritas: Einrichtungsstatistik zum 31.12.2018 (Gesamtübersicht) (Freiburg: Deutscher Caritasverband). Diakonisches Werk der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland e.V. (2021), Einrichtungsstatistik 2020: Statistik der Diakonie Deutschland –​Stand 01.02.2020, Diakonie Texte Statistische Informationen (No. 6) (Stuttgart: Diakonisches Werk). Ebertz, Michael N. (1998), Erosion der Gnadenanstalt? Zum Wandel der Sozialgestalt von Kirche (Frankfurt a.M.: Knecht).

394    Detlef Pollack and Olaf Müller Eicken, Joachim and Ansgar Schmitz-​Veltin (2010), ‘Die Entwicklung der Kirchenmitglieder in Deutschland. Statistische Anmerkungen zu Umfang und Ursachen des Mitgliederrückgangs in den beiden christlichen Volkskirchen’, Wirtschaft und Statistik (No. 6), pp. 576–​89. Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD) (several years), Statistik über die Äußerungen des kirchlichen Lebens in den Gliedkirchen der EKD: Annual Statistics (Hannover: Kirchenamt der EKD). Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD) (several years), Zahlen und Fakten zum kirchlichen Leben: Annual Statistics (Hannover: Kirchenamt der EKD). Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD)(2012), Fünfte Kirchenmitgliedschafts-​untersuchung (KMU) (Hannover: Kirchenamt der EKD). Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD)(2020), ‘Bedford-​Strohm: “Die Kirche will sich verändern”’. (Hannover: Kirchenamt der EKD) https://​www.ekd.de/​ekd-​kirc​henm​itgl​iede​ rzah​len-​2019-​56925.htm (Accessed 10 June 2021). EVS (1990, 2017), European Values Study: Longitudinal Data File 1981–​2008 (EVS 1981–​2008). GESIS Data Archive (Cologne). ZA4804 Data file Version 3.0.0, doi:10.4232/​1.12253. Forschungsgruppe Weltanschauungen in Deutschland (fowid) (2020), ‘Religionszugehörigkeiten 2019’. (Berlin: Giordano Bruno-​Stiftung), https://​fowid.de/​meld​ung/​religi​onsz​ugeh​oeri​gkei​ten-​ 2019 (Accessed 10 June 2021). Gabriel, Karl (1992), Christentum zwischen Tradition und Postmoderne (Freiburg/​Basel/​ Wien: Herder). Gabriel, Karl (2000), ‘Kirchen/​Religionsgemeinschaften’, in Bernhard Schäfers and Wolfgang Zapf (eds), Handwörterbuch zur Gesellschaft Deutschlands (Opladen: Leske +​Budrich), pp. 380–​91. GESIS (2014), Allgemeine Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften ALLBUS—​Cumulation 1980–​2012, GESIS Data Archive (Cologne). ZA4578 Data File Version 1.0.0, doi:10.4232/​1.11898. GESIS (2019), Allgemeine Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften ALLBUS 2018, GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA5250 Data File Version 2.0.0, doi:10.4232/​1.13250. Glock, Charles Y. (1954), Toward a Typology of Religious Orientation (New York: Columbia University). Glock, Charles Y. (1962), ‘On the Study of Religious Commitment’, Religious Education 57 (No. 4, Research Supplement), pp. 98–​110. Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland (GG). 23 May 1949. (Berlin: Bundesministerium für Justiz) https://​www.gese​tze-​im-​inter​net.de/​gg/​GG.pdf (Accessed 20 December 2017). Herms, Eilert (1989), ‘Die evangelischen Kirchen in der Gesellschaft der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 39 (No. B 49), pp. 14–​23. Höllinger, Franz (1996), Volksreligion und Herrschaftskirche: Die Wurzeln religiösen Verhaltens in westlichen Gesellschaften (Opladen: Leske +​Budrich). Kaufmann, Franz-​Xaver (1979), Kirche begreifen: Analysen und Thesen zur gesellschaftlichen Verfassung des Christentums (Freiburg: Herder). Kaufmann, Franz-​Xaver (1989), Religion und Modernität: Sozialwissenschaftliche Perspektiven (Tübingen: Mohr). Köcher, Renate (1987), ‘Religiös in einer säkularisierten Welt’, in Elisabeth Noelle-​Neumann and Renate Köcher (eds), Die verletzte Nation. Über den Versuch der Deutschen, ihren Charakter zu ändern (Stuttgart: DVA), pp. 164–​281. Kösters, Christoph and Wolfgang Tischner (2005), ‘Die katholische Kirche in der DDR-​ Gesellschaft: Ergebnisse, Thesen und Perspektiven’, in Christoph Kösters and Wolfgang Tischner (eds), Katholische Kirche in SBZ und DDR (Paderborn: Schöningh), pp. 13–​34.

RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES     395 Krech, Volkhard (1999), Religionssoziologie (Bielefeld: transcript). Liedhegener, Antonius (2001), ‘Religion und Kirchen vor den Herausforderungen der Urbanisierung in Deutschland im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert: Forschungsstand und Forschungsperspektiven’, Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen (No. 26), pp. 191–​219. Luckmann, Thomas (1967), The Invisible Religion: The Problem of Religion in Modern Society (New York: Macmillan). Meulemann, Heiner (2000), ‘Säkularisierung, Kirchenbindung und Religiosität’, in Bernhard Schäfers and Wolfgang Zapf (eds), Handwörterbuch zur Gesellschaft Deutschlands (Opladen: Leske +​Budrich), pp. 562–​73. Müller, Olaf, Detlef Pollack, and Gert Pickel (2012), ‘The Religious Landscape in Germany: Secularizing West—​Secularized East’, in Detlef Pollack, Olaf Müller, and Gert Pickel (eds), The Social Significance in the Enlarged Europe: Secularization, Individualization and Pluralization (Farnham/​Burlington: Ashgate), pp. 229–​55. Müller, Olaf and Detlef Pollack (2017), ‘Angekommen und auch wertgeschätzt? Integration von Türkeistämmigen in Deutschland’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 67, (No. B 27–​9), pp. 41–​6. Nientiedt, Klaus (1986), ‘Sie stagnieren, aber ein Ende ist nicht in Sicht—​zur Situation bei den sog. “Jugendreligionen” ’, Herder Korrespondenz 40 (No. 2), pp. 83–​7. Nipperdey, Thomas (1988), Religion im Umbruch. Deutschland 1870–​1918 (München: Beck). Pfündel, Katrin, Anja Stichs, and Kerstin Tanis (2021), Muslimisches Leben in Deutschland 2020 –​Studie im Auftrag der Deutschen Islam Konferenz. Forschungsbericht 38 des Forschungszentrums des Bundesamtes (Nürnberg: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge). Pollack, Detlef (1994), Kirche in der Organisationsgesellschaft. Zum Wandel der gesellschaftlichen Lage der evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer). Pollack, Detlef (1995), ‘Was ist Religion? Probleme der Definition’, Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 3 (No. 2), pp. 163–​90. Pollack, Detlef (2003), Säkularisierung—​ein moderner Mythos? Studien zum religiösen Wandel in Deutschland (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck). Pollack, Detlef, Nils Friedrichs, Olaf Müller, Gergely Rosta, and Alexander Yendell (2010), Wahrnehmung und Akzeptanz religiöser Vielfalt. Eine Bevölkerungsumfrage in fünf europäischen Ländern (WArV 2010), Data Set (Münster: University of Münster). Pollack, Detlef, Gert Pickel, and Olaf Müller (2007), Church and Religion in an Enlarged Europe (C&R 2006), Data Set (Frankfurt/​Oder: European University Viadrina). Prantl, Heribert (2015), ‘Aufstand der Aufgeregten’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 19 August. http://​ www.suedd​euts​che.de/​poli​tik/​jahre-​kruzi​fix-​urt​eil-​aufst​and-​der-​aufg​ereg​ten-​1.2613​635 (Accessed 20 December 2017). Religionswissenschaftlicher Medien-​und Informationsdienst (REMID)(2009), Mitglieder/​ Anhänger von Religionsgemeinschaften: Muslime in Deutschland (Marburg: REMID). Religionswissenschaftlicher Medien-​und Informationsdienst (REMID)(2011), Religions-​ und Weltanschauungsgemeinschaften in Deutschland (Bezugsjahr 2009) (Marburg: REMID). Religionswissenschaftlicher Medien-​und Informationsdienst (REMID)(2018), Religions-​ und Weltanschauungsgemeinschaften in Deutschland (Bezugsjahr 2017) (Marburg: REMID). Weimarer Reichsverfassung (WRV). 11 August 1919. Huber, Ernst Rudolf: Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 4: Deutsche Verfassungsdokumente 1919-​1933, 3rd edn, 1992 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer), pp. 151–​79.

CHAPTER 23

J EW ISH LIFE A ND P OL I T I C S IN P OST- ​WAR G E RMA NY Joseph Cronin

In 1979 and 1980, two books with unusually similar titles were published in West Germany. The first, Fremd im eigenen Land (‘Foreign in One’s Own Country’), was edited by journalists Henryk Broder and Michel Lang. The second, Lea Fleischmann’s Dies ist nicht mein Land: Eine Jüdin verlässt die Bundesrepublik (‘This is Not My Country: A Jewish Woman Leaves the Federal Republic’) appeared the following year. Both books, written by young Jews living in Germany, provided accounts of how disillusioned they had become with the country they had grown up in. The previous decade in West Germany had been especially turbulent. The student movement of the late 1960s was followed by economic crises, social unrest, the emergence of new grassroots social movements (such as anti-​nuclear, peace, and environmental groups), and Left-​wing terrorism. Yet the authors of these books pointed to deeper currents in West German society and its political culture. They highlighted the persistence of authoritarian tendencies, exemplified (for them) by the ‘Anti-​ Radicals Decree’ (Radikalneranlass) of 1972, also known as the Berufsverbot (‘ban on careers’). This decree, passed by a government led by the Social Democratic Party (SPD), prohibited political ‘extremists’, broadly construed to include anyone who had been affiliated with a communist party or organization, from entering public sector occupations, including teaching and the civil service. But perhaps more than anything else, the authors of these two books were disappointed with the leadership of West Germany’s Jewish community. This community was organized as a single, unified entity—​the Einheitsgemeinde (‘unified community’)—​and was as such more homogeneous than other national Jewish communities in Western Europe and North America. Since 1950, West Germany’s small Jewish population had been represented by an official body called the Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland). The Central Council was set up on 19 July 1950 as a means of organizing and representing the approximately 30,000 Jews who, for whatever reason, were continuing to live in Germany. They were comprised of an

JEWISH LIFE AND POLITICS IN POST-WAR GERMANY    397 approximately equal number of German Jews and East European Jewish ‘Displaced Persons’ (DPs), who had been sent to transit camps in occupied Germany after the war. The original number of Jewish DPs in Germany had been much higher—​around 250,000—​but most had emigrated to North America or, increasingly from 1948, to the newly established state of Israel (Grossmann and Lewinsky, 2018, p. 59). Germany’s Jews had largely been abandoned by international Jewish organizations. The World Jewish Congress had declared in 1948 that no Jew should ever set foot on Germany’s ‘blood-​soaked soil’ again (Richarz, 1985, p. 266). Two years later they concluded that ‘If a Jew remains in Germany, he no longer has any portion in world Jewry’ (Grossmann, 2007, pp. 263–​4). When the Central Council was set up in July 1950, some of its founders saw it as a temporary measure: for years Jews living in West Germany harboured the belief that they would emigrate as soon as their circumstances allowed them to. In a famous phrase, they ‘sat on packed suitcases’ (Richarz, 1985, p. 272).

The Central Council of Jews in Germany The Central Council’s very name acknowledged the ambivalence Germany’s Jews felt about their place of residence. It contrasted deliberately with the pre-​ 1933 Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith (Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens) and indicated that Jews living in Germany after the Shoah were simply that: Jews who happened to live in Germany. They did not have, or at least did not purport to have, any deeper connection to the country, as many German Jews had done before the Nazis came to power. The Central Council did not have an especially large talent pool to draw from. Most of Germany’s interwar Jewish politicians had either fled the country during the Nazi period, or had been murdered in the Holocaust. The vast majority of East European DPs left Germany, the ‘land of murderers’, as soon as they were able to. Those who stayed usually did so for family reasons: they had relatives who were too old or too sick to start a new life elsewhere. Nonetheless, the Central Council’s early years were defined by several talented personalities. One was Philipp Auerbach, a German-​Jewish Auschwitz survivor who worked to secure financial compensation for victims of Nazi persecution, Jewish and non-​Jewish alike. In 1951, Auerbach was accused of embezzling reparation funds and put on trial in Munich. The trial’s impartiality was compromised from the outset: three of the five presiding judges had links to the Nazi party (Kraushaar, 2001, p. 212). The legal proceedings were accompanied by a negative press campaign against Auerbach, tinged with anti-​Semitic stereotypes. Auerbach also received death threats. The day after being found guilty—​and sentenced to two-​and-​a-​half years in prison—​Auerbach committed suicide. A committee set up to investigate the trial later found Auerbach to have been

398   Joseph Cronin innocent: he had merely bypassed some aspects of the administrative process in order to distribute the funds to their intended recipients more quickly. He had not profited personally from this process. Four years after his death, Auerbach was posthumously pardoned (Ludyga, 2005, pp. 129–​31). Another noteworthy figure from the early years of the Central Council was Heinz Galinski. Also an Auschwitz survivor, Galinski served as chairman of the Central Council from 1954 to 1963 and then again from 1988 until his death in 1992. He was also chairman of the West Berlin Jewish community for the duration of its existence. While warm and humorous in private, in his public persona, Galinski exemplified the role of a sober Mahner (‘admonisher’). He remained sceptical about the German population throughout his career, and at memorial ceremonies he would frequently warn about the dangers of Germany relapsing into barbarism (Seligmann, 2012). As we shall see, Galinski’s misgivings about the German public would later lead him to cover up a scandal within the Central Council that he feared would produce an anti-​Semitic response. The historian Anthony Kauders has described the relationship that developed between the Central Council and the government of the Federal Republic as a ‘gift exchange’ (Gabentausch) (Kauders, 2007, pp. 129–​31). The relationship was one of mutual reciprocity; both needed each other, though it was hardly a relationship of equals. The Central Council was important for the federal government because the existence of Jews in Germany bestowed legitimacy on the nascent West German state. Jews living in Germany showed that the Federal Republic, the legal successor to the Third Reich, had transcended its Nazi past. And the Central Council, for its part, could not survive without the funding and protection—​which included security personnel at the entrance to every synagogue in West Germany—​the government was able to offer it. The flipside of this arrangement, however, was that by the 1970s the relationship between the Central Council and the federal government had become altogether too cosy. Werner Nachmann, the Council’s chairman from 1969 to 1988, became notorious amongst younger German Jews—​the children of Holocaust survivors—​for his unwillingness to criticize the federal government in any way. A case in point was the so-​called ‘Filbinger affair’ of 1978, which began when allegations emerged about the activities of senior CDU politician Hans Filbinger who had served as a military judge in the Second World War. Nachmann, who could easily have stayed out of the debate, jumped to Filbinger’s defence, emphasizing that Filbinger was a personal friend (Postone, 1980, p. 190). In January 1979, the US-​produced mini-​series Holocaust was broadcast on West German television. It provoked an extraordinary public response. The broadcaster, West Germany’s third channel, set up a telephone hotline for viewers to contribute their thoughts following each evening’s broadcast. It was overwhelmed with calls. While some callers wanted to downplay the significance of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry, or to absolve the German army (Wehrmacht) of any responsibility for it, the majority expressed feelings of guilt and shame, whether for their own role as bystanders to

JEWISH LIFE AND POLITICS IN POST-WAR GERMANY    399 the unfolding persecution, for ‘not wanting to know’ what was going on, or simply for their prior lack of awareness of it (Zielinski, 1980, pp. 90–​1). For Jews in Germany too, the broadcast of Holocaust inaugurated something of a sea-​ change in attitudes. Literary scholar Jack Zipes noted that the series was the ‘catalyst’ for ‘younger Jews in Germany [beginning] to speak out on different political and cultural fronts’. Before the broadcast of Holocaust, Zipes argued, ‘there had been an unspoken understanding among Jews and between Jews and Germans that it would be best to keep silent and blend in with the rest of the population, not to arouse attention’ (Zipes, 1994, pp. 17–​18). Motti Kalman, born to a German-​Jewish family in 1961, stated in an interview with the sociologist Y. Michal Bodemann in the 1990s that there was not much talk about the Holocaust, even in his household, ‘until the Holocaust TV series was broadcast here in Germany, in 1979’. Thus the series’ impact applied ‘not just for the Germans, but for the Jews [in Germany] as well’. In Kalman’s family at least, Holocaust also changed the tenor of the discussion from a ‘history of survival’ to a ‘description of suffering’ (Bodemann, 2005, p. 277). However, it would take several years before these changes in Jewish self-​understandings manifested themselves in German public life.

Controversies in Jewish life in Germany in the 1980s In the meantime, a countervailing current of Holocaust ‘normalization’ pervaded the West German cultural and political sphere. In historian Frank Stern’s blunt assessment, there was an ‘anti-​Jewish revival in the late 1970s’, which had its roots on both sides of the political spectrum (Stern, 1992, p. 423). Conservatives felt that Germany had now done enough to atone for its Nazi past and should move on, while the West German Left had become increasingly aligned with the Palestinian cause in the Israel-​Palestine conflict: a development historian Anson Rabinbach assessed critically as a ‘ “giant exculpation” derived from a symbolic displacement of blame onto the victims’ (Rabinbach, 1988, p. 176). Expressing both sentiments, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt declared, on a return flight from Israel in 1981, that ‘German foreign policy can and will no longer be overshadowed by Auschwitz’ (Rabinbach, 1988, p. 179); a statement that was politically much more acceptable than it would have been ten or even five years before. A change in administration the following year only strengthened the belief, within West Germany’s political establishment, that, nearly forty years after the Holocaust, the Federal Republic should be considered a ‘normal’ nation. Chancellor Helmut Kohl remarked in 1984, again in the context of a state visit to Israel, that his generation enjoyed ‘the grace of late birth’ (die Gnade der späten Geburt); in other words, that they were just young enough not to have been complicit in the crimes of the Nazi regime (Rabinbach, 1988, p. 181). Kohl’s implication therefore was that his generation (born in the 1930s), which now held political power, no longer had to atone for Nazi crimes, nor to feel any

400   Joseph Cronin sense of responsibility for this past because they were not personally responsible for it. In a more sympathetic reading, Kohl was at least self-​aware enough to recognize that only the timing of his birth separated him from older Germans who were bystanders or even perpetrators in the regime. Towards the end of 1984, Kohl arranged with US President Ronald Reagan to visit a military cemetery near the town of Bitburg, in Western Germany, the following May. The visit was to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe. The cemetery was chosen because it contained the graves of American and German soldiers; it was thus meant to symbolize shared suffering, reconciliation between two former enemy nations, and West Germany’s rehabilitation as a key ally in the Cold War. However, the event turned into a fiasco when it became known in early 1985 that the cemetery also contained the graves of forty-​nine Waffen SS personnel. Neither Kohl nor Reagan was willing to cancel the visit. Indeed, Reagan doubled down on his rhetoric in response to mounting criticism, claiming at a press conference in April 1985 that the Waffen SS graves were numerically insignificant at the cemetery and that the majority of German soldiers buried at Bitburg were ‘young teenagers that were conscripted, forced into military service in the closing days of the Third Reich’ (Reagan, 1986, p. 240). Instead of cancelling, Reagan and Kohl arranged an ‘offsetting’ visit to the nearby former concentration camp at Bergen-​Belsen for the same day. This only made the criticism in the US more vociferous. While representatives of the American-​Jewish community showed no compunction in expressing their outrage, German-​Jewish leaders were much more reserved. Central Council chairman Werner Nachmann had even agreed to speak at the Bergen-​Belsen part of the visit until finally being persuaded against the idea by representatives of the World Jewish Congress two days before the visit took place (Rosensaft, 1987, p. 162). The ‘Bitburg affair’ also signified a rift between older and younger members of the Jewish community in Germany that was to become more pronounced over subsequent years. The Federal Association of Jewish Students in Germany (Bundesverband Jüdischer Studierender in Deutschland) broke with the tutelage of its parent organization, the Central Council, to openly oppose the visit. A handful of its members even joined an American-​led ‘sit-​in’ at the documentation centre at Bergen-​Belsen, occupying the building for two days before the West German police—​wary of how the arrest of Jews at a concentration camp would look—​timidly told them to disperse (Cronin, 2020, p. 179). What started on a very small scale with Bitburg nonetheless nudged open a previously closed door, so far as German-​Jewish activism was concerned, and was, in that sense, a harbinger of things to come. In the next controversy, German Jews had to take the initiative themselves. The ‘Fassbinder conflict’, as it became known, had already begun at the time the Bitburg visit took place. Its roots went back to 1975, when German dramatist Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–​82) wrote a play called Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod (‘Garbage, the City and Death’). Set in Frankfurt am Main during the property speculation and city planning boom of the mid-​1970s, the play caused a minor scandal when it was first

JEWISH LIFE AND POLITICS IN POST-WAR GERMANY    401 published, due to Fassbinder’s portrayal of the play’s main character—​a man known only as ‘The Rich Jew’. As such, the play was never performed during Fassbinder’s lifetime. However, in 1984, the intendant of Frankfurt’s state theatre, Günther Rühle, decided to give the play its premiere performance, scheduling it for October the following year. Upon hearing this, the leader of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, a Polish-​Jewish Holocaust survivor called Ignatz Bubis, felt compelled to take action. Not only was the play replete with anti-​Semitic motifs, but the character ‘The Rich Jew’ was probably based on Bubis himself, who, as a property investor, had been active in Frankfurt city planning during the 1970s, for which he faced anti-​Semitic abuse at the time (Karasek and Manz, 1985). Members of Frankfurt’s Jewish community started buying tickets to the play’s opening performance. On the night of the premiere, 31 October 1985, around thirty members of the community, who had gathered in the audience, stormed the stage before the performance had begun and unfurled a banner which read ‘Subsidized Anti-Semitism’ (Subventionierter Antisemitismus)—​a reference to the fact that the play was sponsored by the Frankfurt city authorities (Karasek and Manz, 1985). An argument ensued between the protestors, on the one side, and Günther Rühle and members of the audience on the other, about whether the performance should be allowed to go ahead. One of the audience members, former student radical Daniel Cohn-​Bendit, was himself Jewish but had been involved in protests against Frankfurt city planning in the 1970s and had even occupied one of Bubis’s properties. While he felt that the play’s performance should go ahead in the name of artistic freedom, he also congratulated the Jewish community members on having the courage to mount a public protest (Karasek and Manz, 1985). Ultimately, the play’s performance was cancelled, as was its entire run, and no attempt was made to stage it again until 1998. The ‘Fassbinder protest’, as it became known, provoked a media storm in West Germany, leading to a debate that eventually became more about freedom of art versus the right to defend one’s dignity as members of a minority group. Yet, behind this discussion, the protest represented a significant milestone for Jews living in Germany in the post-​war period: this was the first time that they had appeared, in significant numbers and with community backing, on a public stage (quite literally) to make their voices heard and to play an active role in the West German public sphere. That said, the protest was not viewed in the same way by all those involved. The older generation, most of them Holocaust survivors, saw the demonstration as nothing more than that. ‘It was a protest, an objection’, Ignatz Bubis later remarked, ‘I will not exaggerate’ (Bubis, 2000, p. 300). In other words, this was purely a response to an anti-​ Semitic play; it did not signify anything greater, certainly not the start of a new modus operandi for the German-​Jewish community. By contrast, younger German Jews viewed the protest as a ‘coming out’ (the English phrase was used) (Brumlik, 1996, p. 163; Kugelmann, 2000, p. 284). It was the first time they had ‘gone public’ about their identity as Jews in Germany and stood up for what that entailed. And once they had made this step, there was no going back.

402   Joseph Cronin Less than two years later, in August 1987, Frankfurt was the stage for another protest involving Jews, anti-Semitism, and the memory of the Holocaust. When the city authorities started work on a new municipal building at a site called Börneplatz, named after the German-​Jewish Enlightenment thinker Ludwig Börne, and which was then a car park in the city centre, builders discovered the remains of Frankfurt’s medieval Jewish ghetto. When no efforts were made to stop the construction work to discuss what should be done with the remains, a citizens’ action group called ‘Save Börneplatz’ (Rettet den Börneplatz) formed and occupied the site for five days at the end of August and the beginning of September 1987. One of the group’s members was Micha Brumlik, a Swiss-​ Jewish academic (b. 1947), who had also been involved in the Fassbinder protest. On this occasion, however, Ignatz Bubis did not get involved, nor did he support the site occupation. This was because he, along with the rest of the board of the Frankfurt Jewish community, had agreed with the city authorities in 1984 that the building work could go ahead, even though it was suspected that the remains of the ghetto lay underneath (Cronin, 2016, p. 173). While the Börneplatz occupation may have shown the limits of Bubis’s and the official Jewish community’s support for this new wave of activism, it also pointed to a generational rupture within Germany’s Jewish population, as the Bitburg and Fassbinder protests had already suggested. In the case of Börneplatz, this was based around the relationship to German-​Jewish history. The older generation—​the Holocaust survivors—​ found it difficult to identify with the remains of a medieval Jewish ghetto in Germany for two reasons. Firstly, most had no ancestral connection to Germany: they had arrived as ‘Displaced Persons’ from Eastern Europe after the war. And secondly, for these survivors, the word ‘ghetto’ would always be associated with the Nazi ghettos set up in Poland during the Second World War: ghettos which had as their aim the wholesale destruction of their inhabitants. As such, it was difficult for these older Jews to identify with the medieval ghetto, or to deem its remains worthy of saving. Brumlik illustrated this generational disparity in a later interview when he remarked: ‘I will never forget a very curious meeting of the [Frankfurt] Jewish community where we said: “Please do something, we have to preserve these very valuable remnants of Jewish life, in this ghetto.” And then an old man said, “Ah, you all speak about ghettos, we’ve been under the Nazis in Poland, we know what a ghetto is! Not those medieval houses” ’ (Brumlik, 2013). For the older generation, the word ‘ghetto’ had been subsumed by its Nazi variant. But for the younger generation, these two different forms of anti-​Jewish persecution were indelibly intertwined. As Jewish intellectual Dan Diner (b. 1946) wrote at the time: ‘The word ghetto is therefore, for Jews here and now, charged with the lived experience of there and then—​eastern Europe in the early 1940s’ (Diner, 1988, p. 20). This was not a position that many older Jews could identify with. But for the younger generation, the medieval Frankfurt ghetto came to bear the weight of the later Nazi ghettos, whose sites were geographically removed, and whose remains could not be recovered. Some German politicians, however, tried to drive a wedge between the two types of ghetto as a way of arguing that the ghetto remains at Börneplatz were ‘no cause for shame’. As the former CDU mayor of Frankfurt Walter Wallmann remarked at the time

JEWISH LIFE AND POLITICS IN POST-WAR GERMANY    403 of the site occupation: ‘It’s not medieval Christian anti-Semitism that’s to blame for Auschwitz but . . . the false path, which the country went down after the Enlightenment. And it’s therefore false and unhistorical . . . to draw a connection between Börneplatz and the gas chambers of the Third Reich’ (Wallmann, 1988, pp. 99–​100). Here, Wallmann attempted to separate ‘Auschwitz’ from the broad sweep of German history, and placed the blame for it on Western modernity, of which it was deemed a manifestation. As with the occupation at Bergen-​Belsen two years earlier, the building site at Börneplatz was eventually vacated peacefully by the police. Construction work recommenced soon after. The majority of the ghetto remains were ultimately built over; a small portion—​including a mikvah (Jewish ritual bath)—​were moved and reconstructed inside the new municipal building, part of which became a new annex of the existing Frankfurt Jewish Museum, and was opened in 1992. Taken together, these three episodes of German-​Jewish activism in the mid-​1980s—​ Bitburg, Fassbinder, and Börneplatz—​demonstrate the emergence of a more vocal and self-​confident Jewish identity in West Germany. Jews became more prepared to stand up for their interests in the face of—​what often appeared to be—​indifferent, and perhaps even hostile, attitudes from the West German state and society. These three events are also nascent examples of what we would today call ‘identity politics’; a term too multifarious in its definitions to explore fully here but which, broadly defined, represents the holding of positions, political and otherwise, based primarily on who one is, in the sense of an imputed or inherited identity. Late 1980s West Germany provided another example of nascent identity politics in the form of a speech delivered by Bundestag President Philipp Jenninger on the fiftieth anniversary of Kristallnacht, 9 November 1988. Jenninger wanted to deliver a speech with content as opposed to mere rhetoric and platitudes (as was then customary). He spent time in university libraries researching the speech and became engrossed in the subject. Jenninger took, as the speech’s major theme, the appeal of National Socialist ideology to ordinary Germans—​why so many people went along with the regime, in other words. In a phrase that became notorious, he described the ideology as ‘something fascinating’ (ein Faszinosum) (Goschler and Kauders, 2018, pp. 356–​8). Members of the audience started walking out of the Bundestag auditorium almost as soon as Jenninger had begun. His speech offended German sensitivities about the Third Reich and Holocaust, by engaging with the regime’s popular appeal. Three years earlier, Jenninger’s CDU colleague, federal President Richard von Weizsäcker, had been widely praised for a speech in which he described the collapse of the Nazi regime as a ‘liberation’ for Germans. Jenninger’s muckraking, by contrast, was considered to be in poor taste. Yet for Ignatz Bubis, the speech was well-​meant, if a little clumsily delivered. Bubis was impressed by Jenninger’s honesty and willingness to probe the darker aspects of the German psyche during the Nazi period (Schmalz, 1995). Curious about why the speech had been so thoroughly lambasted, Bubis decided to repeat it, almost verbatim, at a memorial event the following year. Bubis’s delivery of the speech attracted no hostility; indeed, it was well received. Thus, what had been unacceptable for a non-​Jewish German to talk about, namely, crimes committed by

404   Joseph Cronin Germans towards Jews, was considered perfectly acceptable coming from the mouth of a prominent Jewish leader (Schmalz, 1995). While the ‘Jenninger affair’ was nationally significant—​the fallout from the debate led to his resignation as Bundestag President within days—​the most important (and potentially damaging) scandal of 1988 for Germany’s Jewish community came in the wake of the death of the Central Council’s long-​serving chairman, Werner Nachmann, in January that year. Soon after taking office, Nachmann’s successor Heinz Galinski discovered numerous irregularities in the Council’s accounts. It soon became apparent that Nachmann had embezzled millions of Deutschmarks—​money that had been set aside for a special ‘hardship fund’ to help Holocaust survivors in financial need. Galinski was later criticized for ‘covering up’ this finding for four weeks, yet the implications of this information becoming public knowledge would have been clear to him. The trial of Philipp Auerbach some thirty-​five years earlier had shown the prevalence of stereotypes surrounding Jews and money in German public discourse. There was no reason to think that such sentiments would not be unleashed again. Yet, for the first time, the German press appeared to take seriously its responsibility to avoid using anti-​Semitic tropes, and newspapers demonstrated restraint and sensitivity in their coverage of the Nachmann scandal. Some even self-​consciously referred to the press’s responsibility in this regard, and mocked the propensity of other, low-​brow newspapers to appeal to crude, anti-​Jewish sentiments in the population (Schmemann, 1988, p. 17). As it happened, the most vociferous and unbridled criticism of Nachmann came from within the Jewish community itself. Younger German Jews had harboured suspicions about Nachmann’s relations with the West German establishment for many years. But even established figures like Galinski and Bubis made no efforts to defend the disgraced former leader. After all, as Bubis pointed out, ‘The worst hit by this are the Jews’—​those who had been deprived of compensation that was rightfully theirs, and those who might become victims of an anti-​Semitic backlash (Schmemann, 1988, p. 17).

The 1990s: Years of Upheaval The events of the 1980s meant that the atmosphere in West Germany’s Jewish community was already charged before the onset of an immigration wave that would change the community’s demographic irrevocably. In July 1990, East Germany’s first democratically-​elected government agreed to a policy that would allow Jews from the Soviet Union to migrate to the German Democratic Republic (GDR). This was part of its efforts to make amends for the GDR’s previously anti-​Zionist policy (and, on occasion, outright hostility towards Jews and perceived ‘Jewish interests’). By 1989 there were only around 400 Jews left in East Germany—​most had fled after an ostensibly ‘anti-​Zionist’ campaign in 1952/​53 (Hollenbach, 2015; Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, 2020).

JEWISH LIFE AND POLITICS IN POST-WAR GERMANY    405 The slow collapse of the Soviet Union from the late 1980s had produced a rise in nationalist sentiment, and with it, far-​Right groups such as Pamyat (‘Memory’), which had begun targeting Jews. The East German government believed that offering refuge to Soviet Jews was a way of making good on its previously unacknowledged historical responsibility for Nazi crimes. The immigration policy was a culmination of measures over the previous months: in May 1990, the GDR’s Prime Minister Lothar de Maizière had ‘begged forgiveness’ from the Jewish people for the Nazi persecution—​a gesture no previous East German leader had even come close to (Schönborn, 2010, p. 210). Around 2600 Soviet Jews arrived, mostly by train, in East Berlin between July and October 1990, when the East German state was dissolved and absorbed into the Federal Republic as five new federal states. At this point the policy was automatically stopped, but there was increasing demand from the Left-​wing press and political parties to reinstate it, or something similar, to show that the ‘new’ Germany would continue to honour its historical responsibility towards Jews who were facing persecution. After a protracted, and at times embarrassing, decision-​making process in the Bundestag, in which ministers repeatedly failed to agree on any kind of measure to accept Soviet-​ Jewish immigrants, a policy was finally forced through by Chancellor Helmut Kohl in January 1991 (Schönborn, 2010, p. 221). The migration was placed under an existing regulatory framework for refugees—​ the Kontingentflüchtlingsgesetz (Quota Refugee Law)—​first used in 1980 for refugees fleeing Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia. Despite its reference to a Kontingent, there was in fact no quota on numbers, and between 1991 and 2005, when the law was rescinded and subsumed into Germany’s new Immigration Law—​effectively ending the immigration wave—​some 210,000 Russian-​speaking Jews migrated to Germany from the states of the former Soviet Union (Referate Geschäftsstelle Beirat Jüdische Zuwanderung, 2009, p. 11). The new arrivals quickly came to outnumber the 29,000 Jews who were already living in the Federal Republic at the time the migration wave began. These Jews soon came to be known as the Alteingesessenen (literally ‘old-​established’), which was a rather misleading term as most of these Jews had arrived in Germany after the Second World War as DPs from Eastern Europe, or were their German-​born descendants. Around 50 per cent of the Soviet-​Jewish immigrants joined a Jewish community (ZWST, 2007, p. 2), and the encounter between these two groups—​the ‘old-​established’ and the Russian-​ speaking Jews—​in the communities resulted in conflicts in several areas. The most immediate of these conflicts was in terms of religious observance: seven decades of Soviet atheism had left their mark on many of the immigrants. Most were secular, and saw their Jewishness as an ethnic or cultural trait as opposed to a religious one. As such, the ex-​Soviet Jews, by and large, could not follow services in Hebrew—​the language in which German-​Jewish communities conducted their services. Some were not even familiar with the Jewish holidays. As a consequence, reports admonishing Jewish immigrants for talking during services (presumably out of boredom) appeared in Jewish community publications throughout the 1990s (Tenné, 1996).

406   Joseph Cronin Along with their lack of knowledge about the Jewish faith, the Russian-​speaking immigrants were also not familiar with Jewish religious law (the Halacha), which stipulates that a person must be born to a Jewish mother or have converted to Judaism in order to be considered as Jewish. Around 60 per cent of the immigrants ‘only’ had a Jewish father, and were thus not halachically Jewish. In the Soviet Union, Jewish identity was considered as a nationality, not a religion, and was recorded on the fifth line (‘Nationality’) of a person’s internal passport (Dietz et al., 2002, p. 37). Soviet-​Jewish identity could also be inherited from the mother’s or the father’s side: in the case of mixed marriages a child would have to choose by the age of 16 which nationality to adopt as their own—​usually they chose that of the non-​Jewish parent (Tolts, 1992, p. 8). Because so many of the immigrants were not halachically Jewish, they were not allowed to become full members of many of Germany’s Jewish communities unless they formally converted to Judaism—​a process which took around twelve months and required intensive study and attendance at courses. This was difficult for many of the immigrants, not only because they could not afford to spend the time or money required, but also because there was no rabbinical court (Beth Din) in Germany until 2010, which meant that they would have to travel to the nearest one (in Basel, Switzerland), to complete the final stage of conversion. Finally, the new arrivals had, in many cases, markedly different conceptions of the Holocaust compared to the ‘old-​established’ Jews. Again, this was a product of their socialization in the Soviet Union, where the state authorities had played down the Holocaust as a specifically Jewish tragedy. They wanted to inculcate a narrative about the ‘Great Patriotic War’ (the Soviet and post-​Soviet term for the conflict fought against Nazi Germany) that emphasized the suffering and sacrifice of all Soviet citizens without distinction. The particularist nature of the Holocaust as a Jewish tragedy was at odds with this narrative. While it would be a gross oversimplification to suggest that Jews from the Soviet Union had no knowledge of the Holocaust—​many had relatives who had been murdered as a result of Nazi Germany’s occupation of the western part of the Soviet Union—​it is also fair to say that they perceived this tragedy in a different way, and it manifested itself differently in commemorative practises. For Russian-​speaking Jews, the main commemorative date was 9 May—​the anniversary of the end of the ‘Great Patriotic War’. For the old-​established Jews it was 9 November, the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the state-​orchestrated pogrom the Nazis meted out against German and Austrian Jews in 1938. While old-​established Jewish leaders frequently bemoaned the absence of Russian-​speaking Jews from 9 November memorial events in Jewish communities, representatives of the immigrants pointed out that this date had very little significance for them (Bertram, 2008, p. 116; Graumann, 2012, p. 76). Even if it was a prelude to the Holocaust, it only immediately affected German and Austrian Jews. (This raises the question of why 9 November became the main commemorative calendar date in German-​Jewish communities in the post-​war period, since the majority of their members were not originally German. The role of the aforementioned ‘gift exchange’ with the German authorities may be illustrative in this regard.)

JEWISH LIFE AND POLITICS IN POST-WAR GERMANY    407 If the issue in the 1990s had been that Russian-​speaking Jewish immigrants would not attend Kristallnacht commemorations, by the early 2000s, these members were demanding, due to their demographic preponderance, that the communities commemorate the anniversary of 9 May. Commemorating the end of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ in a Jewish community context was not as strange as it sounded: older Russian-​speaking Jews, especially those who had fought in the Red Army, tended to see themselves as victors against Nazism rather than as victims of the Holocaust, and their Jewish identity certainly played a role in this (Kessler, 2008, p. 140). However, demands to commemorate 9 May in a community context were anathema to many old-​established Jews, who still held onto the reins of power in most communities. Worse still, in 2000 it became known that some Jewish Red Army veterans had met with German Wehrmacht veterans for a ‘comradely meeting’ at a five-​star hotel in Potsdam. The report caused consternation amongst old-​established Jews who felt, not without reason, that these Jewish veterans had failed to understand the nature of the Holocaust and the Wehrmacht’s role in facilitating it (Shternshis, 2011, p. 57). More generously, Meinhard Tenné, leader of the Central Council’s integration commission, stated that the Russian-​speaking Jews simply saw the world ‘through their own spectacles’, just as the old-​established Jews did, and that neither group had a monopoly on objectivity so far as Holocaust commemoration was concerned (Braun, 2003, p. 16). By the mid-​2000s, some communities had reached a compromise solution in the form of Yom HaShoah, the Israeli Holocaust remembrance day, which recognized victims alongside heroes, ghetto resisters, partisan fighters, and Jewish soldiers of the Red Army (Jüdische Gemeinde in Hamburg, 2005, p. 11). There was a historical irony that lay behind these tensions: in the decade or so after the Second World War, the situation in Germany’s reconstituted Jewish communities had been very similar. Then the power struggle was between German Jews and the DPs from Eastern Europe. Again, the ‘newer’ group dominated demographically, although not so starkly as the Russian-​speaking Jews did in the 1990s. The result, in the 1950s, was that, despite the majority of German Jews being Liberal in religious orientation, the newly refounded communities—​based on the Einheitsgemeinde (‘unified community’) model—​followed Orthodox practice, since this corresponded with the East European Jews’ religious orientation (Kauders, 2007, p. 165). Four decades later, however, the situation was reversed, and the ‘unified community’ came under pressure to adapt. Some Russian-​speaking Jews favoured Liberal Judaism as services were held in the vernacular (German—​a language that they were at least learning), and men and women could sit together (Frankfurter Jüdische Nachrichten, 1997, p. 6). The Central Council’s inability to accommodate these demands led to ‘secession communities’, run by the immigrants, being set up, and ultimately, to the founding of the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany (Union progressiver Juden in Deutschland) in 1997. This was the first alternative to the ‘unified community’ model since the pre-​Nazi period—​a move which some commentators celebrated as a shift towards pluralism and ‘normality’, and which others decried as weakening the German-​Jewish community’s ‘critical mass’, and hence ability to protect itself (Cronin, 2019, pp. 80–​1).

408   Joseph Cronin

Jewish Life and Politics since Reunification The 1990s also witnessed major changes in how the (now enlarged) Federal Republic dealt with its Nazi past. The first development to contend with was a sharp increase in far-​Right violence. Although this was, in most cases, targeted not against Jews but against refugees and asylum seekers from Southern Europe and Southeast Asia, the Central Council’s new leader (following the death of Heinz Galinski in 1992), Ignatz Bubis, continued in the manner he had pioneered in 1985 during the Fassbinder controversy. Within weeks of his election as President of the Central Council in September 1992, Bubis visited the formerly East German town of Rostock where a major far-​Right arson attack had recently taken place on a building housing asylum seekers. Characteristically, Bubis criticized the German authorities for having tolerated such extremism. ‘They should have gone in hard right at the outset,’ he told a British newspaper in November 1992. ‘Instead they held back, pursuing a policy which effectively encouraged the extremists. The results are clear for all to see’ (Eisenhammer, 1992). Bubis’s rhetorical and physical interventions after what became a series of far-​ Right attacks were symbolically significant. They showed solidarity with other minority groups in Germany who had been victimized by the violence. As Bubis showed, a problem for any of these groups was a problem for them all. Bubis’s tenure as President of the Central Council from 1992 to 1999 proved to be a watershed moment, not just for the Central Council, but for Jews living in Germany more generally. Bubis was willing to speak to the media on a range of topics, not just perceived ‘Jewish affairs’. He was also more prepared to criticize the government than any of his predecessors had been. In adopting a public persona, Bubis became a household name in Germany. He regularly appeared on news programmes and chat shows. A longstanding member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), Bubis was even mooted as a potential presidential candidate in 1993, a possibility which he however declined, believing that a Jewish federal President would lead to a backlash (Brenner, 2013). The height of Bubis’s public profile came in 1998, with the so-​called ‘Walser-​Bubis debate’. This was sparked off by a speech delivered by the acclaimed German writer Martin Walser on 11 October 1998, on the occasion of his receiving the prestigious Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (‘Peace Prize of the German Book Trade’). During the speech, which quickly strayed onto political topics, Walser declared that Germany’s enduring fixation on Holocaust commemoration had become ‘a permanent presentation of our shame’, and argued that ‘Auschwitz’ should not be used as ‘a means of intimidation or a moral cudgel’ (Moralkeule) (Walser, 1998). The speech was well-​received by the audience, in contrast to Jenninger’s speech a decade earlier. Ignatz Bubis, who was present at the event, was one of the few who did not applaud. He described the speech as ‘intellectual arson’ (geistige Brandstiftung), and the dispute turned into a media event. Both men had their supporters and detractors.

JEWISH LIFE AND POLITICS IN POST-WAR GERMANY    409 SPD politician Klaus von Dohnanyi argued that Bubis ‘could not understand’ Walser’s position because he was not a German, and that Jews in Germany would have behaved no differently to their ‘Aryan’ counterparts had the Nazi persecution ‘only’ targeted disabled, homosexual, and Romani people. Bubis responded in Der Spiegel by accusing Walser and Dohnanyi of latent anti-​Semitism (Luttmer, 2004). The editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frank Schirrmacher, believed that the dispute could be resolved by bringing the two men together to discuss their respective positions, and he managed to arrange this on 14 December 1998. During the discussion, Walser reiterated that he had ‘not been misunderstood’, while Bubis retracted his charge of ‘intellectual arson’. The debate was, in effect, never fully resolved, and it left a sour taste for Germany’s Jews. It was likely a reason why, when Bubis gave his final interview in July 1999, just weeks before his death, he stated that he thought he had achieved ‘almost nothing’ in his public life so far as relations between Jews and non-​Jews in Germany were concerned (Der Tagesspiegel, 1999). Bubis, who had scandalized some sectors of German-​Jewish opinion in the early 1990s by declaring that he was a ‘German citizen of the Jewish faith’ (deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens)—​deliberately reviving the epithet that most German Jews had used before 1933—​asked to be buried in Israel, due to his fear that his grave in Germany would be desecrated. Sadly, and ironically, Bubis’s grave in Israel was desecrated, by a radical activist who believed Bubis had betrayed the Jewish people by having chosen to live in Germany (Silver and Cleaver, 1999). The new millennium saw the continuation of two countervailing currents: memorialization of the Nazi past and the Holocaust on the one hand, with demands for a ‘line to be drawn’ under it on the other. In 2001, the Jewish Museum Berlin was opened. It provided the opportunity for Germans, and international tourists, to explore the richness of German-​Jewish history, a history that went far beyond the Holocaust. Yet, at the same time, the escalation of the Israel-​Palestine conflict in the early 2000s provoked a rise in anti-​Semitic incidents across the Federal Republic, and a political scandal that engulfed Germany’s third largest party, the FDP. In 2002, the FDP’s deputy chairman Jürgen Möllemann was instrumental in allowing former Green party politician and outspoken Israel critic Jamal Karsli to enter the party. Karsli had made a number of incendiary comments over the previous years, for instance accusing the Israeli army of using ‘Nazi methods’, and pointing to a ‘Zionist lobby’ that ‘dominates the media’. As such, his prominent acceptance into the FDP was controversial from the outset (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2002b). Möllemann however made matters worse by criticizing the Central Council’s deputy leader Michel Friedman as having a ‘hateful and intolerant manner’, in response to Friedman’s criticism of the FDP’s decision to admit Karsli, and then refused to apologize for the remarks. Friedman responded by saying that the FDP had ‘gone over to the level of the Republikaner and the NPD’—​two of Germany’s far-​Right parties (Der Spiegel, 2002). In its ‘Berlin Declaration’ of May 2002, the FDP stated that it ‘regretted’ the comments Möllemann had made about Friedman but refused to denounce him or take further action, claiming that ‘The accusation of anti-Semitism against the FDP as a whole or

410   Joseph Cronin against individual members . . . is defamatory and unjustified’ (FDP-​Bundespartei, 2002). The board of the Central Council responded by criticizing the declaration and saying that it had been a missed opportunity for the party to distance itself from Möllemann and Karsli (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2002a). In the space of a few months, Ignatz Bubis’s former party had alienated itself from much of Germany’s Jewish population. The rise in anti-​ Semitism in German politics and society in the early 2000s highlighted the precarious situation in which Jews in Germany still found themselves. Yet, at the same time, the memorialization of Jews murdered in the Holocaust was becoming increasingly prominent in public life. After years of delays, the Berlin Holocaust Memorial opened in 2005 to widespread acclaim. Designed by the American architect Peter Eisenman, the memorial, which occupies 19,000 square metres of prime Berlin real estate, conveys a sense of disorientation and alienation through its rows of undulating concrete plinths. The memorial is dedicated ‘to the murdered Jews of Europe’—​a permanent reminder of the Nazi genocide in the heart of Germany’s capital. Unlike the Jewish Museum Berlin, however, the memorial was accompanied by a renewed discussion about whether Germany had now completed its process of ‘coming to terms with’ the Nazi past and should now ‘draw a line under’ that episode of its history (Der Spiegel, 2005).

Conclusion The regulations allowing Jews from the former Soviet Union to migrate to Germany on a relatively uninhibited basis ended in 2005. The new immigration criteria, which stipulated that prospective immigrants must pass a language test, be capable of supporting themselves in Germany, and be eligible to join one of Germany’s Jewish communities (the latter imposed at the Central Council’s request), caused immigration numbers to fall from over 10,000 per year to fewer than 1,000 per year (German Bundestag, 2006, pp. 1–​2; Referate Geschäftsstelle Beirat Jüdische Zuwanderung, 2009, p. 11). Between 2002 and 2004, more Jewish immigrants had entered Germany than Israel—​a source of some diplomatic embarrassment, and probably one reason for the introduction of more stringent regulations (Cohen and Kogan, 2005, p. 250). Between 1990 and 2005, the membership of Germany’s Jewish communities swelled from 29,000 to 130,000 (ZWST, 2007, p. 2). Since then the number has started dwindling again. The community’s demographic is once again ageing, and this has led to discussions about whether the Soviet-​Jewish migration only offered a temporary reprieve from an inevitable decline. While the immigration certainly made a quantitative contribution to the communities’ membership, the immigrants’ qualitative contribution to Jewish life in Germany has been more disputed, at least amongst old-​established Jews. Cilly Kugelmann, former deputy director of the Jewish Museum Berlin, stated in an interview in 2014 that, while ‘many Jewish communities only exist because of this

JEWISH LIFE AND POLITICS IN POST-WAR GERMANY    411 immigration . . . what you might call Jewish spirituality, or Jewish knowledge [amongst the Russian-​speaking Jews], is very very very limited’ (Kugelmann, 2014). As one old-​established member of the Jewish community in Augsburg put it: ‘The young people are leaving and the old people are dying’. But, he admitted, as far as German society is concerned, the immigration has been a huge success (Strzegowski, 2014). Younger people from the immigration cohort are relatively well-​integrated and well-​educated. Some have even become prominent public figures. To give some examples: politicians Sergey Lagodinsky and Marina Weisband, writers Wladimir Kaminer, Lena Gorelik, Olga Grjasnowa, and Katja Petrowskaja, and concert pianist Igor Levit all come from Jewish ‘quota refugee’ backgrounds. They are also ‘out’ as Jews and are publicly active in advocating for Jewish rights and against anti-Semitism in Germany. The past decade (2011–​21) has been one of the most turbulent for Jews in Germany since the end of the Second World War. In 2012 there was a misguided (and short-​lived) decision to ban circumcision in Cologne, which had to be overturned by the Bundestag (Brenner, 2018, pp. 429–​30). While seemingly insignificant, the decision betrayed a lack of sensitivity towards both Jewish and Muslim minorities by the responsible authorities. In the 2013 federal elections a new party, the ‘Alternative for Germany’ (Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)), made large strides, and in 2017 they became Germany’s third-​ largest party, outperforming the FDP. Although the party campaigns largely on an anti-​ Islam and anti-​immigrant basis, its leaders have also been outspoken in their views about the Nazi past, and Germany’s commemoration of it. In June 2018, the party’s co-​leader Alexander Gauland described the Nazi period as a Vogelschiss (‘bird’s mess’) in German history, drawing on an established rhetoric that attempts to minimize its significance. In September 2018 a small scandal erupted when it emerged that a group calling itself ‘Jews in the AfD’ had formed. Given that over 90 per cent of Germany’s Jewish population is now of a Russian-​speaking background, the group’s existence could be explained by strong conservative sentiments in many of the ex-​Soviet states. In any case, former Central Council President Charlotte Knobloch described the group’s existence as ‘incomprehensible’, since the AfD was the party in which anti-​Semites felt ‘most at home’ (Der Tagesspiegel, 2018). At the same time, anti-​Semitic incidents have been on the rise across Germany once again. An attack on a synagogue in Halle in October 2019, in which two people were killed, indicated how serious the situation had become (Deutsche Welle, 2020). One of the original unifying points between German and East European Jews in the early post-​war years had been support for the state of Israel, and as such this became a foundation stone of the Jewish communities. Younger German Jews, however, can no longer be expected to automatically support the actions of the Israeli government. In May 2021, German-​Jewish journalist Fabian Wolff published an essay in Die Zeit titled ‘Judaism: Only in Germany’, which, on the surface, appeared to hark back to many of the themes raised by Henryk Broder, Michel Lang, and Lea Fleischmann in their books over four decades earlier: scepticism about the German government and society’s attitudes

412   Joseph Cronin towards Jews living in Germany, and mistrust of the official Jewish community’s leadership. However, whereas Broder and Fleischmann later migrated to Israel, Wolff complained about the lack of space for an Israel-​critical position not only within the Jewish community, but in German society more broadly (Wolff, 2021). In considering what has changed in Jewish life and politics between the late 1970s and early 2020s, the answer seems to be both a lot and very little.

Further Reading Brenner, Michael (ed.) (2018), A History of Jews in Germany since 1945: Politics, Culture, and Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Cronin, Joseph (2019), Russian-​Speaking Jews in Germany’s Jewish Communities, 1990–​2005 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Geller, Jay Howard (2005), Jews in Post-​Holocaust Germany, 1945–​1953 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Geller, Jay Howard and Michael Meng (eds) (2020), Rebuilding Jewish Life in Germany (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press). Morris, Leslie and Jack Zipes (eds) (2002), Unlikely History: The Changing German-​Jewish Symbiosis, 1945–​2000 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

Bibliography Bertram, Jürgen (2008), Wer baut, der bleibt: Neues jüdisches Leben in Deutschland (Frankfurt/​ Main: Fischer Taschenbuch). Bodemann, Y. Michal (2005), A Jewish Family in Germany Today: An Intimate Portrait (Durham and London: Duke University Press). Braun, Stefan (2003), ‘Die meisten Deutschen können zwischen Israelis und Juden nicht wirklich unterscheiden’, Das Parlament 53(31–​2), p. 16. Brenner, Michael (2013), ‘1993: Bundespräsident Ignatz Bubis?’, Jüdische Allgemeine, 7 October. Available at: (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Brenner, Michael (2018), ‘A New German Jewry?’, in Michael Brenner (ed.), A History of Jews in Germany since 1945: Politics, Culture, and Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), pp. 417–​31. Broder, Henryk M. and Michel R. Lang (eds) (1979), Fremd im eigenen Land: Juden in der Bundesrepublik (Frankfurt/​Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag). Brumlik, Micha (1996), Kein Weg als Deutscher und Jude: Eine bundesrepublikanische Erfahrung (Munich: Luchterhand). Brumlik, Micha (2013), Interview with the author in Berlin, 27 August. Bubis, Ignatz (2000), ‘Das war das einzige Mal, dass ich ernsthaft gedacht habe, ob ich nicht auswandern soll’, in Richard Chaim Schneider (ed.), Wir sind da! Die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland von 1945 bis heute (Berlin: Ullstein), pp. 296–​305. Cohen, Yinon and Irena Kogan (2005), ‘Jewish Immigration from the Former Soviet Union to Germany and Israel in the 1990s’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 50, pp. 249–​65.

JEWISH LIFE AND POLITICS IN POST-WAR GERMANY    413 Cronin, Joseph (2016), ‘Controversies Surrounding the Excavation at Börneplatz, Frankfurt am Main, 1987’, Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 22(2–​3), pp. 172–​84. Cronin, Joseph (2019), Russian-​Speaking Jews in Germany’s Jewish Communities, 1990–​2005 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Cronin, Joseph (2020), ‘The Bitburg Affair and the Beginnings of Jewish Activism in 1980s West Germany’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 65, pp. 167–​84. Der Spiegel (2002), ‘Die Zitate, die die Republik bewegen’, 5 June. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Der Spiegel (2005), ‘Kein steinerner Schlussstrich’, 9 May. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Der Tagesspiegel (1999), ‘Ignatz Bubis zieht Bilanz: Ich habe fast nichts bewegt’, 27 July. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Der Tagesspiegel (2018), ‘Jüdische Verbände entsetzt über Gruppe “Juden in der AfD” ’, 25 September. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Deutsche Welle (2020), ‘Anti-​Semitism in Germany “Sharply Rising,” Warns Security Agency’, 9 October. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Dietz, Barbara, Uwe Lebok, and Pavel Polian (2002), ‘The Jewish Emigration from the Former Soviet Union to Germany’, International Migration 40(2), pp. 29–​48. Diner, Dan (1988), ‘Schichten der Erinnerung: Zum Börneplatz-​Konflikt’, Babylon 3, pp. 18–​26. Eisenhammer, John (1992), ‘Germany Turns to its One-​Man Conscience: Ignatz Bubis has Stern Words for the Government in Bonn’, The Independent, 1 December. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). FDP-​Bundespartei (2002), ‘Die Berliner Erklärung der FDP, Freie Demokraten: FDP Köln’, 31 May. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Fleischmann, Lea (1980), Dies ist nicht mein Land: Eine Jüdin verlässt die Bundesrepublik (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe). Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (2002a), ‘Kein Pardon!’, 1 June. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (2002b), ‘Möllemann bekommt Beifall von Haider’, 1 June. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Frankfurter Jüdische Nachrichten (1997), ‘Gefahr oder Chance?’, October, pp. 5–​6. German Bundestag (2006), Kleine Anfrage, printed matter 16/​ 1318, 14 June (Cologne: Bundesanzeiger Verlagsgesellschaft). Goschler, Constantin and Anthony Kauders (2018), ‘The Jews in German Society’, in Michael Brenner (ed.), A History of Jews in Germany since 1945: Politics, Culture, and Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), pp. 287–​375.

414   Joseph Cronin Graumann, Dieter (2012), Nachgeboren—​ Vorbelastet? Die Zukunft des Judentums in Deutschland (Munich: Kösel). Grossmann, Atina (2007), Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Grossmann, Atina and Tamar Lewinsky (2018), ‘Displaced Persons’, in Michael Brenner (ed.), A History of Jews in Germany since 1945: Politics, Culture, and Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), pp. 57–​84. Hollenbach, Michael (2015), ‘Vom Überleben einer Minderheit’, Deutschlandfunk, 17 October. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Jüdische Gemeinde in Hamburg (2005), ‘Feierliches Gedenken an das Kriegsende’, July/​ August, p. 11. Karasek, Hellmuth and Ulrich Manz (1985), ‘Wir haben eine Leiche im Keller’, Der Spiegel, 10 November. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). jüdische Geschichte der Kauders, Anthony D. (2007), Unmögliche Heimat: Eine deutsch-​ Bundesrepublik (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-​Anstalt). Kessler, Judith (2008), ‘Homo Sovieticus in Disneyland: The Jewish Communities in Germany Today’, in Y. Michal Bodemann (ed.), The New German Jewry and the European Context: The Return of the European Jewish Diaspora (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 131–​43. Kraushaar, Wolfgang (2001), ‘Die Auerbach Affäre’, in Julius H. Schoeps (ed.), Leben im Land der Täter. Juden im Nachkriegsdeutschland (1945–​1953) (Berlin: Jüdische Verlagsanstalt), pp. 208–​18. Kugelmann, Cilly (2000), ‘Kindergartensandkasten-​perspektive vom Polnischen Stetl’, in Richard Chaim Schneider (ed.), Wir sind da! Die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland von 1945 bis heute (Berlin: Ullstein), pp. 276–​95. Kugelmann, Cilly (2014), Interview with the author in Berlin, 25 February. Ludyga, Hannes (2005), Philipp Auerbach (1906–​1952): ‘Staatskommissar für rassisch, religiös und politisch Verfolgte’ (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-​Verlag). Luttmer, Karsten (2004), ‘Die Walser-​Bubis-​Kontroverse’, Zukunft braucht Erinnerung, 5 October. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (2020), ‘Ich war ein DDR-​Bürger und auch jüdisch’, 9 October. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Nachama, Andreas (2014), Interview with the author in Berlin, 27 February. Postone, Moishe (1980), ‘Review of Fremd im eigenen Land’, New German Critique 20(2), pp. 187–​93. Rabinbach, Anson (1988), ‘The Jewish Question in the German Question’, New German Critique 44, pp. 159–​92. Reagan, Ronald (1986), ‘Remarks of President Reagan to Regional Editors, White House, April 18, 1985’, in Geoffrey Hartman (ed.), Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), pp. 239–​40. Referate Geschäftsstelle Beirat Jüdische Zuwanderung und Aufnahmeverfahren Jüdische Zuwanderung (2009), Evaluierungsbericht: Aufnahmeverfahren für jüdische Zuwanderer aus der ehemaligen Sowjetunion (Nuremberg: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge). Richarz, Monika (1985), ‘Jews in Today’s Germanies’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 30, pp. 265–​74.

JEWISH LIFE AND POLITICS IN POST-WAR GERMANY    415 Rosensaft, Menachem Z. (1987), ‘A Journey to Bergen-​Belsen’, in Ilya Levkov (ed.), Bitburg and Beyond: Encounters in American, German and Jewish History (New York: Shapolsky Publishers), pp. 152–​65. Schmalz, Peter (1995), ‘Keiner hat etwas gemerkt’, Die Welt, 1 December. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Schmemann, Serge (1988), ‘Germans are Wary of Jewish Scandal’, The New York Times, 26 May, p. 17. Schönborn, Susanne (2010), Im Wandel –​Entwürfe jüdischer Identität in den 1980er und 1990er Jahren (Munich: Martin Medienbauer). Seligmann, Rafael (2012), ‘Heinz Galinski: Ein Leben für die Freiheit’, Berliner Zeitung, 28 November. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Shternshis, Anna (2011), ‘Between the Red and Yellow Stars: Ethnic and Religious Identity of Soviet Jewish World War II Veterans in New York, Toronto, and Berlin’, Journal of Jewish Identities 4, pp. 43–​64. Silver, Eric and Hannah Cleaver (1999), ‘Protester Desecrates Bubis Grave’, The Independent, 16 August. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Stern, Frank (1992), The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge: Antisemitism and Philosemitism in Postwar Germany (New York: Pergamon). Strzegowski, Josef (2014), Interview with the author in Augsburg, 4 November. Tenné, Meinhard (1996), ‘Der Vorstand berichtet’, Gemeindemitteilungen der Israelitischen Religionsgemeinschaft Württembergs (7), July, p. 5. Tolts, Mark (1992), ‘Jewish Marriages in the USSR: A Demographic Analysis’, East European Jewish Affairs 22(2), pp. 3–​19. Wallmann, Walter (1988), ‘5. September 1987: Rede des Hessischen Ministerpräsidenten Walter Wallmann vor dem Kreisparteitag der Frankfurter CDU’, in Michael Best (ed.), Der Frankfurter Börneplatz: Zur Archäologie eines politischen Konflikts (Frankfurt/​Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag), pp. 98–​101. Walser, Martin (1998), ‘Erfahrungen beim Verfassen einer Sonntagsrede’, Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels: Dankesrede, 11 October. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Wolff, Fabian (2021), ‘Judaism: Only in Germany’, Die Zeit, 7 May. (Accessed: 14 January 2022). Zielinski, Siegfried (1980), ‘History as Entertainment and Provocation: The TV Series “Holocaust” in West Germany’, New German Critique 19, pp. 81–​96. Zipes, Jack (1994), ‘The Contemporary German Fascination for Things Jewish: Toward a Minor Jewish Culture’, in Sander L. Gilman and Karen Remmler (eds), Reemerging Jewish Culture in Germany: Life and Literature since 1989 (New York and London: New York University Press), pp. 15–​45. ZWST (Central Welfare Board of Jews in Germany) (2007), Mitgliederstatistik der jüdischen Gemeinden und Landesverbände in Deutschland für das Jahr 2007 (Auszug) (Frankfurt/​ Main: Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der Juden in Deutschland e. V.) (Accessed: 14 January 2022).

CHAPTER 24

IDENTIT Y AND DI V E RSI T Y IN P OST-​U NI FI C AT I ON GERMA NY Priscilla Layne

And suddenly you understand: This warm community of Black people, here in the USA, is only possible, because centuries of survival were necessary. The basis, upon which these people meet each other and empower each other, was and is bloody, unjust and torturous. It occurs to you, you can be thankful that you are just a welcomed guest in this community; a tourist of this blackness born of pain. You should feel lucky, that your heart only temporarily imitates a few somber beats while here. (Wenzel, 2020, p. 302)

Since at least the late 19 century, hegemonic German society has understood itself as a white, homogenous nation. It is true that German-​speaking people had long defined themselves against people considered non-​white, such as Africans and Asians, particularly in medieval and early modern texts (Martin, 2001). However, it is important to remember that Germany did not exist as a nation until 1871 and therefore the German nation came into being at the height of discussions around race and in the midst of Germans’ first attempts at colonial conquest.1 In fact, Germans’ colonial exploits only strengthened their need to draw clear boundaries between themselves and racialized Others. However, despite white Germans’ anxiety around separating themselves from racialized Others, for centuries there have been several groups of racialized minorities whose presence in Germany always challenged this white self-​image: to name just a few, 1 

Prior to 1871, however Germans did fantasize about colonial exploration (Zantop, 1997).

IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY IN POST-UNIFICATION GERMANY    417 Roma and Sinti, Jews, Black Germans, Turkish Germans, and Vietnamese Germans. Rather than attempting to create a comprehensive list of racialized minorities who have lived in Germany over the centuries, I highlight these five groups in order to demonstrate how diverse German society is and always has been, as well as how the majority has reacted to this diversity. In this essay, I will take a closer look at how the presence and participation of these racialized groups in German society has both been challenged by and managed to challenge German identity, particularly by using examples from post-​unification literature. Discussing these distinct groups is helpful, because it shows how necessary it is to have a nuanced conversation about different racialized groups. The reality is, the five groups I have highlighted each have very different historical trajectories within Germany. For example, Roma and Sinti have lived in the German Sprachraum (linguistic space) since the fifteenth century (Randjelovic, 2015, p. 672). Jews began migrating to Germany during the fourth century, continuing into the early Middle Ages (Federal Ministry of the Interior, 2021). There is also evidence of a Black German presence going back to the Middle Ages (Martin, 2001), although the first significant population of native-​born Black Germans emerged following the First World War, in the Rhineland area occupied by African and Asian French colonial soldiers. Meanwhile, today’s large Turkish German population has its origins in the 1960s, when Turkish guest workers were recruited to West Germany. And Vietnamese Germans first migrated to West Germany (in 1979) as refugees from the Vietnam War and East Germany (in 1980) as industrial labourers (Bösch and Su, 2020, p. 1). And yet, although each of these groups had a different pathway to Germany, some groups, like Sinti and Roma, Jews and Black Germans, have long been targeted by racial discourses from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries about who does or doesn’t belong in Germany, while the presence of other groups, like Turkish Germans and Vietnamese Germans, was only instrumentalized for political anti-​immigration rhetoric in the late twentieth century. Regardless, each community currently contributes to the mosaic of post-​unification German society, and each group faces discrimination, and acts of physical and verbal violence, while individual members within each group try to define themselves on their own terms.

Diverse German Authors Grapple with Identity An example of how racialized people in Germany go about constructing their identity vis à vis their unique experience is offered in the quote with which I began this essay. This quote was taken from 1000 Serpentinen Angst (‘1000 Coils of Fear’), the debut novel of Black German author Olivia Wenzel. Black Germans are a minority group that make up 1 per cent of Germany’s population, though this is only an estimate since Germany

418   Priscilla Layne does not use the category of race for statistical purposes because of the term’s connection to Nazi German genocidal politics.2 Wenzel was born in 1985 in Weimar, in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), making her one of very few Black Germans to be born in the East. Like Wenzel, her novel’s first-​person narrator was also born in the GDR to a white German mother and an Angolan father. The unnamed narrator grew up alongside her twin brother, as the only Black person in her town. And in the scene described above, she is visiting the US for the first time and experiences what it is like to be surrounded by Black people and no longer stared at. This passage conveys the possibilities of ‘identity’ in our modern era. The narrator may be a German citizen, but she also sees herself as belonging to a larger African diaspora and therefore connected to African Americans through the construct of race. At the same time, she is aware of the differences between Black Germans and African Americans, which is why she sees herself both as a ‘welcomed guest’ and ‘a tourist of this blackness born of pain’. Although Black Germans and African Americans may share common experiences of racism, discrimination, and violence and a past of slavery and colonialism, for this narrator it is significant that she did not walk in the same shoes as the African Americans she encounters and their ancestors. Nevertheless, her visit to the US offers her a space to try on new identities and this is necessarily tied to her experience of her pregnancy. If the new state of her body can turn her into a mother, what other possible identities might be within her grasp? This passage demonstrates some of the questions revolving around issues of ‘identity’, because for the narrator, her identity is clearly constructed both from her own feelings and sense of self, as well as from others. In Germany, white Germans see her as Black, an identity which often excludes her from a sense of national belonging, because the majority of Germans understand themselves as homogenously white (Hund, 2017). But her being perceived as Black, has allowed her to perceive herself as also belonging to the African American community, even though a part of her knows she does not share the exact same experiences. Thus, this passage from the novel exemplifies Rolf Eickelpasch und Claudia Rademacher’s understanding that ‘in late modernity, the individual becomes an architect of his own self’, who can put together an identity based on ‘intuitionally given construction sets’ as well as ‘fashion, media and popular culture’ (Eickelpasch and Rademacher, 2013, p. 7). While Wenzel’s passage might emphasize the agency of the individual, identity can also be overdetermined by outside factors, including other members of society. Take for example the poem ‘You Know What I’m Called?’ by Romani German author, playwright and actor Nedjo Osman. In the poem, Osman confronts Germans’ false depictions of Roma by rejecting the racial slur referred to in German as the Z-​Wort (see Randjelovic 671) and insisting that this word is connected to a history of violence against the Roma people, including his mother, grandfather, sister, and brother who were all killed by the 2  In 2020, an attempt was made by the German government, in collaboration with Black German organizations, to allow Black Germans to self-​identify and talk about their experiences in Germany, but this Afrozensus was purely voluntary. https://​afrozensus.de/​

IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY IN POST-UNIFICATION GERMANY    419 Nazis. Osman asserts he will name himself and he chooses to identify as ‘Roma, Sinto, Manush, Kale’ (Franz et al., 2019, pp. 51–​2). In addition to confronting and rejecting German stereotypes and linguistic violence against Sinti and Roma—​something that Osman also does in the TKO—​Europäisches Roma Theater (European Roma Theater) in Cologne—​he also addresses the killing of Sinti and Roma during the Holocaust, an example of how Sinti and Roma in Germany have become more vocal that their ancestors not be forgotten in German memory culture. As an intervention in depictions of Sinti and Roma in German culture, Osman’s work in the theatre is just as important as his poetry. In conversation with Cornelia Wilß, Osman said that he created TKO because ‘I’ve acted in 22 films for television and movie theaters. But I ask myself, how long I will have to continue playing a mobster’ (Franz et al., 2019, p. 36).3 Here Osman references the fact that Romani and Sinto actors are typically typecast as being involved in organized crime. But the problem of being typecast is something that all five racialized groups can also relate to. For example, when Thomas Köck received the Mullheim Prize for Dramatists for his play Atlas in 2019, which depicts Vietnamese immigrants as so-​called ‘boat people’—​a derogatory term for undocumented immigrants—​in response, a group of Asian Germans published an anonymous letter under the title ‘Open letter of German-​Asian artists and supporters to the Schauspiel Leipzig, the Deutsche Theater Berlin and to Mülheimer Theatertage’ which demanded that Asian Germans have the right to represent themselves, rather than constantly being depicted in a derogatory way as faceless victims without agency by white German artists. Another example of the tension between outside and inside perspectives when it comes to identity can be observed in the following scene from Olga Grjasnowa’s novel All Russians Love Birch Trees. Grjasnowa’s novel follows a female protagonist, Masha, who, like Grjasnowa, immigrated to Germany from Azerbaijan as a young child together with her family seeking refuge from nationalist violence. Though born in Azerbaijan, Masha and Grjasnowa belong to a Russian Jewish family. Thus, Grjasnowa and her protagonist are representative of the nearly 200,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union who immigrated to Germany during the 1990s (Ben-​Rafael, 2015, p. 65); the result of ‘an administrative act that Germany inherited from the East German government in 1991, which allowed Jews into Germany as “contingent refugees” ’ (Popper, 2004). The novel follows Masha during her young adult years in Germany, on a journey to gain a better sense of self. It is no surprise that due to her multicultural and multilingual background, she is drawn to the profession of translator, for which she has learned Arabic. In the following, she and a close friend, the Turkish German Cem, get into a ‘fender bender’ with a white German man. When Cem admits the accident was his fault, the white German man starts interrogating him: ‘ “Do you even know how to drive? Do you have a license? . . . You don’t know how to behave on German roads, do you? You’re just a guest

3 ‘Ich

habe in 22 Filmen fürs Fernsehen und Kino mitgespielt. Aber ich frage mich schon, wie lange ich noch einen Mafioso spielen muss.’

420   Priscilla Layne here!” ’ (Grjasnowa, 2014, p. 172). Cem rejects this label as a ‘guest’ in Germany, insisting he was born there and in response, his antagonist calls him the K-​Wort, a German slur for Turks (see Nobrega pp. 638-​643). Rather than accepting the incident as a simple accident, the white German man immediately singles out Cem’s ethnic identity, due to his physical appearance. The man calls Cem the K-Wort —​a German, racist term used against Turks since the 1960s—​and he assumes that Cem is not acculturated to German society and therefore doesn’t know how to drive properly. This conflict represents some of the difficulties BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) face in Germany today, because many of the majority society cannot see past their ethnic or racial identities, nor can they embrace the fact that Germany has become a diverse nation. The term ‘People of Colour’ can be seen as ‘closing a discursive gap, in which many people have fallen, because they don’t feel like they belong to Black organizations or migrant communities’ (Dean, 2015, p. 606).4 In the US, the ‘B’ and ‘I’ in the term ‘BIPOC’ refers to ‘Black and indigenous people and their specific experiences with discrimination with a special focus on the fact that Black and indigenous people, in contrast to other People of Color, never count as white and are never seen as such’.5 These are important distinctions to make, because while a Turkish German or Jewish person may identify as a Person of Colour or a migrant, they may also still be viewed as white, in a way that Black Germans or Roma and Sinti Germans may not. Thus, even though all five groups I have introduced may be racialized by the majority and face some form of discrimination, their experience of discrimination will not always be the same.

Defining Identity and Diversity ‘Identity’ and ‘diversity’ are both rather difficult words to define as they are words whose meanings have changed fundamentally since their origins and they are words whose meaning greatly depends on the context. Identity is a fairly modern concept and its German equivalent, Identität has its roots in the eighteenth century. The term emerged at a time when the modern subject realized their role and status in society no longer needed to be prescribed by a holy entity and that they could instead construct a self on their own, based on education, class, and social standing (Eickelpasch and Rademacher, 2013, p. 6); hence the multitude of Bildungsromane that were published, exploring identity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What has changed greatly since the

4 ‘People of Color-​ Politik [ist] dazu geeignet, eine diskursive Lücke zu schließen, in die bisher viele derjenigen hineingefallen waren, die sich weder Schwarzen Organisationen noch Migrant_​ innen-​ Communities zugehörig fühlten.’ All translations from German to English are the author’s own. 5 ‘Schwarze und indigene Menschen und deren bestimmte Diskriminierungserfahrungen mit besonderen Fokus darauf, dass Schwarze und indigene Menschen, im Gegensatz zu vielen anderen People of Color, nie als weiß gelten oder angesehen werden.’

IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY IN POST-UNIFICATION GERMANY    421 notion of identity was first introduced is whether or not it has a fixed vs. a fluid nature. According to an etymological understanding, Identität stemmed from the Latin identitās and referred to ‘complete consensus, sameness, substance . . . stemming from “the unity of a substance” ’ (DWDS).6 In a survey of the German scholarship addressing identity in the twenty-​first century, Erol Yildiz found that though scholars could not agree whether social structures play a determining or less important role in identity formation, what they do advocate for is that it is important to achieve ‘a consistent and coherent identity . . . a unified subject’.7 But for those individuals in Germany who identify as migrants, as having a migration background or as post-​migrant, the notion that one can achieve a ‘consistent and coherent identity’ seems more challenging and arguably undesirable.8 More believable is the idea that ‘Identity [is] conceptualized as a multidimensional structure . . . a structure, behind which there is no “true self ” that could emerge’ (Yildiz, 2006, p. 340).9 The assumption that identity is something unified and unwavering points out how old-​fashioned understandings of identity can be a roadblock in a society that is ‘radically diverse’, which is how Jewish author Max Czollek would describe contemporary German society.10 As of 2019, 26 per cent of Germans identified themselves as having a migration background (‘German population of migrant background rises to 21 million’, 2020), referring to individuals who either migrated to Germany themselves, or who are the children or grandchildren of migrants. For that reason, it has become common for Germans to grow up in a multilingual environment, to practise traditions, consume foods, and wear clothing that stem from their parents’ or grandparents’ home country and to travel frequently between countries, whether for education, work, or holidays. The fact that terms like ‘post-​migrant’ and ‘radical diversity’ have been coined recently indicates that it is no longer sufficient to think of an identity as unified, stable, and unchanging. 6 ‘“völlige Übereinstimmung, Gleichheit, Wesenseinheit” wird im 18. Jh. aus spätlat. identitās (Genitiv identitātis) “Wesenseinheit” entlehnt.’ 7  Erol Yildiz, ‘Identitätsdiskurs zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts’, Soziologische Revue 29 (2006), p. 37. 8  ‘Persons with migration background (in the broad sense) are defined as in the micro-​census “all persons who immigrated after 1949 to the present territory of the Federal Republic of Germany, as well as all foreigners born in Germany and all those born in Germany of at least one immigrant or a foreign parent” (Statistiches Bundesamt, 2012, p. 6)’ (Wischmann, 2008, p. 473). The term ‘post-​migrant’ comes from the theatre and was coined by Shermin Langhoff, former director of the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse Theatre in Berlin. In Langhoff ’s words, ‘postmigrant theater explicitly deals with the diversified plural society of the city’ (Cornish, 2017, p. 176). Thus, while the white German hegemony may continue to debate whether or not Germany is a country of migration and whether or not immigrants have integrated, the term post-​migrant acknowledges that the German nation is already multicultural and composed of different views. 9 ‘Identität [ist] als mehrdimensionale Struktur konzipiert . . . eine Struktur, hinter der kein “wahres Selbst” zum Vorschein kommen könnte.’ 10  ‘ “Radikale Vielfalt” entails not only the recognition of the existing complexity and diversity of Jewish and other minority identities, but a more general acknowledgement of the fact that we all are composed of multiple and shifting aspects and attachments and that we all simultaneously belong and do not belong’ (Lizarazu, 2020).

422   Priscilla Layne Part of what makes identity formation so complex in contemporary society is the more recent acknowledgement of intersectionality. The term ‘intersectionality’ was coined by Black feminist and lawyer, Kimberlé Crenshaw. At the time, Crenshaw was looking to investigate how African American women are uniquely disadvantaged by the legal system, due to how racism and sexism interact. Nowadays, the term has been expanded to mean an analytical strategy that looks at ‘how intersectional frameworks provide new angles of vision on social institutions, practices, social problems, and other social phenomenon associated with social inequality’ (Collins, 2015, p. 3). Acknowledging an individual’s different intersections means addressing that the way in which society interacts with them may be dependent on multiple factors. Max Czollek has pointed out how it is often convenient for white Germans to ignore a person’s intersectionality in order to categorize and instrumentalize them more easily. For example, Czollek argues, while many Germans complain that people with a migration background are unable to integrate, they would never direct such a critique towards Jews, even though many Jews in Germany actually have a migration background as well. And yet, they are never included in this particular, racialized category, which is often reserved for people of Middle Eastern descent. Thus, Czollek identifies that one of the reasons white Germans understand so little about the contemporary Jewish community is that for the majority of Germans, Jews can only fit into the category of ‘Jewish’ and never also ‘immigrant’, or ‘queer’, or ‘disabled’, or ‘Black’, or countless other possible intersections (Czollek, 2020). Unlike identity, diversity (first used in the fourteenth century in English) is a word that has been imported into German from English and is occasionally translated in German as Diversität or as the much older word Vielfalt. Vielfalt, which was used as early as the fifteenth century, was meant to indicate ‘A large amount or number, numerous, very, significant’ (DWDS).11 Originally, diversity was used in the scientific realm. Today, Black German scholar Maisha Maureen Eggers defines diversity as, ‘social plurality, for heterogeneity and the variety of lifestyles and life plans that are characteristic for societies in late modernity’ (Eggers, 2015, p. 256).

Migration, Integration, and National Identity Why is this so important for identity in post-​unification Germany? Well, if you consider how diverse Germany has become since reunification, it becomes clear why it is necessary to do away with older concepts of identity as stable and determined. This is a problem the late Günter Grass addressed in a poem that was only published after his 11 ‘eine große Menge oder Anzahl, zahlreich, sehr, bedeutend.’

IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY IN POST-UNIFICATION GERMANY    423 death in 2015. This was a significant summer, first and foremost because Germans found themselves grappling with the effects of their government having accepted a million Syrian refugees fleeing war the previous year. In a way, Grass’ life and the arrival of these Syrian immigrants represent two sides of the same coin of German history—​namely how Germany has struggled with accepting migrants and how this influx of people inevitably changes Germans’ self-​understanding of their own identity. Following Grass’ death, a collection of unpublished writings from the final years of his life were published as the book Vonne Endlichkait (‘Of All That Ends’) in 2015. Among the texts was a poem by the title ‘Fremdenfeindlichkeit’ (‘Xenophobia’).12 In many ways, this poem presents an excellent opportunity to dissect identity and diversity in post-​unification Germany, particularly because Grass contextualizes more recent waves of migration within a larger historical frame. In just three stanzas, Grass manages to sum up the history of German post-​war migration from 1945 until 2015 and gestures towards how the arrival of ‘foreigners’ over the decades has impacted German society. Grass begins with the Aussiedler which can be translated as ‘ethnic German migrants to Germany’.13 These are ethnic Germans who, up until the end of the Second World War, lived in Eastern European territories that either belonged to Germany prior to the First World War or were occupied by Germany during the Second World War. Following the Second World War, these Germans, who overnight found themselves living in Eastern European countries, did not feel safe remaining, for fear of reprisals that might be taken by the locals for the horrors committed by the Nazis. But while these German emigrants might have hoped to be warmly received by the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) with open arms, this was not the case. The Germans living in the West looked down on the newcomers. They viewed them as lower-​class, uneducated peasants. Furthermore, at a time when the economy was unstable, resources were scarce and there were housing shortages, Germans in the West felt there were not enough resources to share with these German immigrants. And this is the history, to which Grass refers in the first stanza, when he speaks of the ‘millions of the expelled/​with little luggage/​and oppressive memories’ who ‘were forcibly accommodated,/​in what remained of the fatherland’, and to whom in response ‘many natives, who felt crowded by their moving in, yelled “Go back to where you came from!” ’. In the second stanza of the poem, Grass demonstrates that as is common with xenophobia, the newcomers eventually become settled, especially once there is a new group, at whom hatred could be directed. This new group, those who ‘who came later, much later/​and from much farther away’ and ‘spoke incomprehensibly’, is most likely meant

12 Günter

Grass, Of all that Ends, trans. Breon Mitchell (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), p. 70. 13  In his essay, Dietrich Thränhardt also discusses Aussiedler who migrated to Germany from former Soviet countries following reunification.

424   Priscilla Layne to be Turks, for of the many Southern European guest workers which West Germany recruited during the 1950s and 1960s, the Turks made up the largest group and would eventually be seen as being the most culturally different than Germans, due to German stereotypes about Muslim culture. Grass’ suggestion that only when the native Germans began to feel foreign themselves, perhaps due to Germany’s ‘radically diverse’ reality, did they begin to see themselves in the so-​called foreigners and ‘start to live with them’. What Grass is describing is a process of migration and integration that happens with each new set of migrants who arrive in Germany. While the Aussiedler arriving in the 1940s may have once seemed foreign, they no longer seemed foreign compared to the guest workers in the 1950s and 1960s. While the guest workers may have once seemed foreign, they no longer seemed as foreign as the Syrian asylum seekers arriving fifty years later. Grass’ poem can be read as both cynical and optimistic simultaneously. On the one hand, Germans’ fear of difference and their need to police both physical and cultural borders may result in them always needing to create new ‘enemies’. However, the longer the ‘foreigners’ remain, the more the native Germans grow used to them and accept having to live side by side. But there are many German BIPOC who would actually view Grass’ latter claim as too optimistic. For those Sinti and Roma, Black Germans, Turkish Germans, Jews, Vietnamese Germans, and any number of racialized minority groups who have lived in Germany for decades—​if not centuries—​they do not necessarily feel as if their constant presence has eased tensions between themselves and white Germans. In fact, Black German scholar Fatima El-​Tayeb would even argue that rather than the discussion around Syrian refugees demonstrating progress in German attitudes towards diversity, instead, while white Germans celebrate themselves for their tolerance, they not only leave German People of Colour out of the conversation, but they continue to target them with discrimination and violence (El-​Tayeb, 2016). El-​Tayeb argues that white Germans need these ‘moments of crisis’ in order to construct some kind of national identity. In Undeutsch, El-​Tayeb asks: ‘what remains of Germany’s identity without these crises supposedly coming from outside. Is crisis production a necessary part of this identity? And what forms of forgetting are required by this constant reproduction of allegedly newer and newer crisis situations?’ (El-​Tayeb, 2016, p. 33).14 Thus, arguably, a lot of the conflict around identity and diversity that exists in Germany today stems from the tension between unmarked or unhyphenated Germans and marked/​hyphenated Germans. As Black German scholars like El-​Tayeb and May Ayim would argue, not only has this so-​called crisis state existed since German reunification, but German reunification actually only exacerbated this problem.

14 ‘Zum anderen erscheint unklar, was bleibt von Deutschlands Identi t​ ät ohne diese angeblich von außen kommenden Krisen. Ist Krisenpro duktion vielleicht notwendiger Teil dieser Identität? Und welche Formen von Vergessen verlangt die stetige Reproduktion angeblich immer neuer krisenhafter Zustände?’

IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY IN POST-UNIFICATION GERMANY    425

How Did We Get Here? German Unification and Its Aftermath Following the founding of East and West Germany in 1949, Germans were separated for four decades, by physical, political, and emotional borders. As one can imagine, bringing East and West together forty years later had far-​reaching consequences for both sides. But while many studies focus on what this experience was like for the white hegemonic population, it is also important to reflect on what this event meant for immigrants, refugees, and more broadly People of Colour living in Germany. The existence of a divided Germany actually had tangible effects for minorities on both sides of the Wall. To a large extent, the two Germanies defined themselves in opposition to one another, competing to be seen as the ‘better’ Germany. Both East and West Germans were eager to distance themselves from the legacy of Nazism and this competition for a positive global image was often played out in foreign policy. The two Germanies contended over who treated their guest workers better, who accepted more refugees, and who had better relations with so-​called ‘Third World’ countries in Africa and Asia; Dietrich Thränhardt discusses some of these older policies, as well as how changes to the immigration laws since 1990 have affected more recent groups of refugees (Thränhardt, 2002). At the moment of reunification, dismantling the border between East and West, suspending the division and competition between these two countries, would have real consequences for the minority populations caught up in the mix. The Second World War came to an end in May 1945, with the four allied countries, namely the US, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, defeating the Nazis and liberating Germans from their fascist regime. These allied countries subsequently divided up Germany into four zones of occupation in order to help the country transition to peace time. These zones were the American zone in the South, the French zone in the West, the British zone in the North, and the Soviet zone in the East. Likewise, Berlin, the country’s capital, was also divided into these four respective zones. One can imagine that the initial months following the war were full of chaos and turmoil. Many of Germany’s cities were bombed out, people were homeless, hungry, and injured. There were scores of displaced persons trying to contact loved ones or just trying to move from A to B in order to join family elsewhere. The economy was incredibly unstable. Food and basic necessities were rationed and many items could only be obtained on the black market. In 1948, without the understanding of the Soviets, the French, American, and British came to an agreement on a new currency to be introduced to Germany to help stabilize the economy and counteract the dealings on the black market. In response, the Soviets barricaded all roads leading to Berlin so that necessary supplies could not be delivered. This was the first sign of the trouble to come. During the famous Berlin airlift, American and British pilots flew over Berlin dropping goods from their planes so that the Berliners would still have access to supplies despite the blockade.

426   Priscilla Layne In 1949, East and West Germany were officially established as two separate countries, one consisting of the Soviet zone, the other consisting of the three Western zones combined. Between 1945 and 1961 3.1 million refugees and migrants left East Germany for the West. In 1961, the Berlin Wall was built, cutting off family members, loved ones, and friends. To a certain extent, the existence of a divided Germany actually benefitted racialized minorities. East and West Germany were always trying to better each other and put forth a more appealing public image. For East Germany, that meant inviting ‘Socialist Friends’ to work and study in their country. For West Germany, that meant establishing a more generous asylum law to replace the law from 1938. The new law intended to be more liberal in order to indicate a “distancing from the discriminating legal practices towards foreigners” under the Nazis (Poutrus, 2019, pp. 52-​3). Nevertheless, as Patrice Poutrus points out, West Germans were more likely to support asylum for Europeans with whom they could identify, like refugees from Hungary during 1956/​7, rather than non-​Europeans who were viewed as dangerous and potentially taking advantage of asylum. The construction of the Berlin Wall also had a direct effect on immigration to West Germany. The Wall cut off East German labourers who had previously commuted to the West. Without this source of labour, in the 1950s and 1960s, West Germans began inviting contract workers from Southern Europe to work in Germany for a brief period of time.15 Both West Germany and East Germany’s engagement with foreigners were meant to be brief. West Germans expected guest workers to return to their home countries once they had earned a substantial amount of money. East Germans expected their ‘Socialist friends’ to return to their countries to build socialism there. Although East Germany practised an official policy of solidarity with other cultures, in reality foreigners living in the East were normally segregated and had little contact with local East Germans. The clearest example of East Germany’s intent that foreigners not establish a life there is the fact that when Vietnamese female labourers became pregnant in the East, they were immediately sent home. All of this cultural exchange was not intended to have permanent effects on the fabric of the national identity. During the first two decades of economic migration, West Germany enjoyed an economic miracle with the help of the Marshall Plan, which was money lent to West Germany by the US in 1957. Between 1961 until 1973, the number of foreigners living in West Germany reached 3.5 million. But, when the oil crisis hit in the 1970s and the economy suffered, tensions began to rise in the West over whether there was still a need for guest workers. The 1970s saw a string of regulations passed, starting with the ‘recruitment ban’ in 1973. These laws not only prohibited the further recruitment of guest workers, but they also made it more difficult for guest workers to bring their families to Germany and they offered incentives for guest workers to return to their homeland. At 15  Thränhardt gives a more comprehensive account of the guest worker programme in his Chapter 19 in this volume.

IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY IN POST-UNIFICATION GERMANY    427 the same time as the economy lagged, West Germans also became concerned with what appeared to be ‘parallel societies’ forming in their midst. It seemed as if guest workers, Turks in particular, were not making an attempt to assimilate. West Germans feared that Turks preferred to live in Turkish neighbourhoods where they could speak Turkish on the street and in businesses, raise their children according to different rules, and generally keep to themselves. This perspective, is however, incredibly flawed. Like in the East, guest workers in the West had largely been segregated, forced to either live in dormitories provided by their factories or in the only neighbourhoods where landlords were willing to rent to them. In addition to the hostility towards guest workers, West Germans also had a growing animosity towards the so-​called ‘flood’ of asylum seekers. This is the xenophobic climate that led to magazine headlines like the following from Der Spiegel: ‘Asyl in Deutschland: Die Zigeuner’ (‘Asylum in Germany: The Gypsies’, 36/​1990), ‘Ansturm der Armen’ (‘Onslaught of the Poor’, 37/​1991), and ‘Asyl: Die Politiker versagen’ (‘Asylum: The Politicians Fail’, 15/​1992). By 1994, the number of foreigners living in West Germany had reached nearly 7 million, in part due to the many people seeking asylum there. In the Eastern states, xenophobia was also on the rise, mainly propelled by the young neo-​ Nazis who were becoming increasingly organized now that they could connect with Right-​wing groups in the West and abroad. While East German officials had attempted to write these young people off as ‘rowdys’ or merely misbehaving youth, these young people had started to pose a real danger not just for People of Colour living in the East, but also for East Germany’s public image. In 1988, for example, neo-​Nazi skins in East Berlin vandalized a historic Jewish cemetery.

The Violent Aftermath of Reunification All of these tensions escalated at the moment of reunification, when a feeling of unified, national identity clashed with the diverse reality of German society. Some of the most violent results of this nationalist fervour were arsonist attacks which took place both in the East, where an asylum seeker’s home was set fire to in Rostock in 1992, and in the West, where a Turkish German family’s home was set on fire in Solingen in 1993, resulting in five deaths. One of the most important cultural responses to this violence following reunification was Advanced Chemistry’s song ‘Fremd im eigenen Land’ (‘Stranger in My Own Country’), released in 1992. Advanced Chemistry is one of the pioneer groups of German hip hop and one of the first groups to choose to rap in German and address social issues in their lyrics. Stemming from Heidelberg, the group consisted of three rappers: two Black Germans and one son of an Italian guest worker. The song begins with a news report about the arson attack in Rostock. Then following the news report, Black German rapper Torch asserts his belonging to the national

428   Priscilla Layne community by stating he has a German passport, but even though he is a citizen and obeys the laws, he gets interrogated because of his dark skin. He believes the problem is that people believe ‘a real German must also look German—​blue eyes, blond hair, then you’re okay’ (Göktürk et al., 2005, p. 116). In the song, Advanced Chemistry also addresses the political climate following reunification. Another member of the group, Linguist, raps that at first he was excited about this historic event, but this excitement quickly dissipated when incidents of racist violence filled the news.16 He continues ‘. . . it’s never been so bad as it is now! Politician types talk a lot but remain cold and calculating . . . a new seat in the Bundestag with every flash of the camera; there they pass a new law. Of course, asylum seekers must leave, and no one messes with the fascists!’ (Göktürk et al., 2005, p. 118). This same sentiment was also expressed in the essay, ‘1990: Home/​land and Unity from an Afro-​German Perspective,’ by Black German poet May Ayim (1960–​1996), in which Ayim theorizes what might lie behind this nationalist, racist fervour. Ayim suggests that despite claims by either country that they had left fascism behind, East and West Germans’ shared past of fascism and racism had always been in their midst. And this is what erupts when the two estranged siblings are reunited in 1990. Ayim’s charge is that because East and West Germans grew up in separate cultures, they may feel different, but they are still linked by a common legacy. Ayim states, ‘the initial euphoria erupted as the joy of reunion between two relative strangers, trying to deny the fact that their relationship up to that point had been characterized by hostilities from a distance’ (2003, p. 45). Here Ayim draws attention to an important aspect of identity formation. If previously, West and East German identities had been defined in opposition to another, how would a unified German identity now be defined? If, in an era of nation-​states, identity formation must always take place in opposition to another, contrasting self with other, Ayim asks, who would be the Others against whom unified Germans defined themselves? Ayim writes, ‘I knew that even a German passport did not guarantee an invitation to the East-​West festivities. We sensed that along with the imminent intra-​German union a closing off from outside would ensue—​an outside that would include us. Our participation in the celebration was not invited’ (2003, p. 48). Thus, Ayim imagines that the hostilities once directed across the Wall will now be turned inward and directed at anyone who does not fit the new, white image of the Berlin Republic. It is therefore no surprise that Ayim notices that formerly taboo terms like ‘home, folk and fatherland were suddenly—​again—​on the lips of many’ (2003, p. 46). Ayim brings attention to these terms because they are typically associated with Nazi Germany. ‘Again making the rounds were words that had been used only with caution or even shunned in both German states since the Holocaust, with uninterrupted favor only in rightwing circles’ (2003, p. 46). 16 

Linguist, whose real name is Dr. Kofi Yakpo, is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics in the School of the Humanities at the University of Hong Kong.

IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY IN POST-UNIFICATION GERMANY    429

Conclusion By drawing attention to the nationalist and racist language on people’s tongues, Ayim suggests that the nationalistic euphoria of reunification has triggered the return of a repressed national chauvinism that people thought had been buried after 1945—​one example she gives of this is the renaming of the subway station in former East Berlin from Thälmann Street to Otto-​Grotewohl-​Street to M**r Street. Thälmann is a reference to Ernst Thälmann (1886-​1944), who became the leader of the Communist party, until his arrest by the Nazis in 1933. He was later assassinated in the concentration camp Buchenwald. Thälmann was celebrated as a hero in East Germany and the street, which was originally dubbed Kaiserhof when it opened in 1908, was renamed Thälmann Street in 1950. The name was changed once again, in 1986, to Otto-​Grotewohl-​Street, after a former East German Prime Minister; a change that lasted until 1991. Then, in 1991, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) argued that as a prominent member of the GDR’s Socialist Unity Party, Grotewohl should not be honoured with a street and the city named the street after a racist, anti-​Black term: m**r, which Black Germans referred to as M-​Strasse (Kühne, 2020). As Japanese-​German filmmaker Hito Steyrl points out in her documentary about legacies of colonialism and racism in Berlin, The Empty Center (1998), not only is M-​Strasse a return of Germany’s repressed colonial past, but the subway station’s walls were constructed from marble taken from Hitler’s chancellor’s office. Thus, this subway exists as a symbolic location where Germany’s colonial, Nazi, and socialist pasts converge. Perhaps an indication of how much attitudes and conversations have shifted since Ayim published her essay is the fact that, after decades of Black German protest to get the street name and subway stop changed, in summer 2020 first the Berlin Transit Authority and then the city itself chose to replace M-​Strasse with Black Germans’ suggestion of Anton Wilhelm Amo Street (‘Mohrenstraße in Berlin wird umbenannt’). Remarkably, part of what finally led to this change were protests against racism in the summer of 2020, which were inspired by German solidarity with George Floyd, the African American man who was murdered by police in Minnesota on 25 May 2020. This demonstrates the extent to which current conversations in Germany around identity and diversity are now always already connected to global conversations and movements.

Further Reading Chin, Rita (2009), The Guestworker Question in Postwar Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Chin, Rita, Heide Fehrenbach, and Geoff Eley (2010), After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press). Göktürk, Deniz, David Gramling, and Tony Kaes (2007), Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration, 1955–​2005 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).

430   Priscilla Layne Linke, Ulli (1999), German Bodies: Race and Representation after Hitler (New York: Routledge). Ogette, Typoka (2020), Exit Racism: Rassismus kritisch denken lernen (Münster: Unrast). Oguntoye, Katharina (2020), Schwarze Würzeln: Afro-​Deutsche Familiengeschichten von 1884 bis 1950 (Berlin: Orlanda).

Bibliography ‘1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany’ (2021), Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community. https://​www.bmi.bund.de/​Sha​redD​ocs/​pre​ssem​itte​ilun​gen/​EN/​2021/​01/​1700-​ years-​jew​ish-​life-​in-​germ​any.html (Accessed 24 June 2021). Advanced Chemistry (2005), ‘Foreign in My Own Country’, in Deniz Göktürk, David Gramling, and Tony Kaes (eds), Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration, 1955–​2005 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), pp. 116–​18. Ayim, May (2003), Blues in Black and White: A Collection of Essays, Poetry, and Conversations (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press). Ben-​Rafael, Eliezer (2015), ‘Germany’s Russian-​speaking Jews: Between Original, Present and Affective Homelands’, in Haim Fireberg (ed.), Being Jewish in 21st Century Germany (Berlin: DeGruyter), pp. 63–​80. Bösch, Frank and Phi Hong Su (2020), ‘ Competing Contexts of Reception in Refugee and Immigrant Incorporation: Vietnamese in West and East Germany’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Issue ahead-​of-​print, pp. 1–​19. Collins, Patricia Hills (2015), ‘Intersectionality’s Definitional Dilemmas’, Annual Review of Sociology 41, pp. 1–​20. Cornish, Matthew (2017), Performing Unification: History and Nation in German Theater after 1989 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Czollek, Max (2020), ‘Gegenwartsbewältigung’, in Fatma Aydemir and Hengameh Yaghoobifarah (eds), Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum (Berlin: fünf), pp.167–​181. Dean, Jasmin (2015), ‘Person/​People of Colo(u)r’, in Susan Arndt and Nadja Ofuatey-​Alazard (eds), Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht:(K)erben des Kolonialismus im Wissensarchiv deutsche Sprache (Münster: Unrast), pp. 597–​608. Eickelpasch, Rolf and Claudia Rademacher (2013), Identität (Münster: Unrast). Eggers, Maisha Maureen (2015), ‘Diversity/​Diversität’, in Susan Arndt and Nadja Ofuatey-​Alazard (eds), Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht:(K)erben des Kolonialismus im Wissensarchiv deutsche Sprache (Münster: Unrast), pp. 256–​63. El-​Tayeb, Fatima (2016), Undeutsch: Die Konstruktion der Anderen in der postmigrantischen Gesellschaft (Bielefeld: Transcript). Franz, Romeo, Christian Petry and Cornelia Wilß (2019), Mare Manuscha: Innenansichten aus Leben und Kultur der Sinti & Roma (Edition Faust: Kindle Edition), pp. 51–​53. ‘German population of migrant background rises to 21 million’ (2021), Deutsche Welle, https://​ www.dw.com/​en/​ger​man-​pop​ulat​ion-​of-​migr​ant-​bac​kgro​und-​rises-​to-​21-​mill​ion/​a-​54356​ 773 (Accessed 21 March 2021). Göktürk, Deniz, David Gramling and Tony Kaes (2007), Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration, 1955-​2005 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Grjasnowa, Olga (2014), All Russians Love Birch Trees (New York: Other Press). Hasters, Alice (2020), Was weisse Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen, aber wissen sollten. ‘Identität’, DWDS, https://​www.dwds.de/​wb/​Iden​tit%C3%A4t (Accessed 22 March 2021).

IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY IN POST-UNIFICATION GERMANY    431 Hund, Wulff (2017), Wie die Deutschen weiß wurden : kleine (Heimat)Geschichte des Rassismus (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler). Kühne, Anna, ‘Der Fall “Mohrenstraße”: Nach der Umbenennung der U-​Bahn-​Haltestelle Mohrenstraße regt sich Kritik am Vorgehen der BVG—​und an dem neuen Namensgeber: Der russische Komponist Glinka soll Antisemit gewesen sein’, Die Tageszeitung, 8 July 2020, p. 23. Lizarazu, Maria Roca (2020), ‘Integration ist definitiv nicht unser Anliegen, eher schon Desintegration. Postmigrant Renegotiations of Identity and Belonging in Contemporary Germany’, in Humanities 9(2). Martin, Peter (2001), Schwarze Teufel, edle Mohren: Afrikaner in Geschichte und Bewusstsein der Deutschen (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition). ‘Mohrenstraße in Berlin wird umbenannt’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 August 2020. Nobrega, Onur Suzan Kömürcü (2015), ‘Kanake’, in Susan Arndt and Nadja Ofuatey-​Alazard (eds), Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht:(K)erben des Kolonialismus im Wissensarchiv deutsche Sprache (Münster: Unrast), pp. 638–​643. Osman, Nedjo (2019), ‘Du weisst wie ich heisse?’, in Romeo Franz, Cornelia Wilß, Alexander Paul Englert, and Christian Petry (eds), Mare Manuscha: Innenansichten aus Leben und Kultur der Sinti & Roma (Frankfurt am Main: Edition Faust), pp. 51–​3. Popper, Nathaniel (2004), ‘Germany is Moving to End Mass Immigration of Jews from Russia’, Forward, 24 December 2004. https://​forw​ard.com/​news/​4029/​germ​any-​is-​mov​ing-​to-​end-​ mass-​immi​grat​ion-​of-​jews/​ (Accessed 31 March 2021). Poutrus, Patrice G (2019), Umkämpftes Asyl: Vom Nachkriegsdeutschland bis in die Gegenwart (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag). Randjelovic, Isodora (2015), ‘Zigeuner_​in’, in Susan Arndt and Nadja Ofuatey-​Alazard (eds), Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht:(K)erben des Kolonialismus im Wissensarchiv deutsche Sprache (Münster: Unrast), pp. 671–​6. Thränthardt, Dietrich (2002), ‘Include or Exclude: Discourses on Immigration in Germany’, Journal of International Migration and Integration 3(3), pp. 345–​62. ‘Vielfalt’ (2021), https://​www.dwds.de/​wb/​Vielf​alt (Accessed 22 March 2021). Wenzel, Olivia (2020), 1000 Serpentinen Angst (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer). Wischmann, Anke (2008), ‘The Absence of “Race” in German Discourses on Bildung. Rethinking Bildung with Critical Race Theory’, Race, Ethnicity and Education 21(4), pp. 471–​85. Yildiz, Erol (2006), ‘Identitätsdiskurs zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts’, Soziologische Revue 29, pp. 36–​50. Zantop, Susanne (1997), Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family and Nation in Precolonial German, 1770–​1870 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press)

CHAPTER 25

G ERM AN LITE RAT U RE , THEATRE, AND FI L M SINCE 19 9 0 Michael Braun

On 2 October 1990, on the eve of the first day of German unity, the literary critic Frank Schirrmacher published an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung with the headline ‘Abschied von der Literatur der Bundesrepublik’—​‘Farewell to the Literature of the Federal Republic’: The literature of the Federal Republic of Germany turned forty-​three. Like that of the GDR, it too is coming to an end. Not today, perhaps, but tomorrow. Then a large part of this literature will be the memory of a country that no longer exists, and the voice of a society whose sounds have become different. Since it’s like saying goodbye while you’re still alive, those involved avoid talking about it. But one sees the rupture. What was present a moment ago drifts away (Schirrmacher, 2015, p. 271).

With his first sentence, Schirrmacher made a new calculation. 1947, forty-​three years earlier, was the founding year of Gruppe 47, a literary and politically influential authors’ association. Gruppe 47 ‘invented’ the German literary establishment (Böttiger, 2012, p. 15), and its authors Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Uwe Johnson, and Martin Walser had written the definitive novels of German literature. Schirrmacher’s essay recognizes the end and a turning point of contemporary German literature by opening a door for stories, plays, and films of and in reunified Germany in a new, ambitious way.

GERMAN LITERATURE, THEATRE, AND FILM SINCE 1990    433

The Literature of the Berlin Republic The fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification are the most striking political caesura in the history of post-​war German literature.1 After literature had kept its distance from politics in previous decades (Zürcher Literaturstreit, 1966), renounced political influence (Kursbuch 15, 1968), and the artists in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had struggled with the proclamation of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), the East German communist state party, that there will be ‘no taboos’ for literature any longer, the political space opened up in a fundamental way in 1989/​90. On 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall was breached and the GDR disintegrated. On 3 October 1990, German unification was accomplished. Berlin was once again recognized as the capital of the united state and since 1999 has been the seat of parliament and government. The writers’ association of the GDR was dissolved in 1990, the academies of arts in East and West Berlin merged in 1992, and East and West PEN united in 1998. The open-​ ended Berlin Republic has thus become the greatest common denominator of the contemporary period of German literature (Brenner, 2011, p. 339; Braun, 2011, pp. 26ff.). Central themes discussed in the literature of the Berlin Republic come from the realm of politics: • the birth of the reunited nation and the question of national identity (e.g. in Michael Kleeberg’s novel Ein Garten im Norden, 1998, and in Durs Grünbein’s early poems Grauzone morgens, 1988); • Germany’s role in Europe and in relation to neighbouring countries (e.g. in Adolf Muschg’s essay Vergessen wir Europa?, 2017, and Robert Menasse’s novel Die Hauptstadt, 2017); • German and European memory cultures in literature (Walter Kempowski’s collective chronicle Das Echolot, 1993–​2005, is the most comprehensive work of German memory culture, whilst Herta Müller’s novel Atemschaukel, 2009, about the Romanian-​German deportation to Russian labour camps marks a decisive aesthetic turn); • the challenges posed by the Balkan wars of the 1990s (e.g. in Marica Bodrožić’s stories Tito ist tot, 2002, and in Norbert Gstrein’s novel Das Handwerk des Tötens, 2010), global civil wars (e.g. in Lukas Bärfuss’ postcolonial Ruanda novel Hundert

1  The

events that took place between the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, and the day of German unification on 3 October 1990, have many names: Wende (turn), peaceful revolution, the process of German unity, German reunification. It has become customary to distinguish between the ‘Wende’ and the ‘Wiedervereinigung’. The period of the Wende stretches from the first demonstrations in East Berlin, Dresden, and Leipzig in the summer of 1989 to the first free elections to the Volkskammer on 18 March 1990, after which the process of reunification (economic, monetary, and social union) began (Grub, 2003, p. 8).

434   Michael Braun Tage, 2008), and terrorism after 9/​11 (e.g. in Katharina Hacker’s Die Habenichtse, 2006, and Husch Josten’s Hier sind Drachen, 2017) and the literary insistence on human rights (Lützeler, 2009, pp. 55ff.); • the refugee crisis of 2015 and the subsequent problems of migration and immigration (Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Gehen, ging, gegangen, 2015, is the most influential example); • climate change and the Fridays for future movement (e.g. in John von Düffel’s novel Der brennende See, 2020); and, last but not least: • health policy since the Coronavirus pandemic (Juli Zeh’s Über Menschen, 2021, is the first Coronavirus novel of German literature). The political context of German literature, theatre, and film is a cultural network of institutions, media, and artists that is unique in Europe and indeed worldwide. This is due to German history in which the concept of Kulturnation always was more powerful than the idea of Staatsnation. Since Herder, the idea of a cultural nation never fit into the space of a nation-​state. Nowadays German is the most widely spoken native language in Europe. It is the official language in Austria, and in the German-​speaking parts of Switzerland and Romania. A German nation containing all native speakers of German has never existed. According to the Grundgesetz (Basic Law) of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), culture is a matter for the individual states (Bundesländer). These states, together with the cities and municipalities, are responsible for 83 per cent of the public funds, which are dedicated to culture (approximately €9.5 billion annually in total). In the spirit of the Grundgesetz, it is the task of politics to create and secure the framework in which culture can act freely. Section 5.3 of the Grundgesetz guarantees this freedom for the fine arts as well as the freedom of science, research, and teaching (‘Kunst und Wissenschaft, Forschung und Lehre sind frei’). Experts are divided about the value of an additional section that describes culture as a State Goal (‘Staatsziel’) with the amendment that the state protects and supports culture (section 20b: ‘Der Staat schützt und fördert die Kultur’). With the end of the division of Germany, the fundamental political question of whether there is one, two, or more German literatures has been settled (Peitsch, 2009, p. 9). The original political positions that literature has taken since the eighteenth century are no longer irreconcilably opposed. There is, on the one hand, the classical aesthetics of autonomy assuming that art must be ‘above all influence of time’ (Schiller, 1993, vol. V, p. 870) and that literature therefore has no place in politics. On the other hand, there is the litterature engagée, renewed by French existentialism, which goes to extremes with political messages and understands writing as action: ‘parler c’est agir’ (Sartre, 1948, p. 29). The author in post-​unification Germany does not want to be a ‘political writer’ (Handke, 1972, p. 26) nor an engaged author (‘engagierter Schriftsteller’) (Grass, 2020, vol. 20, p. 196). When the political enters the arts, it often appears in picaresque novels, film comedies, in ironic poems in the tradition of Heine (such as in Enzensberger’s Zukunftsmusik, 1991, and Kiosk, 1999) or with post-​heroic everyday heroes (Bröckling, 2020, pp. 196–​ 97). Only the Nobel Prize winners Günter Grass (1999) and Peter Handke (2019) have

GERMAN LITERATURE, THEATRE, AND FILM SINCE 1990    435 intervened momentously in the political events of contemporary history: Grass with his critical Israel poem (2012) and Handke with his pro-​Serbian travel book (Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina oder Gerechtigkeit für Serbien, 1996). Grass and Handke are outstanding, though differently committed, political authors. Their works represent a claim to national representation. The author speaks as teacher and conscience of the nation. But this claim becomes questionable in the literary debates after 1990. When Günter Grass revealed in his autobiography Beim Häuten der Zwiebel (2006), that he had been a member of the Waffen SS during the last years of the war, this not only damaged the author’s credibility, but also the political significance of his statements about Germany and the Germans. It has led to fierce cultural-​ political controversies. In fact, the literary controversy is the preferred political format of contemporary literature (Weninger, 2004). In general, one can state: the concept of the political has lost its distinctiveness for literature in Germany after 1990 (Neuhaus et al, 2019, p. 6). The political in literature is much more than just impetus, theme, or motif. It is a universal design element in cultural formats, a staging art, a narrative. One can no longer call texts, plays, or films apolitical simply because they do not take a position on issues of the political establishment. Rather, literature is always political when it talks about politics. This, in turn, brings it close to political ‘state narratives’ (Staatserzählungen) that provide orientation and identity, reflect lessons from historical experiences, and question their own role (Münkler et al, 2018, pp. 9ff.).

Outrage over Outrage: Literary Debates of the 1990s The literary controversies after 1990 were all political debates. They were ignited by a great number of authors and their works: by Christa Wolf and her story Was bleibt (1990), by the entanglements of former GDR authors with state security (1991), by Rolf Hochhuth’s Wende drama Wessis in Weimar—​Szenen aus einem besetzten Land (1993), Botho Strauß’s Spiegel essay Anschwellender Bocksgesang (1993) and also by Grass’s novel on German unity Ein weites Feld (1995) and Handke’s Gerechtigkeit für Serbien (1996). Crucially important contributions were also Günter Grass’s Friedenspreis lecture (1997) on the Turkish writer Yaşar Kemal (Grass 2020, vol. 23, pp. 197-​210), W.G. Sebald’s Zurich lectures on literature and air war (1997), Martin Walser’s Paulskirchen speech about the new Berlin Holocaust memorial (1998), Grass’s polemical Israel poem (2012), Michael Kleeberg’s Frankfurt poetics lecture on the author as a citizen and writer (2017), and not least Uwe Tellkamp’s Dresden remarks on the discourse of German immigration policy (2018). All debates touched on stimulating topics, such as the political role of the intellectual, about their public echo, about the difference between nation and Europe, homeland and cosmopolitanism, about historical memory and fears for the future, about images of perpetrators and victims, but above all about the question of the freedom of the arts.

436   Michael Braun Accordingly, these controversies had a significant effect across the media. These debates pointed out the political elements of culture and its polarized artists, critics, and the culturally-​aware public. Privacy and political status are just as difficult to separate in a literary controversy as are the questions of the aesthetic quality of the work of art on the one hand, and the moral integrity of the author on the other. These questions often tempt readers to publicly ostracize the authors of supposedly politically incorrect or discriminatory statements. Since 2019, this so-​called ‘Cancel Culture’ has been a much-​discussed political phenomenon. When the author defends his controversial work and vouches for it with his authority, the moral judgement of ‘bad’ author overlaps with the aesthetic judgement of ‘good’ book. This turns the literary debate into a political scandal (Barner, 2006, pp. 374–​80; Bluhm, 2004, pp. 61–​73). Literature as political scandal requires an occasion, an initial text printed or performed, which does not adhere to the unwritten rules of the cultural establishment. This initial text, however, only becomes scandalous through a medium (a critic, an author, or an important public figure) that establishes a violation of cultural ritual. The effects of literary scandal are difficult to calculate and can turn against the original intentions of their author, who can receive applause from the wrong side. Botho Strauß and Martin Walser, for example, had to put up with Right-​wing extremist appropriations of their public statements. The first major debate of the post-​Wende period was the controversy over Christa Wolf (Anz, 1995). It was at the same time a dispute about the political role of GDR authors in the new all-​German literature. After the end of the GDR, did the GDR writers ‘win or fail’? So asked the literary critic Marcel Reich-​Ranicki in the television talk show The Literary Quartet on 30 November 1989. Was the ‘flattering super-​and substitute function of artists and writers’ now passé? This is where the songwriter Wolf Biermann intervened. Did the authors from the GDR sufficiently defend themselves against the persecution of colleagues who were critical of the regime? This was the central question discussed at the Bertelsmann Foundation’s Writers’ Congress at Cäcilienhof Castle in Potsdam on 10 June 1990. And what remains of the GDR literature after the end of the GDR? Answers to these questions were expected from Christa Wolf ’s approximately 100-​page novella Was bleibt (‘What Remains’), published in 1990. In this short book a female narrator recounts the experiences, fears, and self-​doubt of a day in 1979 under the surveillance of the East German state security. Christa Wolf was not only a figurehead of GDR literature, ‘a kind of female Heinrich Böll of the East’ (Magenau, 2002, p. 13); she also enjoyed high international recognition and was considered a promising German candidate for the Nobel Prize in 1989. Together with other GDR intellectuals, she had advocated a reform path for the ‘experiment of socialism’ beyond German unification. On 4 November 1989, she gave a brilliant speech on the ‘language of change’ (Die Sprache der Wende) at Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. Christa Wolf ’s Was bleibt is the first and most significant GDR book after the end of the GDR. The question mark missing from the title can be interpreted as an attempt to

GERMAN LITERATURE, THEATRE, AND FILM SINCE 1990    437 save the political legacy of the GDR. At the same time, Wolf ’s book quotes the final verse from Hölderlin’s hymn Andenken (1803): ‘Was bleibet aber, stiften die Dichter’ (‘what remains comes from the poets’). Christa Wolf thus makes clear what remains after the end of the GDR: the literature of its poets. But it was precisely this that the first critics of Wolf ’s story radically questioned. Almost simultaneously, on 1 and 2 June 1990, a few days before the book was published, reviews by Ulrich Greiner and Frank Schirrmacher appeared in Die Zeit and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Their accusations can be summarized as follows:

1. perpetrator biography as victim biography: the privileged ‘state poet’ described herself as a victim of the state and state security; 2. much ado about nothing: Wolf ’s accusations directed at herself no longer change anything because her narrative comes too late. Written in ‘June–​July 1979’ and revised in the ‘fall of 1989’, as the book’s blurb states, its publication would have been a minor sensation in GDR times, and the author might have been expatriated; 3. trivialization of the SED dictatorship: Wolf ’s book is silent on the dates of political repression (uprising of 17 June 1953, building of the Wall in 1961, Prague Spring in 1968, martial law in Poland 1981–​83); 4. mendacious style and GDR Biedermeier: this historical reality is obscured by a sentimental genre picture of a privileged writer. The first three accusations concern the political content of the narrative. Only stylistic criticism provides aesthetic criteria. But the artistic case was not at issue at all. The political goal of the predominantly West German literary critics was to topple the writer Christa Wolf from the high pedestal of GDR literature. Wolf ’s defenders, led by Grass, recalled her critical stance in the GDR and condemned the criticism as an inquisition. It was the ‘Gesinnungsästhetik’, the moral integrity of the author, that critics and apologists were arguing about. Little attention was paid to the literary quality of the narrative and the precarious role of political self-​criticism. What remains is a book of self-​accusation, of the search for ‘another language’ (‘eine andere Sprache’, Wolf, 1990, p. 7), of the awareness of political failures, of the guilty conscience of not having done enough, and of not having written critically enough. ‘Believed in the false gods for too long’ (‘Zu lange an die falschen Götter geglaubt’), Wolf ’s diary Ein Tag im Jahr 1960–​2000 (2003) reads under the date of 27 September 1990. In the summer and autumn of 1990 the Wolf controversy developed into a fundamental debate. Now it was about the role of intellectuals in East and West Germany, about their position on national unity, about their contribution to an identity of the Germans of whatever kind. Alongside fierce opponents of German unity (Grass, 2020, vol. 22, pp. 410–​41) for whom the memory of Auschwitz prevents the return of Germans to a ‘normal’ nation, there were also enthusiastic supporters of reunification (above all Martin Walser) as well as cautious sympathizers of the idea of the cultural nation (Bruyn, 1999, p. 57) and ironic commentators. The latter see the utopias of political modernity

438   Michael Braun (equality, internationalism, administrative state) redeemed in a dubious way and welcome an everyday life that makes do without prophets (Enzensberger, 1997, pp. 77ff.).

Candidates for the Great German Novel in 1995 Alongside diaries and essays (such as Thomas Rosenlöcher, 1990; Hans Magnus Enzensberger, 1997; Cees Nooteboom, 2009), it is the novel that participated most strongly in the literary discourse of the post-​reunification period. It becomes political as soon as it tells the renewed nation comprehensively about its new identity. To this end, it is useful to distinguish between state and nation. Narratives that establish the state are not so much intended to support the state as a functioning system of order and law as to endow the national self-​image with unifying narratives, founding legends, and memory rituals. Herfried Münkler clearly identifies four such German grand narratives: the ‘European narrative of preventing war’ and the victimizing notion of sacrifice, as well as the ‘occident narrative’ and the ‘global player narrative’ (Münkler et al, 2018, pp. 169–​96). Aleida Assmann distinguishes the classic German national narratives of the post-​war period, namely peacekeeping and the rule of law, from the current European lessons of memory culture and human rights (Assmann, 2018). The political site of these grand narratives is the great German novel (cf. Bohrer, 1995). The discourse around the great German novel borrows from the tradition of the Great American novel, which dates back to the founding period of post-​Civil War reunified America. It served to read the country as a book and to free American culture from the influence of its European anxiety (cf. Buell, 2014). Whether the great German novel that was supposed to ‘fill in the gaps in meaning of the political push for change’ actually existed is debatable (Barner, 2006, p. 965). In any case, literary critics and the political public expected it. Numerous authors and publishers have catered to these wishful expectations. One example is Michael Kumpfmüller’s novel Hampels Fluchten (2000) about a bed salesman who moves with his parents from Jena to Regensburg after the war, re-​christens his sons Konrad and Walter with the names of the founding fathers of the two German states, Adenauer and Ulbricht, then goes back to the East in 1962, and dies there in 1988. The book was celebrated by some as the great German novel of the turn (Die Zeit, 17 August 2000; FAZ, 6 July 2000), by others as a comfortable morality tale, a ‘dessert version of German history’ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 26 September 2000; The Guardian, 16 November 2002). Others have referred to it as a ‘history of the whole of Germany from within and below at the same time’ (Krekeler, 2000). The prerequisite for the great German novel was German unity. Previously, the great thing about the German novel had been seen only in the realm of society and history, from Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks (1901) to Günter Grass’s Die Blechtrommel (1959). Now, however, the novel had new material, a national projection surface and

GERMAN LITERATURE, THEATRE, AND FILM SINCE 1990    439 an open history. Uwe Tellkamp’s Dresden novel Der Turm (2008) tells of the decline of the better society in the GDR in the tradition of the Bildungsroman. Lutz Seiler’s Deutschlandroman Stern 111 (2020) is the story of the power vacuum of 1989/​90 and the political role played by the media in this time of structural change (‘Stern 111’ was the name of an East German radio set). In 1995, several novels appeared that were considered contenders for the great German novel: Günter Grass’s Ein weites Feld, Thomas Hettche’s Nox, Erich Loest’s Nikolaikirche, Thomas Brussig’s Helden wie wir, Reinhard Jirgl’s Abschied von den Feinden, Bernhard Schlink’s Der Vorleser, Christian Kracht’s Faserland, and Hans Pleschinski’s Brabant. Hettche’s and Brussig’s novels tell German history as burlesque stories about the fall of the Wall and the Wende. Kracht describes the ego trip of a wealth-​addled product brand fetishist through the Bonn Republic, from Sylt to Zurich. Loest’s Nikolaikirche adds to the immediate prehistory of the civil right movement, especially in Leipzig; Jirgl’s novel contributes the post-​war story of flight and expulsion. Schlink’s novel combines the national narratives of memory culture and prevention of war with the central questions of whether and what can still be learned from German history. In his novel, Grass talks about the state narrative of averting war as a ‘never again’ appeal. He stages a moral-​ pedagogical memory culture performance. Pleschinski, however, has his characters heed the European lessons of occidental narratives and human rights. He focuses on the positive rather than on Grass’s more negative legacy of German history. Both novels certainly claim to speak for an entire Germany, aware of its history and capable of talking about its identity, national as well as European, with its wealth of symbols and emblems. Günter Grass’s novel is probably the most hotly contested novel about Germany after reunification. What was controversial was not so much the content, which immersed itself into the German history of the late nineteenth century, but precisely the claim of the novel to make German history great through depth. On 21 August 1995, the news magazine Der Spiegel published an angry open letter from Marcel Reich-​Ranicki in this spirit. The literary critic read his best enemy the riot act, saying that the novel was ‘completely and utterly mishandled’ because the ‘megalomaniac’ author had simply failed to live up to his self-​imposed mission of giving Germany a timely history. Reich-​Ranicki’s polemic was intensified by the Spiegel cover, which showed the critic literally tearing the novel apart. This montage is reminiscent of both Rembrandt’s image of the smashing of the tablets of the law (1659) and of the epically torn unity of Germany. In an afterword to the new edition of Ein weites Feld in the Theodor Fontane commemorative year 2019, Daniel Kehlmann turned against literary criticism’s narrowing of the novel to the present. Grass, Kehlmann wrote, was ‘not concerned with the great diagnosis of the present, but with penetrating the present and its preconditions with the means of sovereign aesthetics’ (Grass, 2019, p. 7). Literary greatness in Grass’s novel is the greatness of other authors to whom he refers, of Theodor Fontane as a critical companion of the years of the founding of the Empire in the nineteenth century and of Hans Joachim Schädlich as a writerly contemporary witness of the divided and the united Germany. Fonty is the name of a character in the book. His companion is called Hoftaller—​a transposition of syllables with the character

440   Michael Braun of Schädlich’s novel Tallhover. It is thus a borrowed representation, a greatness on the shoulders of giants, a fantasy of grandiosity. In Ein weites Feld, as in The Tin Drum, an omnipotent voice banishes fear and shame and empowers the narration of a moral authority (Morsbach, 2006, p. 166). This fantasy of superiority in the work is evident in two chapters of Grass’s novel. ‘Placed in front of the monument’ and ‘Spoken down from the monument’ (­chapters 28 and 29) tell the reader how the main characters, Theo Wuttke, called Fonty, and his Mephistophelian companion Hoftaller visit the Fontane monument in Neuruppin and there encounter a mirror figure of the author Günter Grass, who says: ‘Look, there is plenty of room next to our friend’ (Grass, 2019, pp. 579ff.). Thus, Grass has set himself into his work here as a monument to stage the politically great in the fantasy of greatness. A similarly nationally coded scene is found in Pleschinski’s novel Brabant. It is about the Atlantic voyage of a multinational European cultural society that wants to protest against the construction of a Disney theme park in Rome by firing a warning shot in Washington DC in the 1990s. It is both a ship of fools and a means of transportation for virtually all modern political discourses of Europe, the late humanist as well as the post-​colonialist, the universalist as well as the national-​cultural sympathizer, the pro-​European as well as the anti-​American. In the chapter ‘Omaha Beach’, which reverses the day of the American landing in Normandy in 1944 to the invasion of culturally outraged Europeans, we find a ‘testament to the Germans’ (Pleschinski, 2004, p. 553). It is written by the antiquities scholar Erich Müller, who represents the Germans as a character in the novel. Müller’s ‘Testament’ is, in the tradition of Hölderlin’s fatherland scolding in Hyperion (1797/​99) and of Thomas Mann’s radio addresses to German listeners (An deutsche Hörer, 1940–​45), an appeal to the peace and love of nations, but at the same time also the document of a search for what great things the Germans can leave to the world: ‘The real artists never created German art, but art for themselves, sometimes for others. The artists’ ties permeate all times and places. The gold background behind Gothic Madonnas comes from Byzantium, all columns are Greek. In which country would pictures, sculptures and sounds from whatever soul lose their expression? The artists, dear Germans, are your world home’ (Pleschinski, 2004, p. 557). Pleschinski’s character protests against the war and the Holocaust being the ‘yardstick’ for the Germans’ heritage, and he reminds us that Germany was a ‘trading country’, had emperors with ‘nobility of soul’ and early democrats who planted their ‘tree of liberty as early as 1792 in Mainz’ (Pleschinski, 2004, p. 556). Looming large in the political image of Germany are the positive traditions of republic and democracy, of progress and freedom, law and good order.

Germany in the Political Poem The question of what holds Germany together is particularly explosive in the political poem. The Germany issue featuring in poems has a long history: from the

GERMAN LITERATURE, THEATRE, AND FILM SINCE 1990    441 Germania myth going back to Tacitus and the ‘furor teutonicus’ tangible in the Wotan myth, to the ‘Vaterländische Gesänge’ in the eighteenth century and the liberation war poetry in the nineteenth century. Part of this tradition are also the hurrah patriotism after the founding of the Reich in 1870/​7 1 and the exile poetry, the politically-​committed poems of the 1970s, as well as the anthology of poems on German current affairs in the series ‘Politik und Lyrik’ of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit (2011). After 1990, Germany has a different status in political poetry than before. The new factual reference of the political poems is unity, which was established peacefully and in free exercise of the right of self-​determination for the first time in German history. Unity hymns, however, are not to be found among the political poems of the 1990s. These poems are, as Walter Erhart summarizes it, ‘less celebratory than rather rich in catastrophe, less hopeful than rather devastating, less utopian than rather disorienting, less stabilizing than rather ego-​threatening’ (Erhart, 1997, p. 165). There is no doubt about how much the theme of the Wende and ‘unity’ dominated the literary scene after 1989. Even a medical encyclopaedia—​which was published with such high circulation numbers literary writers can only dream of—​makes a non-​serious contribution to the fall of the Wall with the gluttonous ‘stone louse’ (Loriot, 1998, p. 1500). The number of poets’ immediate reactions to the political events of 1989/​90 was, however, relatively limited. The anthologies Grenzfallgedichte (1991), Von einem Land und vom anderen (1993), and Nachkrieg und Unfrieden (new edition 1995) contain over 255 poems from the period after 1989. Only eight poems have ‘Germany’ as a noun or ‘German’ as an adjective in the title. The traditional German vocabulary is absent from the poems on German unity, as is the patriotic pathos of nineteenth-​century liberation war poetry and early twentieth-​century national panegyric. Apparently, the new German unity, which had previously been almost taboo in wide circles of German literature, had left many poets speechless. Many of the poems also are by little-​known poets and of aesthetically unconvincing quality. Günter Grass’s sonnets to Germany (Novemberland, 1933) describe ‘the country and its people’ as a divorced couple and see ‘aesthetics’ suspended in the ‘raging present’ (Grass, 2020, vol. 1, pp. 285 and 299). Heinz Czechowski’s poem Die überstandene Wende, written in November 1989, captures the perplexity in the face of an unpredictable future in a harmless play on words: ‘Was hinter uns liegt, Wissen wir. Was vor uns liegt, Wird uns unbekannt bleiben, Bis wir es Hinter uns haben.’ (‘What lies behind us, /​We know. What lies ahead, /​Will remain unknown to us, /​Until we have it /​Behind us.’) (Conrady, 1993, p. 7).

442   Michael Braun The most famous and representative poem on German unity is Volker Braun’s Das Eigentum: ‘Da bin ich noch: mein Land geht in den Westen. KRIEG DEN HÜTTEN FRIEDE DEN PALÄSTEN Ich selber habe ihm den Tritt versetzt. Es wirft sich weg und seine magre Zierde. Dem Winter folgt der Sommer der Begierde. Und ich kann bleiben wo der Pfeffer wächst. Und unverständlich wird mein ganzer Text. Was ich niemals besaß wird mir entrissen. Was ich nicht lebte, werd ich ewig missen. Die Hoffnung lag im Weg wie eine Falle. Mein Eigentum, jetzt habt ihrs auf der Kralle. Wann sag ich wieder mein und meine alle.’ (Conrady, 1993, p. 51)2 In the tradition of medieval proverbial poetry, the speaker laments something that he could, if ever, call his property only in the spiritual sense. The place of the political poet is between the winter of the Wende and the ‘summer of desire’, which resemble a second German economic miracle. His pose is that of the melancholic, as in Dürer’s famous engraving Melencolia I (1514), sitting in the midst of a colourful world of things, but unable to speak to anyone. The second verse twists the slogan ‘Peace to the huts, war to the palaces’ from Büchner’s pamphlet Der hessische Landbote (1834). The palace is an allusion to the East Berlin Palace of the Republic, inaugurated in 1976. If Braun uses ‘Palästen’ to make an insipid rhyme with the ‘Westen’, he now sees German unification as a declaration of war on the ‘huts’ of the working class. It appears as an irony of history that the ‘palace’, first the seat of the State Council, later the People’s Chamber, then the GDR’s temple of culture, was demolished between 2006 and 2009. In its place, the façade of the old Berlin City Palace was rebuilt; in December 2020, the Humboldt Forum was digitally opened here.

Re-​theatralization and Representation: Politics on Stage When contemporary theatre becomes political, it stages political conditions, the state of the nation, the cohesion of Europe, the treatment of refugees, and the Coronavirus 2 

There is an online translation by Michael Hoffmann: https://​www.poet​ryin​tern​atio​nal.org/​pi/​poem/​ 2409/​auto/​0/​0/​Vol​ker-​Braun/​Prope​rty/​en/​tile (Access 6 January 2022).

GERMAN LITERATURE, THEATRE, AND FILM SINCE 1990    443 pandemic (such as in Heinz Simon Keller’s Cologne dramatization of Anna Seghers’ refugee novel Transit in 2020), but also the representation of clichés and the role of an audience that plays along as a group of ‘spect-​actors’ (Augusto Boal). After the fall of the Wall, new provocative productions came together from East and West. Elfriede Jelinek switched from political dialogue to post-​dramatic discourse on Germany. Her drama Die Schutzbefohlenen (2013, revised 2015) is set against the backdrop of a restrictive European refugee policy. The text that refers to Aischylos’ tragedy Hiketiden (‘Supplices’) has no dialogue and no named characters; it is a long prose-​monologue, spoken by a chorus. This chorus holds up a mirror to the host society which is unwilling to listen to the refugees' stories. The productions on German and Austrian stages dealt very differently with the political potential of Jelinek’s play. The question of how refugees in Jelinek’s ‘Die Schutzbefohlenen’ and Milo Rau’s play ‘Die Europa Trilogie‘ (‘The Europe Trilogy’, 2014-​16) come onto the stage and how the audience sees and hears them depends on the language as well as on the actors with their masks and costumes, and on the interrelations between integration and exclusion. Ferdinand von Schirach is a criminal defence lawyer in his main profession. His novels and dramas have been bestsellers since 2009; they have been recorded in many multimedia formats and have been discussed widely, often controversially. Schirach’s topics are civil rights, above all the institutionally guaranteed human dignity. This is based on Kant’s idealistic (deontological) philosophy of law. For Kant, ‘dignity’ is an absolute inner value of man, which has no price, no counter-​value (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 1785). Whoever touches this dignity of man violates a high legal principle of our constitution. This is precisely what Schirach’s drama Terror, 2015, demonstrates. A fighter pilot has shot down a plane hijacked by terrorists and about to crash into a packed soccer stadium. The pilot confesses to the crime. He violated the law. However in such a case, shooting down was at times legally permissible; the corresponding paragraph 3 in section 14 of the Aviation Security Act of 15 January 2015, was conceded by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2016. Did the pilot act correctly and should he be acquitted? Or is the charge of ‘murder in 164 cases’ justified, so that the pilot should be punished? Terror develops this conflict in the form of a courtroom drama. It approaches the problem with witness testimony, cross-​ examination, closing arguments by the prosecutor and defence lawyer, audience verdicts, and alternative sentencing pronouncements by the judge. With the help of simple classical means, the actions of the characters on stage are supposed to trigger the Aristotelean emotions eléos and phóbos (‘lament and shudder’, ‘fear and pity’) in the spectator, in order to free him in this way from the terrifying state of excitement (catharsis). But the question remains how the pilot is to be judged on the basis of his deed: as a hero who sacrifices a ‘few’ people to save many more, as a pitiable victim of an extreme dilemma, as a lawbreaker who flouts the constitution and military order, or even as a multiple murderer? Thus Schirach transfers this question of conscience from the pilot to the audience. The latter has to make a decision that is moral—​and no longer just legal. Schirach’s drama is about ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, about guilt and atonement, about affects and their taming, about fate. The spectator has to evaluate and comment on the events like the chorus in the ancient drama, because

444   Michael Braun they are part of a democratic polis. The spectator thus becomes the judge of whether a fundamental value can be sacrificed in the name of another. What is therefore important to the playwrights of the present is to step out of the teaching theatre into political and social life: ‘We will not educate anyone. But theater is self-​made, it is not fake, it does not disappear into the net, it is not monitored and manipulated,’ said Sibylle Berg on 9 December 2017, at the conference ‘Theatre and Politics’ of the Deutsche Bühnenverein in Hofgeismar. When playwright and director Falk Richter brought Fear to Berlin’s Schaubühne in the autumn of 2015, a play about Right-​wing nationalist tendencies, there was protest and a lawsuit for allegedly violating the personality rights of a politician. In a radio interview, Richter said, ‘What can theater do? It can educate, it can first show that this is the situation, it can also exacerbate it, it can also provoke in order to demand an attitude from the audience to take a stance on what is happening right now. It can also do completely different things: It can work with refugees, it can also make a production with Pegida supporters. And say, well, we’ll deal with them in a dialogue’ (Deutschlandfunk, 18 January 2016).

Between Retro-​R ealism and Post-​Heroism: The Politics of Film in Germany After 1990, German film returned to politics in classic narratives and genres. It emerged primarily in the Defa studios in Babelsberg, which were reprivatized after the fall of the Wall. Under the artistic direction of Volker Schlöndorff the Defa studios became a centre of European film and television production in the 1990s, not least thanks to increased cooperation with American film companies (Hake, 2004, pp. 306ff). The Filmmuseum Berlin at Potsdamer Platz, which opened in 2000, and the annual Berlinale also underscore the importance of film in the German Republic. What is political about German film is above all its style. The first feature films about the GDR used the form of comedy to stage the longing for a state as it could have been, but never was. This Ostalgie—​an artificial word made up of ‘Ost’ and ‘nostalgia’—​is characterized in Leander Haußmann’s Sonnenallee (1999) and Wolfgang Becker’s Good-​bye, Lenin! (2003) as a peaceful and painless memory. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Das Leben der anderen (2006), which won the German and European Film Awards, counters this Ostalgie style with an ambivalent plot in which the writer, who was once loyal to the state, becomes a dissident and the Stasi guard becomes his secret protector. The film is a political thriller about censorship, conspiracies, politics, and art. It demystifies the myth of a supposedly ‘commode dictatorship’ (Grass, 2019, p. 318) and reflects a critical memory of the GDR. The TV co-​production Babylon Berlin (2017–​20) about the political anarchy and cultural euphoria of the Weimar Republic, the historicizing documentaries about the Berlin Wall by British film director Cynthia Beatt with actress Tilda Swinton, Cycling The

GERMAN LITERATURE, THEATRE, AND FILM SINCE 1990    445 Frame (1988) and Cycling The Invisible Frame (2009), and Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Werk ohne Autor (2018), a biopic about Gerhard Richter (Braun, 2020, p. 21), as well as more recent films about terrorism in Germany in the 1970s, Volker Schlöndorff ’s Die Stille nach dem Schuss (2000) and Uli Edel’s Der Baader-​Meinhof-​Komplex (2008), also combine the claim of historical documentation with a differentiated interpretation of the main protagonists as both perpetrators and victims (Orth et al, 2020). Anti-​modernist aesthetics, idealizing camera work, reduced Hollywood style, retro-​realism, and not least a politicization of adventure and the hero’s journey (Seeßlen, 2017) are the stylistic characteristics of political cinema in Germany. Prime examples are the first German historical film about Hitler, Der Untergang (2004) by Oliver Hirschbiegel, and in Operation Valkyrie (2008), Bryan Singer’s film about Claus von Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt on Hitler. The plot of Marc Rothemund’s film Sophie Scholl—​The Last Days (2005) shows the other side of the political resistance in a dictatorship. The plot focuses on Sophie Scholl’s last days before her execution. The film is based on historical facts, previously unreleased interrogation transcripts, and new interviews with witnesses. This historical accuracy not only allows for the interplay of the perspectives of both the perpetrator and the victim. It also enables and enhances the visual imagination of the main character, because only the sound sources are documented in the Gestapo files, but not what is to be seen. But the film also deals creatively with the unreliability of the files. Sophie Scholl’s surviving confession—​‘In my wantonness or stupidity, I committed the error of throwing down about 80 to 100 such leaflets [Flugblätter] from the second floor of the university [Munich] into the atrium’—​becomes a self-​confident confession: ‘Such pranks are in my nature.’ In the interrogation scenes, which take up nearly two-​thirds of the film, the camera remains faithful to Sophie Scholl (in stable point of view shots) as it frantically follows the interrogator around the room. In this way, the camera shots reveal the character’s inner attitude. Rothemund’s film does not imitate a historical portrait, but makes us ‘wonder if history has not been sanitized for our entertainment, for our sense of tradition, and for our conscience’ (Hamilton, 2005, p. 161). Thus, the film turns iconic resistance fighter Sophie Scholl, whose 100th birthday was commemorated in May 2021, into a post-​heroic young woman clinging to the right life in the wrong conditions.

Conclusion German unification marks an epochal turning point for culture in Germany. Under the influence of a globalized cultural market, new political dimensions of literature, theatre, and film are emerging. The following major conclusions can be drawn: 1. There is a decoupling of authorship, audience, and work. Anyone who creates an artistic work is no longer safe from undesired political appropriation. The more political the respective work is, the more divided the reactions among the public

446   Michael Braun audience and literary critics. The work of art itself is not immune to political interpretations. The fact that the political appears ubiquitously in art is part of the cultural heritage of postmodernism in the twenty-​first century. 2. There is no longer a Group 47 that rules the literary field and radiates into politics. The political in post-​1990 literature is pluralistic, but individual; competitive, but not exclusive; disengaged, but participatory. The Jewish-​German author Max Czollek, born in 1987, opposes a German ‘Leitkultur’, a national notion of homeland, a political ‘integration theater,’ ‘Gesinnungsästhetik’, and the signalling of artistic. He pleads for a dynamic, open mixed culture in Germany: art, he writes in his essay ‘Gegenwartsbewältigung’, must be the object of the criticism we direct at society and politics (Czollek, 2020, p. 17). 3. The political in literature is writing about Germany and the Germans, which is not limited to state, nation, and homeland, but which deals with contemporary history and the present, with identities and affiliations, with roots and routes, with power and mass. This is what makes German literature highly regarded internationally. Anja Kampmann’s debut novel Wie hoch die Wasser steigen (2018), which tells the story of a postmodern migrant labourer and oil rig worker in the Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea, was shortlisted for the 2019 National Book Award and translated into English shortly thereafter. It is hard to imagine, however, that a poem would be recited at the inauguration of a German head of government, as happened in the US when Joe Biden was inaugurated in January 2021.

Further Reading Braun, Michael (2013), Wem gehört die Geschichte? Erinnerungskultur in Literatur und Film (Münster: Aschendorff). Brockmann, Stephen (1999), Literature and German reunification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Erb, Andreas and Christof Hamann (eds) (2021), die horen 66 (No. 284): furchtlos schreiben. Das Politische der Literatur (Göttingen: Wallstein). Helbig, Holger (ed.) (2007), Weiterschreiben. Zur DDR-​Literatur nach dem Ende der DDR (Berlin: Akademie Verlag). Langguth, Gerd (ed.) (1997), Die Intellektuellen und die nationale Frage (Frankfurt a.M./​New York: Campus).

Bibliography Anz, Thomas (ed.) (1995), ‘Es geht nicht um Christa Wolf’. Der Literaturstreit im vereinten Deutschland (Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer). Assmann, Aleida (2018), Der europäische Traum. Vier Lehren aus der Geschichte (München: Beck). Barner, Wilfried (ed.) (2006), Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart (2nd edn, München: Beck).

GERMAN LITERATURE, THEATRE, AND FILM SINCE 1990    447 Baron, Baron (2008), ‘Das Sterben an der Berliner Mauer’, Die Politische Meinung 53 (8), pp. 56–​8. Bluhm, Lothar (2004), ‘Standortbestimmungen. Anmerkungen zu den Literaturstreits der 1990er Jahre in Deutschland. Eine kulturwissenschaftliche Skizze’, in Clemens Kammler and Torsten Pflugmacher (eds), Deutschsprachige Gegenwartsliteratur seit 1989. Zwischenbilanzen, Analysen, Vermittlungsperspektiven (Heidelberg: Synchron), pp. 61–​73. Böttiger, Helmut (2012), Die Gruppe 47. Als die deutsche Literatur Geschichte schrieb (München: Deutsche Verlags-​Anstalt). Bohrer, Karl-​ Heinz (1995), ‘Erinnerung an Kriterien. Vom Warten auf den deutschen Zeitroman’, Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken 49 (11), pp. 1055–​61. Braun, Michael (2011), Die deutsche Gegenwartsliteratur. Eine Einführung (Köln/​Weimar: UTB). Braun, Michael (2020), ‘Werk ohne Autor. Die Suche nach dem großen deutschen Roman in der Gegenwartsliteratur’, in Marion Brandt and Mirosław Ossowski (eds), 30 Jahre germanistische Forschung in Polen und Deutschland (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego), pp. 13–​23. Brenner, Peter (2011), Neue deutsche Literaturgeschichte. Vom ‘Ackermann’ zu Günter Grass (3rd edn, Berlin and New York: de Gruyter). Bröcking, Ulrich (2020), Postheroische Helden. Ein Zeitbild (Berlin: Suhrkamp). Buell, Lawrence (2014), The Dream of the Great American Novel (Cambridge/​Mass. and London: Harvard University Press). Conrady, Karl Otto (ed.) (1993), Von einem Land und vom andern: Gedichte zur deutschen Wende 1989/​1990 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Czollek, Max (2020), Gegenwartsbewältigung (München: Hanser). Enzensberger, Hans Magnus (1997), Zickzack. Aufsätze (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Erhart, Walter (1997), ‘Die deutsche Einheit und die Poesie’, in Walter Erhart and Dirk Niefanger (eds), Zwei Wendezeiten. Blicke auf die deutsche Literatur 1945 und 1989 (Tübingen: Niemeyer), pp. 93–​104. Grass, Günter (2020), Werke. Neue Göttinger Ausgabe, 24 vols, Dieter Stolz and Werner Frizen (eds) (Göttingen: Steidl). Grub, Frank Thomas (2003), ‘Wende’ und ‘Einheit’ im Spiegel der deutschsprachigen Literatur. Ein Handbuch. Vol. 1: Untersuchungen. Vol, 2: Bibliographie (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter). Hake, Sabine (2004), Film in Deutschland. Geschichte und Geschichten seit 1895. Aus dem Englischen von Roger Thiel (Reinbek: Rowohlt). Hamilton, Coman (2013), ‘Memories of “Good” and “Evil” in “Sophie Scholl—​Die letzten Tage” ’, in Pól O Dochartaigh and Christiane Schönfeld (eds), Representing the “Good German” in Literature and Culture after 1945. Altruism and Moral Ambiguity (Rochester and New York: Camden House), pp. 151–​67. Krekeler, Elmar (2000), ‘Das Buch der Woche: Dann geh doch nach drüben’, Die Welt 19.8. https://​w ww.welt.de/​print-​welt/​articl​e528​986/​Das-​Buch-​der-​Woche-​Dann-​geh-​doch-​ nach-​drue​ben.html (Accessed 6.1.2022). Loriot, alias Victor von Bülow (1998), ‘Steinlaus (Petrophaga lorioti)’, in Helmut Hildebrandt et al (eds), Pschyrembel. Klinisches Wörterbuch (258th edn, Berlin and New York: de Gruyter), p. 1500. Lützeler, Paul Michael (2009). Bürgerkrieg global. Menschenrechtsethos und deutschsprachiger Gegenwartsroman (München: Fink). Magenau, Jörg (2002), Christa Wolf. Eine Biographie (Berlin: Kindler).

448   Michael Braun Morsbach, Petra (2006), Warum Fräulein Laura freundlich war. Über die Wahrheit des Erzählens (München and Zürich: Piper). Münkler, Herfried, Jürgen Kaube, and Wolfgang Schäuble (eds) (2018), Staatserzählungen. Die Deutschen und ihre politische Ordnung (Berlin: Rowohlt). Neuhaus, Stefan and Immanuel Nover (eds) (2019), Das Politische in der Gegenwartsliteratur (Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter). Orth, Dominik and Heinz-​Peter Preußer (eds) (2020). Mauerschau –​Die DDR als Film. Beiträge zur Historisierung eines verschwundenen Staates (Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter). Peitsch, Helmut (2009), Nachkriegsliteratur 1945–​1989 (Göttingen: vandenhoeck&ruprecht unipress). Reich-​Ranicki, Marcel (1995), ‘ . . . und es muß gesagt werden’, Der Spiegel 34 (20.8.) https://​ www.spie​gel.de/​p oli​t ik/​und-​es-​muss-​ges ​agt-​wer​den-​a-​d8ddd​884-​0002-​0001-​0000-​ 00000​9208​344 (Accessed 2.6.2021). Sartre, Jean-​Paul (1948), Qu-​est ce que la littérature? (Paris: Gallimard). Schiller, Friedrich (1993), ‘Ankündigung “Die Horen” (1794)’, in Sämtliche Werke, vol. V. Gerhard Fricke and Herbert G. Göpfert (eds) (9th edn, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), pp. 870–​3. Schirrmacher, Frank (2015), ‘Abschied von der Literatur der Bundesrepublik. Neue Pässe, neue Identitäten, neue Lebensläufe: Über die Kündigung einiger Mythen des westdeutschen Bewußtseins’ (first published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2.10.1989), in Frank Schirrmacher, Ungeheuerliche Neuigkeiten. Texte aus den Jahren 1990-​2014. Jakob Augstein (ed) (München: Blessing), pp. 271–​81. Seeßlen, Georg (2017), ‘Die Ufa—​ein böses Filmmärchen’. https://​www.epd-​film.de/​the​men/​ die-​ufa-​ein-​boe​ses-​filmm​aerc​hen (Accessed 28.5.2021). Weninger, Robert (2004), Streitbare Literaten. Kontroversen und Eklats in der deutschen Literatur von Adorno bis Walser (München: Beck).

Contemporary Novels, Diaries, Poetry, Plays, and Film books Bärfuss, Lukas (2008). Hundert Tage. Roman (Gölttingen: Wallstein). Bodrožić, Marica (2002), Tito ist tot. Erzählungen (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Bruyn, Günter de (1999), Deutsche Zustände. Essays (Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer). Düffel, John (2020), Der brennende See. Roman (Köln: Dumont). Enzensberger, Hans Magnus (1991), Zukunftsmusik. Gedichte (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Enzensberger, Hans Magnus (1999), Kiosk. Gedichte (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Erpenbeck, Jenny (2015), Gehen, ging, gegangen. Roman (München: Knaus). Grass, Günter (2019), Ein weites Feld. Roman (first print 1995). With a foreword by Daniel Kehlmann (Göttingen: Steidl). Grass, Günter (2006), Beim Häuten der Zwiebel (Göttingen: Steidl). Grünbein, Durs (1988), Grauzone morgens. Gedichte (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Gstrein, Norbert (2010), Das Handwerk des Tötens. Roman (München: Hanser). Hacker, Katharina (2006), Die Habenichtse. Roman (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Handke, Peter (1972), Ich bin ein Bewohner des Elfenbeinturms (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Handke, Peter (1996), Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina oder Gerechtigkeit für Serbien (Frankfurt a.M: Suhrkamp).

GERMAN LITERATURE, THEATRE, AND FILM SINCE 1990    449 Henckel von Donnersmarck, Florian (2006), Das Leben der anderen: Filmbuch (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Jelinek, Elfiede (2013), ‘Die Schutzbefohlenen’. https://​www.elfr​iede​jeli​nek.com/​fschu​tzbe​fohl​ ene.htm (Accessed 2.6.2021). Josten, Husch (2017), Hier sind Drachen. Roman (München: Piper). Kampmann, Anja (2018), Wie hoch die Wasser steigen. Roman (München: Hanser); (2019) High as the Waters Rise. A Novel. trans. Anne Posten (New York: Catapult). Kempowski, Walter (1993–​2005), Das Echolot. Eine kollektives Tagebuch. 10 vols. (München: Knaus). Kleeberg, Michael (1998), Ein Garten im Norden. Roman (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-​Anstalt). Kumpfmüller, Michael (2000), Hampels Fluchten. Roman (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch). Menasse, Robert (2017), Die Hauptstadt. Roman (Berlin: Suhrkamp). Müller, Herta (2009), Atemschaukel. Roman (München: Hanser). Nooteboom, Cees (2009), Berlin 1989 | 1990. Aus dem Niederländischen von Helga van Beuningen und Rosemarie Still (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Pleschinski, Hans (2004), Brabant. Roman zur See. Neuausgabe (München: dtv). Rau, Milo (2016). Die Europa Trilogie. The Europe Trilogy. Civil Wars, The Dark Ages, Empire (Berlin: Verbrecher Verlag). Rosenlöcher, Thomas (1990), Die verkauften Pflastersteine. Dresdener Tagebuch (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Schirach, Ferdinand von (2005), Terror. Ein Theaterstück (München: Piper). Tellkamp, Uwe (2008), Der Turm. Geschichte aus einem versunkenen Land. Roman (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Wolf, Christa (1990), Was bleibt. Erzählung (Frankfurt a.M.: Luchterhand). Wolf, Christa (2003), Ein Tag im Jahr 1960–​2000 (München: Luchterhand).

CHAPTER 26

GERM AN ART A FT E R 19 9 0 Marion Deshmukh

One of Germany’s foremost curators, Eckhart Gillen, who mounted the massive exhibition at Berlin’s Martin Gropius Bau in 1997–​98 titled: Deutschlandsbilder: Kunst aus einem geteilten Land (translated in English as: German Art from Beckmann to Richter, Images of a Divided Country), noted that ‘in a time of political and economic globalization and internationalization, the European neighbors clearly possess more solid historical images and national art histories with which they can respond more calmly to the challenges of the world market and of world art’ (Gillen, 1997, p. 16). He then observed that Germany’s aesthetic history, like its political history during the course of the twentieth century, has had a fraught legacy and its complex history continues to cast long shadows even to this day.

The Fine Arts and Germany’s Past As numerous commentators have noted, an ongoing dilemma in examining the fine arts in Germany has been the country’s ‘shattered pasts’, to borrow an expression from the title of Michael Geyer and Konrad Jarausch’s examination of German history during the twentieth century (Geyer and Jarausch, 2002). How to understand and how to evaluate the variety of styles, movements, and schools that were overlaid with an equal variety of governmental regimes, some that allowed aesthetic freedom while other regimes repressed and punished artists who opposed those in power. In summarizing cultural trends since unification well over three decades ago, history will never be far from the analysis since it begins at the exact moment of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. A prominent East German painter, Willi Sitte, expressed his disappointment with the sudden turn of events of 1989 by no longer wishing to paint the working class, a staple of East German artists’ subject matter: The theme doesn’t exist for me any longer . . . The working classes offered us the possibility of being able to work as artists—​that’s what I thought, what I believe, I had

GERMAN ART AFTER 1990    451 to think . . . so I don’t understand the way this working class, which I’ve so trusted, are behaving during the changeover. That has profoundly wounded me, even as a Marxist, inwardly. (Gillen, 1996, pp. 131–​2)

Six years after German unification, the Bonn-​ based publisher Inter Nationes published a volume, edited by the cultural historian Hermann Glaser, titled in English: What Remains—​What Lies Ahead? Cultural Upheaval in East Germany (Glaser, 1996). The title aptly spoke to the aesthetic, literary, and social uncertainties following the fall of the Berlin Wall. As Ulla Weber noted, ‘Thirty-​two state or subsidized theatres, three opera houses, four funded orchestras, two national galleries, two academies of art . . . ’ meant that after unification, Berlin had a surplus of cultural institutions that for ideological as well as economic reasons, needed reorganization, reduction, or elimination (Weber, 1996, p. 173). In particular, what was to become of the myriad official German Democratic Republic (GDR) cultural institutions ranging from museums to artists’ associations, to art schools? Fierce debates began almost immediately over the artistic worth of East German art and architecture, with West German critics and artists disparaging their Eastern compatriots as tools of the repressive socialist regime and its art offerings mere propaganda, not true art. Given the very different institutional underpinnings and support for the fine arts in East and West Germany, artists who were prominent in the East were thrown upon unfamiliar market forces after 1990. The GDR government had generously subsidized art education, art exhibitions, museums, and even amateur interest in painting during the decades of its rule. While there were both periods of increasing repression of artistic styles and periods of cultural thaw, East German artists believed that their work was critically important for the regime and the people as a whole. Favoured artists such as Bernhard Heisig were revered and discussed. In the West, stylistic variety, ranging from abstraction, to pop art (ironically dubbed by West German artists, ‘capitalist realism’) to neo-​expressionism caught the eye of dealers and museum curators. The general public, however, was less intimately involved in aesthetic debates in the West than in the East. While West German critics often examined contemporary art through the lens of Germany’s fraught history, because the government rarely intervened in stylistic debates, post-​Second World War painting, printmaking, and photography tended to be critiqued through aesthetic rather than political considerations. Ironically, though pop art is considered a quintessentially American aesthetic phenomenon, even though originating in the late 1950s in England, the West Germans embraced the movement again, against the backdrop of its recent history. ‘The Pop generation aimed directly at the states of mind of the consumer society that was just taking shape in a massive way in the still young Federal Republic of Germany’, and its chief protagonists ‘clearly rejected the esoteric art world of the late-​bourgeois era’ (Weinhart, 2015, p. 44). In 1963, Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg gave a performance in a Düsseldorf furniture store with the title, ‘Living with Pop: A Demonstration for Capitalist Realism’. Richter exclaimed: ‘Pop art is not an American invention, and we

452   Marion Deshmukh do not regard it as an import—​though the concepts and terms were mostly coined in America and caught on more rapidly there than here in Germany (Weinhart, 2015, p. 45). The 1960s were punctuated by the construction of the Berlin Wall and border fences between the GDR and the Federal Republic, highlighting the tense relations between Eastern bloc countries and the Western allies. While West Germany enjoyed a prosperous decade, East Germans were forbidden to leave their country, especially because younger East Germans were attracted by the better economic prospects over the border. But by the end of the decade, even in the prosperous West, dissatisfaction grew over global affairs, such as the Vietnam War, over the conservative nature of universities, and punctuated by a generational critique of Germany’s past. The prosperous 1960s gave way to the more uncertain 1970s and 1980s when, after the shock of the oil crisis, economic stagnation, and the rise of radical terrorists, such as the Baader-​Meinhof group, West Germany’s self-​satisfaction of the 1950s and early 1960s was replaced by increased introspection and the visual arts reflected this uncertainty. By the 1980s, one important group of painters, some of whom had left the GDR, coalesced into what critics would characterize as the Neo-​Expressionists. East German artists such as Jörg Immendorff and A.R. Penck, and writers such as Wolf Biermann sought asylum in the West. They highlighted to the public the differences both stylistically and institutionally, between East and West.

International Recognition Much of the art that has received international acclaim had already been produced before unification in 1990. Several painters and photographers whose work can be seen around the world in the major museums and in prominent private collections include Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, Markus Lüpertz, Gerhard Richter, Jörg Immendorff, A.R. Penck, Neo Rauch, the photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, Thomas Struth, and others from the Düsseldorf Art Academy. These artists were regularly exhibited by the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. Indeed, in the US, there have been a fair number of major exhibitions immediately before and following German unification to the present day. To give just two random examples: in 2004, the Dallas Museum of Art hosted an exhibition ‘Sigmar Polke, History of Everything, Paintings and Drawings, 1998–​2003’ (Lane and Wylie, 2003). And in 2017, the Hirshhorn Museum of the Smithsonian Institution and Phillips Collection, both in Washington, DC, mounted a major retrospective of the oeuvre of Markus Lüpertz (Lüpertz, 2017). In a conversation with the art historian Richard Schiff at the opening of the Hirshhorn Museum exhibit, Lüpertz discussed his formative years in divided Berlin and how those years molded his art in subsequent decades. Influenced as many artists and writers were over the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the ideas of Nietzsche, Lüpertz described his ‘Dithyrambic’ paintings as emanating from the ancient Dionysian notion of ‘drunken creativity’, and

GERMAN ART AFTER 1990    453 he opined that ‘painting comes from the Divine’ (Lüpertz, 2017b). Yet in his work, like in the oeuvre of his contemporaries, Richter, Kiefer, Immendorf, and Baselitz, numerous motifs and series centred on recent German history. Even in his later work, such as Nude, his insertion of German Second World War military helmets has been a recurring theme in his work since the 1970s. There have been a few East German artists who were able to navigate the dangerous shoals of remaking themselves for the capitalist market. Those post-​1990 East Germans include Bernhard Heisig, whose later work and portraits of prominent East and West German politicians echo the frenzied brushwork of the Neo-​Expressionists. Another East German painter, Werner Tübke, whose hyper-​realism echoed both early modern and recent German history, nonetheless caught the critical eyes of Federal Republic critics, dealers, and museum curators. This essay describes the major post-​1990 trends not only in the visual arts, but also in photography and equally importantly, in the politics of museum curating and museum renovation. For it was due to the latter activities that some German artists were favoured over others and received critical notice which advanced their careers. The politics of museum curating along with the renovation of existing museums and the construction of new museums has become an important national project in the united Federal Republic.

Cultural Institutions in Post-​Unification Germany One of the key dilemmas facing the new, unified Germany after 1990 was the surfeit of cultural institutions, particularly in Berlin. Bonn had been the West German seat of government. In 1991 parliament voted to move the capital to Berlin and the process was finally completed in 1999, ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. During the Cold War, East Germans characterized the Eastern part of Berlin its official capital and many of its cultural institutions, including the museum island, the opera, state library, and university were all located in its sector. While Bonn was the capital of West Germany, West Berlin was seen by the West as a beacon of freedom—​political, social and cultural—​by West Germans. To counter the East Berlin cultural institutions, West Berlin built duplicate edifices to compete with the East: the New National Gallery competed with the East’s Old National Gallery; the Museum of German History, located in the ruins of the Reichstag, competed with the Museum of German History located on Unter den Linden, the grand boulevard; the museums of global ethnography and of Old Masters were located in Dahlem. Thus, after unification, debate proliferated regarding whether the new Germany would be able to afford duplicates of the major museums in Berlin. Should Berlin be an embarrassment of cultural riches or should it consolidate and reorganize its cultural

454   Marion Deshmukh offerings? Ultimately the decision was an economic one—​the government could not afford to supervise so many institutions, several of which did, in fact duplicate each other. When the city was reunited in 1990 but before the government officially moved most of the bureaucracy from Bonn to Berlin, Berlin could count two symphony orchestras, three opera houses, two national libraries, two art academies, thirty-​two theatres, and twenty-​nine major museums. If one were to include in the tally several of the minor museums, such as the Hair or Sugar Museum, the number of public collections rose to 135! (Galloway, 1991, p. 100). Ironically both East and West Germany heavily subsidized culture and this meant that the official culture of each side, communist and capitalist, had an official state art that was propagated in both, schizoid halves of the city. What was obvious from the first years of unification was that East German museums, even those in Berlin where state subsidies were more generous, was that the basic infrastructure—​from temperature controls to lighting, to methods of display, badly needed modernization. These tasks needed to be completed before discussions ensued over which artworks would grace the newly-​renovated museums. The museum island in Berlin housed the historically most famed collections—​ranging from ancient sculpture and Old Masters to works of the classic modernists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The buildings, constructed in the nineteenth century, had been heavily damaged during the Second World War and only superficially reconstructed and renovated during the Cold War. As Alan Riding noted in 2006, ‘It may be a decade or more before this city’s [Berlin] monumental Museum Island finally shakes off the twin legacies of World War II and East Germany’s Communist regime, but with the reopening of the Bode Museum, the cultural park in the former East Berlin has taken another step toward recovering its place as one of the world’s great centers of art’ (Riding, 2006, E1). By 2020/​21, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (SPK)) finished renovation of almost all the museums on the Museum Island—​they include the Old National Gallery, the Pergamon, the Altes (Old), the New (Neues), and the Bode Museum. In addition, because there were several duplicate museums in West and East Berlin before unification (such as the Mies van der Rohe-​designed New National Gallery in West Berlin), the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation was tasked with reorganizing the seventeen museums it owns by consolidating and reorganizing its vast and varied collections. For example, according to the initial master plan, the Museum Island was meant to display all art from the ancient world through 1900 while museums in the former West Berlin, such as the Gemäldegalerie, the Hamburger Bahnhof (a converted railway station), and Mies van der Rohe’s New National Gallery, were primarily to host temporary exhibitions. As Peter-​Klaus Schuster, former director-​general of the capital’s state museums succinctly noted: ‘Berlin will become a city of art, presenting everything from Babylon to Matthew Barney’ (Galloway, 1991, p. 100). Yet, in July 2020 the German government announced that the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation itself would be dissolved, as it was too unwieldy. By 2025 it would be divided into four independent foundations for state museums, the secret state archives, the Ibero-​American institute, and the state library. The finances of the foundations would also be reorganized.

GERMAN ART AFTER 1990    455 One factor to acknowledge regarding both Germany’s museum culture and its artists is the fact that for much of its history, Germany consisted of independent principalities and was not unified as a federal nation-​state until 1871. Historically it was most centralized during the Nazi era. During the Cold War, regional schools of art emerged in both East and West Germany, whether in Leipzig or Düsseldorf. Likewise numerous high quality regional museums, from Dresden to Munich, Hamburg, and Frankfurt vied with Berlin as major repositories of art and sculpture.

German Art Now In 2003 and 2004, the St. Louis Art Museum mounted an ambitious exhibition of contemporary German art titled: German Art Now (Homburg, 2003). In one of the catalogue essays, the senior curator of the Tate Gallery in London, Sean Rainbird, observed: ‘The interpretation of contemporary art in the German-​speaking world, by both Germans and outsiders, can be traced in great part to the ways artists have responded to the disruptive impact of Germany’s turbulent political and social history . . . Each of the successive models of government imposed a different form of administrations with far-​ reaching effects on peoples’ lives . . . Post-​unification, the German-​German context has been transformed more into an economic and structural question than an artistic one’ (Rainbird, 2003, p. 27). This observation is correct when assessing the aesthetic terrain after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The spirited and often acrimonious debates over art and culture tended to centre on the relative worth of GDR art, which to most West Germans, was unknown. Should East German museums in Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, and other GDR cities continue to exhibit and display the works of painters, sculptors, graphic artists, and photographers whose oeuvre was sanctioned by a repressive regime? Or should the art be consigned to the dust heap of history, as were numerous Soviet-​era monuments to Marx and Lenin? These debates in some manner echoed debates after the defeat of the Third Reich when East and West occupying military governments sought to rehabilitate the modern art the Nazis had discredited and vandalized. Comparisons were made between the Nazi art removed from museums and public collections after 1945 and socialist-​era art from the GDR after 1990. ‘The structural relationship between the two German dictatorships with their totalitarian methods of surveillance, seduction, and suppression through a leadership cult, mass parades, and the apparatus of state security with which the people were supposed to be shaped into a “national community”, (Nazi jargon) or a “socialist human community”, (GDR jargon), was thus made a taboo in the GDR’ (Gillen, 1986, p. 130). Artists, critics, curators, and others reflected on what was ‘true art’ in the new regime, grappling with political, social, and economic unification, yet divided, in the memorable phrase of the essayist, Peter Schneider, by a ‘wall in one’s head’. GDR artists who embraced socialism as a philosophy and its aesthetics of realism as a humanistic

456   Marion Deshmukh way of reaching ‘the people’, were maligned for their propagandistic renderings of the heroic worker, including artists, such as Volker Stelzmann. When asked about the artistic worth of officially-​recognized GDR artists such as Bernhard Heisig and Wolfgang Mattheuer, Georg Baselitz, himself an émigré from East Germany retorted: ‘Not artists, not painters. Neither of them ever painted a picture . . . They are interpreters who fulfilled a programme for the GDR system. Artists degenerated into being propagandists of ideology . . . They betrayed imagination, love, craziness in that mechanical, supposedly historically correct way . . . Not triumphant painters, simply assholes (Gillen, 1996, pp. 135–​6). Unlike theatre, literature, or film, which could be exported from the closed GDR, paintings needed to be seen in their original which was difficult once the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961, the year that Germany’s most famous artist, Gerhard Richter, fled Dresden for Düsseldorf. Books and magazines which illustrated modern art were prohibited in the GDR and only by the end of the 1970s could artists travel, and even then with numerous restrictions. Because the GDR and its culture was closed off from the West, the assumption by West Germans was that most of the art allowed and exhibited in the GDR was socialist realism and therefore not true art. And particularly negative were the comments and opinions of painters who had left the GDR well before 1989 and believed their artistic brethren were sell-​outs to the closed, communistic regime. However, by the 1960s, the visual landscape was changing, even in the GDR, particularly among artists who had grown up during the Weimar Republic and began experimenting with new concepts such as the ‘simultaneous image’ and dialogic image. Previous artistic movements, such as expressionism, and surrealism Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) together with naturalism, a favoured form, were officially accepted in 1971 under the Honecker regime. Under the umbrella of ‘Range and Diversity’, but based on socialism and the ‘socially significant, these diverse styles made their way from the studios to officially sanctioned galleries and museums (Gillen, 2003, p. 134). Artists who, by the 1980s, experimented with neo-​expressionism, a movement that paid homage to the turn-​of-​ the-​century Brücke and Blaue Reiter expressionist artists groups, as well as to the Weimar Republic artists who savagely critiqued that same regime, would also be criticized for a willingness to be co-​opted by the SED government by West German artists. Ironically, as both the Federal Republic and the GDR began to converge in questions of the environment, and of nuclear threats in the wake of the SS 20 missile crisis, so too did one see a stylistic convergence of artists during the mid-​1980s, just prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thus the trope of GDR artistic conformity was not altogether appropriate during the regime’s last decade when a variety of styles—​from a hyper-​realism to neo-​expressionism emerged and were encouraged. And the picture becomes even more muddied when one considers that the Federal Republic’s most famous post-​war artists, among them Georg Baselitz and Gerhard Richter came from the GDR. A fair number of critics would argue that Richter, who has recently turned 90, is Germany’s pre-​eminent post-​war and post-​unification artist, an artist whose aesthetic styles are among the most varied of all German painters. Berlin, once united, would serve not only as the political capital after most of the Federal Republic’s government bureaucrats shifted from

GERMAN ART AFTER 1990    457 Bonn to Berlin, but also as the new cultural capital, uniting the city’s dense collection of museums and art galleries as well as artists’ studios.

The Documenta One way to understand the changes and the continuities in contemporary German art is to analyse one of the most important exhibitions, held approximately every five years, not in Berlin, but in Kassel, a middle-​sized German city which was located not very far from the GDR border before 1990. There, beginning in 1955 and continuing to the present day, a vast series of exhibits, titled Documenta are held to highlight the most recent trends in art. The first Documenta privileged painters whose art had been dismissed as ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis and also focused on the continuities of modernism from the 1920s, disrupted in the 1930s and 1940s by the Third Reich, the war, and the Holocaust before emerging in the Federal Republic by the early 1950s. Conceived by Arnold Bode, professor at the Kassel Werksakademie, together with the art historian Werner Haftmann, the two desired to re-​establish the narrative of twentieth-​century modernism that had been violently omitted during the Nazi regime as well as educate Germans about contemporary art which slowly began to emerge from the ashes of the Second World War in Europe (Rosenberg, 2015). The first, 1955 Documenta’s aims stated: ‘The intent of the exhibition is, first to document and trace the development of the fine arts in our century in Europe, from the revolutionary, unsettling antecedents to the beginning of our century, and second, to define, as precisely as possible, the positions achieved today’ (Universes in Universe Biennials, 2017). Even ten years after the war, the venue for the exhibition, the Fridericianum Museum, lay in ruins as did many of Germany’s cultural institutions. But from that first exhibit, the Documenta 1, to the Documenta 14, held during the summer of 2017, the Documenta shows have become extremely influential. (Documenta 15 is planned for the summer of 2022.) In a New York Times exhibition review, Holland Cotter notes: ‘I had a positive experience at Documenta 14, the immense international art blowout that happens every five years in this uncharismatic industrial city north of Frankfurt’ (Cotter, 2017, C1). The 2017 exhibition, which was unique in that it was shown in both its traditional site, Kassel, as well as, for the first time, in Athens, Greece, focused on the relationship of art to current newsworthy issues—​from an installation of Nazi looted books and artworks from the Gurlitt collection, to international artists representing the growing refugee crisis, a crisis which has particularly impacted Germany. Documenta shows were held initially every four years and after 1972, every five years. The first exhibition displayed 670 works by 148 artists, ranging from the early classical modernists, such as Kandinsky and Picasso, to the most recent generation of primarily abstract painters. A record number of visitors—​130,000—​attended the show. In the most recent Documenta show, between 600,000 and 800,000 people attended the 100-​ day exhibition. In addition to the art works displayed, the event itself has become, and

458   Marion Deshmukh continues to be, a media event, often with film, auxiliary events staged and performed, and press from around the world attending. Several controversies attended the early Documenta shows, especially charges by critics that Bode focused excessively on what he called the ‘universal language’ of abstraction. But during the height of the Cold War, abstraction was seen as the aesthetic counterweight to Soviet and Eastern bloc socialist realism. Debates, beginning in Germany at the end of the 1940s, decried abstraction as ‘formalism’, countering that art should speak to the people and not become an esoteric language, only decipherable to other artists, critics, and museum curators. This criticism echoed the anti-​modernist stance of the Nazis. Thus Bode’s and Haftmann’s decision to privilege abstraction was a conscious political as well as aesthetic act. The Documenta shows of the 1960s onwards became more international and less Euro-​ American-​centric. Curators, often coming from countries other than Germany, invited artists from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as from North America and Europe to participate. But the Documenta shows, from the outset, have always embodied the political. Curators, whether the French curator, Catherine David (1997) or the Nigerian-​ American Okwui Enwezor (2002) assumed that the Documenta shows, with their worldwide range and global reputation, would embody a discussion of how art was produced, received, and distributed, based on current social and political conditions. As a result, each Documenta is directed by a new curator, one who has his or her own idea of what should be the exhibition’s focus. For example, Catherine David conceived the 1997 show, the last of the twentieth century, as a ‘critical confrontation with the present’ allowing an elaboration and reflection of the exhibition’s own history, ‘on the recent past of the post-​war period and on everything from this now-​vanished age that remains in ferment within contemporary art and culture’ (Universes in Universe Biennials, 1997). As noted, Documenta 14, held in the summer of 2017, took place not only in Kassel, its traditional venue, but also in Athens, a first for the exhibition, which some commentators saw as a subtle nod to the ancient birthplace of both democracy and to more recent upheavals caused by the 2008 financial crisis. The first Documenta show of 1955, held in a bombed-​out city which was at the edge of the Cold War, served to rehabilitate international modernism after its demise under the Nazis and its critics who labelled abstraction in particular as ‘formalism’ by the USSR and its Soviet bloc allies, including the GDR. The unabashed embrace of abstraction in Documenta 1 was a clarion call from art and artists for the recognition of the cultural value of artistic freedom. After German unification in 1990, the Documentas broadened their gaze and included a less Euro-​centric and more global vision, tempered by the growing uncertainties of the Euro financial crisis, the migration crisis and global climate change, among other concerns.1 1 See

the issue of On Curating 33 (2017), ed. by Nanne Burrman and Dorothee Richter, “The Documenta Issue”, which features wide-​ranging articles on the history and the contemporary curating strategies of Documenta.

GERMAN ART AFTER 1990    459

Variety of Styles and Approaches When one evaluates the most prominent modern and contemporary painters, one is struck by the variety of styles between the artists, but also the variety of approaches taken by individual artists over time.

Performance Artists The most senior artist who influenced an entire generation, Joseph Beuys (1921–​86), was a performance artist, who assembled disparate materials such as felt, fat, bronze, iron, photography, and graphic works. His oft-​quoted motto that ‘everyone is an artist’, stemmed from his populist approach to aesthetics wherein he incorporated found objects and juxtaposed them with materials more commonly associated with ‘high art’, such as a bronze sculpture. Beuys was perhaps the most famous West German artist during the 1960s through the 1980s, ushering in a substantial coterie of artists who studied with him. Sigmar Polke (1941–​2010), like a number of artists of his generation, fled with his family from East Germany to West Germany in 1953, in the wake of the Berlin uprising against the GDR regime. He studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy during the 1960s when he began his pop art imagery. His work, referring to what he noted are pages ripped from current newspapers, show his debt to the Fluxus movement of performance art during the 1960s, pop art influences from the US, and his often ironic interpretation of German contemporary culture (such as his Fünfziger Jahre, The Fifties, 1963–​69) or his interest in the venerable staple of the German diet, potatoes (Potato House, 1967). His late work, detailing the imagery and after-​effects of global tensions after September, 2001, incorporating his signature pixelated dots, photography, and colour fields, indicated his continuing interest in the contemporary and how art and artists grapple with the larger political and economic crises of their time (Lane and Wylie, 2003). Despite his initial association with pop art of the 1960s, his art, over the decades, evolved and avoided easy characterization, though his engagement with current events and his thumbing his figurative nose at economically satisfied post-​war Germany endeared him to the next generation of artists.

Painters and Sculptors If there is an artist very closely intertwined with twentieth-​century German history, it is Anselm Kiefer, born during an allied air raid in March, 1945. Kiefer belongs to the second generation of Germans, those without direct living experience in Nazi and wartime Germany, but whose childhood was indelibly framed by the post-​war chaos and

460   Marion Deshmukh reconstruction of the country. Like the older Gerhard Richter, Kiefer’s development was punctuated by absences—​silences of his elders in discussing their lives during the 1930s and 1940s. Kiefer’s paintings of the 1970s overtly reference Wagnerian opera, Germanic myths, and the then-​recent horrific consequences of Hitler’s ‘New World Order’ (Germany’s Spiritual Heroes, 1973; Parsifal I, II, III, 1973; The Ways of Worldly Wisdom; Battle of the Teutoburg, 1976–​77; Shulamith, 1983). Kiefer, like his contemporaries during the 1970s and 1980s, confronted the ambiguities of German history through references juxtaposing the great writers, artists, and thinkers, such as Goethe, Caspar David Friedrich, and Kleist, with the consequences of racial totalitarianism under Hitler. In one of Kiefer’s very early works, he paraphrases the famous Romantic painting by Friedrich, The Wanderer above a Sea of Fog, 1817, with an image of a man employing the Nazi salute perched on a pile of boulders near the sea (Untitled, 1969–​72). By the 1980s, influenced by the poetry of the Romanian-​ Jewish poet who wrote in German, Paul Celan, Kiefer embarked on a series of large paintings that directly address the Holocaust. Celan’s poem ‘Death Fugue’ ends with the two lines: ‘your golden-​hair Margarete/​your ashen-​hair Shulamith’ (Celan, 1948). As commentators have noted, Kiefer’s myth of the German forest begins with folk tales before passing through civilization as represented by Greco-​Roman columns and ends darkly with a scorched earth, representing the destruction of war and the Holocaust (Baque, 2015, p. 49). Kiefer was one of several prominent artists who grappled with Germany’s past through their art. In addition, artists such as Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Markus Lüpertz, and A.R. Penck also wrestled with the past. By the 1970s and 1980s, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, German painters on both sides of the Wall turned to what critics called ‘neo-​expressionism’. The artists incorporated figures and symbols and turned away from minimalist and abstract art, art that had dominated West German painters, though not entirely. Three of the artists grew up in East Germany and all confronted the post-​war history of divided Germany. Today’s highest-​paid living painter globally is Gerhard Richter who, at the age of 90, continues to be very productive and inventive in his varied oeuvre. A major retrospective of his works—​which range from his blurred photographs of the 1960s and 1970s to his abstract and glass paintings of the 1990s to the present, were shown in Berlin’s New National Gallery in 2012 and another major show was held in his birthplace, Dresden, in 2015. He has also had numerous shows abroad and has been a highly sought-​after artist by contemporary collectors (Richter, 2015). Richter’s work, like that of his contemporary colleagues, such as Kiefer, Baselitz, and Lüpertz, among others, both grappled with Germany’s history of the 1920s through 1940s, when these artists were born and raised along with confronting Germany’s difficult post-​Second World War history as a divided nation being on the frontlines of the Cold War. The Dresden-​born artist A.R. Penck was forced to leave East Germany in 1980, moving to Cologne. His work was populated by stick figures and abbreviated symbols, often with ambiguous meanings. As one critic noted, ‘in his paintings, levels of positive-​negative reality shift quickly, on, off, then on again, as in the alternating dense black and white

GERMAN ART AFTER 1990    461 patterns of Verwendung-​Verschwendung, 1975. The more recent Standart 5, 1980, is a joyous large-​scale, uninhibited color wheel of saturated, thin latex pigment stains . . . His hieroglyph paintings, symbolic languages, curious writings, watercolors, drawings, prints, sculptures and musical instruments ceaselessly issue forth’ (Cowart, 1983, p. 16). Another painter, Jörg Immendorff is perhaps best known for his Café Deutschland series of the 1970s and 1980s which starkly represented the divided culture of East and West Germany, symbolized by ‘hot and cold, open and closed. The divisions of his works are as if all the occupants carry physical traces of bisecting walls with them’ (Cowart, 1983, p. 19). Like Anselm Kiefer, Immendorf was born in 1945 and like Kiefer, studied under Joseph Beuys at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. By the late 1960s, he taught as an art teacher in a high school in the city. He began his most famous series of paintings, the Café Deutschland canvases, in the late 1970s. His cluttered, symbol-​laden works are populated with images of German flags, the Berlin Wall and fragments of the Brandenburg Gate, and ominous-​looking bikers in leather jackets, helmets, and spears. ‘His works concern a divided culture and country, symbolized by hot and cold, open and closed. The divisions of his works are as if all the occupants carry physical traces of bisecting walls with them’ (Cowart, 1983, pp. 18–​19). As the critic Donald B. Kuspit noted, ‘The new German painters perform an extraordinary service for the German people. They lay to rest the ghosts—​profound as only the monstrous can be—​of German style, culture, and history, so that the people can be authentically new’ (Kuspit, 1983, p. 46). Markus Lüpertz, born in Bohemia, fled with his family to the Rhineland in 1948, seven years after his birth. He studied in Berlin and by the early 1970s, had won accolades and awards from the German art establishment, including the Villa Romana Prize and the German Art Critics’ Prize. He is known for his unsettling works, which he announced in 1966 through his ‘Manifesto of the Dithyramb’: ‘The grace of the twentieth century will be made visible by the Dithyramb founded by myself ’ (Lüpertz, 2017, p. 125). The definition of ‘Dithyramb’ is based on poetic and choral hymns originated by the ancient Greeks and sung in honour of Dionysus. Early critics viewed Lüpertz’s work, like the work of his contemporaries, Kiefer and Baselitz, as ‘seen to be deconstructing German cultural history and style, in an attempt to restore its strength, which like that of any cultural thought, exists in the discrepancy between plan and execution, between idea and practice’ (Lüpertz, 2017, p. 52). Thus, a coterie of painters, most born in the 1940s, grew up under the shadow of war, division, the Cold War, and then, after 1989, unification. They came of age during a period when silence and avoidance of the immediate Nazi past pervaded German society, East and West. By the 1960s, as their generation came of age, the artists, like their contemporaries at universities, began to question and pose provocative queries, aesthetically to their elders. One famous example was Gerhard Richter’s work, based on a photograph of his uncle and reworked into a blurred painting, Uncle Rudi (1968, 2000) but also Lüpertz’s Helmet series of the early 1970s. Their works would inevitably be judged through the lens of history and contemporary events and the artists often deliberately chose subjects laden with symbolic

462   Marion Deshmukh historic meanings, though frequently these meanings were created ambiguously and the meanings needed to be teased out. Yet a number of painters, even those who critics and the public associated with recent and contemporary history, often were torn between wanting to be simply autonomous artists with a freedom to do whatever moved them aesthetically versus feeling obligated to address the weight of German history (Eckmann, 2009). By the 1980s, not only did German painters reach international renown, partly spurred by the numerous exhibitions and performances by Joseph Beuys, teacher to a number of contemporary painters, but high prices were garnered for German paintings. As noted, Gerhard Richter’s works are among the most expensive of any living artist. But many of the famous painters—​Richter, Kiefer, the photographers Struth and Gursky—​ command seven-​and eight-​figure prices for their oeuvre. In addition to German artists’ increasing renown in the visual arts, German photography became one of the most sought-​after genres for domestic and international collectors.

Photography Germany’s long history of art and documentary photography, stretching back to over a century, was reimagined and reinvigorated with a cohort of photographers-​teachers, the most prominent being Bernd and Hilla Becher, famously known for their industrial images of blast furnaces, grain elevators, and other documents of modern manufacturing in the Ruhr region, long the home of Germany’s industrialization, going back to the late nineteenth century. Düsseldorf was not only the epicentre of avant-​garde art activity but also the centre of the photographic renaissance, beginning in the late 1960s. The Bechers influenced painters such as Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke, students of the couple at the Düsseldorf State Academy of Art. These painters incorporated photography into their oeuvre in new ways by using photography in combination with painting and in exploring themes of recent history. Along with the post-​war painters, the Bechers influenced a second generation of photographers, including Candida Höfer, whose images ranged from Turkish guest workers to empty museum spaces. Likewise, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth, both of whom studied at the Düsseldorf Academy, are perhaps the most well-​known photographers, depicting interior and exterior spaces through very imaginative perspective views. Architectural imagery, often done using very large formats (in some cases, photographs measuring 62 x 126 inches) was a hallmark of the ‘Becher’ school. By the 1990s, photographers used digitally altered composites of multiple images to create new spaces and interior scenes, such as Andreas Gursky’s Library of 1999. His was a panoramic view of the Gunnar Asplund Public Library in Stockholm, Sweden. The three-​part book stacks seem to be floating above and below the ceiling and what appears to be a floating reflection of the book stacks below. Some have interpreted Gursky’s library as a postmodern exploration of knowledge, as represented by the book collection. Candida Höfer also created a photo of a library, German National Library, Frankfurt am

GERMAN ART AFTER 1990    463 Main, 1997, which displays a small corner of a larger space and balances the book stairs with the table and chairs and the blank wall space in a type of tripartite division. Thomas Struth, another Düsseldorf Academy student and probably the most renowned current photographer, tends to produce images of cultural places, such as the Art Institute of Chicago and Rome’s Pantheon (both 1990) wherein visitors are gazing at the historical or artistic artifacts located therein.

Conclusion One can probably state that unification has been very fruitful for the visual arts in post-​1990 Germany. Artists who were considered provincial, living in either the Federal Republic or the GDR have gained a much larger national canvas on which to display their art. Germany’s economic prosperity, and its European and global reach have also fostered an increased interest in the arts by museums, dealers, and collectors around the world, enabling artists to command top prices for their works. While stylistically changes have been less obvious with unification, the cultural prominence of the artists themselves has catapulted Germany to the centre of the global art market. And while museum consolidation, particularly in Berlin, has occurred, the renovated and modernized museums in Berlin and in other East and West German cities have attracted visitors and have highlighted the critical importance of the visual arts throughout the country.

Further Reading Barron, Stephanie and Sabine Eckmann (eds) (2009), Art of Two Germanys: Cold War Cultures [Exh. Cat, Los Angeles County Museum of Art] (New York: Abrams). Butin, Hubertus, Stefan Gronert, and Thomas Olbricht (2013), Gerhard Richter, Editions, 1965–​ 2013 (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag). Deshmukh, Marion (ed.) (1998), Cultures in Conflict: Visual Arts in Eastern Germany since 1990 (Washington, DC: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies). Glaser, Hermann (ed.) (1996), What Remains—​What Lies Ahead, Cultural Upheaval in East Germany (Bonn: Inter Nationes). Mesch, Claudia (2008), Modern Art at the Berlin Wall (London and New York: Tauris Academic Studies).

Bibliography Aronsson, Peter and Emma Bentz (2011), ‘National Museums in Germany, Anchoring Competing Communities’, in Building National Museums in Europe, 1760–​2010 (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press; LiU E-​Press). Baque, Dominique (2015), Anselm Kiefer: A Monograph (London: Thames & Hudson).

464   Marion Deshmukh Barron, Stephanie and Sabine Eckmann (eds) (2009), Art of Two Germanys: Cold War Cultures [Exh. Cat, Los Angeles County Museum of Art] (New York: Abrams). Burrman, Nanne and Dorothee Richter (eds) (2017), On Curating (No. 33): ‘The documenta issue’ (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, May 26, 2017). Butin, Hubertus, Stefan Gronert, and Thomas Olbricht (2013), Gerhard Richter, Editions, 1965–​ 2013 (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag). Celan, Paul (1948), ‘Death Fugue’. https://​poets.org/​poem/​death-​fugue Cotter, Holland (2017), ‘With Art as Their Witness’, New York Times (24 June), C1. Cowart, Jack (1983), ‘Expressions’, in New Art from Germany: Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Anselm Kiefer, Markus Lüpertz, A. R. Penck [exh. Cat., St. Louis Art Museum] (Munich: Prestel Verlag). Deshmukh, Marion (ed.) (1998), Cultures in Conflict: Visual Arts in Eastern Germany since 1990 (Washington, DC: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies). Eckmann, Sabine (2009), ‘Historicizing Postwar German Art’, in Stephanie Barron and Sabine Eckmann (eds), Art of the Two Germanys: Cold War Cultures [exh. Cat., Los Angeles County] (New York: Abrams), pp.34–​47. Galloway, David (1991), ‘The New Berlin: “I Want My Wall Back” ’, Art in America (September). Geyer, Michael and Konrad Jarausch (2002), Shattered Pasts (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Gillen, Eckhart (1996), ‘Conviction Aesthetics versus Indulgence: The Inter-​ German Iconographic Controversy’, in Hermann Glaser (ed.), What Remains—​What Lies Ahead (Bonn, Inter Nationes), pp.129ff. Gillen, Eckhart (1997), ‘Tabula Rasa and Inwardness: German Images before and after 1945’, in Eckart Gillen (ed.), German Art from Beckmann to Richter, Images of a Divided Country, [Exh. Cat., Berlin] (Cologne and New Haven, CT: Dumont and Yale University Press and Dumont), pp.16–​22. Gillen, Eckhart (ed.) (1997), German Art from Beckmann to Richter: Images of a Divided Country [Exh. Cat., Berlin] (Cologne and New Haven, CT: Dumont and Yale University Press). Glaser, Hermann (ed.) (1996), What Remains—​What Lies Ahead, Cultural Upheaval in East Germany (Bonn: Inter Nationes). Hollein, Max and Martina Weinhart (eds) (2015), German Pop [Exh. Cat., Schirm Kunsthalle Frankfurt] (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König). Homburg, Cornelia (ed.) (2003), German Art Now [Exh. Cat. St. Louis Art Museum] (New York: Merrell). Kuspit, Donald B. (1983), ‘The American Case Against Current German Painting’, in Jack Cowart (ed.), Expressions. New Art from Germany: Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Anselm Kiefer, Markus Lüpertz, A. R. Penck [exh. Cat., St. Louis Art Museum] (Munich: Prestel Verlag). Lane, John R. and Charles Wylie (eds) (2003), Sigmar Polke: History of Everything, Paintings and Drawings, 1998–​2003 [Exh. Cat., Dallas Museum of Art] (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Lüpertz, Markus (2017a), ‘Markus Lüpertz, Threads of History’, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC, 2017 and ‘Markus Lüpertz’, Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, 2017. Lüpertz, Markus (2017b), Conversation Richard Schiff with Markus Lüpertz, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC (24 May). Mesch, Claudia (2008), Modern Art at the Berlin Wall (London and New York: Tauris Academic Studies).

GERMAN ART AFTER 1990    465 Rainbird, Sean (2003), ‘Past Battles, Distant Echoes’, in Cornelia Homburg (ed.), German Art Now [Exh. Cat. St. Louis Art Museum] (New York: Merrell). Richter, Gerhard (2015), New Presentation in the Albertinum [exh. Cat., Albertinum and the Gerhard Richter Archive] (Dresden: Albertinum). https://​gerhard-​richter-​archiv.skd.museum/​en/​exhibitions/​gerhard-​richter-​new-​drawings-​2017-​to-​2020/​ Riding, Alan (2006), ‘German Museums Move Closer to Reunification’, New York Times (27 November), E1. Rosenberg, Max (2015), Transforming documenta: Art, Legitimacy, and Modernity in Postwar West Germany (unpubl. Ph.D. diss., New Haven, CT: Yale University). Uhlig, Max (1990), ‘Six Artists from a New Germany’, Art International 11 (summer), pp. 29–​43. Universes in Universe Biennials: documenta, 1972–​2017. https://​www.docume​nta-​arc​hiv.de/​ en/​docume​nta/​51/​about-​docume​nta. For Documenta 10 (1997), see: https://​www.docume​ nta.de/​en/​retros​pect​ive/​docu​ment​a_​x#. For Documenta 14 (2017), see:http://​alephino. documentaarchiv.de/​ a lipac/​ Y PWBMWRTYTTDKMVGVGTO-​ 0 0033/​ s ysix?SCAN_​ CODE=​ALL%3AART&SCAN_​START=​documenta+​14 Weber, Ulla (1996), ‘Contours of a Crisis, Berlin Cultural Policy after 1989’, in Hermann Glaser (ed.), What Remains—​What Lies Ahead, Cultural Upheaval in East Germany (Bonn: Inter Nationes). Wege, Astrid (1999), ‘Who Decides What is “Hauptstadkultur”, and What Is Not?’, Oktober 89(27, summer), pp. 127–​38. Weinhart, Martina (2015), ‘German Pop: Bemerkungen über eine nicht allzu naheliegende Beziehung’, in Max Hollain and Martina Weinhart (eds), German Pop [Exh. Cat. Schirn Frankfurt Kunsthalle] (Cologne, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König).

PA RT I V

G E R M A N Y I N G L OBA L A F FA I R S Germany and Europe

CHAPTER 27

GER MAN FOREI G N P OL I C Y Roots, Reasonings, and Repercussions Holger Moroff

Both West and East Germany were children of the Cold War. With its end East joined West. It was a prelude to eleven more formerly communist countries in Eastern and Southeastern Europe joining first NATO and then the European Union (EU) during the following two decades. These were by far the two most important foreign policy aims of a united Germany, eventually coming into conflict with what Russia perceived as its sphere of influence. War has become unthinkable among EU members; the rule of law and human rights have taken centre stage. Equally important has been the reconceptualization of politics, including international politics, as a multilateral problem-​solving exercise. Such a conception is not shared by many authoritarian countries or politicians, who prefer to view foreign policy as a zero-​sum game.* This chapter looks at the historical roots of German foreign policy from Sonderweg to a new normalcy, focusing on the importance of human rights and rhetorical action as they surrounded the birth of the new Germany in 1990. Their repercussions are analysed by focusing on five exemplary cases of German foreign policy since then. They are the two US-​led wars in Iraq, the Balkan conflicts, 9/​11, the Euro sovereign debt crisis, and Germany’s policies towards the civil war in Libya. These cases shed light on a reluctant hegemon who has diligently avoided unilateral actions and military interventions until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 ushered in a pivot on military spending, weapons exports and sanction regimes.

Germany in Europe The EU serves as a prime example of the domestication of inter-​state conflicts through a joint focus on problem-​solving. The new common enemy is not another state or * 

This chapter is based in parts on Moroff (2021), ‘Democratic Security and Foreign Policy: The EU as a Problem and a Solution for the “German Question” ’. It is much revised and expanded, offering a new perspective on German foreign policy in general.

470   Holger Moroff ideology but environmental, health, economic, and technical risks as well as welfare problems that call for joint actions across borders. Karl Deutsch’s (1957) analysis of ‘security communities’ and François Duchêne’s (1973) ideas on ‘regulated spaces of integration’ captured these developments early on. Both built on Norbert Elias’ frame of a civilizing process, leading to a paradigm of ‘Weltinnenpolitik’ and the concept of ‘soft security’ (Moroff, 2002). Germany provides an instructive example of how an emerging power upset an existing balance of power, and how it eventually joined and furthered a new multilateral international order. Human rights have played an essential role in this complex process. During the East-​West conflict it was about public shaming of human rights abuses occurring on the respective other side of the Iron Curtain, and about proudly showcasing one’s own human rights and welfare achievements, notwithstanding differing definitions of human rights and democracy on both sides of the ideological divide. This dynamic has changed fundamentally with the war on terror, which has been used to justify human rights violations. In an increasingly multipolar international system, characterized by more intra-​state conflicts, it becomes less and less clear who violates human rights most, who is on the good and who on the evil side, and who will eventually prevail. Ultimately, this growing ambivalence makes foreign policy less predictable and more difficult. Germany moved from norm violator to norm proponent. This helped solve old dilemmas of a ‘Sonderweg’—​a special path to modernity—​not unlike the one invoked by China or Russia today. This chapter looks at the historical path from German ‘Mittellage’ via a ‘Westbindung’ to actively participating in foreign and military affairs in the twenty-​first century. The main focus lies on the evolving human rights norms linked to democratic security in an inherently less stable multipolar international system. The role of human rights is intrinsically linked to the form of government and the structure of society. It is only in democracies that the people, the electorate, and thus the aggregate of all individuals are the ultimate sovereign. From this simple but fundamental principle follows that these individuals have innate rights that must be protected. The first ten amendments of the US constitution provide a concrete expression of these rights and protections as does its more lofty and less concrete declaration of independence. Both, as well as the declaration of human rights for the first French Republic, are rooted in this principle. Over the last two centuries virtually all advanced countries have come to accept it as the base for their legitimacy, even if they only pay lip service to it like China or Russia today. If challenged, these non-​democratic countries often resort to claiming superior performance in meeting their people’s material needs and improving their standard of living. The end of elevating individual lives justifies the means of not giving them a say. Thus, output legitimacy trumps input legitimacy. Like many other modernizing countries, Germany swayed between these two forms of rightfulness. Since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1949, German foreign policy has been closely connected to the project of European integration. The country’s foreign policy goals were shaped by the consequences of and lessons from its devastating role in the tumult of the first half of the twentieth century. Paradoxically,

GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY    471 as Helga Haftendorn (2001) and others have argued, it was only through the transfer of national sovereignty to European and NATO institutions that Germany could regain its sovereignty. Henceforth, German power was not defined in nationalist terms, but redefined as the ability for multilateral cooperation and action. German unification in 1990, as well as the inclusion of East and Southeast European countries into NATO and the EU project, only reaffirmed and intensified Germany’s connection to Europe and the Atlantic world. The EU continued to be the master framework and, in many ways, the solution for German foreign policy in the decades following the collapse of communism and unification. However, during the discourse of the 2010s the EU seems to have generated more problems for German foreign policy than solutions. Questions about German leadership in the Eurozone and the refugee crises, the rise of anti-​German sentiments in many highly indebted Euro countries, and complex policy choices confronting Germany have ignited a debate about the ‘new German question’ (Ash, 2013). Discontent among German citizens about the course of the EU and the emergence of a newly formed Eurosceptic party, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), shed light on some of the new controversies about the European project within Germany. The broad-​based pro-​ European consensus among political elites and the major old parties is being challenged by two newcomers, Die Linke and AfD, on the very Left and the very Right of the political spectrum (Lemke 2020, and Pautz in this volume). What does this imply for the country’s future foreign policy orientation? The answer to this question must be given in a new strategic context of global multipolarity and a growing number of fragile states. It must reckon with a more volatile and unpredictable international system while keeping Germany’s unique historical experiences in mind. For the first half of the nineteenth century, the German question—​that is, the question of its political unity and socio-​economic form—​was a problem for the various German principalities and their people.2 In the second half of the nineteenth century, it turned into a European problem—​because Germany’s unification upset the precarious balance of power in Europe—​and during the first half of the twentieth century it became a global problem because of its expansionary foreign policies and fascist turn. Since the 1950s, and with East Germany joining West Germany in 1990, and by implication also the EU and NATO, this question seems to have found a lasting answer. During this period, the preoccupation with foreign policy was slowly superseded by an enhanced focus on domestic policies in Germany, Europe, and the economically interdependent advanced industrialized countries in general. Despite the populist backlash in the mid-​2010s, security no longer defined primarily as a zero-​sum game within the international balance of power, but it is viewed increasingly as a trans-​and supranational project of solving societal problems and achieving shared aims (Duchêne, 1973).

2  During

that period Germany was a geographic and cultural term not a political one, not one of statehood. This only changed with its unification under Prussian leadership in 1872.

472   Holger Moroff The EU’s main policies concern the common market. Its four freedoms of goods, services, people, and capital are its backbone. In these policy areas member states have pooled their sovereignty. Entering this supranational covenant means each individual state can be made to do something it does not want to if the European Court of Justice (ECJ) finds against it, or if it cannot muster a blocking minority of votes in the Council of Ministers, the EU parliament, or the European Central Bank (ECB). This is the essence of the EU’s supranational nature. It creates security without talking about it in a strategic military sense of Realpolitik. It links states in a joint enterprise and lays down the rules for solving conflicts peacefully, at least low-​politics and technical ones. The EU, thus, contributes to a change of perspective from a national to a common European-​wide space within which shared problems and aims can be defined and policies initiated to solve them. In this sense and in these low-​politics areas, the EU supersedes and transforms traditional concepts of foreign policy among its member states (see Chapter 2, by Winkler, in this volume). However, the Eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis has posed a great challenge to this project, as have the refugee crises, and Brexit. Deep economic integration and the ensuing changes in perspectives on international relations on the continent were necessary preconditions for several German foreign policy aims that came to fruition during the last three decades, such as NATO’s and the EU’s Eastern enlargement. Without the prior experience of West European integration—​under the military security shield of the US—​neither Eastern enlargement nor unification would have been possible. Furthermore, a set of soft security policies at the heart of the EU provided the frame in which common values and norms of interaction could develop that eventually led to a pluralistic security community in which strategic aggression became unthinkable and inter-​state military conflict impossible (Moroff, 2002). The main difference between NATO and the EU has been that the latter did not need a common enemy or strategic hard security concerns to amalgamate member states’ interests and policies. In its self-​stylization the EU has not been an externally-​driven organization, but rather an intrinsically-​motivated project.3 Nonetheless, members also tried to ‘rescue’ their national relevance to various degrees in a globalizing world by bundling their weight.4 It was undoubtedly the FRG that pursued this strategy most vigorously. The initial motive for doing so was the desire to be readmitted into the club of ‘civilized’ nations as a respected and relevant interlocutor, but also to prove that its neighbours had nothing to fear from a strengthened, increasingly sovereign, and 3 

Of course, this has always been contested as European integration was also a means to strengthen economic cooperation among US allies under its security shield and with its blessings and roots in the Marshall Plan (see Chapter 5, by Larres, in this volume). However, as far as ‘rhetorical action’ goes, the EU thought of itself as overcoming power politics among nation-​states. 4  According to Alan Milward (1994) it was more concerned with West European powers retaining a modicum of global relevance after they lost global power status in the aftermath of the Second World War and in the face of the East-​West conflict.

GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY    473 eventually reunified Germany. Since then, the seemingly paradoxical ‘leitmotif ’ of self-​ assertion through self-​restriction has become characteristic of German foreign policy also after unification (Haftendorn, 2001). Very much like the EU, Germany turned into a civilian power, emphasizing multilateralism, strong international institutions, supranational integration, the rule of law, human rights, and restrictions on the use of force (see Chapter 29, by Harnisch, in this volume). Germany’s main foreign policy priorities were reunification, continued peaceful cooperation with its neighbours, and stable relationships with the former superpowers as well as with emerging powers. The EU provides the main framework within which the first two aims have been realized, and it continues to be a pivotal element in achieving the latter two. Given Germany’s export-​oriented economy (see Chapter 16, by Busch, in this volume), deepening the European common market has been a constant vital interest. However, rather than using the EU as a fortress against globalization, Germany conceives of it as a means to facilitate, foster, and participate in the global marketplace. Traditionally, this marketplace has not been viewed as a threat to democracy as Habermas (2013) suggested. To appreciate these achievements and strategies, one must put them in a historical context against which they stand out as more recent exceptions rather than as a long-​standing tradition.

Historical Roots: from ‘Mittellage’ via ‘Sonderweg’ to a ‘New Normalcy’ German geopolitical claims shifted after two phases of military expansionism in the first half of the twentieth century. It arrived at the ‘normalcy’ of a civilian power within wider European and transatlantic structures, abandoning the German concept of a ‘Sonderweg’. Such a special path to modernity, different from those of other Western countries, was rooted in its geopolitical self-​conception as having to straddle the contradictory forces of its ‘Mittellage’. It had to balance an internal divide between a conservative agrarian, landed aristocracy in the East and a dynamic, industrial bourgeoisie in the West. This was also a reflection of the external ‘Mittellage’ as Germany was sandwiched between rapidly modernizing liberal democracies to the West and traditional, agrarian monarchies in the East. In the terms of Niklas Luhmann, a monocentric and stratified society clashed with an increasingly polycentric and functionally differentiated one (Luhmann, 1997). For the nineteenth century, many historians see a dividing line between Western and Eastern Europe cutting right through the middle of Germany along the river Elbe. Located on the West, lay the industrial, maritime, and globally-​oriented part, whereas the East was much more continental, agricultural, and parochial in character (Gerschenkron, 1943). Accommodating the two sides posed one of the biggest challenges

474   Holger Moroff to Bismarck’s plans of integrating the German states into a single political structure. The other conundrum of ‘Mittellage’ meant being surrounded by large powers. In the early twentieth century, German geopoliticians proposed a ‘Sonderweg’—​a special path that followed neither Western liberalism nor Eastern socialism (Haushofer, 1934; Behnke, 2006, pp. 400–​2). This idea can be traced back to the 1880s, when a generation of Germans had experienced unprecedented economic growth and military victories—​not unlike the US at that time—​while witnessing the relative decline of Great Britain. ‘The men of this generation who grew up in the late Bismarckian era were also convinced devotees of the “world policy” devoted to securing for Germany “a place in the sun” [i.e. colonies], which the young Emperor had been quick to announce as his program. It was the accession of Wilhelm II in July 1888 that really unleashed the conservative dynastic forces at home; those calling for pushful expansion abroad got their heads (Fischer, 1967, pp. 7–​8). This mode of thinking gained in currency during the Third Reich when Karl Haushofer turned Geopolitik into an academic discipline and thus gave the Nazi leadership legitimacy, since Geopolitik possessed ‘a convincing scholarly-​analytical lexicon which seemed to provide scientific legitimation for a proactive programme of territorial aggrandizement’ (Bassin, 2005, p. 222). After the material and moral devastations Germany had caused on the European continent under Nazi leadership, a ‘never again’ mentality with respect to both militarism and nationalism developed. Germany’s foreign policy leadership rejected a Sonderweg and, thus, unilateral actions. Instead, it favoured a ‘Westbindung’, an integration with the countries of Western Europe and North America. Therefore, for proponents of West integration, the task for post-​war Germany was to renounce any intention of ever acting unilaterally, of going down a ‘special path’ (Bach and Peters, 2002, pp. 5–​6, Chapter 5, by Larres, in this volume). Ideas about a ‘civilizing’ change of international relations were first articulated in the context of European integration in the 1960s and 1970s. Germany’s civilian power identity was closely linked to the EU. The geopolitical context of the East-​West conflict manifested itself visibly in the division of Germany, which in and of itself represented the division of Europe as a whole. ‘Hence, overcoming the latter division must necessarily include overcoming the former . . . This correlation between European and German division and unity leads over to a positive affirmation the European(ised) identity of the latter’ (Behnke, 2006, p. 414). West Germany’s firm inclusion in the European integration project was the basis for reshaping spatial, security, and foreign policy concepts. ‘In “Europe,” Germany could seek legitimacy and regain agency through sharing sovereignty. This itself was bound to introduce significant overlap between German and European interests’ (Bach and Peters, 2002, p. 9). After unification and with the fall of other East European communist regimes, some saw Germany in a new kind of Mittellage, which was quite different from the old concept (Walser Smith, 2008). Rather than bridging different perspectives between East and West, the challenge consisted of bringing the Eastern part of Germany and later that of Europe into the political, economic, and security regimes of Western Europe. West Germany’s economic and political success seemed so appealing that its sheer power of

GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY    475 attraction—​its soft power—​was strong enough that the old question of its Mittellage and its need for a Sonderweg was rendered obsolete by having East Germany join the West and thus also the EU and NATO. In the very same way, large parts of Eastern Europe would transcend their potential Mittellage dilemma—​of having functioned as a buffer zone between two or more empires—​by joining the EU and NATO. Those outside this enlargement circle still face the grim realities of being treated as a buffer zone by Russia (see Chapter 34, by Szabo, in this volume). Ukraine and Georgia provide ample examples of this. The EU’s Eastern enlargement also constitutes a successful example of nation (re)building, democracy promotion, and the creation of free market economies right on Germany’s doorstep, thus reaching its main foreign policy objectives in a permanent structural setting. For this reason alone, it has become paramount for Germany that the EU remains a stable sub-​system of international relations. And in this sense, it is less important for the EU to act as a single power abroad (see Chapters 29 and 30, by Harnisch and Daehnhardt respectively, in this volume) than to avoid rifts among its members over events in its neighbourhood or farther afield. Even if this leads to delays or inaction, protraction is less destabilizing than member states acting unilaterally or at cross purposes with the danger of troubles in the neighbourhood or external shocks spilling over into the EU.

The Outsize Role of Human Rights In hindsight it becomes clear that only fortuitous international conditions made achieving those goals possible. Even the most optimistic visionaries did not predict the time and speed with which the Eastern bloc collapsed. In 1988 Helmut Kohl surmised that he would not ‘live long enough to experience reunification’ (Erb, 2003, p. 92). However, one essential and rather uncivil precondition for a civilizing world order was the ‘balance of terror’—​the nuclear deterrent. First, it caused a perceived stalemate and then a rapprochement between the Cold War superpowers in the 1970s. This in turn spurred Western Europe and especially Germany to foster the Conference on Security and Co-​operation in Europe (CSCE) process5 as part of its ‘Ostpolitik’—​lest its concerns were now being sidelined by a détente between the US and the Soviet Union (see Chapter 5, by Larres, in this volume). It was a process of trust-​building measures that eventually led to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 where for the first time East and West agreed to, among other things, the idea of cultural freedom, and thus freedom of opinion and speech, the right to self-​determination, and the acceptance of post-​Second World War borders. All of these are codifications of what Habermas, drawing on Kant, sees as the quint essential role of 5  The CSCE process, or Conference on Security and Co-​ operation in Europe, started in 1973 and consisted of several negotiations leading to non-​binding agreements between East and West European leaders.

476   Holger Moroff human dignity (Habermas, 2013). These norms were to become pivotal for the peaceful East European revolutions a decade later but also for the EU’s Eastern enlargement after yet another decade.6 Freedom of expression and the right to self-​determination proved an especially important outcome. The CSCE process also made apparent how rhetorical action—​for these norms were not genuinely embraced by the Eastern leadership—​took on a life of its own once dissidents and later mass movements started to demand respect for and the implementation of such norms. Their constant reiteration changed assumptions as to what constitutes politically acceptable arguments and finally legitimate action. These mass protests thus also formed the backdrop against which German reunification could take place so rapidly and EU Eastern enlargement thereafter. To see how this ‘speech act’-​driven process worked and spiralled into political realities, it is instructive to take a closer look at the Soviet Union’s acquiescence to German unification. Eventually this led to the self-​determination of much of Eastern Europe as well as integration into Western political and security alliances.

From Rhetorical via Communicative Action to Political Reality If the first unification of Germany was made with blood and iron, the second took only words and money. (Garton Ash, 1999, p. 53)

Not only did Moscow and the puppet regimes of Eastern Europe make publicly codified concessions to certain norms which they were later asked to live up to,7 but the West too made promises to the peoples of the communist bloc for over four decades of the East-​West conflict. If they only changed and became liberal democracies with a free market and showed respect for human and minority rights, they could join the Western camp. Such promises were clearly part of a Cold War propaganda programme—​like much of the human rights discourse on both sides—​but once uttered and reiterated, they could not be rescinded easily. 6  The Helsinki Final Act’s ‘Declaration on Principles Guiding Relations between Participating States’ encompasses ten articles with Articles III, VII, and VIII being most important for the peaceful revolutions a decade and a half later. They read respectively: III. Inviolability of frontiers, VII. Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion, or belief, and VIII. Equal rights and self-​determination of peoples. The whole process and especially Article III was viewed as a major diplomatic boost for the Soviet Union at the time, it seemed to consolidate the USSR’s territorial gains in Eastern Europe following the Second World War. The Helsinki accords gradually became a manifesto of the dissident and liberal movements. What this meant was that the people who lived under authoritarian systems could claim official permission to say what they thought. 7  The free, non-​ governmental Polish union Solidarity as well as the Czechoslovakian opposition group Charter 77 made explicit references to the Helsinki Final Act (taking its name from the revisions of that Act in 1977) and its political norms and values.

GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY    477 The people of Eastern Europe first demanded the implementation of the norms that their own leadership had publicly embraced. And after they toppled these leaders they asked their Western neighbours to keep their longstanding promises in turn and allow them into their premier clubs, first and foremost NATO and the EU. Frank Schimmelfennig (2001) analyses the phenomenon of rhetorical action and how it can entrap politicians when they cannot put the genie of loudly trumpeted norms, values, and promises back into the bottle again. His insights are also very instructive for events two decades later in the other authoritarian neighbourhood of the EU, namely the Southern Mediterranean and the Middle East, during the uprisings of the Arab Spring. They show an almost self-​reinforcing discourse on human dignity that only overarching security concerns could counteract, rendering the countries of the Arab Spring half a decade later as undemocratic as before. The Soviet leadership accepted a unified Germany within NATO but placed several restrictions on its military, and NATO had to denounce any anti-​Soviet aims. The standard explanation for this outcome from a realist perspective is the same as that for the end of the Cold War: the superior economic, military, and political strength of the West and the decline of Soviet power since the 1970s were responsible (Wohlforth, 1995). While such structural and material considerations did play a role, they can hardly account for all—​or even the major—​decisions taken during the 2 +​4 negotiations on German unification in 1990 between the four allied powers of the Second World War—​ the Soviet Union, the US, Britain, and France—​and the two Germanys. Drawing on Habermas’s concept of communicative action Risse arrives at the conclusion that ‘the Cold War’s endgame is largely a story of reassurance rather than compellence or even coercion’, and that the 2 +​4 talks can best be characterized as ‘a process of communication, argumentation, and persuasion rather than traditional power-​based bargaining’ (Risse, 1997, p. 162). Looking at the options available to the Soviet leader Gorbachev and his foreign minister Shevardnadze, one finds some support for Risse’s line of argument. At the time, they could have forced Germany to choose between unification and NATO membership, thus pitting supporters of the alliance against a strong movement for unity. In this situation, the response of West Germany and the US was to avoid humiliating the already weakened Soviet Union and to seek German unification within the existing borders as well as respect ‘the principles adopted in the Helsinki Final Act, recognizing the inviolability of frontiers in Europe’ (Ross and Fukuyama, 1989). It was also important to place restrictions on Germany’s military and transform NATO from an anti-​ Soviet alliance to a post-​Cold War security organization that would enter a partnership with Eastern Europe. This was the foundation for subsequent NATO enlargements, which were to precede all subsequent EU Eastern enlargements. In a later interview, Shevardnadze explained that German NATO membership would have been rejected by the Soviet Union without the decisions taken at the NATO Council in London in July 1990. Here the end of the Cold War was declared and the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were invited to establish permanent liaison missions with NATO, a restructuring of the alliance’s conventional forces was announced, and nuclear forces were declared solely a weapon of last resort (Shevardnadze, 1991, p. 257).

478   Holger Moroff German NATO membership was linked to the Helsinki/​OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) principle of self-​determination, which to the surprise of many participants in the Moscow delegation Gorbachev accepted. That made it appear as if Germany had the right to decide for itself which alliance it would join, if any. For face-​saving purposes, participants at the London meeting agreed that the US might advocate for Germany’s membership in NATO, ‘but if Germany made a different choice, would respect that choice’ (Risse, 1997, p. 178). At least this was the public diplomacy side of it. In reality neither the US nor the UK or France would have accepted such an outcome. This window of opportunity for self-​determination was closing fast, since the Soviet Union and the rest of Europe came to think twice about the likely implications of it once the Yugoslavian wars of secession started in the summer of 1991. In the end, however, German NATO membership was not negotiable for the US and Gorbachev also came to view a neutral Germany as a loose cannon which was potentially much more dangerous than one integrated into a reformed NATO. Of course, money changed hands too. It is estimated that Germany paid between 50 and 80 billion marks (US $31–​50 billion) to the Soviet Union (Newnham, 1999). Money diplomacy had played an important role in the 1980s as well, with a loan of over one billion marks to East Germany (see Chapter 5, by Larres, in this volume). Monetary elements have been part and parcel ever since, not least during the first Iraq war in 1991 and later during NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. In the end, a pivotal change in words and attitudes—​speech acts—​turned a perceived foe into a potential friend. At a crucial stage during the negotiations, Gorbachev reasoned that one should avoid ‘a replay of Versailles, where the Germans were able to arm themselves . . . The best way to prevent that process is to ensure that Germany is contained within European structures’ (Risse, 1997, p. 177). While Gorbachev with his statement seemed to acknowledge the existence and importance of Duchêne’s ‘regulated spaces of interaction’, he also showed that the Soviet leadership had changed its preferences in the course of the negotiations. This change can hardly be explained by a purely game-​theoretical analysis. Rather a theory of communicative action seems better suited. It presumes that well-​reasoned arguments are likely to convince others if they are open to change their minds and preferences. The same holds true for the Western allies among whom only the US appeared to have had a clear and stable set of preferences, namely German unification within existing borders and within NATO. It took both Bonn and Washington in tandem several argumentative efforts to convince Great Britain and France of this reasoning. The latter two appeared ‘entrapped’ in their decades-​old rhetoric of professing to have overcome and replaced geostrategic thinking with reconciliation and economic integration. Such a deeply engrained discourse could not be jettisoned overnight. Changing the game back to one of power politics and orienting the thinking towards a geopolitical balance of power takes time. In this situation, it is somewhat ironic that the Soviet leadership probably did more for the survival of NATO than any member by insisting that the alliance had to be transformed. NATO adapted very quickly to the new security environment and through

GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY    479 that was able to reshape itself for the remaining decade. Thus, the end of the Cold War gave also birth to a new raison d’être of the alliance and turned it even more into a ‘pluralistic security community’ based on a collective identity of democratic countries similar to that of the EU. These are essential elements of a ‘Weltinnenpolitik’ and a domesticated foreign policy. Since its interventions in Georgia and Ukraine in respectively 2008 and 2014 (see Chapter 34, by Szabo, in this volume), Russia seems to have given NATO another lease of life again by reviving its old raison d’être. This was reinforced again by Russia’s demands in December 2021 that the alliance should promise not to admit either country, as well as stop troop rotations in former member countries of the Warsaw Pact. Contested interpretations of the 2 +​4 negotiations form the backdrop to these demands, and President Putin’s revisionist narrative portrays NATO as an enemy, existentially threatening Russia. It is here that German ‘Ostpolitik’ reveals its paradox. Creating security by supporting democracy and regulated spaces of regional integration can be perceived as a threat by those countries whose regimes are neither democratic nor inclined to abide by international norms or multilateral rule setting. As much as a democratic Taiwan is a thorn in the side of China’s autocratic rulers, so could a democratic and prosperous Ukraine threaten the legitimacy of an autocratic regime in Russia. In as far as NATO and the EU are in the subtle business of regime change by their sheer power of attraction, autocrats will feel threatened by them. A change of discourse from a geopolitical focus on Mittellage and the need for a Sonderweg to one of multilateral cooperation not only changed the self-​perception of Germany, but also that of its neighbours’ and transatlantic partners. Both were necessary preconditions for the two most pressing German foreign policy issues, first unification and, later, EU/​NATO Eastern enlargement. Speech acts, originally only of a rhetorical kind that were uttered by politicians without them imagining that concrete deeds would ever be demanded on their basis, came home to roost. The rhetorical commitments made in the Helsinki Final Act by the communist leaders, and the West’s promise to any Eastern European country that it could join their club once they rid themselves of communism, again proved the power of ideas and words.

The Balkan Crises As much as the EU seems to be the main solution to many of Germany’s most pressing foreign policy issues, Germany can also be seen as posing a problem for a consistent and coherent EU foreign policy. Ever since Germany’s unilateral recognition of Slovenia and Croatia in December 1991, its willingness to coordinate decisions with its partners has been questioned (see Chapter 31, by Sperling, in this volume). Witnessing and supporting the calls for self-​ determination for East Germany, the Federal Republic initially welcomed similar movements across Eastern and

480   Holger Moroff Southeastern Europe. The former Yugoslav Republics of Croatia and Slovenia wanted more autonomy in a reformed confederate system. However, in the face of Serbia’s refusal and repression they declared themselves independent and the precarious balance of various ethnicities, brokered under Tito, broke down. The massacre of Srebrenica in 1995 is its symbol. German value-​based foreign policy of protecting human rights and preventing genocide became as important as its attempts to keep peace in its neighbourhood and reducing the number of refugees from the former Yugoslavia. Germany believed that Belgrade had no interest in settling the disputes through peaceful negotiations. It therefore recognized Slovenian and Croatian independence in December 1991 before the majority of the other EU members did. It was ostensibly done to avoid bloodshed despite the misgivings of other European nations (Libal, 1997, pp. 12–​16). Though it was done in a largely unilateral fashion it was not for power political reasons. Germany went ahead in recognizing these nations while working with and trying to convince others through the various international institutions it was a part of (Libal 1997, p. 86). It was seeing the spectre of ethno-​nationalist civil wars and secessionist conflicts on the wall that informed Germany’s strong push for EU and NATO enlargement. If the former communist countries demonstrated good neighbourly relations and implemented the European Conventions on Human Rights and Minority Protection, they would be granted a membership option. If Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had gone down the path of Yugoslavia it would have been a major catastrophe for the whole of Europe and Germany in particular. Herein also lies the reason for its support of the peaceful break-​up of Czechoslovakia into two independent states in 1993. For good historical reasons Germany was as much interested in expanding the EU eastward as it was in making it stronger. Whereas the UK supported a quick enlargement in hopes of watering down the political and supranational elements of the EU, Germany aimed at widening and deepening. The first step of deepening while widening was the Treaty of Maastricht, where Germany agreed to a currency union as a price for unification, which in itself was the first time the EU expanded into former communist territory, albeit indirectly through East Germany acceding to the EU member state of West Germany. A pattern of deepening and widening was established that held true throughout the revisions in the Amsterdam (1999), Nice (2003), and Lisbon (2009) treaties, adding new policy components like a common foreign and security policy or cooperation in justice and home affairs and making more and more policy areas subject to supranational decision making (Kelemen et al., 2014). Yugoslavia also informed Germany’s change of heart about military interventions. Ten years after the fall of the Wall a unified Germany was participating in NATO’s efforts to stop the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo with a force of 5,000 German soldiers deployed at the front lines (Erb, 2003,1p. 68). This was the first time since the Second World War that German soldiers were deployed in this manner. It was not sanctioned by the UN Security Council but covered under German law by the Constitutional Court decision of 1994, which stipulated that these deployments are possible only in a multilateral format.

GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY    481 Thus, Germany had proven to its allies that it was a reliable member of NATO and prepared to share a greater military burden. It was under an Social Demoratic/​Green Party coalition that Germany first committed troops to a foreign conflict zone. If in opposition, these parties would likely not have backed such a move. However, the decision was significantly inspired by what was seen as parallels between the ethnic cleansing being committed in the Balkans and Germany’s own Nazi past. This marks an important change in discourse for the Green party from the historically informed pacifist stance of ‘never again war originating from German soil’ to ‘nie wieder Auschwitz!’—​Never again Auschwitz—​which turned into a rallying call for its interventions in the Balkans. A new leadership role emerged through its early recognition of Slovenia and Croatia and by promoting NATO’s Kosovo mission. However, pragmatism trumps principles when it comes to non-​EU countries further East and especially those who belonged to the former Soviet Union. Here non-​intervention and de-​escalation rule supreme. This is for historical reasons as much as for the fact that Russia can always increase military pressure, aided by substantial disinformation and cyber warfare capabilities. Germany does not want to stoke the narrative that Russia is encircled by enemies, which would only play into the hands of a stronger authoritarian grip on power by President Putin (see Chapter 34, by Szabo, in this volume). Similar to 1998, it is once again an SPD lead coalition government with a Green Party foreign minister that faces a major threat to European security in 2022. It remains to be seen if a value-​based approach can lead to success when dealing with a strong authoritarian power.

Iraq and 9/​11 Almost immediately after unification Germany faced its first foreign policy challenge as a united, sovereign state. Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and the UN and Germany’s NATO allies were set to liberate the country. With all the domestic upheaval caused by absorbing East Germany, Berlin was in no position to become involved in this conflict. However, with the military intervention in Iraq receiving a UN mandate and NATO committing troops to the invasion of Iraq, Germany realized that it had to jump on board at least symbolically to prove to its neighbours and allies that it intended to be a reliable member of the international community. As in the past, Germany’s contribution to the mission was financial, contributing about US $12 billion as well as logistical support in economic aid (Erb, 2003, pp. 149–​51). The terrorist attacks on 9/​11 2001 and the fact that some of it was planned on German soil forced Germany to come to grips with new security challenges and alliance obligations. The Schröder government expressed solidarity with the US. When the UN Security Council passed Resolutions No. 1368 and 1373 which authorized member states to exercise the right of individual and collective self-​defence and NATO invoked Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty, Germany contributed soldiers to the coalition against

482   Holger Moroff international terrorism. Germany’s response was domestically justified by its value-​ based foreign policy (Maull, 2006). However, equally important was signalling that it was a fully participating alliance member, thus strengthening NATO and its multilateral structures. At the same time Germany was also keen on showing its efforts as a mediator by hosting the successful negotiations on forming an interim government for Afghanistan (Nabers, 2004, p. 58). During this UN conference held at the grand Petersberg hotel outside of Bonn in 2001, Germany pledged €80 million per year for the social and economic reconstruction of Afghanistan. That German security is defended at the Hindukush marked a stark departure from its previous focus close to home. However, the US-​led invasion of Iraq in 2003 showed that there is no support for unilateral, pre-​emptive strikes, even of the most important ally. It was also a very unusual and public disagreement between Washington and Berlin with Chancellor Schröder using the strong domestic anti-​war sentiment in a reelection campaign that he won very narrowly (Karp, 2006). He and the Green party Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, also cited the German Basic Law, which expressly forbids the preparation for an offensive war (Bender, 2008). Germany was not alone in refusing to go along with the US. It worked in tandem with France and rejected the US ‘evidence’ for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in the UN Security Council. Thus, it was not just a unilateral refusal to follow its most important ally. But Berlin’s refusal demonstrated that its foreign policy had departed from the reflexive, and virtually unconditional Atlanticism of the Cold War in favour of a multilateralism that takes its cues from Germany’s own assessment of the nature of international politics and its domestic election cycle (Karp, 2006). The end of the Cold War placed Germany in a position it had never been in before: it no longer had to fear the outbreak of war, and it would not have to face any military confrontation in the immediate future. This is the reason why the Bundeswehr has been incrementally restructured from a solely defensive army to one with intervention and expeditionary capabilities. It is a sign of its intentions to engage in missions like the one in Afghanistan as well as in rapid reaction forces intended to support alliance member who feel threatened by Russia, like the Baltic republics (see Chapter 32, by Kaim, in this volume). Balancing alliance demands with domestic forces that focus on economic interests and identity or value-​based demands of large constituencies is the main task for the foreign policy community in Germany.

The Case of Libya The fact that Germany enjoys a high degree of trust and has a reputation of pursuing a value-​based foreign policy, has allowed it to take leadership roles and express criticisms concerning other types of international events as well. A more recent case of a diplomatic ‘Sonderweg’ was its abstention from the 2011 UN resolution condemning the Gaddafi regime in Libya and authorizing the use of force to protect civilians. In the same

GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY    483 vein, it was very reluctant to arm rebels in Syria in 2013. These seem to be symptoms of two wider and far-​reaching phenomena with respect to German foreign policy. First, Germany’s actions show how very difficult it is to coordinate twenty-​seven foreign policies under an EU auspice and to speak with one voice on the world stage. On the flip side, the desirability of a coherent EU that presents a united front to the world might be questioned in a highly complex world where it becomes increasingly difficult to tell what the right side of history will be. This was something the last three generations of Western politicians and scholars were accustomed to, starting with the two World Wars and ending with the demise of the Soviet Union. Since then, history has not ended but the international system has become more dynamic, multipolar, complex, and most importantly less predictable. Could there even be advantages to incoherence and ambiguity, and to being a member of a diffuse foreign policy actor like the EU? Libya is a case in point insofar as during the spring of 2011, most experts rightly expected it to descend into a protracted civil war with a large arsenal of highly destructive weapons on Gaddafi’s side that would likely have necessitated, at some point, external mediation. If the EU as a whole had cut off all contacts with one side, it could not have served in such a mediating capacity. With the benefit of hindsight, such scenarios are at the heart of the method of constructing counterfactuals. ‘What would have happened if?’ is the question that must be asked more often in a less predictable international system, and, by implication, foreign policy might have to become more pragmatic than principled in order to safeguard higher aims. At times this might mean that principled ends might justify less principled means. Such possible conflicts and dilemmas need to be spelled out and reflected rather than papered over by simplified and moralized dichotomies between an inherently evil ‘Realpolitik’ and an inherently good liberal, value-​based foreign policy. Many EU member states maintain special relationships with third countries and regions outside the EU that can potentially help in times of conflict without enlisting all twenty-​seven members in a coherent foreign policy stance. On the outside, it is difficult to distinguish a conscious policy of strategic incoherence from one of fundamental differences among member states. Whether they truly act at cross-​purposes or try to gain influence has been difficult to determine ever since the salient move of British Prime Minister Tony Blair in joining the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, while Germany abstained. He did this despite an overwhelming lack of public support in Great Britain itself, though he did not face an election. Blair argued that only in this way could one influence the US hegemon and strengthen its less hawkish elements as personified at the time by Secretary of State Colin Powell among others. To Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, the hawkish Secretary of Defense and Vice President, the good cops were Britain and the new East European NATO members, the bad cops were France and Germany. It is debatable whether this was a strategy, even more so whether it worked, but the possibility of strategic incoherence should not be ruled out beforehand. In mainstream discussions, these phenomena are regularly viewed as external powers dividing member states and thus forestalling a strong unified EU position. Whether it is a

484   Holger Moroff successful ‘divide and rule’ politics by outside powers or effective strategic incoherence with potentially useful results—​intended or unintended—​depends very much on the particular situation. In the case of Libya, Germany had fewer material interests at stake than other member states such as Italy and France. It also had less of a pro-​Gaddafi foreign policy than these countries before the uprising. Both France and Italy invited Gaddafi to multiple state visits and provided him with various forums for generating favourable publicity. Germany’s cautious attitude seemed to make good sense in the pre-​conflict era as well as during the uprising in light of the principled pragmatism as outlined above, but also in keeping an EU member in a potential position of a credible mediator if the warring parties needed one. With Turkish, Russian, and foreign Islamist terrorist groups intervening in the conflict on different sides it became even more protracted. The fact that Germany kept a more neutral position from the outset predestined it to host the first major negotiating conference among the warring parties and major foreign powers in January 2020. It resulted in a fifty-​five-​point plan and created a monitoring committee. The second Berlin conference on Libya took place in June 2021 during which Russia and Turkey pledged to reduce their number of mercenaries. Much like the Afghanistan conference held two decades prior, this points to a pattern of Germany trying to take on the role of honest broker and providing room and good will for negotiating complicated conflicts in highly fragile states.

The Case of the Euro Crisis The sovereign debt crisis and its implications for the EU’s monetary union have posed a very different challenge to German foreign policy than issues of war, peace, human or minority rights, and revolutions or civil wars in its neighborhood. On the surface it does not even look like a foreign policy problem. However, the smooth functioning of the EU is Germany’s main guarantee for regional stability and peaceful interaction with its direct neighbours, every threat to it is a threat to Germany. International financial markets seem to have tied and forced the hands of politicians and central banks in the case of the Euro crisis as much as they did when the speculative bubbles burst in the housing markets of the US, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal in 2008. In the early 1990s, Chancellor Helmut Kohl justified agreeing to a common monetary policy without a common fiscal policy by saying that the latter would follow in the former’s wake, counting on what neo-​functionalists term ‘spillovers’. This was the so-​ called locomotive theory of a common currency—​that is, one without stringent regulation of member states’ budgetary policies. The train of integration would be pulled towards a deeper fiscal union by a monetary union with the common currency serving as its locomotive. In contrast, according to the crowning theory, first an economic governance system or fiscal union should be established that governs public debt. Thus, the

GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY    485 whole project would be crowned by a common currency, not driven forward by it. The train of integration has been pulled further towards a fiscal union, albeit more by external shocks than the internal logic of the Euro system. About twenty years after the negotiations on the Euro as part of the Maastricht Treaty, both theories were put to the test by the sovereign debt crises that engulfed Greece and Cyprus but also Spain, Portugal, and Ireland. And a decade later another external shock, the Covid-​19 pandemic, paved the way for the first bond for Euro-​wide debt obligations. In July 2020 the European Council agreed to issue European sovereign bonds of €750 billion, branded Next Generation EU, to support member states hit by the pandemic (see also Chapter 2, by Winkler, in this volume). So far, these financial external shocks have led to a deepening of EU integration, despite temporary travel restrictions in the face of the Covid-​19 pandemic. This is in stark contrast to the external shocks of the 1970s that drove member states apart. There is no natural law of what constitutes an optimal public debt limit. Debt is sustainable as long as a country can service its obligations on interests and principal. The public debt-​related criteria of the 1998 stability and growth pact —​3 per cent annual budget deficit, 60 per cent public debt in relation to GDP—​are somewhat arbitrarily set, and none of the major EU economies has fulfilled all of them all the time, neither would other big economies such as Japan or the US. As a matter of fact, Germany and France were the first to violate them, thus setting a precedent of loose enforcement of the stability pact and later on watering it down further. The determining factor of debt sustainability is the interest rates markets ask a country to pay for its bonds and its forecasted growth. Both measures are linked and the price for bonds are based on payback assumptions. If a critical mass of investors decides to bet on a country’s default and thus charge ever higher interest rates that will eventually force its default. It becomes a self-​fulfilling prophecy. The currency union was also set up, among other things, to prevent such speculative attacks on exchange rates—​like that of George Soros’ against the British pound in 1990—​and thus insulating its members from speculation. Where and according to which criteria should the price—​the interest rate—​for government bonds be set? Should it be through the free market mechanism of supply and demand? Should the ECB intervene when it deems the price greatly distorted, as it did by buying Greek and Italian debt, and what constitutes ‘major distortions’? Should all members of a currency union lend to the ones whose price for debt becomes unsustainable, and if so against which collateral and under what conditions? These are the questions the Eurozone has been facing intermittently since 2008. Germany exports over 40 per cent of its goods and services into that zone and its banks have lent heavily to the Greek, Italian, Spanish, and to a lesser extent to the Portuguese and Irish governments. Does this mean it should bear the brunt of bailing them out? This seemed to pose one of the biggest problems for German foreign policy since the EU’s enlargement. It remains to be seen whether the crowning or the locomotive theorists will be proven right. But if the outcome is a general introduction of constitutional debt limits, a Schuldenbremse, and strict budget controls, analogous to the

486   Holger Moroff German model, then one could conclude that as much as the ECB was modelled after the Bundesbank, future fiscal policy will be modelled after a northern European tradition of austerity and thrift. Such a neo-​functional locomotive would then pull in a direction favourable to German foreign and domestic policy goals in the end. With the so-​called Recovery and Resilience program of 2020 sizeable joint EU bonds have been issued, thus communitarizing debt in an unprecedented manner. Strengthened joint fiscal constraints because of the sovereign debt crisis and joint EU debt management in response to the Covid-​19 crisis point into the direction of a closer fiscal union. Neither policy was planned in advance but brought about as reactions to external shocks.A real danger of the sovereign debt crises and joint EU debt management is that they might prove too contentious to be dealt with by EU institutions and mechanisms. These institutions were originally designed to deal with non-​controversial issues of low politics, not with topics that are highly charged and easily politicized. Domesticating foreign policy—​and especially German foreign policy—​has been a major goal and achievement of European integration. In this sense, the EU constitutes the most developed sub-​system in international relations yet. However, once political conflicts, even over seemingly domestic issues like member states’ budgets, are being fought out along the fault lines of national groupings, pitting one country against another, there is the possibility of reversing the trend and turning domesticated issues into international power struggles again. This can easily give rise to emotional recriminations, moral admonishments, and the logic of zero-​sum games in international relations that were long thought overcome by European integration. The experiment of economic and political integration of nation-​states with long traditions of sovereignty and enmity is constantly being challenged. It has proved invaluable in solving Germany’s foreign policy conundrums. Should it turn into a highly contested policy arena with political mobilization along the lines of nation-​states, Germany has the most to lose.

Conclusion NATO and the EU are Germany’s main foreign policy pillars and tools. They pose both problems and solutions to its main foreign policy aims. Their respective enlargements into Eastern Europe was the main goal of German foreign policy after unification. It stabilized its neigbourhood, preventing it from descending to ethno-​nationalist civil wars like Yugoslavia, and it also prevented such potential instability form spilling over into the EU. Both Eastern enlargements, but particularly that of NATO, has become more controversial as it inched closer to what Russia considers its ‘near abroad’ of former Soviet republics with a strong ethnic Russian presence. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ensuing frozen conflict in the Don Bas region as well as Russia’s demands in 2021 to keep Ukraine and Georgia out of NATO and its subsequent invasion of Ukraine show the limits of this policy.

GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY    487 The case of Libya and by extension that of Syria and other Arab Spring countries shows the thin line between effective strategic incoherence among EU member states and the danger of external conflicts in the EU’s neighbourhood turning into contentious issues of high politics among member states. This not only paralyses the EU as an international actor, but even worse, it might pit member states against one another and thus threaten the EU’s greatest achievement, namely that of being the most advanced and stable sub-​ system of international relations among modern nation-​states. Similarly, it can be argued that the Euro crisis posed a problem because the actions it engendered fall outside of the clearly prescribed regulated areas of interaction. Exceptional circumstances require exceptional measures was the argument at the time. However, this meant circumventing, if not clearly breaching, written EU law and procedures. The power of being able to define a situation as exceptional and taking extraordinary measures outside the normal political process is what Carl Schmitt (2007/​1934) called the essence of power in politics. Any time that happens on the EU level, action is taken outside the regulated spaces of integration, and it challenges the ‘domestication’ of foreign policy. It also strengthens the executives of member states. Supranational institutions like the EU Commission or procedures like qualified majority votes in the EU Council are pushed aside in favour of ad hoc intergovernmentalism. This makes crisis management more dependent on leaders of individual countries and their domestic circumstances and constituencies. The EU is ill-​equipped to deal with high politics, as it was designed to crowd it out by low politics. Foreign policy used to be by definition high politics and the need to react to external shocks like the Arab Spring and the Russian invasion of Ukraine or to internal ones like the Euro or the Covid-​19 crises throws it back onto a high politics plane, thus challenging the time-​honoured technocratic mode of EU policy-​making as much as it undermines the possibility of a low-​profile German foreign and EU policy. However, the more salient member states, and especially Germany, become in making controversial decisions on highly politicized, emotional, and contested issues, the greater the danger of creating and reinforcing national fault lines inside the EU. If this means a return to the primacy of foreign policy that Europe witnessed until the 1950s, then old balance of power questions, special paths of unilateral actions, and a geopolitical Realpolitik will again be on the agenda. This would threaten the EU as a stable and effective subset of international relations. Post-​war German governments have been guided by their commitment to furthering civility and the rule of law in international relations. This also bears out a self-​reinforcing logic of any civilian power. Its self-​conception as an international actor and its foreign policy capabilities depend on the existence of regulated structures of interaction. Action outside these regulated areas have limited and potentially even self-​defeating effects. Germany, very much like the EU, would be rendered a minor player because of its inability to project hard military and strategic power, as witnessed in the 2022 US-​Russia negotiations over Ukraine without Europeans at the table. Both, Germany and the EU, base their external actions on soft security policies, utilizing global regime structures

488   Holger Moroff with explicit rules and implicit norms. Neither has sufficient hard security capabilities of projecting coercive power into its neighborhood. For this it has relied on the US.

Further Readings Bulmer, Simon and William E. Paterson (2019), Germany and the European Union: Europe’s Reluctant Hegemon? (London: Red Globe Press). Crossley-​Frolick, Katy (2017), ‘Revisiting and Reimagining the Notion of Responsibility in German Foreign Policy’, International Studies Perspectives 18: 443–​64. Dyson, Tom (2007), The Politics of German Defense and Security. Policy Leadership and Military Reform in the Post-​Cold War Era (New York: Berghahn Books). Haftendorn, Helga (2001) Deutsche Außenpolitik zwischen Selbstbeschränkung und Selbstbehauptung: 1945–​2000 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-​Anstalt). Katzenstein, Peter J. (ed.) (1997), Tamed Power: Germany in Europe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press). Schoeller, Magnus G. (2019), Leadership in the Eurozone. The Role of Germany and EU Institutions (London: Palgrave Macmillan).

Bibliography Ash, Timothy Garton (2013), ‘The New German Question’, The New York Review of Books, August 15 https://​www.nybo​oks.com/​artic​les/​2013/​08/​15/​new-​ger​man-​quest​ion/​. Ash, Timothy Garton (1999), History of the Present (New York: Random House). Bach, J. and S. Peters (2002), ‘The New Spirit of German Geopolitics’, Geopolitics 7(3), pp.1–​18. Bassin, M. (2005), ‘Blood or Soil? The Völkisch Movement, the Nazis, and the Legacy of Geopolitik’, in Franz-​Josef Brüggemeier, Mark Cioc, and Thomas Zeller (eds), How Green were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (Athens: Ohio University Press) pp. 204–​42. Behnke, Andreas (2006), ‘The Politics of Geopolitics in Post-​Cold War Germany’, Geopolitics 11(3), pp 1–​44. Bender, Peter (2008), ‘Deutsche Auβenpolitik: Vernunft und Schwäche’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 43, pp. 3–​5. Deutsch, Karl (1957), Political Community in the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Duchêne, François (1973), ‘The European Community and the Uncertainties of Interdependence’, in M. Kohnstamm and W. Hager (eds), Nation Writ Large: Foreign Policy Problems before the European Communities (London: MacMillan), pp. 1–​21. Enzensberger, Hans Manus (2011), Brussels, the Gentle Monster or the Disenfranchisements of Europe (Chicago: Seagull Books). Erb, Scott (2003), German Foreign Policy: Navigating a New Era (Boulder, Co.: L. Rienner). Fischer, Fritz (1967), Germany’s Aims in the First World War (New York: W.W. Norton). Garton Ash, Timothy (1999), History of the Present (New York: Random House). Gerschenkron, Alexander (1943), Bread and Democracy in Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press).

GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY    489 Guérot, Ulrike and Mark Leonard (2011), ‘The New German Question: How Europe Can Get the Germany It Needs’, ECFR-​policy. http://​ecfr.eu/​cont​ent/​entry/​the_​new_​german_​ question_​how_​europe_​ca​ n_​g​et_​t​he_​g​erma​ny_​i​t_​ne​eds Assessed 03.03.2021 Habermas, Jürgen (2013), The Crisis of the European Union: A Response (Cambridge, Polity Press). Haftendorn, Helga (2001) Deutsche Außenpolitik zwischen Selbstbeschränkung und Selbstbehauptung: 1945–​2000 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-​Anstalt). Harnisch, Sebastian and Hanns Maull (eds) (2001), Germany as a Civilian Power? The Foreign Policy of the Berlin Republic (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Haushofer, Karl (1934), Weltpolitik von Heute (Berlin: Zeitgeschichte Verlag). Karp, Regina (2006), ‘The New German Foreign Policy Consensus’, The Washington Quarterly 29(1) (Winter 2005–​06). Kelemen, R. Daniel, Anand Menon, and Jonathan Slapin (2014), ‘The European Union: Wider and Deeper?’, Journal of European Public Policy 21(5), pp. 643–​6. Lemke, Christiane (2020), ‘Right-​wing Populism and International Issues: A Case Study of the AfD’, German Politics and Society 38(2) (Summer), pp. 90–​108. Libal, Michael (1997), Limits of Persuasion: Germany and the Yugoslav Crisis, 1991–​1992 (London: Praeger). Luhmann, Niklas (1997), Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt/​M, Suhrkamp). Maull, Hanns W. (2006), Germany’s Uncertain Power. Foreign Policy of the Berlin Republic (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Maull, Hans (2010), ‘The European Union as Civilian Power—​ Aspirations, Potential, Achievements’, in Robert Ross, Øystein Tunsjø, and Zhang Tuosheng (eds), US-​China-​EU Relations—​Managing the New World Order (Abingdon and New York: Routledge) pp. 48–​76. Milward, Alan et al. (1994), The European Rescue of the Nation State (London: Routledge). Moroff, Holger (ed.) (2002), European Soft Security Policies (Berlin: Institute for European Politics). Moroff, Holger (2021), ‘Democratic Security and Foreign Policy: The EU as a Problem and a Solution for the German Question’, in Natalier Dalmer, Jutta Joachim, and Andrea Schneiker (eds), Transatlantic Relations in Times of Change: Past, Present and Future (Baden-​ Baden: Nomos), pp. 97–​116. Nabers, Dirk (2004), ‘Germany’s Security Policy between Europeanism, Transatlanticism and a Global Role’, in Saori N Katada, Hanns W. Maull, and Takashi Inoguchi (eds), Global Governance: Germany and Japan in the International System (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate), pp. 53–​7 1. Newnham, Randall (1999), ‘The Price of German Unity: The Role of Economic Aid in the German-​Soviet Negotiations’, German Studies Review 22(3), pp. 421–​46. Ross, Denis and Fukuyama, Francis (1989), ‘How to Approach the Unity Issue’, policy paper for Secretary of State James Baker, 13 November 1989, quoted in Risse, ‘The Cold War’s Endgame and German Unification’, p. 170. Risse, Thomas (1997), ‘The Cold War’s Endgame and German Unification’, International Security 21(4), pp. 159–​85. Schimmelfennig, Frank (2001), ‘The Community Trap: Liberal Norms, Rhetorical Action, and the Eastern Enlargement of the European Union’, International Organization 55(1), pp. 47–​80. Schmitt, Carl (2007), The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, German original 1934).

490   Holger Moroff Shevardnadze, Eduard (1991), Die Zukunft gehört der Freiheit (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag). Stevens, Philip (2013), ‘Germany Should Face the German Question’, Financial Times, 18 April 2013. http://​www.ft.com/​intl/​cms/​s/​0/​3517a​d4c-​a74c-​11e2-​9fbe-​00144​feab​dc0.html#axzz2U​ FTwS​jDI Assessed 03.06.2021 Walser Smith, Helmut (2008), ‘When the Sonderweg Debate Left Us’, German Studies Review 31(2), pp. 225–​40. Wohlforth, William (1995), ‘Realism and the End of the Cold War’, International Security 19(2), pp. 91–​129.

CHAPTER 28

FRANC O-​G E RMA N REL ATIONS A ND T H E EUROPEAN INT E G RAT I ON PRO CESS SINC E 19 9 0 Carine Germond

‘France and Germany are no longer just a couple: our two countries are a family.’1 Spoken by the leader of the French parliament in the German Bundestag on the fifty-​fifth anniversary of the 1963 Elysée Treaty, these words symbolize the path travelled by the two countries since the end of the Second World War. They underline the historical legacy of Franco-​German post-​war rapprochement, which helped them create a unique partnership and act as a driving force of European integration. In effect, the close Franco-​German relationship has become almost inextricably entwined with Europe. Theirs has been an intense and complicated relationship, but it was one that frequently proved instrumental to advancing or deepening European union. With the elimination of Franco-​German strategic rivalry, the continued political reconciliation has provided a foundation for a stable peace in Europe and cleared the way for economic integration (Kupchan, 2012, p. 202). Likewise, European integration has also provided opportunities for France and Germany to work together, deepen their bilateral cooperation, and provide leadership, albeit not continuously or consistently. Krotz and Schild have described this unique interdependence as ‘embedded bilateralism’ which is specifically the ‘interrelated reality of Franco-​German bilateralism and multilateral European integration’ (Krotz and Schild, 2013, p. 1).

1  Speech by François de Rungis, German Bundestag, 22 January 2018. Retrieved from https://​www. bundes​tag.de/​fr/​docume​nts/​tex​tarc​hiv/​disco​urs-​rugy-​ber​lin-​538​474.

492   Carine Germond Franco-​ German relations are among the most extensively studied special or privileged relationships that exist between two countries. But while their transformation after 1945 has been particularly well-​researched by historians, few studies analyse more recent developments. A key feature of the historical literature is the adoption of a teleological approach, which stresses the linear transformation—​and emotional quality—​of bilateral relations. Generally, these follow a similar pattern, addressing the hereditary enmity to reconciliation to a special relationship that enabled France and Germany to shape and lead Europe since 1945. This pivotal role is best captured in the images of the ‘motor’ (Picht and Wessels, 1990), ‘linchpin’ (Friend, 1991), ‘engine’ (Calleo and Staal, 1998) or ‘axis’ (Hendriks and Morgan, 2001); while the imagery of the ‘couple’ (Ménudier, 1993), ‘duo’ (Germond, 2012), and ‘tandem’ stresses the personal and privileged entente of their leaders. These various labels also emphasize the political or diplomatic nature of Franco-​German contacts, their high degree of institutionalization, and the relationship’s internal cohesion, though it may be more assumed than real. Another important characteristic of this literature is its emphasis on key disruptive turning points, especially big moments of high politics, like the Elysée Treaty, that are taken as indicators of continuity or change in the relationship. Generally, this approach also adopts a strong state-​centric focus that stresses cooperation between the two states and governments but, as a result, neglects cross-​border exchanges between civil societies. This teleological conceptualization of bilateral relations has been criticized for following too closely official discourses on both sides of the Rhine and for failing to fully capture the complexity and scope of bilateral relations (Sangar, 2020, pp. 9–​32). This chapter discusses the impact of Franco-​German relations on the European integration process following German reunification. The first section provides a brief overview of the development of Franco-​German relations between 1945 and 1990, a period that saw rapprochement and reconciliation laying the foundation for the emergence of a unique partnership. The second section examines the difficulties that France and Germany experienced while trying to steer the course of an enlarging Europe from German reunification to roughly the mid-​2000s. The third section explores the more recent pressures and challenges that have affected the ability of both countries to exert joint leadership in an EU mired in crises.

Franco-​German Rapprochement and Post-​War European Integration, 1945–​90 As Europe emerged from the ashes of the Second World War, it was by no means evident that France and Germany would become close partners, let alone play such a constructive role in advancing European integration. The two countries had been at war

FRANCO-GERMAN RELATIONS AND THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROCESS    493 with each other three times in less than a century.2 Territorial annexation, occupation, and humiliated national sentiments had nurtured a deep-​seated antagonism and rivalry on both sides of the Rhine, which continued to mould relations in the immediate post-​ war era. Following the conclusion of the war, France among the allies advocated for a policy that prioritized security from its former foe. This entailed the limitation of occupied Germany’s military and economic prowess, the control of coal and steel—​essential wartime and reconstruction resources­—, and the consolidation of France’s position over Germany. The emerging Cold War and pressures from the US to guarantee the economic and political stability of Western Europe and Germany’s anchoring in the West forced the French government to revise their German policy. Additionally, the universal material devastation, population loss, and moral legacy of the Holocaust also necessitated a change. This new approach essentially consisted of embedding West Germany within Western European cooperation structures, like the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) (1951) and the European Economic Community (EEC) (1957), the forerunner of today’s European Union (EU). Yet most crucial of all, both nations saw in European integration a means to break the cycle of Franco-​German wars and to provide a solution to specific French and German problems. Franco-​German relations were thus at the heart of the first initiatives for European integration that provided a new framework for bilateral relations. It did not mean, however, that the French and German governments saw eye to eye on all matters. Relations with NATO and the American ally remained contentious during Charles de Gaulle’s presidential tenure (1958–​69) and beyond, as the foreign policy of subsequent French governments abided by the Gaullist tenets of French and European independence. To this effect, Franco-​German relations have never been exclusively bilateral. Both countries have had to position themselves constantly, individually or collectively, vis-​ à-​vis other partners in the Atlantic Alliance and in Europe (Germond, 2018, p. 115). Disagreements over the course of European integration also strained relations during the 1960s, when the French and German governments repeatedly clashed over agricultural and institutional matters (Germond, 2014). Broader societal shifts also facilitated political rapprochement in the post-​war. After 1945, a few pioneers championed cultural and societal contacts as a cornerstone of reconciliation. Popular initiatives like the town partnerships were instrumental in fostering the popular acceptance of reconciliation and cooperation, ultimately sowing the seeds that would come to fruition in 1963 with the signature of the Franco-​German ‘friendship’ treaty. Signed on 22 January 1963, the Elysée Treaty established highly institutionalized structures and procedures for cooperation. Heralded as a foundational event of the present-​day Franco-​German relationship, the treaty prescribed a strict schedule for regular meetings between ministers, diplomats, and civil servants in foreign and

2 

The Franco-​Prussian War (1870–​7 1), the First and Second World Wars (1914–​18, 1939–​45).

494   Carine Germond European policy, security, and defence. It also set out to promote cultural relations and youth exchanges, with the creation of a Franco-​German Youth Office. With the treaty, the Franco-​German dialogue became a pivotal element of post-​war European politics (Germond, 2010, pp. 196–​7). Its major contribution was to establish a ‘coordination reflex’ (Paterson, 2008, p. 99) that allowed the relationship to overcome disagreements. The institutionalization of cooperation further made it possible for the two governments to sound out opinions and coordinate positions before presenting them to their European partners. The signature of the treaty ushered in a period of unprecedented close Franco-​German cooperation that has been described as ‘regularised intergovernmentalism’ (Krotz and Schild, 2013, pp. 30–​1). Over the decades, the Elysée Treaty evolved in scope and purview. In 1988 the two governments added a protocol creating new consultation instruments in the fields of culture, finance, and defence. Since 2001, the French President, German Chancellor, and their foreign ministers meet roughly every two months (the so-​called Blaesheim process), in addition to the regular bi-​annual meetings prescribed by the treaty. The bi-​ annual summits were transformed in 2003 into a Franco-​German Ministerial Council involving different members of the French and German governments and the post of ‘General Secretaries of Franco-​German Cooperation’ was created. In January 2019, President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel signed in Aachen a new treaty on cooperation and integration. In its essentials, this new treaty reaffirmed the centrality of the bilateral partnership as a driver of European unity and set out to reinforce cooperation to meet twenty-​first-​century challenges, especially in the defence and security fields. Beyond their symbolic significance, the consultations organized by the treaty did not always result in joint agreement or actions. In addition, the relationship that emerged from the treaty was one of unequal partners, with France in the role of a primus inter pares and West Germany in that of a junior partner, a role largely accepted by German leaders in view of their country’s recent past. The bilateral partnership essentially relied on a quid pro quo that balanced each parties’ strengths: West Germany was the dominant economic power and France the dominant political power. Based on a shared leadership, this relative equilibrium defined the Franco-​German couple through German reunification in 1991 and gave it credibility, clout, and the capacity to steer Europe. During this period, two successful duos played a key role in building this partnership. These were Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Helmut Schmidt in the 1970s, and François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl in the 1980s. These pairs first maintained excellent personal relations—​an aspect that would serve as a model for the post-​war Franco-​German partnership. Second, they agreed on the necessity of a close cooperation to lead Europe and were able to take advantage of opportunities arising from the European and international context. Their cooperation led to a series of joint initiatives resulting in important institutional advances like the creation of the European Council (1974), the development of European political cooperation, the election of the European Parliament by direct suffrage (1973), and the Single European Act (1986). With the

FRANCO-GERMAN RELATIONS AND THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROCESS    495 Schengen Agreement (1988) this last would serve as an important milestone towards a genuine common market, in which goods, workers, capital, and services could move freely, resulting in the abolition of the European Community’s internal borders. Other initiatives contributed to deepening the European Community’s economic and monetary governance with, for example, the ‘snake in the tunnel’ and the European Monetary system, which, despite their shortcomings, laid the groundwork for economic and monetary union (EMU) in the 1990s (Germond, 2010, pp. 197–​9). While cooperation in the areas of defence and security had remained limited since 1963 due to disagreements over transatlantic relations, it was revived under Mitterrand and Kohl, although important strategic differences remained. Mitterrand’s speech in the Bundestag in support of the deployment of the US Pershing missiles in West Germany was described as a ‘founding act’ (Védrine, 1996) that paved the way to closer Franco-​ German—​and later European—​defence and security collaboration. In 1988, the two governments subsequently founded the Franco-​German brigade, which formed the nucleus of the Eurocorps, an intergovernmental European military corps established in 1992. The Franco-​German brigade demonstrates the way Mitterrand and Kohl used their privileged partnership to advance European integration in which joint bilateral initiatives served as the foundation for a deepening European cooperation. The rapid political and economic changes in the Eastern bloc during the summer and autumn of 1989 and the unexpected fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 made German reunification, until then a distant if not unlikely prospect, an urgent geopolitical reality that threatened to derail Franco-​German relations and the project of economic and monetary union launched in 1988. As in the past, the French government pursued a European solution with the chief purpose of anchoring a uniting Germany into a deepening European union. Paris was also adamant that Germany must respect existing borders, particularly the German-​ Polish border. France’s concerns over the prospect of German unity were heightened when Kohl, bowing to domestic pressures, adopted the stance of a quick unification and appeared lukewarm on the EMU. After protracted bilateral discussions, Kohl ultimately agreed to start negotiating the EMU, thus signalling his intention to achieve concomitantly German and European unification. German reunification and European Monetary Union are thus typical examples of bilateral compromises. The French President agreed to reunification provided it was Europeanized; the German Chancellor conceded on the issue of monetary integration but obtained strict economic stability criteria applicable to all future Eurozone members and an independent European central bank modelled after the Bundesbank. Kohl’s commitment to European integration also helped overcome bilateral tensions over German reunification and reignited the Franco-​German couple who drove the process behind the two intergovernmental conferences (IGCs) on monetary union and European union. The Franco-​German input which followed was decisive for the successful outcome of the negotiations of the Maastricht Treaty in February 1991 (Mazzucelli, 1997). Nevertheless, the Maastricht Treaty is still viewed by some as the last major European achievement of the Franco-​German ‘engine’.

496   Carine Germond German reunification upset the fragile equilibrium of bilateral relations that had prevailed until 1989 and accelerated the rebalancing of Franco-​German power relations, begun two decades earlier. It tilted the balance of power in favour of a new German state, which was larger, economically stronger, and potentially more influential and assertive. Geographically, the prospect of EU enlargement to Central and Eastern European countries placed reunified Germany at the heart of the EU, relegating France to its periphery.

The Strained Leadership: Franco-​ German Relations in an Enlarging Europe, 1990–​2007 German reunification marked the end of an era for Franco-​German relations. The new tandem was now one of relative equals with increasing competition for the leadership within it. In addition, the ascent of a new generation of political leaders, like Gerhard Schröder and Nicolas Sarkozy, who had not directly experienced the war partly accounts for the change in the nature of the bilateral partnership since the 1990s. As a rule, relations became more elusive, were less close in general, and lacked the trust and friendship that had been a characteristic of prior years. This made it more difficult to take joint initiatives and rally European partners with increasingly different national interests. The bilateral relationship deteriorated steadily during the 1990s and the two countries stood more often divided than united. France remained suspicious of reunified Germany and struggled to accept that the latter had come to assume a leadership role more in line with its newly found economic and political power. The German government’s policy of reconciliation with Poland, its active encouragement of a rapid enlargement of the union, and its pro-​Croatian support at the beginning of the Yugoslavian war did nothing to alleviate those suspicions. On the contrary, they only increased French concerns about a German domination in Central and Eastern Europe. The French government also resisted acknowledging that it no longer assumed the political leadership in the partnership. The frostier personal relations between the leaders of both countries only added to the quarrelsome atmosphere that characterized Franco-​German relations. Splits appeared on European issues, too. Long periods of cohabitation in France (1993–​95 and 1997–​2002)—​the cooperation of a conservative President with a socialist Prime Minister, or vice versa—, the narrow outcome of the referendum in France on the Maastricht Treaty, and the domestic rifts it spawned between federalists and Eurosceptics, impeded bilateral cooperation on European matters. Moreover, the two countries diverged on EU enlargement. France, which had at first resisted enlargement only to accept it unenthusiastically when it appeared inevitable, fought to prioritize the deepening of European integration over its widening.

FRANCO-GERMAN RELATIONS AND THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROCESS    497 Conversely, Germany favoured pursuing both in parallel. Berlin’s support of a speedy EU expansion was motivated by economic motives given that the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) were potential export outlets and a reservoir of cheaper labour for German industry. Germany had also a strong geo-​political interest in the integration of the CEECs into the EU and NATO, which would bring stability and security to the country’s immediate periphery. Lastly, Germany may have had a sense of indebtedness given the crucial role played by Poland and Hungary for their contribution to undermining the Wall and bringing about German reunification. Different concerns underlined France’s ambivalent attitude vis-​à-​vis enlargement. Among them were France’s now limited ability to impose its view in an EU twice its size and whose centre of gravity would have moved further East. Disconcerting also was Germany’s enhanced position in an enlarged EU and a potential diminishing of France’s own influence through a weakening of that same bilateral alliance. As a counterweight to Germany’s interest in Central and Eastern Europe, the French government turned to the Mediterranean, a traditional region of French influence. This revived interest in the Mediterranean gave birth in 1995 to the Euro-​Mediterranean Partnership, which paved the way for the subsequent establishment of the Union for the Mediterranean, a pet project of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in 2008. The treaty revision negotiations at Amsterdam (1997) and Nice (2000) witnessed hard bargaining between the two countries. During the Amsterdam summit meeting, Kohl refused to extend majority voting in several crucial areas, thus seemingly calling into question his country’s long-​standing federalist standpoint to adopt an intergovernmental approach that was paradoxically more in line with France’s traditional preference for intergovernmentalism (Stark, 2006, p. 110). In France, however, this was interpreted as a sign of Bonn’s sacrifice of deepening in favour of enlargement. If bilateral relations had been tense during the Amsterdam summit, the Nice summit signalled a major crisis in French-​German relations (Mazzucelli et al., 2006, p. 167). Relations between French President Jacques Chirac (1995–​2007) and Gerhard Schröder, who had succeeded Kohl in 1998, were neither very good nor close, although both statesmen took care to display their personal rapport in public. Yet while Schröder first prioritized deepening relations with the UK and Washington, he quickly had to recognize that the bilateral entente remained indispensable. The Nice summit, which aimed to overhaul the EU’s institutions and procedures in preparation for the accessions of ten CEECs in 2004 (two more joined in 2007), became a bilateral battlefield. The first Franco-​German bone of contention concerned the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Chirac refused an adjustment of the distribution of subsidies that would be detrimental to French farmers but would help fund the union’s enlargement and CAP reform. Only hours before the summit was due to start, the two statesmen met privately and came to an agreement on the financing of agricultural payments to the candidate countries and a (delayed) reform of the CAP. The agreement largely reflected French preferences. Contention over the distribution of votes in the Council formed the second bilateral disagreement. France refused to give up its parity with Germany while the latter insisted

498   Carine Germond on a higher number of votes to reflect its larger population. Whereas for Germans it was a question of democratic legitimacy, the French viewed it as a question of power. The outcome was a complex—​and for non-​EU insiders largely incomprehensible—​compromise formula of a triple majority of votes, member states, and population. The Nice negotiations thus ended with a relative victory for France, but at the cost of relational scars. Franco-​German dissensions also broke out on security policy. The resumption of French nuclear tests in 1995 sparked a strong negative reaction from Germany, a country whose anti-​nuclear sentiments were historically strong. Paris attempted to mitigate criticism of the tests by offering to share its nuclear deterrent with Germany and its European allies. These efforts succeeded in allaying German concerns and in January of 1997 Chirac and Kohl signed a ‘common strategic concept’ document at a meeting in Nuremberg which also included tentative plans to create a powerful European defence industry. Formulated in the run-​up to the fortieth anniversary of the 1957 Treaty of Rome, the initiative intended to push the EU into closer cooperation on European defence policy, despite hostility from Britain and reluctance from several other EU member states. Yet the continued absence of Paris from NATO’s integrated military command substantially weakened the impact of the common strategic concept. The proposed alliance, after all, would have operated in conjunction with NATO. Instead, France’s unilateral abandonment of its compulsory military service only added to German irritations. Only in 2002 did the Franco-​German tandem seem to recover some traction. In France, President Chirac, himself a conservative, was no longer hindered by cohabitation with a socialist Prime Minister. In Germany, Chancellor Schröder secured a second term, albeit with a narrow majority. The renewal of the Elysée Treaty in 2003 by Chirac and Schröder brought together the two estranged partners, even as it also served to stage their renewed entente for domestic and European purposes after the rifts and tensions of the previous years. That rapprochement, in large part, was facilitated by the American military intervention in Iraq in 2003, which both countries opposed publicly in a joint statement, albeit for different motives. Nevertheless, the revival of the Paris-​Berlin alliance failed to forge unity among EU member states regarding Iraq, a most critical foreign and defence policy issue. Several of their European partners, the UK, Spain, Portugal, Poland, and Italy among others, broke with France and Germany and sided with the US. Both countries were subsequently mocked by US President George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, for representing ‘old Europe’. The Iraq war would further demonstrate a new difficulty of the perennial partners—​an inability to command the same level of influence in a greatly expanded Europe. The incident indicated that it would be much more difficult for both countries to impose their view or rally their partners to their positions in an enlarged EU with a much greater heterogeneity of national interests. France and Germany’s repeated breach of the Stability and Growth Pact, first enacted in 1997 on Germany’s insistence to enforce the deficit and debt limits established by the Maastricht Treaty, had also badly damaged their credibility, especially vis-​à-​vis their smaller EU partners.

FRANCO-GERMAN RELATIONS AND THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROCESS    499 Both Paris and Berlin had played a relatively passive role in the early work of the Convention on the Future of the European Union, which had been convened in December 2001 to draft a constitutional treaty. As a result of the renewed French-​ German entente, however, the two governments started working together in the Convention from 2003, which was chaired by former French President Giscard d’Estaing. In January, both countries submitted a joint proposal on institutions and economic governance, which was described as a masterpiece of French-​German diplomacy and typical of bilateral compromises (Mazuccelli et al., 2006, p. 173). Both countries exerted renewed leadership during the negotiations and secured a successful conclusion to the Convention in June 2004. Yet these efforts still resulted in a failed ratification. The rejection of the French and Dutch referenda on the constitutional treaty in summer 2005 signalled a continued popular opposition to the deeper European integration that such a treaty represented. After a two-​year period of reflection, the Lisbon Treaty—​also known as the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)—​was signed without pomp and fanfare but in large part thanks to the combined efforts of French President Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. While this treaty did keep most of the essential elements of the constitutional treaty, it ill-​equipped the EU to tackle the multifarious crises that struck from 2008 onward.

From Merkozy to Merkron: Steering Europe through Crises, 2008 to the Present Elected in 2007 and 2005 respectively, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at first formed an odd couple, not only because of their different temperaments. The French and German positions further diverged when Sarkozy tried to establish a multilateral leadership for the EU by seeking a close partnership with the UK, Italy, Spain, and Poland with France in a leadership role (Germond and Seidel, 2022). Sarkozy’s efforts to reaffirm France’s international leadership—​ from his support of the Union for the Mediterranean to his personal involvement in the Russian-​Georgian border dispute on behalf of the EU—​challenged the Franco-​ German relationship. More broadly conceived, his foreign policy activism was not always appreciated by the German government, who suspected—​not without cause—​that the French initiatives attempted to counterbalance German dominance and violated the traditional understanding of bilateral consultation in accordance with the Elysée Treaty (Vasallo, 2013, pp. 105–​6). Although Berlin did applaud France’s return to the NATO military command structure after forty years of absence, it was clearly part of Sakorzy’s attempt to demonstrate

500   Carine Germond that the grande nation was back. Perhaps not surprisingly, Merkel responded by reducing European involvement and by engaging in more unilateral policies (Bulmer and Paterson, 2010). Despite the increasingly rivalrous nature of the Franco-​German relationship, nevertheless, Sarkozy and Merkel were nicknamed ‘Merkozy’ by 2010. Their entente was—​first and foremost—​one of necessity. Confronted with the Euro and sovereign debt crisis that reached European shores in 2009, the pair had to work together and find convergence in their views on fixing Europe. As the value of the Euro plummeted and Greece stood on the brink of insolvency, the severity of the 2010 financial crisis required France and Germany to take the lead. Yet, there was little Franco-​German agreement at first. While Germany favoured strict penalties for those states in breach of the Eurozone membership criteria, France advocated more support. While Germany called for strengthening the Eurozone’s economic governance, particularly regarding a more consistent application of Eurozone rules, France supported a bailout. The rapidly crumbling stability of the Eurozone proved, however, that more EU integration was the only solution. The Franco-​German stand-​off finally resolved itself when in May 2010 Sarkozy accepted Germany’s wish to involve the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the Greek bailout programme. Merkel partially conceded a long-​ standing French objective to establish an economic government for Europe. The resumption of bilateral cooperation paved the way for new treaties to reform and improve Eurozone governance: the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism in 2010 and the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union in 2012. In combining a French preference for financial support schemes with a strengthening of fiscal rules as advocated by Germany, these two treaties were typical of bilateral arrangements. Despite initially divergent positions, both countries managed to strike acceptable compromises for their EU partners (Schild, 2013). These advances confirmed the weight of influence wielded by Paris and Berlin; when united, they can push a European course through hard times. This position of leadership, and the capacity to drive European initiatives through bilaterally agreed compromises, did incite criticism from other member states. But the Franco-​German leadership, whether either party welcomes it or not, has remained essential in the EU-​27 to broker the necessary policy compromises. The Euro crisis moreover accelerated the transformation of Germany into Europe’s ‘reluctant hegemon’ (Paterson, 2011; Bulmer and Paterson, 2013). Yet, as Europe sunk into recession and the financial and economic crisis escalated, it became advantageous for France to ally itself with the German economic giant and use its clout to wield influence. A common and closely concerted leadership during the sovereign debt crisis had been a deliberate choice of Sarkozy and Merkel, but would François Hollande, who succeeded Sarkozy in 2012, follow in his predecessor’s footsteps? The incumbent President had criticized Sarkozy for his close alignment with the German Chancellor and had called for a more balanced Franco-​German partnership to address the growing power imbalance in favour of Germany (Schild, 2013, p. 39). Hollande moreover advocated the Europeanization—​i.e. sharing—​of the national debts, through the introduction of

FRANCO-GERMAN RELATIONS AND THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROCESS    501 Eurobonds, the monetization of debt by the European Central Bank (ECB), and the need for a European growth strategy. While Merkel was open to the latter, debt sharing and direct lending to crisis-​affected Eurozone members remained anathema to her government. France, however, was not in any position to risk a showdown on either issue. Its international rating had been downgraded and while the French position on Eurobonds clearly favoured the southern EU member states it was not likely to garner major support from them. France’s economic and competitiveness problems meant that Germany remained the crucial power broker throughout the financial crisis. Conversely, German insistence on profound and painful austerity policies in the Southern European crisis-​ ridden countries did little to induce cooperation. Greeks protesting the measures would go so far as to hold up posters of Merkel sporting a Hitler moustache, displaying a sentiment not limited to Athens. But after this rocky start, matters improved. The year-​long celebrations of the Elysée Treaty anniversary at Reims in the summer of 2012 enabled the two leaders to ‘reboot’ their relationship. Several joint initiatives point to a revival of Franco-​German bilateralism following this period. By the mid-​2010s, Europe seemed to have come to grips with the Euro and sovereign debt crises. However, the massive influx of refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria in the autumn of 2015 raised new challenges. Merkel and Hollande called on EU unity, solidarity, and the values on which it is built, but they stopped short of providing a comprehensive blueprint on how to tackle the continent’s biggest migrant—​and humanitarian—​crisis since the Second World War. Although both governments attempted to project an image of unity, there was little evidence of a common Franco-​German approach to the refugee crisis. Accordingly, Europe reacted in disarray, with Germany filling nolens volens the leadership vacuum. Compared to France, Germany shouldered the larger burden. Merkel first responded unilaterally with a generous open arm policy and her famous ‘we will manage’ phrase. She urged her European partners to share the responsibility of hosting refugees. French politicians decried her gestures, which highlighted the two countries’ different strategies on asylum policies. Without prior consultation with Paris, Germany also took the lead in brokering a (contested) deal with Turkey designed to stem the flow of migrants entering the EU. The absence of a French-​German strategy is linked to several factors. The financial and refugee crises had emboldened nationalist, Eurosceptic, populist, and anti-​immigrant political movements in both countries but to different degrees. In addition to these, the dramatic Islamist attacks that struck France in 2015–​16 relegated the refugee crisis to the background and impeded public debate. It was feared that this would only further bolster Marine le Pen’s Right-​wing, xenophobic party who was successfully hunting for votes by linking immigration to security. Moreover, Paris and Berlin envisioned different solutions to the crisis: while Germany accepted the largest share of refugees and proposed to relocate refugees according to an EU-​wide distribution key, Paris intended to tackle the problem at its source through military means. Thus, the migration crisis exemplified the tension between the need for solidarity, cooperation, and harmonization of migration and asylum policies and the

502   Carine Germond preservation of national interests (Demesmay, 2018). The absence of shared preferences and, most importantly, the Franco-​German inability to bridge their differences to exercise collective leadership in the EU helped explain why the engine stalled. If the Franco-​German couple had been conspicuous by its absence during the refugee crisis, the Ukraine crisis signalled a major resurgence in Franco-​German leadership. Following a German-​initiated response, the two countries negotiated directly with Russia on how to achieve a ceasefire and to restore peace. They also established the so-​called Normandy Format Talks involving the leaders of the four involved parties (France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine) to help solve the conflict. Despite this diplomatic success, the Ukraine crisis highlighted the underlying geopolitical rivalry between the two states as they attempted to position themselves as the EU’s geopolitical centre. Moreover, it revealed differing geopolitical priorities and perceptions of regional security. The stabilization and Westernization of the EU’s—​and Germany’s—​ Eastern flank, through EU expansion, the Eastern Partnership,3 and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), have been paramount for German governments, also to create a buffer zone between the EU and an increasingly unpredictable and aggressive Russia under Vladimir Putin’s leadership. France’s geopolitical and neighbourhood priorities have been more focused on the Southern arc of the EU, along the Mediterranean Sea. These bilateral differences have impacted the ability of the EU to define a common foreign and security policy vis-​à-​vis its Eastern neighbours and Russia. The restoration of mutual trust between Germany and France was also down to Hollande’s commitment to implement economic reforms despite opposition at home and his firm defence of Merkel’s position in the dispute over the Greek rescue. France insisted that Athens stick to Eurozone rules and repay all its loans. In these parallel areas, leaders across the Rhine had rediscovered the inescapability, centrality, and irreplaceability of the Franco-​German relationship in Europe. In 2017, however, another major shift occurred in the Franco-​German relationship, as Hollande declined to run for re-​election. The former Minister of Economy, Emmanuel Macron, succeeded him as the twenty-​fifth President of the French Republic. Would Macron’s election derail the new entente? At first glance, Macron’s young age at only 39, his very different political style, and personality put him at odds with the German Chancellor. Yet, their views were not incompatible. Macron had campaigned with an overtly pro-​European political agenda and he had one of the most German Cabinets, with several of his close collaborators being well versed in German affairs and fluent in Goethe’s language. Macron’s tenure started on a promising foundation. His ambitious reforms were consistent with the Merkel government’s economic convictions and aimed at re-​establishing France as a reliable and strong partner to Germany. This would enable the tandem, he hoped, to steer the EU through crises, a goal reaffirmed in the 2019 Treaty of Aachen.

3 

A policy initiative aiming to deepen and strengthen relations between the EU and six of its Eastern neighbours (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine).

FRANCO-GERMAN RELATIONS AND THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROCESS    503 He promoted an ambitious initiative for a sovereign, democratic, and united Europe. In a programmatic speech held at the Sorbonne in September 2017, Macron laid out his vision for relaunching Europe, which included a comprehensive reform agenda. He also made it clear that he wanted France and Germany to ‘inject decisive, practical momentum’ (Macron, 2017) and take the lead. Even so, his European efforts and appeal to Germany largely fell on deaf ears. The German government welcomed his European initiative but did not follow up with a concrete response. Merkel’s decisions not to run for a fifth term and the make-​up of her grand coalition certainly restricted Germany’s ability to take major European decisions. Macron’s activism, however, was also perceived as a veiled pursuit of French interests. His call for more European strategic autonomy as the best way to revitalize NATO, an organization he bluntly described as ‘brain dead’ (The Economist, 2019), unsurprisingly was met with scepticism in Berlin. The allocation of the EU top jobs in the run up to the European Parliament (EP) elections in spring 2019 created additional frictions between Paris and Berlin. Jean-​ Claude Juncker’s succession as Commission President was particularly contentious. Merkel initially supported her compatriot from the European People’s Party (EPP), Manfred Weber, who was the designated contender following the Spitzenkandidaten process—​an informal arrangement according to which the EP political group with the most seats has a mandate to lead the Commission. Macron was in favour of appointing a more prominent personality and supported a more gender-​balanced distribution of EU positions. Ursula von der Leyen, the second German national to preside over the Commission, was to a large extent a Franco-​German compromise. Put forward by Macron to solve the deadlock on the appointment of the Commission President, she was a canny, if not uncontroversial, choice. As a conservative herself, she was a palatable candidate to the German CDU-​CSU and in the EPP, which had lost its natural candidate when Weber was forced to renounce his bid for the post as it became clear he could not obtain sufficient support from EU member states. Her surprise candidacy could also rally Poland and Hungary, both of whom opposed the alternative social democrat Spitzenkandidaten, Franz Timmermann, on account of his criticism of their contentious constitutional and judicial reforms. In a typical Franco-​German quid pro quo, Christine Lagarde, a former French Minister for Economy and Director of the IMF since 2011, obtained the presidency of the ECB. This bilateral agreement on the top EU jobs served as an opportunity for the two governments to stage their renewed entente, despite deep divergences over the EU’s direction. Furthermore, this partial reconciliation would go on to greatly benefit the EU when the Coronavirus crisis struck Europe in spring 2020 and brought European economies to their knees. Franco-​German close cooperation was instrumental in brokering a historical agreement on an EU rescue and bailout package that provided financial assistance to European governments and formed the groundwork for closer fiscal integration through an incipient mutualization of debt, a step the German government had originally resisted. These efforts by their respective governments would

504   Carine Germond earn Merkel and Macron the new nickname of ‘Merkron’. Not unlike her predecessor Jacques Delors in the 1980s, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen relied on this Franco-​German unity to make bold proposals and ensure that they were accepted by all EU member states, especially by the so-​called ‘frugal’ four—​the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Austria. The UK’s exit from the EU (Brexit), effective on 1 January 2021, offers another example of Franco-​German crisis management. Throughout the Brexit negotiations, France and Germany were in unison to defend the integrity of the single market, highlight the benefits of membership, and, more broadly, prevent further disintegration (despite occasional differences in nuance). Krotz and Schramm (2021, p. 51) credit this Franco-​ German commitment to an integrated EU for safeguarding the unity of the EU-​27 and for preventing other member states from following the British example of withdrawing from EU membership. The departure of the UK, a traditional supporter of free trade and liberal economic principles similar to Germany’s ordo-​ liberal philosophy, confirmed how central relations with France were, despite Macron’s support of Keynesian economic policies. If anything, the loss of the UK as a counterforce and coalition partner has reaffirmed the centrality of the Franco-​German duo in European politics. This development, however, is not necessarily welcome to all. Some, like the Visegrád countries (V4—​Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia), are fearful that France and Germany will use this renewed bilateral leeway to push for a core Europe that would exclude them in the post-​Brexit EU (Krotz and Schild, 2018, p. 1179). Democratic backsliding and the rise of neo-​ authoritarian and Eurosceptic governments in these four countries (particularly in Poland and Hungary) has also complicated relations. These tensions have been further exacerbated by the migration crisis and the Covid pandemic with the V4 staunchly refusing to take in migrants under the Commission’s proposed scheme of mandatory national quotas and with their rejection of the Union’s joint vaccination strategy. France and Germany have regularly castigated the V4 for these actions, viewing them as a direct affront to European unity and solidarity. Another source of concern for Paris and Berlin has been the degradation of the situation in Ukraine. The recent skirmishes and build-​up of Russian troops along the Ukrainian-​Russian border and in the Crimean Peninsula prompted both capitals to reaffirm unisono their support for the Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. Although Macron and Merkel agree that the sanctions imposed on Russia over the annexation of Crimea and Russian support for the separatists fighting in Ukraine cannot be relieved until Russia implements the peace deal agreed in 2014–​15, both leaders see these sanctions as impeding better relations with Moscow. French President Macron is particularly keen on restoring dialogue with Moscow, even at the expense of concessions on Ukraine or Russia’s suspended G8 membership. On the other side of the Rhine, Chancellor Merkel remains a steadfast defender of, and a driving force behind, a firm EU sanction policy, even more so after the Russian government’s suspected involvement in the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Behind the apparent

FRANCO-GERMAN RELATIONS AND THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROCESS    505 Franco-​German joint position, these tensions thus expose the difficulties of defining a common—​bilateral and European—​policy vis-​à-​vis Russia. The future Franco-​German agency in the EU hinges on the outcome of the German elections in September 2021. Armin Laschet, Merkel’s designated successor, was seen in Paris as an ideal interlocutor. A native of Aachen in North-​Rhein-​Wesphalia, he has a cultural and linguistic proximity to France, which Merkel lacked. He has long supported more engagement with France and criticized Merkel for not responding to Macron’s European overtures. As Germany’s representative for cultural affairs within the Elysée Treaty cooperation framework, he has established close contacts with the French political leadership, including President Macron, with whom he is said to have a good relationship. He is familiar with the inner workings of the bilateral partnership. In addition, while Merkel dominated the Franco-​German tandem, Laschet may be more inclined to hand over the reins to France and go back to more traditional bilateral power dynamics. Anointed CDU top candidate in spring 2021, Laschet looked very much like a Chancellor-​in-​Waiting. Yet in the wake of damaging allegations of corruption when it emerged that several conservative law-​makers earned commissions for brokering state-​funded facemask deals and the CDU’s subsequent fall from grace, this ascension is far from assured. In addition to this, mounting dissatisfaction with Covid management, disappointing electoral results in Baden-​Württemberg and Rhineland-​Palatinate, two of the biggest Länder, and the surging appeal of the Green party have raised unexpected obstacles on the road to the chancellery. Macron himself, if he decides to run for a second presidential bid, will face re-​election in spring 2022. His most formidable opponent is likely to be once again the president of the Eurosceptic, far-​Right National Rally, Marine Le Pen, whose campaign roadmap for 2022 no longer includes her unpopular plan of holding a referendum on Frexit and withdrawing from the Euro. Either way, whoever wins the German federal elections in September 2021 and the French presidential race in June 2022 will find it difficult to escape some form of close cooperation between the two EU heavyweights.

Conclusion A typical perspective views Germany and France as the two powerhouses driving the economic and political integration of Europe. The Franco-​German community of interest and purpose is regularly reaffirmed through rhetoric used by politicians across the Rhine, symbolic commemorations like the treaty anniversaries, and other ritualized events such as the bilateral summits. Although the bilateral partnership has undergone profound transformations since 1990, key characteristics that remain include its resilience, adaptability to major domestic and international changes, reliability, and stability, all of which have conferred on it a crucial function to drive forward European integration. Notwithstanding divergences and periods of frostier relations, the two countries have not ceased to cooperate over the last fifty years. While French and German leaders

506   Carine Germond have been tempted at times to seek closer cooperation with other European partners, Paris and Berlin have been tied by the Elysée Treaty. Moreover, the crises that have struck Europe since the late 2000s have forced both countries to acknowledge the inevitability, irreplaceability, and necessity of their bilateral cooperation to solve Europe’s problems. At the same time, it has become more difficult for France and Germany to act as Europe’s internal federator. German reunification fundamentally altered the inner balance of the bilateral partnership. The shared leadership that characterized it until 1989 has been gradually replaced by a growing political and economic asymmetry in favour of Germany. French leaders have tried to correct this situation throughout the last two decades by means of economic reforms and foreign policy initiatives. The EU’s successive enlargements have further diluted the political preponderance of both states and introduced new areas of cooperation in which they had little common interests and thus fewer incentives to drive European integration further. Likewise, Franco-​German leadership in Europe was, then and now, neither exerted consistently nor continuously nor was it based on a unity of preferences. Rather, it was the two countries’ capacity to overcome diverging interests and bridge differing positions that proved essential for advancing European integration. A compromise reached bilaterally often met the needs and interests of their EU partners. This has not changed. Even today, Franco-​German institutionalized bilateralism—​which continues to be unparalleled—​remains critical in forming the EU agenda, building compromises, performing crisis management, and influencing the formation of temporary coalitions within the EU. Yet the future is uncertain. The problems that Europe has grappled with for a decade and half—​from massive migration influx, terrorist threats, to an economic and social crisis dramatically exacerbated by the Covid-​19 pandemic—​will continue to test the capacity of the old Franco-​German motor to provide leadership and solutions to these multifarious challenges. If anything, the recent rescue package demonstrates yet again that the Franco-​German partnership alone is not sufficient to make policy, but that it is most efficient when it brokers solutions in close cooperation with EU institutions. The future will also tell whether a new German Chancellor will be more sensitive to Macron’s plans for deep and ambitious reforms of the EU and the Eurozone, not all of which were to Merkel’s liking. The extent to which internal balance is impacted by the loss of the UK as a potential counterbalance to an occasionally uncomfortable Franco-​ German tête-​à-​tête remains to be seen. Conversely, a post-​Brexit, more assertive and exclusively bilateral approach may not be so easily accepted by their EU partners. Such political leadership, while welcomed and oft necessary in times of crisis for want of other credible alternatives, is likely to face more contestation or resistance once the danger recedes. To continue to exert joint leadership in the EU, the duo will moreover have to overcome persisting discrepancies in particular policy fields and disagreements about longer-​term European objectives and priorities. What is certain, however, is that Franco-​German cooperation will continue to be a central element of the two countries’ policy both vis-​à-​vis each other, and in Europe.

FRANCO-GERMAN RELATIONS AND THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROCESS    507

Further Reading Cole, Alistair (2001), Franco-​German Relations (New York: Pearson). Germond, Carine and Henning Türk (eds) (2008), A History of Franco-​German Relations in Europe: From ‘Hereditary Enemies’ to Partners (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Krotz, Ulrich and Joachim Schild (2013), Shaping Europe. France, Germany, and Embedded Bilateralism from the Elysée Treaty to Twenty-​First Century Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Pedersen, Thomas (1998), Germany, France, and the Integration of Europe: A Realist Interpretation (London: Pinter). Webber, Douglas (1999), The Franco-​German Relationship in the EU (London: Routledge).

Bibliography Bulmer, Simon and William Paterson (2010), ‘Germany and the European Union: From “Tamed Power” to Normalized Power?’, International Affairs 85(2), pp. 1051–​73. Paterson, William (2011), ‘The Reluctant Hegemon? Germany Moves Centre Stage in the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies 49(Annual Review), pp. 57–​75. Bulmer, Simon and Willian Paterson (2013), ‘Germany as the EU’s Reluctant Hegemon? Of Economic Strength and Political Constraints’, Journal of European Public Policy 20(10), pp. 1387–​1405. Calleo, David P. and Eric R. Staal (1998), Europe’s Franco-​German Engine (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press). Vertrag und die deutsch-​ Defrance, Corine and Ulrich Pfeil (eds) (2005), Der Elysée-​ französischen Beziehungen 1945–​1963–​2003 (Munich: Oldenburg). Demesmay, Claire (2018), ‘The Difficult Convergence: Franco-​German Cooperation During the Migration Crisis’, Annuaire français des relations internationales XIX, pp. 455–​67. Friend, Julius (1991), The Linchpin. Franco-​German Relations 1950–​1990 (New York: Praeger). Germond, Carine (2012), ‘Dynamic Franco-​German Duos: Giscard-​Schmidt and Mitterrand-​ Kohl’, in Erik J. Jones, Anand Menon, and Stephen Weatherhill (eds), The Oxford Handbook of European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 193–​205. Germond, Carine (2010), ‘Franco-​German Dynamic Duos’, in Anand Menon, Erik Jones, and Stephen Weatherill, (eds) The Oxford Handbook of the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 193–​205. Germond, Carine and Henning Türk (eds) (2008), A History of Franco-​German Relations in Europe: From ‘Hereditary Enemies’ to Partners (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Germond, Carine (2014), Partenaires de raison? Le couple France-​Allemagne et l’unification de l’Europe (Munich: Oldenburg). Germond, Carine (2018), ‘Alliance and Independence. The Role of the United States in de Gaulle’s European Policy Conceptions’, in Hélène Miard-​ Delacroix and Johannes Grossmann (eds), Deutschland, Frankreich und die USA in den ‘langen’ 1960er Jahren. Ein transatlantisches Dreiecksverhältnis (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag), pp. 110–​21. Germond, Carine and Katja Seidel (2022), ‘The Franco-​German Relationship at the Heart of EU History’, in Brigitte Leucht, Katja Seidel, and Laurent Warlouzet (eds), Reinventing Europe: The History of the European Union since 1945 (London: Bloomsbury).

508   Carine Germond Hendriks, Gisela and Annette Morgan (eds) (2001), The Franco-​German Axis in European Integration (Cheltenham/​Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing). Krotz, Ulrich and Joachim Schild (2013), Shaping Europe. France, Germany, and Embedded Bilateralism from the Elysée Treaty to Twenty-​First Century Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Krotz, Ulrich and Joachim Schild (2018), ‘Back to the Future? Franco-​German Bilateralism in Europe’s Post-​Brexit Union’, Journal of European Public Policy 25(8), pp. 1174–​93. Kortz, Ulrich and Lucas Schramm (2021), ‘An Old Couple in a New Setting: Franco-​German Leadership in the Post-​Brexit EU’, Politics and Governance 9(1), pp. 48–​58. Kupchan, Charles A. (2012), How Enemies Become Friends. The Sources of Stable Peace (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Macron, E. (2017), Initiative for Europe. https://international.blogs.ouest-france.fr/ archive/2017/09/29/macron-sorbonne-verbatim-europe-18583.html (Accessed 4 May 2021). Mazzuccelli, Colette (1997), France and Germany at Maastricht. Politics and Negotiations to Create European Union (New York: Garland). Mazzucelli Colette et al. (2006), ‘Cooperative Hegemon, Missing Engine or Improbable Core? Explaining French-​German Influence in European Treaty Reform’, in Colette Mazzucelli and Derek Beach (eds), Leadership in the Big Bangs of European Integration (Abingdon: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 158–​77. Ménudier, Henri (Dir.) (1993), Le couple franco-​allemand en Europe (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle). Paterson William E. (2008), ‘Did France and Germany Lead Europe? A Retrospect’, in Jack E. Hayward (ed.), Leaderless Europe (New York: Oxford University Press). Picht, Robert and Wolfgang Wessels (eds) (1990), Motor für Europa. Deutsch-​französischer Bilateralismus und europäische Integration (Bonn: Europa Union Verlag). Sangar, Eric (2020), Diffusion in Franco-​German relations. A Different Perspective on a History of Cooperation and Conflict (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan). Schild, Joachim (2013), ‘Leadership in Hard Times. Germany, France and the Management of the Eurozone Crisis’, German Politics and Society 31(1), pp. 24–​47. Stark, Hans (2006), ‘The Franco-​German Relationship, 1998–​2005’, in Hanns W. Maull (ed.), Germany’s Uncertain Power. New Perspective in German Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, London). The Economist (2019), ‘Emmanuel Macron warns Europe: NATO is becoming brain-​dead’. https://​www.econom​ist.com/​eur​ope/​2019/​11/​07/​emman​uel-​mac​ron-​warns-​eur​ope-​nato-​ is-​becom​ing-​brain-​dead (Accessed 30 April 2021). Vasallo, Francesca (2013), ‘Sarkozy and Merkel. The Undeniable Relevance of the Franco-​ German Bilateral Relationship in Europe’, German Politics and Society 31(1), pp. 92–​115. Védrine, Hubert (1996), Les mondes de François Mitterrand. A l’Elysée 1981–​1996 (Paris: Fayard).

CHAPTER 29

GERM ANY A ND E U FOREIGN P OL I C Y

1

Sebastian Harnisch

The foreign policy of the European Union (EU) pertains to the organized, agreed-​ upon, and coordinated actions of the EU and its political relations towards the outside world. It was first legally specified in the commitment to establish a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in the Treaty of the European Union in Maastricht (TEU-​ M 1993). The CFSP was preceded by the European Community’s (EC) foreign policy, which incorporated, for the most part, foreign economic policy aspects of the European foreign policy, such as the EC’s trade, development, and association policies (Carlsnaes et al., 2004). More recently, the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) was launched to augment the CSFP, focusing on military challenges and capacities to quell conflicts in the EU’s periphery and beyond (Howorth, 2014). Since 1993, when the CFSP superseded the European Political Cooperation (1986), the EU foreign policy has undergone fundamental changes with regard to its institutional underpinnings, its functional and geographical remit, as well as the effects on member states’ foreign policies, i.e. Europeanization (Keukeleire and Delreux, 2014; Müller-​Brandeck-​Bocquet and Rüger, 2015; Wong, 2011). Germany’s attitude towards the EU’s evolving foreign policy may therefore manifest itself in different dimensions of the EU’s foreign policy process.2 As a member state of the EU, Germany may or may not support the establishment of new norms and institutional structures, thus either seeking to strengthen or weaken EU competences vis-​ à-​vis member states and entities (polity). Similar to other member states, the biggest economic power in the EU may also seek to bolster or undercut, or otherwise influence the process of EU foreign policy coordination through using unilateral means or 1 

I thank Isabella Lauber for her excellent research assistance in the preparation of this essay. (2001a) identifies two policy dimensions: regulative politics and constitutional politics, focusing on the latter of the two. 2  Wagner

510   Sebastian Harnisch colluding with outside powers, such as the US, Russia, or China (politics). Last but not least, in the policy dimension: Berlin may or may not support a common or joint policy decision or strategy of the EU towards a specific conflict, i.e. the Yugoslavian wars, or policy area, such as migration (policies) inasmuch as the EU pursues policy goals similar to, or at least compatible with Germany’s national foreign policy (Freudlsperger/​ Jachtenfuchs 2021). This chapter proceeds as follows. It first examines different concepts of how to tackle the interaction between German and EU foreign policy, dwelling on theoretical explanations and the empirical work done on different regional and functional policies. Second, it assesses Germany’s constitutional policy towards the CFSP, focusing on the role of societal actors in the process. Third, the essay traces Germany’s substantial policy contribution in three cases, testing the hypothesis that Germany’s CFSP policy has become more intergovernmental over time. The conclusion sums up the findings and outlines the extent and limitations of the literature in the field.

Concepts, Explanations, and State of the Literature Conceptually, the three dimensions of the EU foreign policy (polity, politics, policies) interact with each other in different ways, depending on the theoretical lens introduced to explain a member state’s interaction with the EU foreign policy process. Neo-​realism holds that international organizations, such as the EU, are instruments of the most powerful states. After unification, Germany was thus expected to seek autonomy and to avoid binding commitments in the CFSP either through blocking the delegation of further competences (polity) or unilateral strategies and actions (politics and policies) (Hyde-​Price, 2001).3 Liberal institutionalism, in turn, suggests that state governments represent a subset of domestic political interests, the selection of which is determined by the institutional structure, especially veto positions, which may pool at, or delegate to the EU level national competences to pursue common or compatible policy goals. Given that German citizens have a strong preference for a more unified CFSP but exert little direct policy pressure in this field, while Germany’s Länder (federal states) and the Bundestag have started to claim more participatory rights in the policy process, liberal institutionalism suggests that Germany will try to upload its constitutional policy preferences to the EU treaties but will resist further Europeanization of the German polity (Harnisch and Schieder, 2006).4 3 

Unilateral moves to maximize autonomy are depicted in Figure 29.1 through arrow (1). Arrow (2) represents the process of uploading German policy preferences to the EU level (Börzel and Risse, 2003), whereas arrow (3) depicts the process of Europeanization. Radaelli (2003, p. 30) defines Europeanization as ‘Processes of (a) construction, (b) diffusion, and (c) institutionalization of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, “ways of doing things”, and shared beliefs and 4 

GERMANY AND EU FOREIGN POLICY    511

International system/society

4 EU Common foreign policy

EU institutions 1

5

3

Germany

EU member states

2 Foreign policies of member states

Figure 29.1  EU foreign policy process: changing patterns of EU-​member state interaction Source: Graph adopted from Jorgensen, 2004, p. 34 and revised

Social constructivist approaches, then, expect the federal government to further European integration because the Grundgesetz stipulates in its preamble as well as Article 23 (new version from 1992) that Germany shall contribute to a united Europe. In addition, further integration within the EU foreign policy has figured prominently in most major party programmes and has been supported by strong majorities in the population (Wagner, 2001b, p. 190). Hence, rather than conceptualizing German interests as fixed, constructivists insist that interests may change when underlying norms, identities, or foreign policy role conceptions change, resulting for example in processes of further Europeanization through de-​Atlanticization (Berenskoetter/​Giegrich, 2010) or de-​ Europeanization through re-​nationalization (Hellmann, 2006).5 The pertinent research literature on Germany’s CFSP policy has focused upon three distinct but interconnected areas: first, the interaction between Germany’s domestic institutions and normative order, suggesting that the country was highly influential in the 1990s in shaping both the structure and content of the emerging EU foreign policy (Bulmer and Paterson, 1996, 2010; Bulmer et al., 2000). In a book-​length comparative study, Wagner (2001a) argues that Germany held firm to its pro-​integrationist CFSP policy after unification despite dramatic changes in the material and norms which are first defined and consolidated in the making of EU public policy and politics and then incorporated in the logic of domestic discourse, identities, political structures, and public policies’. 5 

Whereas arrows (2) and (4) depict the transfer of German civilian power norms first to the EU and then the international society level, arrow (5) may be conceptualized as international socialization forces that either ‘teach’ further European integration, e.g. experience of Yugoslav wars, US unilateralism or UK exiting the EU, or interactions that re-​socialize Germany into a more detached social position or into another international group, e.g. Great Powers (cf. Daenhardt, 2011, p. 50).

512   Sebastian Harnisch institutional environment because of its ‘europeanized identity’. Second, several studies have analysed Germany’s influence on the course of the CFSP during a particular time period (for the 1980s and early 1990s: Schmalz, 2004; the later 1990s: Lüdecke, 2002; and the 2000s: Daenhardt, 2011) or focused on a particular policy realm (for the Middle East: Müller, 2011; for Afghanistan and Congo: Gross, 2009; for the Caucasus region: Lypp, 2008; for China: Fox and Godemont, 2009; for Eastern and Central Europe and Africa: Helwig, 2016a). Overall, these studies find that Berlin has increasingly, if hesitatingly, used the EU foreign policy process to further common and rarely purely national goals (Hellwig, 2016; Müller-​Brandeck-​Bocquet, 2016). And third, several analyses concentrated on the emerging military aspects of the CFSP, i.e. the European Security and Defense Policy (Berenskoetter and Giegerich, 2010; Miskimmon, 2007; Miskimmon and Paterson, 2006; Bunde 2021). While significantly turning towards ESDP engagements, missions, and practical support, these studies suggest that ‘the limits of German Europeanization [in this policy area] are largely due to the fact that EU’s military capabilities remain extremely modest . . . [while] NATO remains the security institution with far the most credibility and as such, defense establishments across the EU will continue to view it as the most credible institution to work within’ (Miskimmon, 2007, p. 186; see also Wagner, 2005). Out of the universe of different dimensions and potential cases for analysing German policy towards the CFSP, this study is focusing on two pertinent research hypotheses in the field: On the one hand, this chapter assesses whether and to what extent Germany’s constitutional policy has been dominated by actors of the political and administrative system rather than societal actors (Wagner, 2001b, p. 188). On the other hand, the chapter considers the idea that Germany’s foreign policy has become de-​Europeanized, i.e. a process by which its policies changed in such a way that state interests are accorded precedence over (state transcending) ‘European’ interests (Daenhardt, 2011; Hellmann, 2006, p. 166). The remainder of this chapter unpacks the empirical data in greater detail.

Constitutionalizing CFSP: Germany’s Policy Contribution Unified Germany has employed a relatively consistent model of foreign policy integration to the EU over the last two decades, animated by varying domestic and international dynamics and the interaction between those two. During the Maastricht negotiations, the model developed and used since the Single European Act (1986) emphasized embedding the united and larger Germany firmly into a more integrated European Political Union, thereby supplementing Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the introduction of the Euro. Germany’s CFSP-​model then arose under, and in many ways came to be characterized by, attempts of the leading European states to

GERMANY AND EU FOREIGN POLICY    513 quell the Yugoslav secession wars and a growing number of humanitarian crises beyond Europe’s traditional security parameters. The key shift in the EU foreign policy was from reassurance among EU member states to providing (military) security in failing states.

The Maastricht Treaty Beginning with unification in 1990, the unifying Germany pursued a European foreign policy premised on a European Political Union supplementing the EMU established in the Maastricht Treaty (TEU-​M). The primary objective was to reassure EU members and neighbouring states that the bigger Germany would not stray off course but would actively engage in building a common foreign and security policy against the background of the Gulf War (1990/​91) and the Yugoslav secessionist wars in Slovenia and Croatia (1991/​92) (Schmalz, 2004, pp. 363–​5). Given domestic opposition to further involvement of the Bundeswehr into military operations (outside NATO’s operational area) and given the opposition by other member states to an ‘ever closer union’, Germany (often together with France) supported and even promoted stronger intergovernmental integration in foreign and defence matters. Germany’s CFSP policy for Maastricht was developed and honed through various bilateral initiatives with France (Mazzucelli, 1997). A constant was the delegation of foreign policy competences through the introduction of qualified majority voting (QMV) in the Council and the establishment of common European defence policy. This policy was modified only after the UK, and to a lesser extent France, signalled that they would be willing to accept the intergovernmental pooling of competences but without changing the unanimity rule in foreign and defence policy. Concerned that the West European Union (WEU) could develop into a rival to NATO and/​or instrument of further militarization of German defence policy, the Kohl government undertook steps to integrate it into the EU treaty system and co-​assigned its forces to NATO as well (Miskimmon, 2007, pp. 41–​6). The Maastricht negotiations provide a classic example of Germany’s (old) CFSP policy. The united Germany (almost) anxiously entered the Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union (ICGPU) to forestall instability in Europe, brought on by potential counter-​balancing behaviour against itself and the ongoing transformation processes in Central and Eastern Europe. With the US opposed to autonomous European capabilities and Russia remaining fragile, the Kohl government assumed responsibility in pushing for a limited Political Union in Western Europe, which was linked to a pan-​European dimension, based on the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) for Eastern Europe and Russia (Regelsberger, 2002). In Maastricht, then, Germany was only partially successful in establishing a Political Union in the CFSP realm. First, the CFSP remained intergovernmental, excluding the European Court of Justice as outlined in Article J (TEU-​M). Without a formal enforcement mechanism, the treaty merely called upon member states to ‘actively and unreservedly support the Union’s external and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and

514   Sebastian Harnisch mutual solidarity’ (Article J. 1.4). Secondly, the treaty established two mechanisms—​ Common Positions and Common Actions—​the latter of which could be voted upon under the QMV procedure, thereby opening the way towards expedited action when at least eight member states (or fifty-​four votes) agreed (Article J. 3.2.). Thirdly, the WEU was integrated into the EU as a bridge between the Union and NATO, including a provision to eventually develop a common European defence (Article J. 4.1.). Last but not least, while keeping CFSP intergovernmental, the Maastricht Treaty foresaw a joint right of initiative to the Commission (with the Council) in CFSP affairs and the opening of the EU budget to finance CFSP administrative and (also) operational expenses (Article J 11.) (Smith, 2003, pp. 180–​4). Having extended executive autonomy in European affairs through establishing the EU, including an intergovernmental Common Foreign and Security Policy, the challenge for the Kohl government was to ensure domestic support for, and ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. Seizing the opportunity, the German federal states (the Länder), the Bundestag, and several parties concerned with executive prerogatives, especially in deploying the Bundeswehr, successfully pressed the executive branch to change the constitutional provisions on Germany’s domestic European policy process in Article 23 (Grundgesetz) and subsequent laws and rules. In the wake of the sluggish ratification of the treaty, the Kohl government conceded substantial changes in the policy process, amounting to a ‘domestication of Germany’s European policy’ (Harnisch, 2009).6 In particular, the new Article 23 considerably expands information rights and veto powers by the Länder and the Bundestag while prescribing several guiding principles for Germany’s integration policy, the so-​called Struktursicherungsklauseln (Harnisch and Schieder, 2006, p. 98). In sum, as the Maastricht negotiations make clear, both domestic and external expectations were important in shaping the Kohl government’s policy. Nevertheless, the spectre of Germany’s past, despite decades of European cooperation, played a crucial role in forming the commitment to embedding the unified Germany into an ever-​closer Union, inserting the latter as a ‘state goal’ into the Grundgesetz in 1992. Notwithstanding the Kohl government’s commitment to a unified European foreign and security policy, NATO remained the first and most important pillar in Germany’s security and defence policy.

The Amsterdam and Nice Treaties Following the outbreak of the Balkan wars, the practice of Germany’s European foreign policy changed in two ways before the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) leading up to the Treaty of Amsterdam (TEU-​A). First, Berlin placed a new emphasis on building 6 Domestication may be defined as the introduction of normative and procedural restrictions substantially altering an executive’s (European) external policy to preserve a domestic institutional and normative order (cf. Harnisch, 2006).

GERMANY AND EU FOREIGN POLICY    515 more effective institutions and devising functional decision-​making. To the extent that effectiveness required more flexibility through limiting unanimity and facilitating solidarity in the form or financial or political support, this was not entirely new, but the support for the establishment of the position of a Mr. CFSP (the High Representative) and a Policy Planning and Early Warning Unit (PPEWU) was. Facilitated by the belief that the Political Union must complement the EMU, this position was significant because it was only partially shared by France, the UK, and other EU member states. Second, a more effective EU foreign policy was understood and expected to follow from integrating the military capabilities of the WEU into the EU. Instead of pursuing an autonomous EU military force, Germany sought to build a common European military force—​as based on the German-​French Corps (1988) and the later Eurokorps—​to strengthen the European voice and contribution to NATO and transatlantic security. This embodied the traditional Sowohl–​als-​Auch-​Policy (as-​well-​as-​policy) and the particular German position trying to bridge the gap between France, who prefers an independent European capacity, and the US/​UK, who stand for an Atlanticist security and defence model (Rummel, 1996, pp. 46–​52). In the negotiations in Amsterdam, the Kohl government succeeded in including new CFSP institutions and procedures (the Position of Mr. CFSP, the PPEWU, a mechanism for flexibility and enhanced cooperation). But Chancellor Kohl and Foreign Minister Kinkel were unable to introduce the expansion of the QMV in CFSP and to include the WEU as part of the EU into the treaty right away. Whereas Germany pleaded for an instant integration compatible with NATO assignments of the respective troops, France sought to dissociate European military structures from NATO and to keep CFSP’s decision-​making structures intergovernmental. As a consequence, Europe’s capacity to speak with one voice, as Kohl had stipulated, remained moderate when the conflict in Serbia’s province of Kosovo broke out in 1998 (Miskimmon, 2007, pp. 95–​9). Domestically, the Kohl government’s pro-​integrationist stance was embedded in a broad bi-​partisan consensus, including the Free Democrats (FDP). With the Federal Constitutional Court holding Bundeswehr out-​of-​area missions constitutional when based on a previous mandate by the Bundestag (12 July 1994), German armed forces were being deployed in an ever-​wider range of military contingencies, for example, in Bosnia, Albania, and Kosovo. However, substantial parts of the Green party and the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) remained opposed to these Bundeswehr missions. As a consequence, these parties (and their voters) contested the inclusion of the WEU into the EU, calling it a ‘militarization’ of an otherwise civilian and diplomatic policy (Philippi, 2001). Underlying the practice of German foreign and security policy becoming more robust was thus a strong belief among the German elite and populace that (increasing) German power should be institutionalized in both an ever more integrated EU and a firm transatlantic security community (Endres 2017). As Figure 29.2 indicates, soon after unification—​and despite considerable skepticism in Eastern Germany towards Western institutions—​German societal support for a more integrated CFSP of the EU starts to hoover between 5-​10% above the EU average

516   Sebastian Harnisch Data on Germans' Support for EU-Foreign Policy to EU Average (in %) 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 2017

2015

2013

2011

2009

2007

2005

2003

2001

1999

1997

1995

1993

1991

0

German Support for EU common foreign policy EU average Support for EU common foreign policy

Figure 29.2  Eurobarometer –​Data on Germans’ Support for the CFSP relative to the EU average Source: Own calculation as based on Eurobarometer 1991-​2017 Note that Eurobarometer data for 2009 could not be identified and that respective questions regarding CFSP preferences changed slightly over time.

in the 1990s. It is the difference during the early days of the Yugoslav secession wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, especially in 1992, that is most distinctive in this phase. Whereas the European average drops to 60%, German societal support remains steady around 70%. Rather than reacting negatively to the intra-​European conflicts over the response to the Balkan wars, German citizens polled appear to stick to an integrationist model as a remedy, seeking more instead of less integration. During the Kosovo conflict (1998–​99), the new red-​green (Social Democrat/​Green) government found itself under substantial domestic and international pressure to both find a diplomatic solution as the country holding the rotating EU presidency in the first half of 1999, but also to provide credible military support to the NATO-​led air campaign, despite strong domestic contestation to the contrary. Rather than being planned, the ambitious policy to develop a European Security and Defence Policy, including a substantial pool of various military and civilian assets, evolved against the background of the British-​French St. Malo initiative (December 1998) and the diplomatic, military, and humanitarian impact of the Kosovo War. Indeed, the European dependency on US military assets and the lack of European influence on US policy and combat targeting decision called for improving autonomous European capabilities, both military as well as diplomatic and civilian (Berenskoetter and Giegerich, 2010). Germany’s presidency of the European Council coincided with both the WEU presidency and the chairmanship of the G-​7, giving ample opportunity to steer the diplomatic and military process ending the NATO Kosovo campaign in June 1999. In this way, the

GERMANY AND EU FOREIGN POLICY    517 Kosovo War and the triple presidencies created a political opening for the Schröder government to accord military force a much higher priority in the EU foreign and security policy than before. But there were many different notions of what was necessary to end the killing in Kosovo and to make the EU’s foreign policy more effective. Three different tenets of CFSP were important and fit together into an integrated strategy. First, common institutions, such as the PPEWU as well as the position of the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy had to be substantiated and supplemented by new institutions in the field of military crisis management (the Political and Security Committee and Military Committee) and civilian post-​conflict management (the Committee for Civilian Aspects of Crisis Management) (Algieri, 2001). Although the military component of the CFSP, the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP), remained contested domestically, and some assets, such as the subsequently created Euro Battlegroups, were never deployed, the Schröder government can claim political leadership for pushing the institutional capacity to speak with one European voice. In 2000, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, in his Humboldt speech, reasserted the idea of a ‘Kerneuropa’ (core Europe; an avant-​garde or pioneer group) promoted in the famous ‘Schäuble-​Lamers Papier’ (Schäuble and Lamers, 1994) and called for a group of willing and able member states to pioneer in the field of the CFSP (Fischer, 2000). Second, the operational capabilities of the WEU were integrated into the Nice Treaty (TEU-​N), thereby ensuring that the emerging ESDP could improve the transatlantic burden-​sharing by making better use of European assets and by also ensuring more autonomous European capabilities. Institutionally, the WEU defence clause rested within the WEU, which remained in hibernation status until it was dismantled under the new EU common defence clause in Article 42,7 (TEU-​L). Third, at the insistence of the Schröder government, civilian crisis management instruments were introduced into the CFSP/​ESDP provisions of the Nice Treaty, thereby addressing societal preferences for multilateral and diplomatic crisis management and allaying partisan concerns about a further militarization of German foreign policy by means of Europeanization (Würzer, 2013). In all three reasons, but particularly in the establishment of civilian crisis management instruments, societal preferences for peaceful, diplomatic, and multilateral conflict resolution played an important role. This public reservation about the use of force informed the critical German reaction to the robust anti-​terrorism measures in the aftermath of the 9/​11 attacks and subsequent military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq (Harnisch, 2004). It also informed the E3/​EU3 initiative towards Iran, which was launched to prevent a prompt military escalation and to give (European) diplomacy a chance to make ‘multilateralism work’ (Cronberg, 2017).

The Lisbon Treaty The problems with the institutional provisions in the Nice Treaty were manifold. It comes as no surprise then that they already reached an early nadir in the member states

518   Sebastian Harnisch split over the Iraq intervention in 2003. This failure—​symbolized by Donald Rumsfeld’s adage of an ‘Old’ and a ‘New’ Europe—​was recognized by all member states, leading directly to the E3/​EU3 initiative and the drafting of the first ‘European Security Strategy 2003’ (ESS 2003). However, the willingness to push for deeper integration ensued only in some EU capitals, among them Berlin. During the ‘Convention on the Future of Europe’ (2000–​01), which led to the aborted EU Constitutional Treaty, the Red-​Green coalition had already proposed to integrate the CFSP into the Commission’s sphere of competences and to strengthen the High Representative by also entrusting them with the chair of the Political Committee (the predecessor of the Political and Security Committee established in Article 25 TEU-​N). After the Iraq debacle and the failed referenda on the Constitutional Treaty, the Merkel government started to push for the EU Commission to be put in charge for implementing the EU foreign policy (Helwig, 2016b, p. 34). Germany’s presidency of the European Council in 2007 was met with expectations that Angela Merkel would jump-​start the integration process after the negative referenda in France and the Netherlands (2005). During the negotiations for the Constitutional Treaty, Germany had already promoted the idea of the High Representative playing a dual role by also figuring as the Commissioner for External Affairs, and the Vice-​ President of the Commission respectively. In addition, Berlin, together with Paris, had proposed the establishment of a European External Action Service (EEAS) that would succeed the lowkey PPEWU (Lieb and Maurer, 2007). But when the Lisbon Treaty was negotiated, Berlin was somewhat less successful in pushing for further integration, for example, by expanding the QMV or enhancing the role of the EU Commission in the CFSP (Helwig, 2016b, p. 35). In particular, Berlin conceded to the British government that there would be no European Foreign Minister but rather a ‘High Representative of the Union for Foreign and Security Policy’. In turn, however, London withdrew its opposition to the High Representative’s position as the Chairperson of the Council and the establishment of a European External Action Service (Phinnemore, 2013, p. 119). Overall, the German Chancellor was credited with laying the groundwork for the constitutional renewal, which was finalized under the French presidency in the second half of 2008. Crucial to this success were a strong inter-​ party consensus on EU reforms in Germany, a meticulous preparation of the bi-​, plural-​, and multilateral negotiations, as well as the provision of opt-​out clauses for sceptical member states, such as the UK and Poland. Since Lisbon, Germany’s overall approach to a deeper European integration has become more guarded against the background of the Euro and migration crises. Most notably so in September 2017 when the French President Emmanuel Macron proposed a far-​reaching overhaul of the Union, no substantial official German response was detectable. This downturn may be traced back to the growing integration scepticism among various political actors. During the Euro crisis, fiscal conservatives and Eurosceptics, especially in the newly established ‘Alternative for Germany’ (AfD), used the Federal Constitutional Court to limit further delegation in the European System of

GERMANY AND EU FOREIGN POLICY    519 Central Banks (ECSB). Under pressure from the AfD and against the background of the migration crisis in 2015–​16, the CSU, the sister party of Chancellor Merkel’s CDU, strengthened its EU-​sceptic rhetoric, calling for the reinstalment of national border controls and the preservation of German culture and mores. However, in foreign, security, and defence matters, in 2013 the Merkel government led an initiative to effectuate the newly established EEAS and to put the High Representative in charge of the EU’s external representation (Helwig, 2016b, p. 37). Moreover, the destabilization of the EU’s neighbourhood (terrorism), the British decision to leave the EU by 2019, and transatlantic uncertainties after the election of Donald Trump have resulted in a boost of German-​French proposals since mid-​2016 to create a ‘European Security and Defense Union’, including a Permanent Structured Cooperation mechanism (PESCO), a fully-​fledged civil-​military headquarters, a European Defense Fund, and enhanced operational EU-​ NATO cooperation (Iso-​ Markku and Müller-​ Brandeck-​ Bocquet, 2020). Notably, the German coalition agreement in 2018, while seeking to strengthen the bond with the US, also concluded that “Europe needs to become more internationally self-​reliant and capable” (translation by author, German government 2018: 144), setting in motion a debate on the “strategic autonomy” of the European Union (Meijer/​ Brooks 2021). In sum, under pressure from external challenges and internal contestation, Germany’s constitutional CFSP policy has evolved considerably since German unification. It has become more community-​based, more robust, and more contentious as EU-​sceptic and anti-​EU groups have finally established a party (the AfD) and other instruments—​such as political movements and various challenges in the Federal Constitutional Court—​ to counter the pro-​integrationist elite consensus in Germany. While further integration of the CFSP remains less contested than in other policy areas, for example, the EMU or migration, it is fair to say that societal actors play an important and growing role in the German debate on the EU’s Common Foreign, Security and Defense Policy (Bunde 2021).

Implementing CFSP: Germany Contributes to the EU’s ‘Effective Multilateralism’ The case of Germany’s CFSP policy is often used to illustrate the conditions for a trend towards ‘Europeanization’ or ‘de-​Europeanization’ (Daehnhardt, 2011; Hellmann, 2006; Schmalz, 2004). In a few exceptional instances, different German governments have departed from an emerging common European position (early recognition of Slovenia and Croatia in 1991) and taken a notably different stance than other big European powers on military interventions (Iraq (2003) together with France; and Libya (2011) alone).

520   Sebastian Harnisch They have also used a variety of multilateral mechanisms, such as the Western Balkan Contact Group (Yugoslav wars); the German-​French, the Geneva, and the Normandy formats (Syria and Ukraine); the Weimar Triangle (Ukraine); or the E3, EU3, and EU3 +​ 3 (Iran), to pursue a mixture of German and European interests (Helwig, 2020). In doing so, German governments of differing party composition have stuck with a strong preference for diplomatic and non-​military means while accepting a growing ‘international responsibility’ (Steinmeier, 2014). As a consequence, Berlin has been an ardent supporter of a strong European External Action Service, pushing for additional competences and QMV, most notably during the EEAS review process (Adebahr, 2015). And yet there remains a perceptible gap between Germany’s above-​average contribution to EU’s military missions and substandard (but increasing) engagement in civilian missions (Müller-​Brandeck-​Boucquet, 2016, p. 379; Harnisch, 2014, p. 3). Germany has attempted to manage the tensions between national legitimacy and European effectiveness by making its leadership preferences increasingly clear and subtly using minilateral mechanisms to build, sustain, and implement common European positions (Helwig and Siddi, 2020). These policies have regularly resulted in more European institutions, most notably the position of the High Representative and the EEAS. The following sections, therefore, discuss two minilateral policy episodes, the Balkan Contact Group and the EU3-​Initiative, that symbolize this emerging trend.

The Yugoslav Wars and the Emerging CFSP Already during the secession of Croatia and Slovenia, the fractured European response was strongly criticized. As a consequence, the CFSP was introduced in the Treaty of Maastricht and immediately put to the test in Bosnia. It soon became apparent that divisions among the twelve member states and the corresponding lack of resources required sustained cooperation with the US and Russia as members of the UN Security Council. The Clinton administration, which took the leadership in early 1994, facilitated the Washington Agreement between Croat and Muslim Bosniaks and created the ‘Contact Group’, privileging European UN Security Council members, UK and France as well as Germany over other EU member states.7 The group covered the conflicts in Bosnia and Hercegovina (1994–​97) as well as in Kosovo (1997–​99) but not in Albania (1997). The Contact Group was set up by the US as an informal forum to quickly align policy positions among the UN Security Council members, including Russia but excluding China, and to reconcile these positions with those EU members that had strong ties and interests in the region (Daalder, 2000, p. 27). As expected, in the Contact Group, 7  The format included the rotating EU presidency and the EU Commission but both played only a marginal observer role in the negotiations (Schwegmann, 2000).

GERMANY AND EU FOREIGN POLICY    521 Germany played a follower role commensurate with the US leadership, keeping Berlin in line with its diplomacy-​first preferences and moving it hesitatingly towards a more robust and interventionist military posture on the Balkans (Maull, 1995). The Contact Group format, although informal, immediately came under sustained scrutiny and criticism from other EU member states (Schwegmann, 2003). On the one hand, member states, such as the Netherlands, feared that they might not be consulted when the Contact Group decided on escalatory military steps, affecting Dutch UN blue helmets serving in Bosnia. On the other hand, larger member states, such as Italy, sought to preserve the status and influence in the Group after serving as rotating EU presidency. In the case of Italy, threats to stop and prevent the US from further using Italian bases for its Stealth bombers led to the toleration of Italy as an additional EU member in 1996, while experts of other EU members rotated in and out of the Group’s small policy structures (Schwegmann, 2000, p. 19). Already under challenge for its disappointing results, Germany and France launched an initiative to bring about the CFSP in December 1995 and December 1996. In two open letters, they called first to modify the consensus principle by introducing a ‘constructive abstention’ procedure, allowing those EU members that were willing and able to do so to go ahead while others tolerated this communal action. Secondly, they proposed to establish a prominent position to give voice to the EU and to provide a senior person who could represent the EU on the international stage (Müller-​Brandeck-​Bocquet and Rüger, 2015, p. 72). While Germany preferred to establish a lower-​key position in the Council Secretariat at the time, thereby limiting potential autonomous actions vis-​à-​vis national foreign ministries, Berlin later pushed for a stronger bureaucratic position of the High Representative and their staff during the Nice and Lisbon Treaty negotiations (Rüger, 2011). In sum, Germany’s Balkan policies in minilateral mechanisms outside the EU framework privileged some bigger EU member states while sidelining EU institutions. However, it did not lead to permanent big power intergovernmental structures. Rather, and against the background of the intra-​EU discord over Balkan policies, Germany sought to strengthen intergovernmental coordination within the EU through the establishment of the High Representative position and the early warning and policy unit in the Council Secretariat. In addition, by constantly pushing the limits of the QMV on external affairs (with the exception of military and defence matters) and tying the High Representative to the Commission, Berlin also indicated its willingness to delegate some national competences to communal institutions.

The Iran Experience and the Emergence of EEAS Given the US-​ led military intervention in Iraq in March 2003 and the Bush administration’s rejection of a comprehensive proposal for the resolution of the nuclear crisis by Iranian authorities in April 2003, three Foreign Ministers of big EU member states launched a diplomatic initiative in August 2003 to resolve the conflict

522   Sebastian Harnisch over unreported and ongoing suspicious Iranian nuclear activities.8 The E3 Foreign Ministers, who travelled to Tehran in October 2003 to negotiate a temporary settlement to suspend disputed activities, were joined in negotiating a second understanding—​ the Paris Accord in December 2004—​by High Representative Javier Solana to become the EU3 mechanism. This Europeanization of the E3 format became necessary when excluded bigger EU member states (Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands) started to complain about being left out and the E3 needed additional leverage through the suspended EU negotiations on a Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) with Iran (Harnisch, 2007, p. 5). The German role during the EU3-​Iran negotiations differed considerably from the Balkan case where Berlin had more or less followed the US leadership. In the case of Iran, European Foreign Ministers had initiated the dialogue and taken the lead to prevent the US from escalating the crisis through an early involvement of the UN Security Council. Among the E3, Germany enjoyed traditionally good (if neutral) relations with the revolutionary Islamic Republic Iran (IRI) and, as the most important European trading partner, initiated the EU’s ‘critical dialogue’ with the regime (Adebahr, 2017, p. 48). During the negotiations, German interlocutors early on, and in contrast to their counterparts from nuclear weapon states, floated the idea of a limited Iranian enrichment capability so as to reconcile the Iranian claim for unrestricted fuel cycle activities with the prohibitive French and US approach (Bergnäs, 2010, p. 499). Germany’s special role among the nuclear powers and permanent members of the Security Council becomes understandable when external expectations are taken into account: First, as a strong protagonist of Israel’s territorial integrity and thanks to its traditionally close relationship with Iran, Germany was deemed to be a credible interlocutor between the two. Secondly, as a strong protagonist of diplomatic solutions and early critic of the US-​led intervention in Iraq, as well as due to its relatively strong trade interests in Iran, it was thought to have political and economic clout with several of the parties concerned.9 Last but not least, the German Federal Foreign Office held the necessary technical know-​how. Moreover, by means of delegation to the High Representative office (and then the EEAS), Berlin provided one of the key negotiators, Helga Schmid, to facilitate the comprehensive tit-​for-​tat structure of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which (temporarily) settled the dispute in July 2015 (Adebahr, 2017, p. 50; Cronberg, 2017, Pos. 960). Even after the conclusion of the JCPOA in mid-​2015, the EU3 proved vital for the diplomatic settlement of the dispute. When Republican law-​makers sent an open letter to the Iranian leadership in March 2015, indicating that the JCPOA negotiated 8 

Comprehensive accounts of the European involvement can be found in Cronberg, 2017; Adebahr, 2017; and Schmitt, 2017. 9  Thus, when the EU3 +​3 considerably toughened the economic sanctions, Germany (and several other smaller EU member states) first resisted further coercive measures, but eventually supported them, cf. Adebahr, 2017, p. 125.

GERMANY AND EU FOREIGN POLICY    523 by the Obama administration would not be upheld by Republicans in Congress or by a Republican President (after the elections in November 2016), E3 ambassadors and emissaries lobbied in both houses of Congress, arguing that international diplomatic relations should not be held hostage to US domestic politics (Crowley, 2015). With the election of Donald Trump, a declared critic of the ‘Iran deal’, the additional function to sustain US compliance with, and tolerance of the JCPOA became even more crucial (Cronberg and Erästö, 2017), though eventually, on 8 May 2018, Trump announced the withdrawal of the US from the JCPOA. In sum, Germany’s active participation in minilateral mechanisms outside the EU framework has not undermined but has, in fact, strengthened CFSP institutions. In this case, the trilateral initiative not only facilitated an intra-​EU accord but also eventually led to sustained transatlantic cooperation in upholding and reforming the nonproliferation regime (Harnisch, 2019). In doing so, it put the High Representative—​ which led the negotiations from 2008–​13—​and the EEAS to work after the Lisbon Treaty had substantially strengthened both institutions.

Conclusion The co-​evolution of the EU and German political systems has substantially changed Germany’s CFSP policy over time. The single biggest shift occurred with the end of the Cold War and the unification of Germany when deeper European integration became a national objective and effective intra-​European coordination a necessity during the Yugoslav wars. A second key change took place after the US shift from benign to belligerent state in the aftermath of the 9/​11 attacks, which galvanized the EU’s preference for diplomatic conflict solutions. More recently, the Euro crisis and the massive influx of refugees from various conflicts in the EU’s neighbourhood have challenged Germany’s pro-​integrationist domestic consensus, thereby placing stronger, if variant, societal limits on the executive’s integrationist predilections. Contrasting these new dynamics with two hypotheses from the pertinent literature on Germany’s CFSP policy reveals, however, two problems that hark back to the monodirectional moorings of rationalist or thin constructivist explanations. First, as extensively discussed in the literature on Europeanization, member states and the EU co-​ evolve over time through up-​, down-​, and cross-​loading, thus often frustrating efforts to pin down the relative influence of causal pathways or single countries (or components thereof such as bureaucracies or interest groups). In constitutional terms, Germany’s constitutive CFSP policy is thus a primary enabler—​—​but by no means the only one—​ of deeper intergovernmental cooperation in foreign and security affairs. A pro-​integrationist reading, however, risks oversimplifying Berlin’s European impact. Ideational underpinnings—​ preference for diplomatic and economic instruments as well as clear limits on delegating military deployment decisions—​should not be minimized (Koenig 2020).

524   Sebastian Harnisch Second, a (temporal) decrease of financial engagement or the use of minilateral mechanisms may not be a good indicator for de-​Europeanization trends. Governments, seeking to effectuate the EU’s often tortuous decision-​making process, may legitimate the EU by boosting its output legitimacy. In turn, better performance may legitimate further pooling and delegation of competences on the European level. But the improvement of European effectiveness increasingly needs to be reconciled with national legitimacy because the delegation of competences challenges national institutions and the interests they represent (Freundlsperger/​Jachtenfuchs 2021: 132). Fortunately, a broader and more inclusive European understanding of legitimacy may help to legitimate new forms of co-​evolution in the CFSP realm, such as PESCO or an EU-​centered civil-​military headquarters. Following the election of the first openly nationalist US President after the Second World War and the subsequent US pullback from a liberal and rule-​based international order, it is the promise of the EU’s effective multilateralism that may help to pull both leaving and wavering member states, as well as neighbouring transition states, into the EU’s orbit in order to sustain an institutionalized international order that has served the Union and Germany so well.

Further Reading Bulmer, Simon, Charlie Jeffrey, and William Paterson (2000), Germany’s European Diplomacy: Shaping the Regional Milieu (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Helwig, Niklas 2020, ‘Germany in European Diplomacy: Minilateralism as a Tool for Leadership’, German Politics 29(1), pp. 25–​41. Iso-​ Markku, Tuomas and Gisela Müller-​ Brandeck-​ Bocquet (2020), ‘Towards German Leadership? Germany’s Evolving Role and the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy’, German Politics 29(1), pp. 59–​78. Harnisch, Sebastian and Hanns W. Maull (eds) (2001), Germany as a Civilian Power? The Foreign Policy of the Berlin Republic (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Maull, Hanns W. (ed.) (2011), Germany’s Uncertain Power: Foreign Policy of the Berlin Republic (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

Bibliography Adebahr, Cornelius (2017), Europe and Iran: the Nuclear Deal and Beyond (Abingdon: Routledge). Adebahr, Cornelius (2015). ‘Germany: The Instinctive Integrationist’, in Rosa Balfour et al. (eds), The European External Action Service and National Foreign Ministries (London: Ashgate), pp. 107–​20. Algieri, Franco (2001). ‘Die Europäische Sicherheits-​und Verteidigungspolitik—​erweiterter Handlungsspielraum für die GASP’, in Werner Weidenfeld (ed.), Nizza in der Analyse (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann), pp. 161–​201. Berenskoetter, Felix and Bastian Giegerich (2010), ‘From NATO to ESDP: A Social Constructivist Analysis of German Strategic Adjustment after the End of the Cold War’, Security Studies 19(3), pp. 407–​452.

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CHAPTER 30

GERMANY IN T H E E U An Assertive Status Quo Power? Patricia Daehnhardt

The European Union (EU) is Germany’s institutional anchor for external policy-​ making and European integration remains its most relevant framework for exerting political influence in Europe and beyond. Since the creation of the European Community (EC) in the 1950s, Germany had assumed the role of a ‘Musterknabe’ (model pupil) (Bulmer and Jeffery, 2010, p. 114) by choice, not coercion, with many of the EC’s economic, political, and legal structures resembling Germany’s institutional preferences for supranational integration. In the last decade, however, concerns with safekeeping control of state core powers have shifted Germany’s preference towards intergovernmental policy-​making. This became clear during the European Union (EU) crises of the 2010s, in which Germany played a pivotal role, and which strengthened Germany’s position as a primus inter pares. This chapter explores Germany’s role in the EU, the domestic actors that constrain or empower its European policy, and Germany’s policies in the EU’s crises during the last decade. Given the structural power it possesses, how successful has Germany been in achieving its European interests? What sort of leadership, if any, does Germany exert in the EU? The chapter proceeds as follows. The first section briefly sketches German European policy since the foundation of the European Community. The second section succinctly explores European integration theories and recent debates on Germany’s European policy. The third section examines the influence of domestic actors involved in EU policy-​making. The fourth section analyses German policy during the EU’s crises of the last decade—​the Eurozone, the Ukraine, the refugee and Brexit crises. The conclusion considers whether Germany has become the EU’s hegemon or remains a status quo power, and points to future areas of research. The chapter advances the argument that, in its European policy, Germany pursues an interest-​driven strategy to strengthen the EU as an integrative and democratic polity through a policy approach that has increasingly chosen intergovernmentalist institution-​building preferences, especially in core state powers, over supranationalist

530   Patricia Daehnhardt integration. As the EU’s key member state, Germany stands more to gain from being a Union member than from dissociating from it. But the ‘realist turn’ forced by the 2010s crises has made Germany’s support for EU integration more conditional, especially regarding the integration of state core powers. Germany was decisive in solving all crises but often found itself in the driver’s seat and alone in the front row, with France taking a back seat. Yet despite this pivotal role, more than being a hegemon ‘on hold’, Germany remains, for now, by choice as much as by domestic politics, a deliberate status quo power in the EU, pursuing its interests in an assertive manner geared towards maintaining the EU order and European integration, from which Germany has been one of the biggest beneficiaries. To solve the tensions surrounding the debate of Germany as a hegemon or a status quo power, revitalizing a German-​French core strategy may be Berlin’s best strategy.

Mapping the Milieu: German Integration Ideas and Interests During the Cold War, European Community membership was a formidable vehicle for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, Germany hereinafter) to pursue several foreign policy goals. It enabled it to recover political sovereignty, regain a legitimate foreign policy, and forge a new post-​war identity, based on anti-​nationalist, anti-​hegemonic, and pro-​European credentials. Germany became a state with a Europeanized identity (Anderson, 2005; Bulmer, 1997; Bulmer, Jeffery, and Paterson, 2000; Wittlinger, 2010) shaped by historical memory (Banchoff, 1997; Markovits and Reich, 1997). Integrated into the newly emerging multilateral and democratic structures in Western Europe, the European Community helped ‘to diffuse the effects of any national preponderance, enabling Germany to cooperate peacefully and productively with its neighbours on a variety of policy issues’ (Banchoff, 1999, p. 9). Without the EC, the ‘economic miracle’ that turned Germany into an economic giant and ‘trading state’ (Rosecrance, 1986; Staack, 2000) ‘would have been perceived as a threat’ (Bulmer and Paterson, 1987, p. 7, in Paterson, 2005) to the rest of Western Europe. European integration further enabled Germany to develop into a shaper of ‘the regional milieu’ through a ‘reflexive multilateralism’ defined by ‘its commitment to European institutions as the locus of policy-​making’ (Bulmer, Jeffery, and Paterson, 2000, p. 52). Reflexive multilateralism became important in two ways. First, it nested German interests in a wider EC framework of intergovernmental cooperation and supranational integration. Secondly, it allowed for Germany to regain ‘sovereignty through integration’ (Müller-​Brandeck-​Boquet, 2006, p. 468) and cushioned Bonn’s ‘leadership-​ avoidance reflex’ (Jeffery and Paterson, 2003, p. 61). Thirdly, it placed Germany in a network of alliances, where relations with France and the US were the two main pillars of Germany’s policy of Westbindung, its insertion in Western European, and transatlantic

GERMANY IN THE EU    531 institutional structures (Hanrieder, 1989). Germany’s reconciliation policy with France, particularly since the Élysée Treaty of 1963, became the catalyst for further European integration, combining France’s political standing with Germany’s economic clout as ‘an instrument for collective action where the two states acting together were normally able to achieve more than they could acting individually’ (Paterson, 2005, p. 270) and where joint action between Berlin and Paris could shape the EU policies more effectively than any other alliance inside the EC. Contrary to the argument that Germany only started pursuing its own interests after unification, some authors have observed ‘a rationalist strategy of cost-​minimization’, for example, in attempts ‘to restrict the size of the EC budget throughout the 1980s’ (Freudlsperger and Jachtenfuchs, 2021, p. 119). As a semi-​sovereign state with constrained domestic actors, Germany’s power was institutionally tamed (Katzenstein, 1997) and exerted ‘indirectly and in a diffuse manner’ (Bulmer, 1997, p. 51). Through its ‘European vocation’ (Paterson, 2010, p. 46) Germany amplified its voice in European integration and pursued its interests through significant institutional congruence with European institutions (Anderson, 1999; Bulmer, 1983; Katzenstein, 1997), thus shaping the contours of European integration decisively, often to the image of its own domestic institutions, sometimes in open disagreement with other member states and most of the time in close cooperation with France. The Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the independent European Central Bank (ECB) reflected some of Germany’s own institutions and monetary policy priorities like price stability, debt limits, and restriction of government financing, and they were aided by the ‘special informal role’ of the German-​French relationship to make the agreement politically acceptable (Dyson, 1999, p. 25). In 1990, when the spectre of a potential German hegemony was raised (Sperling, 2001), institutional continuity of Germany’s EC and NATO memberships became the precondition for France’s and America’s acceptance of German unification (Bozo, 2008). Thus, unification served as a catalyst for EC institutional reform, through the Maastricht Treaty and EU enlargement to Eastern European countries. This German-​French cooperative hegemony (Pedersen, 1998) was already noticeable in the mid-​1980s when the Single European Act introduced the qualified majority voting (QMV) system in the Council of Ministers, on matters regarding the single market, or later when Germany and France disregarded the 3 per cent of GDP rule for deficits of the Stability and Growth Pact, the EU’s fiscal policies coordination mechanism, in 2003. By the mid-​2000s, however, the German-​French ‘embedded bilateralism’ (Krotz and Schild, 2013) had become increasingly asymmetric reflecting Germany’s increase in structural and institutional power and France’s economic weakness (Bulmer and Paterson, 2013, p. 1392; see also Chapter 28, by Germond, in this volume). At the same time, ‘identification with Europe [was] not as important anymore as a kind of ersatz identity’ and ‘a clearer and less reluctant articulation of German interests’ could be identified (Wittlinger, 2020, p. 165). Germany’s support for European integration has been consistent and its role in the EU has been as an anchor of stability, despite occasional policy shifts, strong disagreements with some member states, and differences in leadership between the three German

532   Patricia Daehnhardt Chancellors since unification. Chancellor Kohl was successful in combining the EU’s institutional deepening with its enlargement to Eastern Europe, and without alienating Germany’s crucial partner France in the process. Chancellor Schröder followed a more emancipatory European policy, with Germany pursuing its own interests as a normal country, again not at the cost of the German-​French relationship. Chancellor Merkel often acted as a skilful mediator in unblocking European deadlock, brokering compromise, rescuing stalled EU Council negotiations, and sometimes balancing conflicts on distribution issues through material concessions, as with the Lisbon Treaty. During the 2010s crises, Merkel acted as a tactical crisis manager and skilful negotiator. Yet during her long Chancellorship Germany did not define a grand strategy for European integration or an overly ambitious vision of Europe, with Berlin often resorting to uncertain, obstructionist, or simply reactive policies before taking more assertive decisions, which disqualified Germany as a hegemon.

Theories of European Integration and German European Policy European integration always advanced with Germany at its core, striving to attain greater political integration through the voluntary transfer of power and competences to the EU level towards a polity somewhere between a ‘union of states’ and a supranational entity, and prevent the emergence of a preponderant power within it. The neo-​ functionalist theory of integration argued that in becoming a founding member of the EC, Germany shifted its ‘loyalties, expectations and political activities toward a new and larger centre, whose institutions possess or demand jurisdiction over the pre-​existing national states’ (Haas, 1961, pp. 366–​7), accepting a unidirectional economic ‘spill-​over’ effect and autonomous supranational institutions. Liberal intergovernmentalism, in contrast, analysed the EU as a ‘normal’ intergovernmental institution with member states focused on their domestic institutional preferences, bargaining capabilities and veto possibilities at the EU level (Moravcsik, 1998). Germany’s preferences regarding the Schengen Treaty, the single market, EMU, or reform proposals for the voting system in the Council of the European Union were explained as being motivated by Germany’s domestic political and economic interests. The various crises the EU has gone through since 2005 have recalibrated integration research in three directions. First, post-​functionalism argued that the traditional ‘permissive consensus’ that had legitimized the integration spill-​over for decades had turned into a ‘constraining dissensus’ (Hooghe and Marks, 2009, p. 6) with ‘disruptive potential of a clash between functional pressures and exclusive identity’ (Hooghe and Marks, 2019, p. 1116). Secondly, a more state-​centred research based on a theory of domestic politics of European integration (Bulmer, 2014) privileged the role of individual member states. Bulmer and Paterson (2017) observed an increased intergovernmentalist approach

GERMANY IN THE EU    533 in Chancellor Merkel’s preference for the ‘Union method’ as a decision-​making procedure in EU Council meetings, often to the detriment of the supranational community method. Finally, ‘new intergovernmentalism’ posited that states sidestepped the traditional Community method through the creation of de novo institutions outside of EU treaties, like the European External Action Service, Frontex, or the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) whose institutional design was not that of supranational institutions ‘in the traditional sense of the term’ but often had ‘an intergovernmental strand to their governance structure that is more conducive to member state control’ (Bickerton, Hodson, and Puetter, 2015, p. 42). Experts on German European policy centred the debate after unification on the question of continuity and change (Europapolitik) (Jopp, 2001). The first argued that Germany viewed European integration as its core national interest and remained on the path of continuity (Banchoff, 1997; Katzenstein, 1997). The change that occurred was incremental, negotiated, and consensus-​driven towards further economic and institutional integration. The second identified change through ‘normalisation’ after 1998, when the Red-​Green government led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder tried to shake off the artificiality it perceived in Germany’s ‘instinctive Europeanism’, initiating a period of ‘normalisation’ (Hyde-​Price and Jeffery, 2001), which portrayed the new Germany as a normal country, sidelining the (exaggerated) Europeanized nature of the German policy, through more assertive policy-​making, for example, in EU budgetary or single market negotiations regarding industry and trade interests or voting rights. Jeffery and Paterson observed a ‘critical juncture for change’, and a ‘shifting of tectonic plates’ of the ‘virtuous circle’ between Germany and the EU that amounted to a new ‘German-​EU incongruence’ (Jeffery and Paterson, 2003, p. 73). Thus ‘the ‘tamed power’ characterization of Germany’s position in the EU no longer holds’ as Germany’s European policy had become more assertive (Bulmer and Paterson, 2010, p. 1052) and ‘to the extent that German power grows, German national interests will shape institutions’ (Crawford, 2007, p. 23). Germany’s European policy had made a realist turn from ‘an idealist and progressive posture to a more conservative, interest-​ based approach, which potentially collides with other EU member states’ interests’ (Daehnhardt, 2013). It had become ‘weaker, leaner, and meaner’, marked ‘by protectionist impulses, non-​compliance in major European policy projects, such as the EU Stability and Growth Pact, and a stiffened opposition to the European Commission’s efforts to enforce EU legislation’ (Harnisch and Schieder, 2006, pp. 96–​7). During the EU’s decade of crises, the debate between continuity (of pre-​unification policy principles) or change (normalization) evolved to the debate between status quo power (preservation) or (reluctant) hegemony. On the side of the ‘hegemon’ argument, no author argues that Germany has become a fully-​fledged hegemon. Rather, Germany became a ‘reluctant hegemon’ (Paterson 2011) when the Eurozone crisis catapulted it into a hegemonic role. ‘This was not a role sought by Germany’ as ‘there was no strategy to build a more central role for Germany’ (Paterson, 2011, p. 73). Germany acted as a ‘coercive’ hegemon, which emphasized ordoliberal ideas rules, pushing the burden of adjustment onto the periphery (Matthijs, 2020, p. 7) and established its ‘economic hegemony’

534   Patricia Daehnhardt over the rest of the EU but it was ‘neither willing nor able to impose its preferences unilaterally on the rest of the EU’ (Schweiger, 2015, p. 24). A decade later, Germany remains a constrained hegemon: a ‘reluctant’ (Paterson, 2011); ‘embedded’ (Crawford, 2007); ‘hobbled’ (Webber, 2019) hegemon, that punches below its weight, even after, or because of its handling of the EU’s crises. In contrast, the ‘status quo power’ argument identifies less change than the hegemony argument. If a status quo power is defined as a country that plays ‘a key role in ensuring the stability of the international system by supporting the existing order, through the institutionalised mechanisms upon which the order is built’ (Daehnhardt, 2018, p. 517), Germany has conducted its EU policies to preserve a model that has worked to its advantage, which explains why it lacks the will to pay the financial and reputational costs of becoming a hegemon. As Schimmelfennig argues, ‘Germany enjoys a relatively low vulnerability and a high indispensability. The German government therefore enjoys a high degree of negotiating power in the European Union, which it uses to preserve the existing integration model’ (Schimmelfennig, 2021, p. 564, own translation). Others view Germany as a ‘Verhinderungsmacht’ or power to obstruct rather than a ‘Gestaltungsmacht’, or ‘power to positively shape policy and institutions’, limited to the role of ‘selective dominance on some issues, veto power on crucial issues and occasional co-​leadership in crisis management and governance reform’ (Schild, 2020, p. 1074). In part, domestic politics explains constraints on Germany’s shaping power, as the next section will discuss.

Coordinating German European Policy and Domestic Politics The EU’s decade of crises has given EU politics more salience in Germany’s domestic politics. Different domestic actors impact executive autonomy in external affairs, perhaps nowhere more so than in European politics. Still, Germany’s European policy is coordinated in a highly decentralized domestic system characterized by ‘horizontal and vertical fragmentation, old-​fashioned and cumbersome procedures, institutional pluralism, and ‘negative coordination’’ (Maurer and Wessels, 2001, p. 102). According to Maurer and Wessels, these features were ‘associated with strategic timidity, late preference-​building and position-​taking, and, as a result, minority positions in the Council of Ministers’. In the 2000s growing interministerial competition and an increasing number of institutional co-​players and veto players that demand influence in EU politics have led to what Harnisch and Schieder termed ‘a growing domestication of Germany’s European policy’ (Harnisch and Schieder, 2006, p. 96, original emphasis). In formulating its interests, the federal government seeks ‘a more pro-​active role in the coordination of policy’ (Bulmer and Paterson, 2019, p. 95) to optimize its bargaining power at the EU level. The government ‘bundles the negotiated preferences of domestic

GERMANY IN THE EU    535 politics, relays these preferences technically to the EU level and bargains them independently at that level’ (Beichelt, 2017, pp. 8–​9). Domestic institutions like the Bundestag, the Bundesländer, the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), the Bundesbank, interest groups, and public opinion shape Germany’s European policy differently. But whereas until unification these actors curtailed the federal governments’ manoeuvrability to wield power and influence in European policy-​making, since the 2000s, in particular, they often ‘reinforced—​rather than constrained—​government diplomacy’ as their veto powers ‘have been externalised, bolstering the German negotiating position in the EU’ (Bulmer and Paterson, 2019, p. 80). To be an effective decision-​maker at the European level, the German Chancellor carries considerable scope for action in setting the Richtlinienkompetenz, which defines the policy guidelines. Thus in crucial matters of policy, the Chancellery can re-​regulate competences, disempower ministries, or circumvent domestic veto players altogether. During the EU’s crisis-​ridden last decade the Chancellery resorted to ‘a more centralized crisis mode of coordination together with a line ministry, either on par or hierarchically’ (Freudlsperger and Weinrich, 2021, p. 9). During the refugee crisis, in October 2015, for example, the Chancellery subordinated the Interior Ministry led by Thomas de Maizière and transferred policy coordination powers to Peter Altmaier, the head of the Chancellery’s Office (Zeit, 2015). During the Eurozone crisis, the Chancellery played a central role in relations with other member states in crisis management, often sidelining the European Commission whose role declined during the crisis. At the level of EU policy-​making coordination, Chancellor Merkel used the ‘Union method’ as opposed to the ‘community method’ as her preferred method for policy-​making in times of crisis. Merkel described the ‘Union method’ in a speech she gave in Bruges, in November 2010, as the ‘combination of the community method and coordinated action by the member states’ (Merkel, 2010b, p. 11), whereby decision-​making power was informally transferred from the supranational to the intergovernmental regulatory domain of the member states, exerted at the European Council or other intergovernmental meetings. Simon Bulmer and William Paterson argued that this represented a departure from Germany’s traditional reflexive multilateralism of attributing European institutions autonomous weight (Bulmer and Paterson, 2017), which suggested a significant shift from Germany’s preference for supranationalism. To represent German interests effectively at the EU level, the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtige Amt), through its European Directorate-​General, is formally in charge of European policy coordination. Its main coordinating body, the State Secretaries Committee for European Affairs, is tasked with presenting a coherent government position which aggregates the different interministerial EU interests. The Foreign Office’s pro-​EU stance has not, however, prevented the Chancellery becoming the main driver of European policy when Merkel made Europapolitik her ‘Chefsache’. The Ressortprinzip recognized in the FRG’s Basic Law (Article 65) ensures the institutional pluralism and decision-​making autonomy of the federal ministries. The federal government relies on line ministries, each of which runs an expert department for European affairs headed by the ministry’s European Affairs officer responsible for policy input, early

536   Patricia Daehnhardt warning mechanisms, and crisis management. Competition between the different EU policy-​coordinating federal ministerial departments can weaken Berlin’s negotiating position in Brussels and lead to a readjustment of competences. This happened, for example, during the Schröder government, when after the completion of the EMU, and the adoption of the Euro, the Finance Ministry took over EU competences from the Economics Ministry regarding structural economic reforms (Dyson and Goetz, 2003), a situation restored after 2005. In the Eurozone crisis, Wolfgang Schäuble’s Finance Ministry took precedence over the Economics or Foreign Ministers in conducting Germany policy. As a guardian of the democratic legitimacy of EU policy-​making, the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, has come to play an increasingly important role as a shaper of German European policy (Abels, 2016; Höing, 2015). The constitutional amendment of Article 23 of the Basic Law, in 1993, when the Maastricht Treaty came into force, strengthened the Bundestag’s participation rights in EU matters (they are stronger than in foreign policy), making its positions, except for compelling reasons relating to integration policy, the basis for the government’s negotiations in the European Council. It has the right, together with the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, to initiate proceedings before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in cases of EU noncompliance. The Committee on European Union Affairs (Europaausschuss), created in 1994, plays a key role in ensuring the Bundestag’s involvement in European policy (Höing, 2015), and it is consulted on relevant EU proposals related to integration, institutional reform, or EU enlargement. To reinforce its influence at the European level, its composition is made up of Bundestag MPs as well as MPs of the European Parliament. As integration has progressed, the Bundestag’s rights have been further strengthened. The Federal Constitutional Court’s (FCC, Bundesverfassungsgericht) verdict on the Lisbon Treaty, in June 2009, gave the Bundestag information and participatory rights and control mechanisms regarding EU affairs in a number of issue areas, including employment policy, competences over the flexibility clause, and budgetary scrutiny powers, and stipulated that further transfers of political or budgetary sovereignty to supranational institutions demanded the scrutiny by German institutions (BVerfG, 2009). This verdict thus turned the Bundestag into an ‘active policy shaper’ in EU politics (Calliess and Beichelt, 2013, in Höing, 2015, p. 192), and subsequent FCC rulings enhanced the Bundestag’s control mechanisms over European rescue measures during the Eurozone crisis such as the European Stability Mechanism or the Fiscal Stability Treaty (Bundestag, 2021) even further. As most of the political parties with parliamentary representation are pro-​integrationist the Bundestag is more a policy scrutinizer than a veto player. Still, the government depended on the support of the parliamentary opposition to approve the EU’s new rescue mechanisms. The Eurozone crisis did not shake the parliamentary consensus, as the opposition Social Democratic party (SPD) and the Greens, criticized the government’s insistence on austerity measures, but not its overall policy, with only the Left-​wing party Die Linke voicing strong criticism of the government’s policies. However, given the creation of the eurosceptic party Alternative for Germany (AfD), in 2012, and its near-​miss

GERMANY IN THE EU    537 to enter the Bundestag in the 2013 election, German European policy was ‘no longer’ a ‘domestically uncontested special situation’ (Göler and Jopp, 2016, p.48, own translation). The entry of the AfD into the Bundestag, after the September 2017 election, with ninety-​four parliamentary seats, increased electoral volatility and party polarization which has made the constitution of majority coalitions harder (Daehnhardt, 2019), as the coalition negotiations after the September 2021 election have shown, resulting for the first time in a three-​party coalition government under the leadership of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). The sixteen Bundesländer, through the Bundesrat, represent another important domestic actor. As with the Bundestag, their capacity to shape European policy-​making was substantially increased, through Article 23, with exclusive legislative powers in education, culture, and police matters, representation rights in the Council of Ministers meetings, and co-​decision rights in matters of EU legislation, which concern the Länder directly (Hrbek, 2016). While at the EU level, the Länder have had permanent representations since the 1980s, the creation of the EU Committee of the Regions, in 1994, and the Maastricht Treaty subsidiarity clause (which the Länder had insisted on) further increased their influence, inverting the practice—​valid until then—​that ‘European policy was defined as a foreign policy responsibility and fell under the exclusive competence of the federation’ (Jeffery, 2001, p. 116). This repatriation of state powers was reinforced in the Treaty of Lisbon whereby the exclusive competence of the Union is constrained in domains where the national, regional, and local levels are better positioned to assume responsibility for policy-​making, thus reinforcing the subsidiarity clause, and giving the Länder an important role, for example, in securing EU structural funds. In budgetary negotiations, of course, Germany has always negotiated hard despite or because of pressure from domestic institutions and internal distribution conflicts. As Josef Janning noted, ‘a permanent debate about the amount and justification of the German net financial contribution to the EU’ has led to a ‘rougher’ internal negotiating climate of European decision-​making issues (Janning, 2007, p. 755). External pressure on Germany’s financial power in handling future economic and monetary crises will therefore continue to be negotiated hard not least because Germany’s net financial contribution to the EU budget, which amounted to €25.82 billion in 2019 (Statista, 2021) is the highest among member states’ contributions. The Bundesbank is thus another powerful domestic institution with a prominent role in core policy areas. Legally independent from the federal government since before unification, the Bundesbank is the gatekeeper of the German Ordnungspolitik based on monetary policies geared towards price and monetary stability, solid economic rules, and robust financial instruments and institutions. During the Maastricht Treaty negotiations, the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl—​under considerable pressure from the Bundesbank—​ensured that the EMU was developed along Germany’s own monetary institutions and that the ECB, located in Frankfurt, overall resembled the institutional design of the Bundesbank, and more importantly, its fiscal discipline, budgetary control, and stability policy (Schweiger, 2016). It played a fundamental role

538   Patricia Daehnhardt during the Eurozone crisis when it acted as ‘a competing voice on policy solutions’ (Bulmer and Paterson, 2017, p. 215), strictly controlling any transfers of budgetary power to the EU level. The strongest domestic institution, however, is the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC, Bundesverfassungsgericht). This judicial institution has had a crucial political impact as it has often curtailed the federal governments’ room for manoeuvre in steering European policy towards further integration and more recently has become a potential veto mechanism on EU policies. The FCC’s role serves three purposes: it acts as a supervisory body to limit the government’s scope for action with regard to budgetary rights and the transfer of budgetary powers to EU institutions or impose limits to the financial responsibilities granted by German institutions to European rescue mechanisms; it checks the constitutionality of EU treaties and monitors the EU’s institutions to guarantee they do not overstep the domain of Germany’s national sovereignty; and it can legally empower domestic institutions such as the Bundestag or the Bundesrat to increase participation or act as a brake on further integration. During the Eurozone crisis, the Court played a major role becoming a ‘co-​shaper of German European policy’ (Bulmer and Paterson, 2013, p. 1399) when it ruled on the constitutionality of the temporary European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM) rescue instruments that institutionalized the financial assistance to crisis-​ridden member states or when it strengthened the role of the Budget Committee of the Bundestag to scrutinize rescue measures. The FCC has also turned into a sort of involuntary mouthpiece in recent years for a group of eurosceptic citizens, who have put forward a number of complaints on these rescue measures in the hope of gaining visibility and a favourable ruling. Despite the Court’s rejection of these complaints, the Bundestag’s right to previously approve each new loan to the debtor countries was re-​emphasized (Schweiger, 2015). Interest groups such as trade associations or farmers’ associations have developed strong interest representation when it comes to defending their interests in German European policy. In strategic terms, however, Thomas von Winter argues that ‘the European policy of German interest groups has remained nationally oriented, in two respects: their main addressee in European policy matters is still the federal government, and in Brussels, too—​apart from the business associations—​the Permanent Representation and the German members of the European Parliament are their preferred contacts. Conversely, only a minority of German interest groups have so far developed into genuine multi-​level players, showing a high level of commitment at both national and EU level’ (von Winter 2021, p. 227, own translation). In their dealings with the government, interest groups such as the German Eastern Business Association (Ost-​Ausschuss der Deutschen Wirtschaft) are powerful actors. However, their disagreement with the government’s sanctions policy after Russia’s annexation of Crimea could not prevent the approval of EU sanctions. In contrast, in the Covid-​19 crisis, the Federation of German Industries (BDI, Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie) together with other business associations, in May 2020, called for ‘a strong show of solidarity for the hardest-​hit countries’ in the interest of German

GERMANY IN THE EU    539 business’ (Genschel and Jachtenfuchs, 2021, p. 363), to be handled at the European level. But these interest groups can indirectly empower the federal government. As Schimmelfennig observed, ‘the greater the power of domestic interest groups and the greater their resistance to a European agreement, the more effectively and credibly the government can threaten a veto if the other governments do not accommodate it (or the critical domestic interest groups) in the negotiations’ (Schimmelfennig, 2021, p. 570, own translation). Finally, public support for European integration plays a role in the government’s European policy. The EU’s crises of the 2010s have not turned the German public against the EU, as satisfaction with membership has risen steadily since 2009, rising 11 percentage points from 63 per cent to 74 per cent in 2019, according to a Pew research poll, confirming Germans as the sixth most favourable public opinion to the EU and EU membership, with 69 per cent of the respondents in favour and 28 per cent against (Pew, 2019). Yet the electorate’s traditional ‘permissive consensus’ for integrationist policies has been challenged by a ‘constraining dissensus’ (Hooghe and Marks, 2009, p. 6) as parts of a more eurosceptic electorate question Germany’s financial EU contribution, EMU, and in particular the Eurozone crisis financial bailouts. The increasing politicization of issues related to the Eurozone and the approval of the Next Generation EU Recovery Fund (€750 billion) in July 2020, in response to the Covid-​19 pandemic, show how financial transfers to Brussels remains the most controversial topic for public opinion. However, as Bulmer and Paterson have argued, ‘politicisation within Germany, far from being a constraint on Berlin’s European policy, served to strengthen the hegemony of German ideas’ (Bulmer and Paterson, 2019, p. 200). Overall, then, the actions of domestic actors have not necessarily harmed the effectiveness with which German governments defend their interests in Brussels as they can manipulate these actors to maximize their bargaining power (Freudlsperger and Weinrich, 2021) with other member states and EU institutions. During the Eurozone crisis, the executive could point to the potential veto by the FCC Court should Germany’s policy on austerity measures and opposition to debt mutualization be rejected in Brussels. In the EU institutions, Germany’s institutional power formally increased with the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty. The Treaty adopted Berlin’s decision-​making preference for a double majority rule in the Council of the EU, with qualified majority decisions adopted by at least 55 per cent of members of the Council (fifteen of twenty-​seven member states) together with the agreement of member states representing at least 65 per cent of the total EU population. The blocking minority must include at least four member states representing at least 35 per cent of the total EU population. In practice, this meant that no decision could be taken against the will of Berlin as Germany became the dominant force. In the European Parliament, Germany has ninety-​ six MEPs since the Lisbon Treaty, the largest possible national contingent of MEPs in the European Parliament, compared with seventy-​nine MEPs from France, seventy-​six MEPs from Italy, fifty-​nine MEPs from Spain, and fifty-​two MEPs from Poland. Seat allocation is dependent on negotiations between member states and on the number of votes obtained by each European political group after a European election. After the

540   Patricia Daehnhardt UK’s departure from the EU, in 2020, when the total number of MEPs was reduced from 750 to 705 MEPs, however, Germany’s number of MEPs (ninety-​six) remained unchanged, whereas France and Spain gained five more, Italy three more, and Poland one more seat resulting from adjustments in demographic representation. Germany continues to advocate European integration despite being reluctant towards further transfers of formal competences to the EU’s supranational institutions, in particular to the European Commission. Its more recent preference for intergovernmental decision-​ making highlights an ‘integration paradox’—​that of a member state ‘which neither want[s]‌to further compromise [its] sovereignty nor want[s] to refrain from advancing European solutions’ (Puetter, 2012, p. 168). In short, the four crises under scrutiny in the next section, domestic politics and constraints inevitably played an important role, and at the EU level, the European Council emerged as the key decision-​making institution, with a strong backing from Germany.

The EU’s Decade of Crises and Germany’s Policy Responses In the 2010s the EU was subject to several crises, which challenged EU integration and governance. The Eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis, which began in 2009, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis a year earlier, was the EU’s most serious crisis. Some Eurozone member states, namely Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Cyprus had incurred massive sovereign debts, and the drop of their countries’ credibility on the international financial markets risked the collapse of their economies. The crisis exposed the limitations of the institutional design of the EMU, implemented in 1999, when the Euro currency was adopted: while the Maastricht Treaty stipulated the integration of monetary policy, the convergence criteria had not brought national economies closer together on fiscal policy, budget deficits, public spending, and competitiveness. This ‘greatly exacerbated the core–​periphery divide within the Union’ (Magone, Laffan, and Schweiger, 2016, p. 299) and risked contagion to other Eurozone members, with implications for the wider Eurozone. As the Eurozone’s strongest economy and the biggest net contributor to the EU budget, Germany became the pivotal actor in solving the crisis. Its initial response, however, in supporting Greece, the country hardest hit by the crisis was cautious and hesitant (Schoeller, 2019). This reflected the tension between the government’s commitment to German ordoliberal principles based on a restrictive budgetary policy and a stability-​ oriented economic and monetary policy, on the one hand, and keeping the Eurozone intact, and its commitment to European integration, on the other (Bulmer and Paterson, 2013). Chancellor Merkel acknowledged the severity of the crisis when she stated before the Bundestag, in May 2010, that the Euro represented the ‘European idea’, and ‘if the

GERMANY IN THE EU    541 euro fails, Europe fails’ (Merkel, 2010a). The Chancellor and her Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, viewed the crisis as ‘existential’ and repeatedly stated that rescuing the Eurozone was ‘alternativlos’—​without alternative, as the end of the currency union risked the disintegration of the EU, something that ran counter to Germany’s economic interests, as the EU’s top export nation and one of the greatest beneficiaries of the single market since the 1990s. But the government’s position proved inflexible in opposing debt mutualization and Eurobonds and in demanding strict conditionality for bailouts (Matthijs, 2016; Schoeller, 2019). As Bulmer and Paterson observed, the measures proposed ‘came straight out of the ordoliberal toolkit: strict fiscal rules with limited scope for discretionary intervention. Equally, Eurobonds . . . were incompatible with Germany’s ordoliberal principles and antithetical to German public opinion’ (Bulmer and Paterson, 2017, p. 219). Chancellor Merkel conditioned Germany’s financial support to the participation of the ECB, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the European Commission—​the troika—​thus combining supranational and intergovernmental institutions to monitor tight conditionality on austerity measures on budgetary control, public spending, and structural reforms. But Germany’s policies did not signal a clear strategy from the outset; rather they were decided through a step-​by-​step approach and ‘last minute rescuing’: the government agreed to the bailouts only when the debtor countries faced imminent sovereign default and the Eurozone possible break-​up. Ireland asked for a rescue programme in November 2010, Portugal in May 2011, Greece for its second programme in July 2011, Spain for a banking recapitalization scheme in June 2012, and Cyprus for a bailout in March 2013. These troika programmes were heavily criticized by the opposition parties and public opinions in the debtor countries for their austerity, conditionality, and for lacking growth incentives or debt mutualization (Magone et al., 2016). The process of finding solutions for the crisis also put a strain on the German-​French relationship. ‘Berlin provided asymmetric co-​leadership shared with France’ (Schild, 2013) at the height of the Eurozone crisis in 2011—​the duo was nicknamed ‘Merkozy’—​ and agreed in their criticism of Eurobonds and the need to establish a permanent rescue mechanism, but they disagreed on models of economic governance (Schoeller, 2018). In May 2012, Sarkozy’s successor, President Hollande, proposed debt mutualization through Eurobonds, an economic growth and investment programme, and a European economic government with its own Eurozone budget and Finance Ministry. Yet Hollande’s attempt to promote a coordinated position with Italy’s Prime Minister Monti, Spain’s Prime Minister Rajoy, and Portugal’s Prime Minister Passos Coelho, at the June 2012 European Council, did neither change Merkel’s and Schäuble’s opposition nor result in a Southern France-​led alliance. But neither did Germany create an alliance of creditor countries of the Northern zone of the Euro despite support from net payer countries like Austria, Finland, and the Netherlands to pursue a joint course. In advancing policy measures to combat the crisis, the member states adopted the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance (TSCG, or Fiscal Compact), and the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), two rescue measures that fell outside the EU treaty framework and were decided upon at the intergovernmental level. The ECB

542   Patricia Daehnhardt ‘intervened autonomously’ and ‘pushed its mandate to the limit by buying bonds of highly indebted countries (Schimmelfennig, 2018, p. 1586). The ECB’s director, Mario Draghi, in July 2012, stated that the bank would do ‘whatever it takes to preserve the euro’ (Draghi, 2012) and the ECB became a lender of last resort for crisis-​ridden member states. The EU adopted the European semester, reforming the Stability and Growth Pact through the ‘Six Pack’ and the ‘Two Pack’ measures, in December 2011 and in May 2013, respectively. The Eurozone crisis, indisputably, catapulted Germany to a leadership role and into the spotlight of a primus inter pares role as ‘the indispensable power in the EU’ (Bulmer and Paterson, 2017, p. 212). Germany determined the course of the crisis: it opposed debt mutualization and a transfer union, insisted on austerity measures coupled with structural reforms, and it was forceful in conditioning its agreement to the bailout programmes. But it prevented the end of the single currency, Greece’s exit from the Eurozone (Merkel supported the second bailout programme in July 2015 against the majority of the German public and many members of her own CDU party), and the disintegration of the EU, which taken together was no minor feat. Germany’s new pivotal role, its effective veto power over EU policies, and its preference for intergovernmental solutions was also a consequence of the EU’s institutional weakness in the crisis as the Commission’s role and existing supranational instruments were considered ineffective. As Freudlsperger and Jachtenfuchs argued, ‘only in cases in which the creation of some supranational capacities appears unavoidable, primarily in full-​blown crisis situations, Germany supports the build-​up of state-​like capacities on the supranational level, while insisting on intergovernmental control and/​or their temporal nature to reduce costs and risks’ (Freudlsperger and Jachtenfuchs, 2021, p. 119). Schoeller argued that Germany’s record in the Eurozone crisis was ‘ambiguous’ as its leadership was not constant but oscillated between ‘no, failed, and successful leadership’, ‘primarily driven by its material interest to shift the adjustment costs of the crisis to the national level and thus to the “debtor states” ’ (Schoeller, 2019, p. 52). The Eurozone crisis represented ‘a critical juncture for European governance and integration’ (Magone, Laffan, and Schweiger, 2016, p. 301) as decision-​making at EU level became centred on the European Council representing ‘the epicentre of the crisis response’, together with the Eurogroup. In addition, the new crisis-​solving mechanisms, like the ESM and the Fiscal Compact, were created by the heads of state and government and finance ministers through a new sort of institutional deepening in economic and fiscal policy-​making, a combination of new intergovernmental instruments outside the EU treaty framework. France’s renewed proposal for a Eurozone budget, presented by President Emmanuel Macron at his Sorbonne speech, in September 2017, led to a joint German-​French commitment to a ‘Eurozone budget within the framework of the European Union to promote competitiveness, convergence and stabilization . . . starting in 2021’ (in Howarth and Schild, 2021, p. 216), but the months leading to the Bundestag elections in September 2021 witnessed a delaying tactic from the outgoing Merkel government, apart from the considerable discrepancy in the amounts proposed by both governments. According to Howarth and Schild ‘the German government’s cautious support for Macron’s Eurozone

GERMANY IN THE EU    543 budget idea can be interpreted as a case of symbolic capacity building to accommodate French preferences without incurring either important material or domestic political costs’ (Howarth and Schild, 2021, p. 217). The second crisis, the onset of the Ukraine crisis, in 2014, became a defining moment for Germany’s European and transatlantic policies, and Berlin’s bilateral relations with Russia. Since the end of the Cold War, Germany had been Russia’s privileged interlocutor in Moscow’s relations with the EU and the US. But relations between Berlin and Moscow had cooled down already a few years earlier, when President Putin declared the West as Russia’s opponent, at the Munich Security Conference, in 2007, or when the renewal of the EU-​Russia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) stalled, and finally, as a consequence of the military conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008, (Forsberg, 2016). The defining moment for Berlin’s Russia policy, however, was the Ukraine crisis, which culminated in Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, in March 2014, and the development of a ‘hybrid war’ between secessionist pro-​Russian forces and the Ukrainian army in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine. Chancellor Merkel determinedly condemned Russia’s actions and the EU applied restrictive measures including targeted economic sanctions to individuals and entities against the ‘illegal annexation of territory and deliberate destabilisation of a neighbouring sovereign country’ (Council of the EU, 2014). In a joint German-​French diplomatic initiative, in June 2014, the Normandy-​format talks were established, a quadrilateral format of peace talks between Germany, France, Russia, and the Ukraine with the aim of ensuring compliance with the Minsk I and II agreements, for a settlement of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, which has yet to produce any long-​term results. In an unprecedented move, the German government assumed the leadership in the West’s response of economic sanctions to Russia and ensured the EU’s unity in maintaining EU consensus on sanctions up to this day. Together with US President Barack Obama, in a rare example of German-​US ‘partnership in leadership’ (Daehnhardt, 2018), the German Chancellor assumed centre stage as the chief negotiator (Szabo, 2018), in an unwavering position, and taking sides, against Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. The importance of Chancellor Merkel’s leadership in the Ukraine crisis is three-​ fold: first, and against the odds, her government’s position suspended the traditionally close German-​Russia economic and diplomatic relations, going against the powerful interest group Ost-​Ausschuss der Deutschen Wirtschaft, which was keen to safeguard economic ties with Russia; secondly, by leading the EU’s response of economic sanctions with diplomatic pressure for compliance with the Minsk agreements together with France, Merkel was able to keep the unity between different European leaders whose domestic constituencies followed diverging economic interests with Russia; even criticism of the Nordstream II project—​the supply of Russian natural gas to Europe, via a maritime pipeline under the Baltic Sea to Germany, circumventing Ukrainian territory—​by the US and many EU member states for the EU’s energy security dependency on Russia did not halt the joint sanctions. Finally, Germany’s position strengthened the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in that the EU for once acted as a united and homogeneous international actor. Without agreement from Berlin, it is unlikely

544   Patricia Daehnhardt that the sanctions against Russia would have been renewed every six months since 2014. While this reflected a joint EU international position, and Chancellor Merkel’s leadership role was particularly visible, her positions were not necessarily geared towards more EU foreign policy integration. The Normandy talks format showed Germany’s preference for the intergovernmental approach, marked by the emphasis on the German-​French bilateralism and the absence of the Commission’s Vice-​President/​High Representative. More than acting as a mere geo-​economic power (Kundnani, 2011)—​ where economic interests define politics and security—​, in the Ukraine crisis the government assumed political leadership and pursued a strategy of restoring order in the Euro-​Atlantic area and keeping European and transatlantic unity. In contrast, the refugee crisis was the most unconventional crisis in Chancellor Merkel’s crisis management approach, and one from which the federal government emerged considerably weakened within the EU. In the summer of 2015, the number of refugees fleeing from the Middle East, in particular from the ongoing Syrian civil war, had increased dramatically, and Greece and Italy, where most of them arrived, had exhausted their logistic capacities in the migrant reception centres. The crisis emerged with the collapse of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), or Dublin system, the EU’s shared regime for asylum seekers adopted in 1999 according to which asylum seekers’ applications are processed in the country of first arrival. This exposed the ‘fragmented, uncoordinated governance’ of the EU (Morsut and Kruke, 2018, p. 152), leaving member states to respond through national measures. Faced with a high number of refugees trying to enter Germany, in August, the government unilaterally suspended the Dublin regulation for the Syrian refugees and opened Germany’s borders to over one million undocumented people. Merkel took arguably the most emotional decision in her sixteen years as Chancellor and her emphatic ‘Wir schaffen das’ (‘we will manage’) mirrored what some termed ‘conviction leadership’: Merkel seemed ‘motivated by principled beliefs, rather than instrumental self-​interest or political strategy’, and ‘given the deep belief in the righteousness’ of her policy, showed ‘a particular tenacity’ in pursuing it ‘even in the face of protracted controversy and powerful dissent’ (Helms et al., 2019, p. 353). It also played into Germany’s long-​term economic interests as demographic indicators showed an ageing society and a declining working force that meant Germany would be forced to rely on immigrant labour in the coming decades. Merkel’s decision subjected her to domestic criticism from those who felt threatened by the opening of borders. A strong disagreement emerged between the Chancellor and Horst Seehofer, leader of the CSU, the CDU’s sister party and Minister of State of Bavaria, the state through which hundreds of thousands of refugees had entered the country coming from Austria and Hungary. At the CSU party conference, in November, Seehofer publicly criticized Merkel harshly for what he saw as the mishandling of the unprecedented situation and demanded the setting of an upper limit to reduce the number of refugee intake (Barkin, 2015). Merkel rejected this ‘Obergrenze’ and instead insisted on a European solution to the crisis. Between September and October 2015, she attempted, unsuccessfully, through a Commission proposal, to convince other member states to accept a mandatory EU

GERMANY IN THE EU    545 quota redistribution system whereby all would accept refugees. More than half of them, in particular the Visegrad and the Baltic States opposed a Commission proposal for a binding quota policy for migrants (Zaun, 2018). Feeling the pressure of upcoming elections in several Länder in 2016, and with public opinion gradually turning against the ‘culture of welcome’ (Willkommenskultur) the crisis had initially unleashed, Merkel pushed instead for an EU-​Turkey agreement to stem the continuing flow of undocumented migrants to Europe and alleviate the divisiveness within the Union. The agreement, signed on 18 March 2016, stipulated that the EU would return to Turkey migrants who had entered Greece illegally, in exchange for setting up a legal procedure for Syrians to enter EU countries directly from Turkey (European Council, 2016). The EU also agreed to support Turkey’s efforts financially with €6 billion for infrastructure and socio-​economic assistance to the Syrian refugees. This agreement, however, did not mask the EU’s internal divisions on how to respond to the crisis, or the lack of intra-​EU solidarity, and it was not the original result that Merkel had hoped for. Critics argued that it made the EU, and particularly Germany, vulnerable to Turkey’s potential blackmail in the future. During the crisis, Merkel ‘voiced and showed strong signs of a pragmatic “ethics of responsibility” ’ (Helms et al., 2019, p. 363) and her emotional reaction was motivated by strong humanism and her own experience of growing up in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) (Mushaben, 2017). But the Chancellor did not succeed in the attempt, Crawford noted, to ‘coerce acceptance of a compulsory program of resettlement to be imposed on its European partners’, which drove a wedge and weakened solidarity between partners, when ‘Germany demanded too much solidarity, its partners offered too little’ (Crawford, 2021, p. 503). Furthermore, the Chancellor’s management of the crisis revealed a lack of strategy, as the zig-​zag course, between the initial decision to open Germany’s borders, then closing them, the failed attempt of a quota system, and the adoption of the EU-​Turkey agreement, confirmed ‘an almost unilateral approach, at the level of the heads of government and involving only selected Member States and the European Commission in mini-​summits’ (Zaun, 2018, p. 57). At the EU level, there was neither more integration between EU member states, nor the burden-​sharing of responsibilities Berlin had initially argued for. To the contrary, the member states repatriated state powers on asylum policy, and the EU’s supranational institutions, like the Commission and the ECJ were unable to play a significant role. Consequently, ‘the EU has been stuck in a stalemate and even suffered some disintegration with the collapse of its common asylum and migration policy’ (Börzel and Risse, 2018, p. 100). Brexit was the EU’s fourth crisis in the last decade. The vote by popular referendum, on 23 June 2016, on the UK’s EU membership was won by a narrow majority of 51.89 per cent in favour of leaving the EU to 48.11 per cent in favour of remaining. Berlin’s response was not to take the centre stage, exerting instead influence to assure that the EU Commission could steer a unified negotiating position and contain a disintegration spillover effect. The Commission’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, conducted the EU-​ UK negotiations through Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) that led to

546   Patricia Daehnhardt the UK’s exit, on 31 January 2020, and the EU-​UK agreement, in late 2020, that regulates the future trade relationship. The UK only joined the EC in 1973, after two failed attempts blocked by the vetoes of French President de Gaulle, in the 1960s, and in its relationship with the EC/​EU was often as an awkward partner (George, 1998). But it never warmed to the Community’s supranational political objectives, it did not see eye-​to-​eye with Germany regarding the deepening of European integration, and it resorted to ‘opt-​out’ clauses in the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties or earlier rebate debates. Yet its departure was unexpected and a major shock for the EU and for Berlin, which had always been in favour of Britain staying inside the EU. First, the German-​British relationship whose ties have been discreet but better than its reputation, has changed. The UK had supported Germany’s policy for EU enlargement towards Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Their bilateral economic and trade ties had deepened since German unification. Between 1999 and 2019, Germany was ‘the main exports market for UK goods’ (Statista, 2020), but since the UK referendum Germany’s exports to the UK have steadily declined, having fallen by 15.5 per cent in 2020, compared to 2019, to €66.9 billion, while imports went down 9.6 per cent in the same time span, to €34.7 billion (Reuters, 2021). Brexit has also financially impacted the EU budget. The UK used to be the second biggest net contributor ‘far behind Germany and just before France’. With Brexit, Germany lost ‘probably its best budgetary ally’ (Brehon, 2017, p. 14) as the UK always acted as a brake to limit the overall EU budget. Furthermore, the departure of one of the net contributors to the EU budget will increase Germany’s own net contribution. The share of national contributions to the EU budget, between 2010 and 2018, was between 11 and 12 per cent (with the exception of 2015, when it contributed 15 per cent) for the UK, and between 19–​21 per cent for Germany (Schulte von Drach, 2020). Secondly, Britain’s departure has elevated Germany to a more pre-​eminent role inside the EU. It may be that Brexit ‘will not make a significant dent on Germany’s upwards rise, either politically or economically’ (Paterson, 2018, p. 96), but the German-​French relationship is likely to become even more imbalanced in the post-​Brexit EU, making a German EU hegemony more possible and the rise of resistance to, and fears of German dominance inside the EU more probable. Consequently, the German-​French relation is now under renewed pressure, either to deepen its bilateralism, face increased German-​French disagreements, or unleash a watering down of European integration. As if in response to this, French President Emmanuel Macron, elected one year after the Brexit vote, in May 2017, laid out his ambitious vision and reform agenda for a revitalized EU in a speech at the Sorbonne University, in September 2017 (Macron, 2017). In this and subsequent speeches, Macron pledged for a recovery of ‘European sovereignty’, a reinvigorated French-​German partnership at the core of Europe and a bolder ‘taking of sides’ from Berlin, on issues of rule of law with Poland and Hungary, trade relations with the US or ‘strategic autonomy’ in matters of European defence. However, Chancellor Merkel’s engagement with Macron’s broad vision was lukewarm at best (Garton Ash, 2018).

GERMANY IN THE EU    547 Thirdly, the EU departure of Europe’s biggest military power produced consequences for Germany and the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The German-​British security relation was sometimes considered ‘a silent alliance’: ‘generally successful, but quiet and sparsely publicised, pragmatic cooperation on a range of issues’ (Saxi, 2019, p. 127). Since then, Brexit has galvanized a renewed German-​French impetus: the German-​French Aachen Treaty of January 2019 aims to deepen bilateral cooperation and reinforce the EU’s capacity for independent action. In the EU’s CSDP, a series of cooperative mechanisms like the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD), and the European Defence Fund (EDF) were put in place since the EU adopted the EU Global Strategy (EUGS), five days after the Brexit vote. The Strategic Compass that the EU plans to adopt during the French EU presidency in 2022 rests on a German-​French impulse for an EU strategy on crisis management, resilience, capabilities, and partnerships. However, German-​French differences regarding strategic interests on the EU’s strategic autonomy, preferred by Paris, and the importance of NATO and transatlantic relations for European states, preferred by Germany, could slow down further CSDP integration. Regarding the UK, it can continue to cooperate outside the EU’s framework, like the British-​French Lancaster House treaties, signed in November 2010, on bilateral defence and security cooperation, or Macron’s ‘European Intervention Initiative’ (EI2) on joint European deployment operations, in 2018, and which the UK joined. Yet the consequences of the departure of a transatlanticist country like the UK are still unclear: it could lead either to the German-​French tandem deepening security and defence cooperation, or to increasing disagreements between France’s preference for increased European strategic autonomy and Germany’s assertion that NATO should remain Europe’s central defence organization. Finally, Brexit has raised the spectre of European disintegration in an unprecedented way (Webber, 2019). While negotiations on the part of the Commission were conducted with the backing of all member states, resulting in a coherent EU position, Brexit has influenced eurosceptic parties and centrifugal forces that could lead other member states to follow suit and exit the Union, putting in peril the whole process of European integration. For Germany, then, promoting convergence on a number of issues has become more important, as the intra-​EU dividing lines between liberal and illiberal democracies, for example, on the redistributive allocation of refugees, on the one hand, and frugal (creditor) and net receivers (debtor), for example, on financial transfers, on the other, risk perpetuating divisions which can further undermine the integration process. The EU’s ongoing rule of law crisis, which will only be mentioned briefly here, reflects how the growing politicization that emerged from the four crises examined reinforced Euroscepticism and strengthened existing illiberal tendencies in some Eastern European countries. Member states like Hungary and Poland are led by ‘challenger governments’ which display a ‘principled opposition to the EU’ and an ‘ambivalent Euroscepticism’ (Hodson and Puetter, 2019, p. 1163). This, in turn, has made rebellion against the rule of law in the EU more pronounced and the enforcement of the EU’s

548   Patricia Daehnhardt rule of law conditionality mechanism increasingly contentious. The attempt by some member states, in 2020, to make access to the New Generation Recovery Fund (NGEU), in response to the Covid-​19 pandemic, conditional to respect for the rule of law led to a stand-​off with Hungary and Poland and their threat to veto the whole MFF and NGEU budget (Gros, 2020). The deadlock was defused by Chancellor Merkel, at the European Council meeting, in December 2020, when the issue of the rule of law mechanism was sent to the ECJ to verify its legality, which in practice means that until then the mechanism will not be applied (European Council, 2020). Moreover, some of these illiberal democracies cultivate political and economic relations with Russia or China, whose foreign policies are characterized by revisionism and global geopolitical ambitions. This can lead to obstructionist voting patterns in the Council on previously agreed policies such as sanctions or trade agreements, prove divisive, and increase the pressure on Germany’s foreign policy. Finally, the risk of EU disintegration associated with a perceived lack of intra-​EU solidarity was an important reason for Germany’s approval of the various financial rescue programmes during the Eurozone crisis. Yet there were instances when Germany’s integrative impulse has backtracked or even gone into reverse (Daehnhardt, 2011; Böttger and Jopp, 2016). Nevertheless, more recently, during the Covid-​19 pandemic, the federal government changed its position on burden-​sharing and accepted EU joint borrowing and grant issuing and, together with France, proposed the adoption of the NGEU, which was approved at the EU Council meeting on 21 July 2020. The NGEU, meant to support the recovery of member states’ economies, was added to the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2021–​27, and through the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) it will provide up to €672.5 billion to support investments and reforms, of which €312.5 billion is in grants and €360 billion in loans (European Council, 2020). Facing a domestic public opposed to the idea of a EU transfer union, the federal government, however, was quick to insist that its agreement to the NGEU was a temporary and exceptional measure to prevent the disintegration of the Union, and preserve Germany’s economic interests in the single market. On 26 March 2021 the Bundestag approved the Fund by a large majority of 478 to 645 (Euractiv, 2021) and about a month later the FCC sanctioned the ratification of the treaty (Chazan, 2021). In conclusion, the decade of crisis marked a caesura in Germany’s Europapolitik. First, Germany emerged strengthened from each of the crises and further consolidated its position as the EU’s key power. Second, all crises exposed the growing asymmetry of the relationship between Germany and France. While there was German-​French leadership management in all but the refugee crisis, Germany emerged as the primus inter pares while France’s structural power limitations came more to the fore. Thirdly, the weaknesses of the EU’s economic governance model exposed in the Eurozone crisis consolidated Germany’s ‘realist turn’ from a traditionally strong supporter for the EU’s supranational institutions towards a clear preference for intergovernmental policies and decision-​making method. Fourthly, the crises increased the salience of European affairs in Germany’s domestic politics leading to a more intense involvement by domestic actors in actions of scrutiny, control, and veto of the government’s action. Finally, its role

GERMANY IN THE EU    549 in the crises examined has unleashed a debate about Germany’s leadership, hegemony, or status quo power.

Conclusion: A New Post-​Merkel German European Policy? Germany remains a key player in the EU and its role as crisis manager in the EU’s simultaneous crises has consolidated its more powerful role. Still, in none of the crises has Germany pursued a hegemonic strategy; rather its policies reflected those of a status quo power aimed at preserving a stable European order in which integration could thrive, certainly according to its own preferences. As a status quo power, Germany made adjustments to the existing order, but refrained from acting more strategically, paying the costs of the provision of public goods in Europe and the wider Euro-​Atlantic area but eschewing hegemony or engaging in policies geared towards a new hierarchical order. Yet Germany’s position as a status quo power is perhaps not tenable in the coming years. In the face of the growing great power competition between the US and China, it will be difficult for Germany (and the EU), to ‘sit on the fence’ for much longer. In issues of international trade, artificial intelligence, and data technology, it will be difficult for the new German government not to take sides. The departure of Angela Merkel, after sixteen years as German Chancellor, will have a profound impact on the country’s European policy. Angela Merkel was a towering figure in EU politics, and after hesitant, and often reluctant positions her decisions were geared towards keeping European unity and integration. Berlin was most effective when it conducted its policy in close cooperation with its partners and addressed disagreements in a negotiated and consensual manner. Germany remains the pivotal member for any further development of the EU, but it no longer sees the EU striving only towards further supranational integration. Thus its price for membership has increased: Berlin now has a clear preference for national and intergovernmental institutions for policy-​ making as this ensures control and sidesteps the distrust it increasingly has towards supranational institutions like the Commission. Overall, European integration has become rougher. As European integration advances into the domain of core state powers, inevitably member states will become more protectionist of the powers they still retain and this will deepen their competition for influence. After the UK’s departure from the EU, the German-​French motor has become even more relevant. Germany may prefer to promote ‘a German-​French co-​leadership through which France recovers its economic power and Germany steps up its security policy’ (Daehnhardt, 2018), or a ‘back to the future’ option through ‘a rejuvenated Franco-​German tandem at the union’s centre’ (Krotz and Schild, 2018). Two questions seem relevant for future research, and both are linked to German and French domestic politics. First, Germany’s legislative election in September 2021

550   Patricia Daehnhardt resulted in a new government, two months later composed of a three-​party coalition. While this SPD-​Greens-​FDP coalition, led by SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Merkel’s former Finance Minister, is likely to maintain its role as an assertive status quo power rather than adopt a radically changed position vis-​à-​vis Germany’s role in the EU, it would still be interesting to investigate how European integration would be affected if Germany turned more unilateralist, and dissociated from its status quo power condition or, in a worst-​case scenario, initiated itself the next EU crisis. Secondly, if France, following its presidential elections in May 2022, chooses a nationalist candidate the country would likely follow a less pro-​European path and become less inclined to work with Germany in forging joint responses to future crises. In such a circumstance, and with the UK gone, it is difficult to envision the continuation of the European project as we know it if Germany loses its essential partner, France, to an anti-​EU leadership. As with the whole European integration process, which is not irreversible and can backslide, the German-​French predicament is that the same can happen to this EU core bilateral relationship.

Further Reading Bulmer, Simon and William E. Paterson (2019), Germany and the European Union: Europe’s Reluctant Hegemon? (London: Red Globe Press). Colvin, Sarah (ed.) (2017), The Routledge Handbook of German Politics & Culture (London: Routledge). Katzenstein, Peter J. (ed.) (1997), Tamed Power: Germany in Europe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press). Krotz, Ulrich and Joachim Schild (2013), Shaping Europe: France, Germany, and Embedded First Century Politics (Oxford: Oxford Bilateralism From the Elysée Treaty to Twenty-​ University Press). Markovits, Andrei S. and Simon Reich (1997), The German Predicament: Memory and Power in the New Europe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press). Schoeller, Magnus G. (2019), Leadership in the Eurozone. The Role of Germany and EU Institutions (London: Palgrave Macmillan).

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Germany and the World Beyond Europe

CHAPTER 31

GER MAN MULTIL AT E RA L I SM AFTER THE C OL D WA R James Sperling

There is a long-​standing consensus in the academic literature that German foreign policy elites have a deeply vested interest in the success of international institutions as providers of global and regional public goods and as fora facilitating the realization of German preferences on issues touching upon vital national interests. Consequently, Germany has developed an exceptional adherence to the norm of multilateralism (Crawford and Olsen, 2017; Rachman, 2017, p. 6; Bulmer, Jeffery, and Paterson, 2000; Bulmer and Paterson, 2010: 1072; Katzenstein, 1997; and Maull and Harnisch, 2001). Some treat German multilateralism as a categorical imperative governing German foreign policy within Europe and in the wider trans-​Atlantic area (Maull, 2014). The ascribed origin of the German dedication to multilateralism includes those who claim that the practice of multilateralism was imposed on an occupied Germany and subsequently became an ingrained pattern of behaviour by the time of the Bonn Accords in 1954 and eventually were endowed with a normative component (Crawford and Olsen, 2017). Others view Germany’s multilateralism as the only viable option open to a circumscribed German state after 1949 if it were to pursue successfully its national interests within and outside Europe (Hanrieder, 1989; Ash, 1994: 71; Kundnani, 2017, p. 10). This latter interpretation is not inconsistent with a broader understanding of the purposeful multilateralization of all Western European and North American states’ foreign economic, security and defense policies after the Second World War by virtue of membership in the post-​war Bretton Woods institutions that multilateralized trade and payments as well as the United Nations (UN) and NATO that multilateralized collective security and collective defence, respectively. In other words, Germany was not alone in adapting to a network of multilateral institutions that framed national policies towards optimizing global or regional economic outcomes and mitigating security pathologies. Moreover, unlike France, the UK, or the US, Germany lacked extra-​European obligations derived from empire that would have compelled Germany to act alone within

562   James Sperling or outside Europe to pursue a particularistic security or economic interest. A multilateral solution to the foremost German foreign policy objectives in the immediate post-​ war period—​unification, restoration of sovereignty, and economic recovery—​could only be achieved within a multilateral framework given the legal prerogatives of the allied powers vis-​à-​vis Germany that persisted until unification in 1990. It would thus be as unproductive to claim that Germany does not act multilaterally as it would be to claim that unilateralism is the hallmark of British, French, or even American foreign policy. After all, the US was the progenitor and then guarantor of the post-​war liberal international order and appeared to remain the only actor in the international system that had the will and capability to do so until the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2017. It is also the case that those who claim that the hallmark of German foreign policy reflects a normative dedication to multilateralism distinct from the instrumental multilateralism practised by other European states is grounded empirically on the undeniable German dedication to European unification—​a policy avocation that appears to remain largely intact (Paterson, 2010). This focus on German multilateralism within Europe creates the space for at least one analyst to make the Zen-​like claim that in the West today there is only ‘multilateralism in one country’ (Rachman, 2017). Most analyses of German multilateralism do not explore if Germany acts multilaterally in the implementation of multilateral agreements and does so in a way that sets it apart from other states. Rather, the concern is usually directed at the German use of multilateral fora to ensure the uploading of German preferences (Bulmer, 1997) or on normative preference for multilateral action that sets Germany apart from others (Varwick and Stock, 2012, p. 396; Hellmann 1996, p. 5; Sandschneider, 2012, p. 4; Fix, 2016, p. 112), or on the rhetorical dedication to the principle of multilateralism (Gotkowska, 2011, p. 2; Kaim, 2007). The consideration of German multilateralism within the EU alone would neither provide a rigorous test of German multilateralism with respect to the implementation stage of commonly agreed upon policies nor provide much insight into the kind of multilateralism Germany practises. The empirical investigation that follows considers German foreign policy multilateralism within several institutions—​NATO, the UN, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the G-​20—​across three issue dimensions: aid for security-​related economic objectives and the global infrastructure, global macroeconomic crisis management, and participation in stabilization and peace-​keeping operations. That empirical analysis, in turn, provides the foundation for answering three questions: Is German foreign policy consistently multilateral in institutional frameworks other than the EU? Does it act multilaterally in a way that differentiates it from its European peer states (UK, France, Italy) or states with a similar rhetorical commitment to multilateralism (Canada, Sweden, the Netherlands)?1 Does Germany treat its commitment to multilateralism as a contract or a covenant?

1 

Hereafter ‘referent states’.

GERMAN MULTILATERALISM AFTER THE COLD WAR    563

Multilateralism: Concept and Categories of Practice John Ruggie provides the minimalist definition of multilateralism as ‘an institutional form which coordinates relations among three or more states on the basis of “generalized” principles of conduct’ (Ruggie, 1992, p. 57). This definition embraces a variety of inter-​state interactions, ranging from small to global multilateralism and concerts of power. Multilateralism is thus understood as a purposeful modality that is instrumental in intent; states engage in multilateralism in order to produce outcomes that are superior to bilateral or unilateral action. Vincent Pouliot and Antonio Franceschet insist that multilateralism has both a substantive and procedural component (Pouliot, 2011, pp. 21–​2; Franceschet, 2016, pp. 12–​13). Substantive multilateralism is conditional multilateralism insofar as it derives its legitimacy from the effectiveness of outcomes (‘output legitimacy’). Procedural multilateralism commits states to institutionally governed interaction patterns that ensures meaningful access at the decision-​making stage (‘input legitimacy’). Pouliot further differentiates axiomatic and instrumental multilateralism according to whether states ‘think about [multilateralism], as one option among others, or do they think from it, as the “natural” way to go about global governance’ (Pouliot, 2011, p. 19). Multilateralism so defined provides insight into the different ways in which we can conceive it, but the difficulty—​particularly with Pouliot’s formulation—​is the emphasis on the cognitive processes governing the decision to act multilaterally; it does not provide a particularly fruitful avenue for empirically testing or differentiating between the rhetoric of multilateralism and the practice of multilateralism, particularly in the implementation stage. Paul Gecelovsky provides a second set of distinctions that provide a foundation for testing the degree to which a state acts multilaterally. He claims that multilateralism can be categorized as contractual or as covenantal. Contractual multilateralism encompasses instrumental and ‘weak’ axiomatic multilateralism insofar as multilateralism is valued only to the extent that it has instrumental value—​even if decision-​makers think from multilateralism it retains its instrumental character. As a covenant, multilateralism not only serves as a state’s ‘default’ position and any deviation from a multilateral solution would be viewed as deviant behaviour, but it also represents a commitment ‘to cooperate, even if co-​operation requires incurring great costs, human or wealth’ (Gecelovsky, 2016, pp. 106–​8). The requirement that a state contemplate self-​ abnegation to preserve multilateralism provides an avenue for testing whether a state has internalized the norm of multilateralism or merely treats multilateralism (and its modulated implementation) as the best means to achieve national or collective goals. This differentiation between the contractual and covenantal reflects the debate on the precise nature of German multilateralism. There appears to be a majority opinion in the academic and policy literature that German foreign policy conforms to the expectations of axiomatic multilateralism as covenant. These authors have applied a broad range

564   James Sperling of adjectives to capture the specific nature of German multilateralism: exaggerated, embedded, inherent, principled, cooperative, and reflexive (see, respectively, Anderson, 1997, p. 85; Sandschneider, 2012, p. 4; Mueller-​Brandeck-​Bocquet, 2012, p. 17; Varwick Stock, 2012, p. 396; Koenig, 2016 pp. 94ff.; Froehlich, 2008, p. 15; Fix, 2016 p. 112). A significant minority of others view German multilateralism as contractual, and qualified by an alternative set of adjectives: attritional, pragmatic, effective, assertive, and selective (see, respectively, Ash, 1994, p. 71; Hellmann, 1996, p. 5; Sandschneider, 2012, p. 8; Deutscher Bundestag, 2012, pp. 2, 4; Gotkowska, 2011, p. 13; Guérot, 2012, p. 13). The debate about the precise nature of German multilateralism and German exceptionalism in this regard frames the empirical analysis of German foreign policy behaviour in the post-​Cold War international system.

The Multilateral Content of German Foreign Policy The three categories of foreign policy considered here—​aid with a security or health component, macroeconomic policy management, military and police operations—​ share several common characteristics. First, these policy areas are not subject to the Community method within the European Union (EU), the potential for unilateral action is unfettered institutionally, and the implementation of multilateral policy initiatives is largely voluntary and national. Second, any state—​including Germany—​ retains a large degree of freedom in choosing or rejecting a multilateral solution to a policy problem that has a significant public goods component. Third, each issue area provides a wealth of empirical evidence that allows a meaningful comparison with similar states with respect to size or rhetorical dedication to multilateralism. Arguably, these characteristics ensure a rigorous test of the claim that Germany’s foreign policy is consistent with axiomatic, covenantal multilateralism and different from peer states.

German Development Aid, Global Health, and Stabilization Assistance The diffused sources and nature of threats today render a sole focus on defence expenditures or power projection capabilities contrary to the defence and security policy statements of NATO and EU member states. EU security strategies have remained particularly preoccupied with addressing the underlying causes rather than symptoms of regional and global conflict and draw oblique unflattering comparisons with the militarized American approach to security (Sperling, 2018). The EU security strategies are echoed in Germany (Gauck, 2014, pp. 4–​6; Auswärtiges Amt, 2014). On

GERMAN MULTILATERALISM AFTER THE COLD WAR    565 Table 31.1 Multilateral aid, 1990–​2019 Total ODA

Multilateral Multilateral Post-​Conflict Conflict, Peace UN Peacebuilding Institutions to total ODA Peace Building* & Security Fund

Index Index

Ratio

Index

index

Index

Canada

0.79

1.50

0.37

1.16

0.72

0.57

France

1.64

0.18

0.02

0.01

0.17

0.06

Germany

1.67

1.51

0.12

1.06

1.82

0.90

Italy

0.47

0.30

0.14

0.39

0.08

0.08

Netherlands 2.65

2.46

0.21

3.77

3.21

2.99

Sweden

2.35

3.59

0.24

5.33

3.28

7.55

UK

1.10

1.89

0.26

0.65

1.74

1.29

*net of ODA classified expenditures Source: OECD, Aid (ODA) by sector and donor [DAC5], http://​stats.oecd.org; United Nations, UN Peacebuilding Facility, at: < http://​mptf.undp.org/​factysheet/​fund/​PB000>

this basis alone, it would not be unreasonable to expect Germany to invest resources in policies that ameliorate the underlying source of conflict or contribute to the costs of post-​conflict reconstruction and stabilization. In conjunction with the claims that multilateralism is a leitmotiv of German foreign policy, we could also expect German aid policies to be more generous and demonstrably more multilateral than those of the referent states. Three aspects of foreign aid are considered: aid dispersed bilaterally and aid disbursed through multilateral institutions; aid with a direct security component; and contributions to multilateral funds for the purpose of reconstruction, stabilization, and peace-​building.

Overseas Development Assistance Over the period 1990–​ 2019, Germany was the largest contributor of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) followed by France and the UK. Adjusted for financial capacity to contribute (derived from relative GDP share of the combined referent states GDP), French and German ODA spending ranked a joint third after Sweden and the Netherlands. The ratio of aid share to GDP share (used here as a proxy for the level of multilateralism) ranged from a high of 2.65 for the Netherlands (indicating that the Dutch ODA share was almost 2.7 times greater than the Netherlands relative GDP share) to a low of 0.47 for Italy (see Table 31.1). Of the referent states, Germany channels the most aid through multilateral channels in terms of total dollars spent between 2007 and 2019 ($21.15 billion), second only to the US ($56.33 billion). But when adjusted for relative GDP share, however, Germany

566   James Sperling ties with Canada for fifth place after Sweden, the Netherlands, and the UK. If we compare the ratio of total ODA channelled through multilateral institutions, Germany only surpasses France and lags far behind Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK. This latter measure is particularly important for two reasons: first, a higher ratio of aid channelled through multilateral channels to total ODA represents a state’s willingness to rely upon multilateral institutions to achieve global development goals; and second, a state would channel a high share of ODA through multilateral channels on the basis of efficacy since that kind of aid is more effective than bilateral aid in meeting the needs of fragile states—​a critical locus of transboundary security threats (Chandy, Seidel, and Zhang, 2016, p. 20). Regardless of whether aid is distributed bilaterally or multilaterally, to fragile states or stable states, Germany ranks at near the bottom of the league table in terms of aid effectiveness, which suggests that Germany ought to make greater use of multilateral channels to improve the translation of ODA into positive developmental outcomes (Chandy, Seidel, and Zhang, 2016, 19–​20). Thus, if axiomatic multilateralism requires that a state ‘think from’ multilateralism, it is clear that Germany fails to do so when it comes to the modality of aid disbursement. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) disaggregates ODA data into specific line items, two of which have direct security implications and would presumably reflect the importance assigned to those tasks in German security discourse: ‘conflict, peace & security’ and ‘post-​conflict peacebuilding expenditures’. Germany, again, is the largest donor in the sub-​category ‘conflict, peace & security’; it contributed $7.11 billion between 1990 and 2019. Despite the large size of the nominal German contribution, if adjusted for GDP, it ranks third behind Sweden and the Netherlands. With respect to the task of post-​conflict peace building (net of ODA expenditures), Germany invested the most in this task ($921 million) followed by the Netherlands ($728 million) between 1993 and 2019, but it ranks fourth among the referent states when adjusted for GDP share. The final category of relevant aid expenditure is the contribution to the UN Peacebuilding Fund. In this instance, Germany, which had pledged $224 million to the UN fund between 2006 and 2024, ranked third after Sweden ($237 million) and the UK ($229 million) in absolute terms, and ranked fourth after adjusting the German contribution for GDP share. There is no denying that Germany writes very large cheques to meet these stabilization and reconstruction challenges to the international community, but it is also the case that the other referent states also do so when adjusted for GDP.

Global Health The SARS-​CoV-​2 pandemic has completed the securitization of health in the North Atlantic area. As a transboundary threat, it requires multilateral cooperation to achieve an optimal outcome globally and locally. The necessity of multilateralism to achieve the goal of preventing, ameliorating, and ending pandemics is widely accepted in the North

GERMAN MULTILATERALISM AFTER THE COLD WAR    567 Table 31.2 Expenditures on international public health, including Covid

Canada

Health ODA

World Health Organization

GAVI

Index of effort

Ratio of assessed to voluntary contributions

Index of effort

Change in ratio of contributions

Index of effort

Global Fund

COVAX

Index of effort

Index of effort

1990–​2019

2016–​19 2020–​21 2016–​19 to 2020–​21

2000–​20 2021–2​ 5

2001–​22

2020–​2037

1.60

2.49

4.18

3.85

1.12

1.68

31.81%

5.05

France

0.61

0.41

1.30

16.79%

1.38

1.81

1.79

0.43

Germany

0.82

2.48

10.88

129.44%

0.90

1.21

0.90

1.61

Italy

0.24

0.46

0.96

–​25.46%

1.20

0.87

0.48

1.08

Netherlands 0.58

2.44

3.24

–​17.92%

2.23

1.59

1.35

0.41

Sweden

1.23

7.29

6.14

–​27.83%

2.34

1.68

1.99

0.11

UK

1.98

8.71

9.36

11.74%

5.43

5.83

2.04

1.44

US

0.80

2.75

1.64

–​55.07%

0.39

0.25

1.01

1.22

Sources: OECD, Aid (ODA) by sector and donor [DAC5], ; WHO, Contributors ; GAVI Vaccine Alliance, Annual Contributions and Proceeds 31 December 2020, < https://​www.gavi.org/​news/​docum​ent-​libr​ary/​ann​ual-​contri​buti​ons-​and-​proce​eds-​31-​decem​ber-​2020?>; The Global Fund, Pledges and Contributions, < https://​www.theglo​balf​und.org/​en/​covid-​19/​.>; GAVI (2021), Contributions pledged. Includes pledges made through 30 June 2021. < https://​www.gavi.org/​investing-​gavi/​ funding/​donor-​profiles>

Atlantic area. The number of serious disease outbreaks prior to SARS-​CoV-​2—​SARs (2002), H1N1 (2009), MERS-​CoV (2003), and Ebola (2014–​16)—​demonstrated the fragility of the global health system and the elusiveness of health security in the twenty-​first century. Despite these outbreaks before the SARS-​CoV-​2 crisis, Germany was a relatively indifferent donor in the ODA sub-​category of health: its expenditures amounted to $5.14 billion between 2010 and 2019, above Canadian expenditures of $4.3 billion, but below UK expenditures of $8.9 billion. And when adjusted for GDP, Germany (and the US) under-​contributed to the health challenges outside the OECD (index ; ARTF Administrator, Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund. End of Year Report. June 21, 2016 to December 20, 2016 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017); UNDP (2017), Funding Facility for Stabilization 2017 Q2 Report: Scaling Up in Mosul, ; Supporting Syria and the region: Post-​London conference financial tracking, Report Two, February 2017, > https://​2c8kkt1ykog81j8k9p47oglb-​wpengine.netdna-​ ssl.com/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2017/​02/​Syria-​Report-​TWO-​8.pdf>

security order, there appears to be a gap between rhetoric and behaviour, at least when the German contribution is adjusted for GDP. In the case of aid to Afghanistan, German contributions are conditioned by its commitment to NATO and participation in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). As a consequence, Germany should be expected to have made aid contributions proportional to the German share of NATO GDP. The expectation within the alliance is that each member should carry a fair share of the burden as provided in Article 3 of the North Atlantic Treaty. But in the case of aid for the stabilization of Iraq, Syria, and the region affected by the war with ISIS, the German obligation to contribute funds to those funding facilities are unencumbered by membership in a formal institution; the global coalition against Daesh created in September 2014 is ad hoc and financial contributions to the task of post-​conflict stabilization are strictly voluntary. The stability of this region is of critical importance to Germany, if for no other reason than to slow the rate of migration into Europe. Consequently, the impulse to act multilaterally should be in evidence in this instance too. Over the period 2003–​16, Germany and the referent states contributed just over $13.94 billion to the reconstruction and stabilization of Afghanistan. Germany and the UK were the two major contributors of overall bilateral aid to Afghanistan ($4.28 billion and 4.25 billion, respectively), but adjusted for GDP share, Germany ranked fifth after three other NATO countries and Sweden. German contributions to the NATO-​sponsored multilateral Afghanistan Reconstruction and Trust Fund (2002–​16) were not as robust;

GERMAN MULTILATERALISM AFTER THE COLD WAR    571 German contributions were on a par with those of Canada and its GDP-​adjusted contribution left it in fifth place. The members of the Global Coalition against Daesh pledged funds in 2016 to ‘mobilise funding for responding to the needs of the people affected by the Syrian crisis’ (ALNAP, 2017). Those states affected by the crisis was defined quite broadly geographically and included Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. Germany and the referent states have pledged $7.2 billion of the total $53 billion pledged by the coalition. Germany accounts for almost 44 per cent of the seven-​nation total and ranks first in terms of gross disbursement. When adjusted for GDP share, Germany remains in first place, but tied with the UK. These seven states have also pledged or contributed $124.5 billion to the UNDP-​managed Funding Facility for Stabilization (Iraq). This fund, which was initiated in 2015 and will continue until at least 2023, had the primary purpose of stabilizing towns and cities to consolidate the gains against ISIS in Iraq and ensuring the safe return of internally displaced refugees. Germany has also been the major contributor to this funding facility (of the referent states), accounts for 45 per cent of the total, and ranks third when national contributions are adjusted for GDP share.

German Macroeconomic Multilateralism: 2008–​09 Financial Crisis and 2020–​2 1 Covid-​19 Recession The collapse of the global financial system in 2008-​09, the onset of the deepest recession since the twentieth century’s Great Depression, and the largely uncoordinated policy responses of the world’s major economies represents a second test of the claim that German foreign policy is guided by a ‘reflexive multilateralism’ or that its behaviour is any more (or less) multilateral than its major partners, notably the major G-​20 economies (Britain, France, Japan, China, and the US). Unlike earlier macroeconomic crises in the 1970s and 1980s that required multilateral and coordinated policy responses within the G-​7, this iteration required negotiations within the G-​20 framework. The proposition that the Germany practises an axiomatic multilateralism should have led the German government to adopt, if necessary, domestic macroeconomic policies that were suboptimal for Germany, but optimal for the global economy. Thus, this case then provides a partial test of whether Germany treats multilateralism as contractual or covenantal—​an approach that could require a macroeconomic policy response that had the character of self-​abnegation and thereby differentiated Germany from the other principals in the G-​20. Europeans and Asians agreed that the financial crisis had global consequences, but was ‘made in America’: it was commonly alleged that the Federal Reserve

572   James Sperling pursued a too expansive monetary policy; that the regulatory framework governing banks and non-​banks in the financial system was ineffective; and that the domestic sub-​prime crisis led to a $1.4 trillion loss that spread to the Eurozone economies. Chancellor Merkel also made reference to ‘reckless speculation’ on the American property market, a lack of transparency in financial markets, and excessive deficit spending in the wake of 11 September (Merkel, 2009). These German criticisms are not inconsistent with an OECD report on the crisis, but the same report pointed to a global ‘savings glut’ that provided the source of easy credit that fueled the financial bubble that burst in 2008. The ‘savings glut’, in turn, was attributed to the unsustainable Chinese, German, and Japanese current account surpluses (Furceri and Mourougane, 2009, paras 15–​25). The US preference for fiscal stimulus as a coordinated response to the crisis, despite British, Chinese, and Japanese support, faced a recalcitrant Germany. The US, however, had to craft a solution to the financial crisis and deepening recession that would satisfy the German demand for fiscal balance in Europe and global regulatory reform with the more pressing concern of allaying the Chinese and Japanese concerns about the future value of their sizeable dollar-​denominated assets. China emerged as a key partner for the US, while Germany saw China as the only solution to the problem of global economic growth and European austerity: Chancellor Merkel suggested that China pursue more expansive fiscal policies to increase global demand; China, in her view, could avoid increasing its level of debt and had a greater growth potential than Germany—​two claims that could equally be made for Germany (Benoit and Bryant, 2009; Wolf, 2009). The US, in turn, depended upon the Chinese willing purchase of US Treasury bonds to support the $841.2 billion fiscal stimulus package. Not only did the Chinese government acquiesce to the Obama administration’s request that they continue to purchase US debt to finance the financial bailout and stimulus programmes, but it also embarked upon its own fiscal stimulus programme that risked inflation and a significant rise in central government debt. In 2009, the output gap in China was -​0.05 (suggesting a near balance of potential and actual output), whereas the (unweighted) output gap was -​6.3 for Germany, France, and the UK, -​5.5 in the US, and -​7.9 in Japan. The German and US stimulus packages struck not dissimilar balances between tax reductions and spending increases (Prasad and Sorkin, 2009, p. 3), whereas the Chinese stimulus package was devoted almost exclusively to upfront expenditures. The US and Chinese fiscal stimulus packages amounted to $841 billion (4.9 per cent of GDP) and $204 billion (4.4 per cent of GDP), respectively, but that of Germany amounted to $73 billion (1.5 per cent of GDP) or about 40 per cent of the combined British, French, and Italian fiscal stimulus of $192 billion (2 per cent of GDP on an unweighted basis) (IMF, 2009). By the time of the April 2009 G-​20 summit, Chancellor Merkel rejected the efficacy and necessity of additional fiscal stimulus and insisted that a return to economic growth depended upon the creation of an effective regulatory framework that restored confidence to global financial markets. American President Barack Obama instead preferred a two-​track strategy that twinned the stabilization of financial

GERMAN MULTILATERALISM AFTER THE COLD WAR    573 markets with regulatory reform with coordinated fiscal stimulus among the G-​20 countries to prevent the recession from descending into depression. The German-​ American ‘debate’ over the importance of regulatory reform was less about the recognition that the global financial system was broken and more about the German desire to avoid any binding commitment to expand deficit spending in the near or medium term. The Merkel government resisted additional fiscal stimulus despite the IMF estimate that the German output gap for 2010 would be -​7.2 per cent and larger than the estimated output gaps for the US, UK, and France. If any country had a rationale for an aggressive fiscal stimulus policy in 2009, it was Germany. But German policy reflected a very simple (and optimal) national policy calculus: fiscal expansion by others would sustain demand for German exports and support an economic recovery, although the long-​term liabilities attending that fiscal expansion—​increased national debt, weakened currencies, and deficits—​would also be borne by others. Financial sector support programmes—​and not fiscal stimulus packages—​were primarily responsible for the deterioration of public finances within the G-​7, particularly in the US and UK. The costs of containing the financial crisis and stabilizing the national banking systems came at a high price: the total costs of the American and British stabilization measures amounted to 73.7 per cent and 46.5 per cent of GDP, respectively, although the front-​loaded fiscal outlays ‘only’ amounted to 6.3 per cent and 19.9 per cent of GDP, respectively. Parallel German measures amounted to 21.7 per cent of GDP. All but 3.7 per cent of that total took the form of guarantees that had zero impact on the level of German federal debt. Yet, German dissatisfaction with the health of the American (and British) banking systems—​and the policies required to shore up the international financial system—​ did not produce a similar degree of unease with the state of the German banking system. Despite the widespread assessment that the difficulties facing the German banking system were second only to those found in the US, the German policy response was limited to a voluntary ‘bad bank’ scheme, the chief purpose of which appeared to be reducing the burden placed on the federal budget. It provided a voluntary mechanism for parking illiquid assets in ‘bad banks’ without any provision for direct government loans to recapitalize those banks participating in the scheme (Munchau, 2009). Despite the seeming success of the ‘stress tests’ of American banks and the IMF recommendation that other member states follow the American lead, then Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück declared those tests as ‘worthless’ and inappropriate. He argued that if stress tests were conducted in Germany and made public, it would undermine confidence in the German banking system with unknown consequences for the German political system (Daneshkhu et al., 2009; Benoit and Daneshkhu, 2009). When the November 2008 G-​20 meeting participants explicitly agreed to facilitate greater transparency in national financial markets, Finance Minister Steinbrück later claimed an exemption for Germany: since Germany was not ‘an old, established democracy like Britain’, it couldn’t afford the risk of a panic attending the published

574   James Sperling results of a stress test (see Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie, 2008; Benoit and Bryant, 2009). This form of special pleading, based on the causal linkage between fiscal deficits, hyperinflation, the collapse of Weimar, and the rise of National Socialism, provided the German government with a ready rationale for rejecting the IMF’s recommendation and the Obama administration’s request for additional fiscal stimulus in April 2009. The macroeconomic consequences of Covid-​19 in 2020 yielded a much different German response than did the financial crisis in 2008–​ 09. Important pillars of German macroeconomic orthodoxy were relaxed with respect to the counter-​cyclical prerogatives of the EU and the willingness to underwrite indirectly the macroeconomic difficulties of its Eurozone partners without recrimination. The contrast between the Merkel government’s response to an economic contraction in 2020–​21 and in 2009 raises the same question mooted with respect to the significant uptick in German contributions to the WHO: can the German response be ascribed to a multilateral impulse or the felicitous convergence of German economic interests and those of its Eurozone partners? The German macroeconomic and financial measures attending the global economic downturn occasioned by the pandemic had two aspects: the domestic and the Eurozone. Germany introduced a series of fiscal packages over the course of 2020 that amounted to $418 billion. Those funds were divided between health expenditures (11 per cent) and expenditures that supported small and medium enterprises (SME), relieved high unemployment, and bolstered the social net. These fiscal measures accounted for 11 per cent of GDP (third highest in the EU) compared to 1.5 per cent during the financial crisis even though the contraction in 2009 was -​4.9 per cent, marginally lower than the -​5.5 per cent contraction in 2020. The Merkel government also undertook measures to support the financial system and provide liquidity to businesses to the tune of $1.05 trillion, 90 per cent which took the form of guarantees. Unlike the 2009 financial crisis, there were no efforts to blame the crisis on a third party and no claims that other governments were better positioned to meet the fiscal and financial policy challenges attending the pandemic (Scholz, 2020). Most remarkable, however, has been the German willingness to act in concert with its Eurozone partners since early 2020 and in so doing depart radically from pre-​existing German insistence on fiscal restraint by highly indebted countries like Italy and Spain. At the EU level, the Merkel government also championed and introduced novel fiscal and financial instruments that have protected the countries hardest hit by the pandemic from economic collapse. In 2020, the EU introduced a series of fiscal and financial measures to offset the economic consequences of the pandemic. Germany was often the driving force behind them and certainly the largest financial contributor. The fiscal packages agreed upon between 2020 and 2021 amounted to approximately €2.7 trillion and the financial packages amounted to €1.97 trillion (IMF, 2021; European Parliament and The Council 2021, Article 6(1)).

GERMAN MULTILATERALISM AFTER THE COLD WAR    575 In April 2020, Finance Minister Scholz and Chancellor Merkel identified a number of policies that Germany had recommended to the Council for immediate action. These policies included financial resources channelled through the European Investment Bank to maintain liquidity and provide investment guarantees, the use of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to function as a safety net (Sicherheitsnetz) for the member states to prevent the loss of confidence in national bond markets and to provide funds to meet the direct and indirect health costs occasioned by the pandemic, and EU-​ funded unemployment insurance (Scholz, 2020). The reliance on the ESM reflected German (and Dutch) resistance to the idea of creating ‘corona bonds’, thereby leading to the mutualization of debt within the Eurozone; the ESM was viewed as an alternative arrangement with the same effect in terms of outcome while avoiding serious political and legal challenges in Germany, particularly, and in other Eurozone states. Merkel made the persuasive argument that a reliance on the ESM had the added benefit of efficacy as well as bypassing the inevitable delay caused by the need for twenty-​seven member states to ratify the issuance of ‘corona bonds’ in conjunction with the required amendment(s) to the EU Treaties. Germany also supported the creation of the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (€1.85 trillion), the Next Generation EU (NGEU) recovery fund (€750 bn),6 the EU Recovery and Resiliency Facility (€672 bn), and the extension of the EU Solidarity Fund (€800 bn) to aid member states in distress. Moreover, the Merkel government also proposed (and the EU member states agreed) that the ECB could provide grants to member states equal to 2 per cent of the 2019 GDP and made provision in these fiscal and financial measures for large grant components—​rather than loans or guarantees as in the past—​to purchase private and public sector securities. James Cotter claims that German largesse reflects the calculation that ‘the ability of other Member States to withstand the economic impact of COVID-​19 is in Germany’s strategic interest as a matter of economic rationality’ (Cotter, 2020, p. 6). Neither Chancellor Merkel nor Olaf Scholz would find that argument problematic, but Chancellor Merkel made two additional claims when explaining the German departure from policy orthodoxy: first, ‘a unified Europe is a part of our Staaatsräson’; and second, Germany and Europe are members of a ‘Schicksalsgmeinschaft’ (Merkel, 2020, p. 12300). The Merkel government not only acted multilaterally in the provision of a public good from the onset of the pandemic with respect to macroeconomic and financial stability at the national and EU levels, but also accepted the mantle of leadership at a parlous time.

6 

This programme was temporarily placed in legal limbo owing to a 26 March 2021 order by the Bundesverfassungsgericht to stop the domestic ratification process. This decision, like the earlier one on 5 May 2020, has also raised the spectre of a rolling back of the European Court of Justice’s primacy and renationalizing the interpretation of EU law. See Chazan (2021); Congressional Research Service (2020, p. 19).

576   James Sperling

German Participation in NATO, EU, OSCE, and UN Operations The third empirical case considers German contributions to NATO and EU flagged operations with a UN mandate, German contributions to Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) missions to UN Peace-​ Keeping Operations (UNPKO), and the level of risk assumed by German personnel in such operations. The much remarked upon German reticence to use military force as a diplomatic instrument reflects a combination of factors, including a culture of self-​restraint reflecting the lessons of what Friedrich Meinecke (1946) christened the German catastrophe, a deep and abiding conviction among the German foreign policy elite that military power is a particularly ineffective instrument to tackle the underlying causes of conflict along Europe’s periphery, and the permissive external context created by others’ willingness to give Germany a free pass out of a sensitivity to German history as well as an understanding of the potential danger that a militarily assertive Germany could pose to European stability. Nevertheless, Germany is a member of the EU, NATO, OSCE, and UN. Each is an institutional exemplar of security multilateralism: the EU and UN meet the criteria of a collective security organization, while NATO is the collective defence organization par excellence. The overall German record of multilateralism in meeting the security challenges of the post-​Cold War order reveals, at a minimum, that the culture of restraint and security multilateralism are mutually nullifying rather than reinforcing imperatives. The OSCE is the least demanding of the four institutions in terms of national personnel required for mission support and risk assumed by those personnel (see Table 31.4). The referent group seconded 587 police or military observers for OSCE missions between 2012 and 2016. Germany accounted for 16 per cent of the total (95) and ranked third behind Italy and the UK; the GDP-​adjusted German contribution places it in fifth place, ahead of France and the Netherlands. Germany’s aggregate national contribution (mission and secretariat personnel) placed it in a three-​way tie for first place with Italy and the UK, although on a GDP-​adjusted basis Germany’s contribution fell into the middle of the pack. German participation in UNPKO is perhaps a more telling indicator of the limits to German security multilateralism. In key German foreign policy pronouncements, the UN is understood as the foundation of a rules-​governed international system and global locus of peaceful conflict resolution. Moreover, the German Constitutional Court determined that a UN mandate is the necessary precondition for the Bundestag to authorize the use of force for purposes other than self-​defence. Consequently, sustained German participation in UNPKO at a level at or above those of the referent states would provide compelling empirical evidence supporting the German claim of being reflexively multilateral, particularly since national contributions to UNPKO are strictly

GERMAN MULTILATERALISM AFTER THE COLD WAR    577 Table 31.4 Personnel contributions to OSCE missions and UN peace-​keeping operations (2012–​20) OSCE Field Missions & Operations

Total OSCE Personnel: Secretariat, Institutions, Missions

UNPKO

Canada

1.20

0.98

0.27

France

0.47

0.59

1.35

Germany

0.70

0.79

0.44

Italy

1.76

1.48

2.12

Netherlands

0.41

0.71

1.33

Sweden

2.82

2.25

2.07

UK

1.54

1.19

0.68

Sources: OSCE, Annual Report, various years; UNPKO, ‘Contributions to United Peacekeeping Operations, Monthly Summary of Contributions as of 31 December 2020’,

voluntary. The German contributions to UNPKO between 2012 and 2017 do not support the claim that Germany is markedly more dedicated to security multilateralism than the referent states: in fact, it contributed fewer military and police personnel to UNPKO than did France, Italy, the UK, and the Netherlands and only exceeded the contributions of Canada and Sweden. If those military and police personnel contributions are adjusted for GDP share, then it slides into sixth place ahead of Canada. Moreover, Germany has not assumed a great deal of risk in its participation: between 1990 and 2017, the referent states suffered 186 fatalities. Only Sweden suffered fewer casualties than did Germany. If national casualties are adjusted for the number of persons committed to UNPKO over that time period, Germany only ranks higher in terms of casualties than Sweden and Italy, but falls behind Canada, France, and the UK. This aversion to risk is replicated in NATO operations as well. The charge of asymmetrical burden-​and risk-​sharing within NATO has been a constant in transatlantic relations and Germany has often been the target of complaints by other members of the alliance. The perceived asymmetry of effort in NATO operations, particularly in Afghanistan, led former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to claim that NATO was divided ‘[b]‌etween members who specialize in “soft” humanitarian, development, peacekeeping, and talking tasks, and those conducting the “hard” combat missions’ (Gates, 2011). Similarly President Barack Obama suggested in his 2016 Atlantic interview that an important component of his foreign policy was arresting the European unwillingness to assume a proportionate share of the burden and risk in NATO-​mandated military operations (Goldberg, 2016). And Donald Trump claimed

578   James Sperling Table 31.5 NATO operations: participation and risk, 1996–​2014 Operations Out of area*

Risk Europe**

Combined

ISAF only

Canada

.62

.17

.46

1.73

France

.48

1.49

.97

.80

Germany

.52

.97

.76

.28

Italy

.57

1.35

.96

.38

.60

1.07

.85

.55

1.40

1.52

1.55

.86

Netherlands UK

*ISAF (2002–​14); Operation Artemis (EU) (2003); EUFOR DR Congo (2006); EUFOR Tchad/​RCA (2008–​09); EUFOR CAR Bangui (2014–​15) **IFOR (1996–​97); SFOR (2003–​05); KFOR (1999–​2014); Operation Concordia (EU) 2003; EUFOR Althea (2005–​14)

during the 2016 election campaign that NATO was obsolete and when in office that the Europeans owed the US ‘massive amounts of money from past years’ (Diamond, 2017). Germany had usually been an unnamed target of American opprobrium, but that changed when Trump chided Germany directly (and sometimes exclusively) with respect to defence spending.7 A full and accurate accounting of German contributions to NATO missions and operations is difficult for a number of reasons. First, there is the problem of how to credit member state contributions to an operation where these do not involve direct personnel commitments, as well as the difficulty of establishing an equivalence of effort between operations that rely heavily on ground forces and those that do not. A second analytical problem concerns the inclusion and exclusion of specific military missions. Consequently, the assessment of German security multilateralism is confined to NATO-​ led and follow-​on EU-​led operations (as in the Balkans) or EU-​led operations that unambiguously protect allied interests. The analysis of NATO-​and EU-​led operations between 1996–​2014 confirms that only Canada supplied fewer personnel than did Germany among the referent states (minus Sweden) to NATO and EU missions inside and outside Europe (see Table 31.5). The UK devoted a disproportionately larger share of armed forces to NATO stabilization missions outside of Europe, while Germany, among the referent states, provided the lowest. The Europeans and Canadians, by contrast, devoted a disproportionately larger 7 

Trump’s explicit criticisms of Germany began in 2017, intensified in 2018 and 2019, and culminated with Trump’s announcement that US troops would be withdrawn from Germany in June 2020 (Deutsche Welle, 2017; Herszenhorn, 2020).

GERMAN MULTILATERALISM AFTER THE COLD WAR    579 Table 31.6 NATO operations, 2015–​18 Land Operations*

Enhanced Air Policing

Enhanced Forward Presence

Naval Operations**

personnel

aircraft

personnel

personnel

ships

personnel

Canada

0.22

1.53

1.41

1.84

0.41

0.50

France

0.34

0.51

0.60

0.41

1.10

0.56

Germany

0.73

0.77

0.90

1.04

1.25

0.89

Italy

1.71

1.18

1.22

0.58

3.73

6.43

Netherlands

0.46

0.87

0.61

2.52

1.65

1.48

UK

0.68

1.39

1.59

2.63

0.90

0.82

United States

1.03

0.37

0.60

0.42

0.01

0.03

Other NATO

1.59

3.04

1.76

2.00

1.34

0.94

* NATO (KFOR, Resolute Support Mission (Afghanistan), Sharp Guard); EU (EUFOR Althea; EUFOR RCA; EUTM Mali; EUTM Somalia); Global Coalition against Daesh. **NATO (Ocean Shield, Patrol in the Aegean, Active Endeavor, and Sea Guardian); EU (Operation Atalanta and EUNAVFOR Sophia)

share of their armed forces to operations within Europe, but Germany’s proportional contribution within Europe only exceeded that of Canada. German contributions to operations post-​Afghanistan are more robust on some measures: German contributions to NATO-​led air and sea operations exceed those of the US in three categories of comparison (land forces, naval personnel, and aircraft). Within the narrower referent group (minus Sweden), however, Germany ranks second in land forces, fourth in naval personnel, and fifth in aircraft (see Table 31.6). The post-​Afghanistan operational burden-​sharing profile is reproduced when military exercises, particularly those that fall within the category of assurance measures, are considered. NATO headquarters identified as ‘significant’ eighteen NATO-​or NATO member-​led exercises in 2015 (NATO, 2015; Kulesa, 2016, Table 4). The German contribution to those exercises exceeded those of the US in four sub-​categories of participation (land forces, aircraft, ships and naval perconnel). With respect to the referent group (minus Sweden), Germany ranked second in aircraft (after the UK), third with respect to ships, fourth with respect to land forces, and last with respect to naval personnel (see Table 31.7). Risk has four separable dimensions present to varying degrees in any operation: the stationing of troops in ‘safe’ as opposed to ‘dangerous’ sectors of an operational theatre; combat deaths; national caveats on rules of engagement; and selective participation in military operations. The first three components of risk-​acceptance (and avoidance) were manifest in ISAF. British, Canadian, and American armed forces accounted for

580   James Sperling Table 31.7 NATO exercises, 2015 Land Forces*

Naval Personnel**

Ships**

Aircraft***

Canada

0.52

1.05

0.9

France

0.34

0.56

0.71

1.34

Germany

0.98

0.35

1.16

1.90

Italy

1.42

0.42

0.36

Netherlands

1.70

2.47

3.56

UK

1.01

2.20

1.67

3.10

United States

0.42

0.58

0.19

0.33

*Trident Juncture; Joint Warrior 15-​1 & 15-​2; Dynamic Mongoose; Exercise Breeze; Sea Shield; Black Sea Naval Exercise; Baltops ** Steadfast Javelin; Trident Shield; Agile Spirit; IRON Sword; Wind Spring; Sabre Junction; Allied Shield ***Arctic Shield

approximately 88 per cent of the 3,348 combat-​related deaths in Afghanistan. The US alone accounted for just over 70 per cent of total NATO combat deaths. If the aggregated number of national forces deployed from 2002–​14 relative to the number of those killed in action are compared, it reveals a rather stark differentiation between risk-​accepting and risk-​ avoiding NATO member states. For the referent states, only Canadian casualties (adjusted for share of NATO combat forces) exceeded those of the US and the referent group. Although none of the referent European states accepted a level of risk consistent with their troop commitment share to ISAF, the level of risk assumed by Germany was the lowest. It is likely that concern over caveats will abate with NATO’s ‘return to Europe’ after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but any future out-​of-​area operation is more than likely to be subject to them. National caveats on the use of national forces have been described as a means of intra-​ alliance ‘burden-​shifting’ and ‘cancers’ on operational effectiveness (Michel, 2006; Cook, 2008). A 2008 NATO Parliamentary Assembly report identified sixty-​two national caveats, forty-​five of which negatively impacted ISAF operations in Afghanistan (Cook, 2008, paras 30–​4). Caveats with operational significance included those which banned night-​time operations, restricted the geographic mobility of national forces, required consultations with national capitals when making tactical decisions, excluded specific categories of activity (notably, counter-​terrorism operations), prohibited the helicopter transport of Afghan armed forces, and fighting after a snowfall (Korski, 2008, p. 16; Noetzel and Scheipers, 2007, p. 6; Cook, 2008, paras 31–​2; Katzman, 2008, p. 32). Although operational caveats were not unique to German forces, Germany was widely understood to be the most culpable ally in this regard. Even though the caveats on German troops reflected the difficult domestic political context constraining successive

GERMAN MULTILATERALISM AFTER THE COLD WAR    581 German governments, it nonetheless shifted the burden of high-​intensity warfare and its attendant risks onto others.8 Germany continued its pattern of risk-​minimization—​if not risk-​avoidance—​during NATO’s Operation Unified Protector (OUP) in Libya. OUP presented a crisis of participation within the alliance and Germany was at the center of that crisis. Only thirteen NATO allies made any direct military contribution (Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Turkey, the UK, and the US). Five of these states—​Bulgaria, Spain, Greece, Romania, and Turkey—​refused to undertake a combat role; and Italy only assumed one reluctantly in late April 2011 once the mission was underway. Germany not only abstained during the Security Council vote on UNSCR 1973 authorizing OUP, but refused to provide any material support to the NATO operation. In fact, Germany went beyond the mere refusal to contribute to the operation: the Merkel government withdrew German warships from Operation Active Endeavour and German crews from AWACS patrols in the Mediterranean.9 A sympathetic reading of German behavior during the Libyan crisis would point to the high threshold for seeking parliamentary approval for the commitment of armed forces to a NATO operation and the ingrained instrumental preference of Germany-​ as-​a-​civilian power in the conduct of foreign policy.10 At the time of Germany’s refusal to contribute to OUP, then Foreign Minister Westerwelle—​albeit roundly criticized in German academic circles at the time—​remained convinced that a no-​fly zone was of limited utility and could very well ‘weaken rather than strengthen the democratic movements in North Africa’ (Deutscher Bundestag, 2012, p. 10815). Such doubts over the wisdom of OUP were widely shared in the Bundestag. But by August 2011, only Westerwelle believed that sanctions led to the demise of the Gadhafi regime.11 As it turned out, OUP did not facilitate the creation of a stable, democratic Libya, but it is as equally clear that a reliance on economic sanctions alone would not have prevented the Gaddafi regime from slaughtering its own population. The German abstention at the UN and the subsequent withdrawal of German personnel from NATO missions in the Mediterranean were justified against a four-​fold reinterpretation of multilateralism. First, members of the coalition government (and opposition) delegated responsibility for enforcing UNSCR 1973 to a coalition of regional actors (notably Persian Gulf states) and questioned whether it was a Western responsibility to intervene. Second, some denied that Germany departed from its reflexive multilateralism: Germany joined approximately one-​half of the NATO member states 8 

On the domestic sources of caveats, see Miskimmon (2012). On the various policy responses to the Libyan crisis by Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the UK, see Sperling (2016). 10  In an interview in Spiegel Online, for example, Westerwelle stated that he ‘saw [himself] as part of a tradition of restraint’ when asked to justify government policy. Spiegel Online (2011). 11  At the end of August, Westerwelle claimed that German sanctions were critical to the success of the Libyan uprising. That assessment was dismissed by any number of German politicans, including Defence Minister de Maizière, Chancellor Merkel, FDP leader Phillip Rösler, FDP General Secretary Christian Linder, and SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel (Sperling, 2016). 9 

582   James Sperling that refused to contribute to OUP, supported EUFOR Libya, and cast an abstention on UNSCR 1973 with four other powers—​Brazil, China, India, and Russia. Third, some German politicians noted (correctly) that the resolution only required Germany to observe the proscriptions of UNSCR 1973, not to enforce them. And finally, Germany’s NATO membership no longer meant that wherever NATO leads, Germany will automatically follow.12 Germany has explicitly stated that the decision to commit German troops to any military operation must be consistent with the national interest and thereby redefined the limits of German multilateralism, at least as it pertains to security.13 Paradoxically, that qualification of German multilateralism has been conjoined to a greater willingness to share the burdens of collective defence post-​Crimea. Germany has since made a significant contribution to conventional deterrence along the Eastern flank of the alliance post: it has assumed the role as a lead nation in NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence in Lithuania. Those deployments, despite the remoteness of Russian military aggression against the Baltic states, place German forces in jeopardy more meaningfully than did their presence in Northern Afghanistan. Despite the relatively minor German contribution to the military operations against Daesh in Syria, Germany has nonetheless contributed, as noted elsewhere, substantial sums to the tasks of stabilization and reconstruction in the region. This does not so much signal a return to the policy of ‘cheque book’ diplomacy as it indicates that Germany may in fact be evolving towards acquiring the status of a full spectrum foreign policy actor consistent with the decision to assume greater responsibility for global order (Merkel, 2005; Auswärtiges Amt, 2014). The unlikely reoccurrence of open-​ended NATO military operations out of area in conjunction with NATO’s ‘rediscovered’ task of collective defence minimizes the likelihood that Germany will be forced to reconcile the competing imperatives of security multilateralism and the non-​use of force.

Conclusion Germany foreign policy has been characterized as one of ‘exaggerated multilateralism’. It would appear from the foregoing empirical analysis that it is German multilateralism that has been exaggerated. This is not to claim that German foreign policy has neither benefitted nor relied upon its participation in international fora, especially the EU, to

12  Former Foreign Minister Fischer (2011) concluded this reinterpretation of Germany’s commitment to NATO amounted to a redefinition of NATO as a one-​way security guarantee without a corresponding reciprocal obligation for Germany. 13  In May 2011, the Ministry of Defence stated that the use of force would require that there be ‘a clear answer to the question of whether German interests require and justify an operation and what the consequences of non-​action would be’ (Ministry of Defence, 2011, p. 4).

GERMAN MULTILATERALISM AFTER THE COLD WAR    583 realize its foreign policy goals. Rather, the claim is that German multilateralism is not particularly distinct from the multilateralism practiced by the referent states. The extent and nature of German multilateralism was tested with respect to three aspects of German foreign policy: financial aid for the purposes of peace-​building, post-​conflict reconstruction and stabilization, and global health; the coordination of macroeconomic and financial regulatory policies in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008–​09 and the significant contraction of the European economy in 2020; and German contributions to a range of military and police operations within the major multilateral frameworks touching upon security—​EU, NATO, OSCE, and UN. The response to the pandemic is the clearest—​and perhaps epiphenomenal—​case of German multilateralism where Germany assumed the dual role of policy leader and pay-​master. There is room for some debate over the reasons for the absence of exceptional multilateralism in German foreign policy. Some ascribe the German departure from axiomatic multilateralism to the transparently contingent and instrumental multilateralism practised by the US (Braml, 2009, p. 16), a more generalized weakening and dysfunction of international institutions (Masala, 2008p. 23), and a pronounced shift in Germany’s global and regional role, notably the stated and ascribed ambition to function as a Gestaltungsmacht (Sandschneider, 2012, pp. 6–​7; Dettke, 2009, p. 45). These claims are not without merit. But it also seems that a more economical explanation would be that German multilateralism has been contractual rather than covenantal, and that it has been neither unconditionally axiomatic nor merely instrumental. Germany, it would appear, is no different in this respect than most states embedded in NATO and the EU.

Further Reading Ash, Timothy Garton (1993), In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York: Random House). Bulmer, Simon and William E. Paterson (2019), Germany and the European Union. Europe’s Reluctant Hegemon? (London: Red Globe Press). Fix, Liana (2021), Germany’s Role in European Russia Policy: A New German Power? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Hanrieder, Wolfram F. (1989), Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press). Fröhlich, Stefan (2019), Das Ende der Selbstfesselung: Deutsche Aussenpolitic in einer Welt ohne Führung (Wiesbaden: Springer Verlag). Meijer, Hugo and Stephen G. Brooks (2021), ‘Illusions of Autonomy: Why Europe Cannot Provide for Its Security If the United States Pulls Back’, International Security 45 (4), pp. 7–​43.

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588   James Sperling Spiegel Online (2011), ‘Spiegel Interview with German Foreign Minister’, 21 April 2011. http://​ www.spiegel.de/​international/​germany/​spiegel-​interview-​with-​german-​foreign-​minister-​ gadhafi-​must-​go-​there-​s-​no-​question-​a-​752164.html> Varwick, Johannes and Christian Stock (2012), ‘Herausforderungen der deutschen Außen-​ und Sicherheitspolitik bis 2030: Eine Analyse aus Sicht der Zukunftsforschung’, Zeitschrift fur Außen-​und Sicherheitspolitik 62 (5/​2012), pp. 391–​401. Wolf, Martin (2009), ‘Why G20 leaders will fail to deal with the big challenge’, Financial Times, 1 April 2009.

CHAPTER 32

GERM ANY AND NATO Markus Kaim

At the end of Angela Merkel's chancellorship, NATO enjoys a level of importance and political support in Germany that it has not enjoyed for a long time. Since Germany’s accession in 1955, the North Atlantic alliance has been one of the two institutional pillars on which German foreign and security policy has rested, along with the European integration process. The German government’s most recent security policy document, the 2016 White Paper on Security Policy, once again underscored this in no uncertain terms:: The North Atlantic Alliance (NATO) is an indispensable guarantor of German, European and transatlantic security. It connects North America and Europe in a political as well as military organisation. For more than six decades, NATO has guaranteed the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of its members. It reflects a mutual commitment to protect the transatlantic partnership of values against threats of any kind and ensures the indispensable commitment of the United States to the security of Europe. ( . . . ) NATO remains the anchor and main framework of action for German security and defence policy. Strengthening NATO also serves to strengthen our transatlantic partnership. (Bundesministerium der Verteidigung, 2016, p. 64)

Due to its history, Germany has made multilateralism the unalterable paradigm of its security policy. This ‘multilateral reflex’ shapes German policy in the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), but above all in NATO. The transatlantic alliance is seen as the central linchpin of German security policy, and the German government as an important player within NATO as well as a reliable ally of the US. Also during Angela Merkel's chancellorship (2005-​21), Germany has continued to recognize the pivotal role of NATO and the imperative of effective multilateralism. In recent years, however, a policy could increasingly been observed that seeks to pursue German interests in the alliance more assertively than before, even if this has sometimes led to conflicts with the United States and made consensus-​building within NATO more difficult. Thus,

590   Markus Kaim German NATO policy is no longer readily willing to put its own ideas behind the success of multilateral cooperation. This behaviour is not an expression of a new German great power policy. Rather, it is an indication that the traditional patterns of German NATO policy are gradually adapting to the changed international and national environment. More important for the appreciation of the alliance in recent years, however, was another factor, namely the tensions in NATO during President Donald Trump's term in office. The latter declared the alliance obsolete, questioned the US commitment to support and protect the European allies and repeatedly complained about what he saw as an unfair burden-​sharing in NATO. Trump repeatedly attacked Germany in particular for the comparatively low share of its defence spending in the national budget. At the NATO summit in summer 2019, Trump even refused to rule out a US withdrawal from the alliance if the allies did not spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defence. The resulting doubts about the reliability of the US have once again made the role of the US as the ultimate guarantor of European security very clear to the German government. (Keller, 2018; Rhodes, 2018). This is all the more true since efforts to develop the EU into an effective security policy provider as an alternative have largely failed. Not all of Berlin’s partners share this ‘NATO renaissance’ in Berlin. This became clear most recently in the controversy between the French President and the then-​ German Defence Minister. In an article published in November 2020, Annegret Kramp-​ Karrenbauer called the French idea of European strategic autonomy in security and defence an ‘illusion’ (Kramp-​Karrenbauer, 2020a). Emmanuel Macron countered this by saying that the Defence Minister’s statement was a ‘misinterpretation of history’. The latter followed up in a keynote speech: Germany’s and Europe’s most important ally remained the US. Without America’s nuclear and conventional capabilities, Germany and Europe could not protect themselves. The conclusions for the EU had to be derived from these ‘sober facts’ (Kramp-​Karrenbauer, 2020b). So even after more than seventy years of German foreign policy, one task Berlin is facing has remained the same, namely, to reconcile Germany’s European ties and its transatlantic obligations.

German NATO Policy until 1990 It is helpful to begin by recalling some cornerstones of German NATO policy since 1955 in order to better identify its changes and their drivers since the end of the Cold War. All federal governments since 1955, regardless of their party political orientation, have regarded NATO as a necessary guarantor of the territorial integrity and political sovereignty of the Federal Republic. Beyond the alliance's military significance, the Germany has always defined NATO as the central political consultation forum for transatlantic security. Membership in the alliance formed the second institutional anchor for German foreign policy alongside the European integration process. At the same time, it was the necessary precondition for Germany to regain its (initially limited) foreign

GERMANY AND NATO    591 policy sovereignty and to make an independent defence contribution during the East-​ West conflict (Kaim, 2007). This did not mean that German NATO policy was not occasionally marked by differences with its partners on certain issues, as in the case of Ostpolitik and the détente policy of the Brandt and Schmidt administrations. The German-​American dispute over NATO rearmament in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a high point in this regard. Ultimately, however, it remained a minority in the West German debate that called for distancing from the US or even for Germany to withdraw from NATO. Instead, the West German consensus regarded the alliance as the preferred security policy option for Germany: It offered protection against possible aggression by the Warsaw Pact, provided the Federal Republic with a degree of voice and influence that went far beyond its position of power in the international system, reduced the necessary costs of national defence through US security guarantees, and, finally, created the conditions for further forms of cooperation through the permanent consultation process in the alliance. German governments have always sought to avoid the conflict that existed between the transatlantic orientation of German security policy on the one hand and the parallel efforts to develop an independent security and defence policy within the framework of the European integration process on the other. However, this has often not been successful. In this sense, German security and defence policy was always dependent on the bilateral US-​French relationship as well, because the confrontational behaviour of these two actors often made the German balancing act more difficult. This was also an important reason why Germany—​despite all its close relations with France—​has always rejected Parisian considerations of countervailing power formation vis-​à-​vis the US. Instead, Germany has always advocated the compatibility of the Atlantic alliance with the formation of a security identity of the EU.

The Transformation of the Alliance German NATO policy continued in this vein after the end of the East-​West conflict. The Two plus Four Treaty enabled a unified Germany to remain in NATO by affirming the right of the Federal Republic to join an alliance of its choice. Germany continued to support NATO's integrated command structure and US leadership in maintaining Euro-​Atlantic security. This was hardly surprising, given that Berlin was more dependent than other member states on the alliance for military planning and, moreover, had no interest in questioning its participation in NATO. This would have exacerbated the fears of its European allies that a united Germany might take a national path in foreign policy and become a threat to its neighbours. Just as the resolution of the ‘German Question’ resulted in a deepening of the European integration process, it also led to a reaffirmation of Germany’s security integration into the North Atlantic alliance.

592   Markus Kaim Within this political framework, German security policy followed the alliance’s adaptation process, which had become inevitable with the end of the East-​West conflict and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact on 1 April 1991. This had several aspects: First, NATO played an important role in the security transformation of Central Eastern Europe; second, Germany focused on integrating Russia into the structures of pan-​European security; third, the alliance gained a stronger profile in conflict management in the Euro-​ Atlantic periphery and—​with the Afghanistan mission—​beyond.

Enlargement After the end of the East-​West conflict, German policy-​makers recognized very early on that the security of Germany’s Eastern neighbours was in the vital interest of the Federal Republic and so spoke out earlier and more clearly than other NATO members in favour of their rapprochement with the alliance. Thus, the German government supported the decision of the June 1990 NATO summit to seek diplomatic contacts with Warsaw Pact members, thus initiating the transformation process that eventually culminated in full NATO membership of many of these countries since 1999. However, this decision was far from unanimous. The United States in particular struggled with this approach for a long time as a sizeable group of US politicians argued at the time that the expansion of NATO would weaken reformist forces in Russia and strengthen the reactionary ones (Asmus, 2004). German policymakers, on the other hand, advocated NATO’s eastward expansion (and EU enlargement alike) from the beginning. The states of Central Eastern Europe were to be offered a firm institutional framework for their security transformation and their rapprochement with the ‘West’. Without anchoring in NATO and the EU, the states between Germany and Russia would have existed in an ‘intermediate Europe’ with unforeseeable political and military consequences (Arora, 2006; Szabo, 2006). In March 1993, then-​German Defence Minister Volker Rühe became the first Western politician to speak publicly in favour of NATO enlargement. He stressed that the Atlantic alliance must not become a ‘closed shop’ and stated that he did not see a single good reason to deny NATO membership to future members of the EU. Thus, Rühe saw the opening of NATO as a prerequisite for the integration of Europe (Rühe, 2019). With the admission of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary to NATO in March 1999, the new Euro-​Atlantic security architecture began to take shape. Five years later, in 2004, seven more countries joined the alliance. The big winners were the Central Europeans, who had belonged to the Eastern bloc against their will and could now finally exercise their right to self-​determination—​and Germany. Only now were the decades over in which it had been the Eastern frontline state of the alliance (and the GDR the Western frontline state of the Warsaw Pact). Since then, Germany has been surrounded by allies, for the first time in centuries.

GERMANY AND NATO    593 Moreover, German policy from the outset aimed to ensure that the enlargement of the alliance would not be at the expense of relations with Russia. Increased cooperation with Moscow was intended to support the democratization and economic transformation of NATO’s Central and Eastern European members and thus contribute to the peaceful unification of Europe. This explains why the German government also supported the alliance’s second round of enlargement only half-​heartedly: On the one hand, the admission of the Baltic States seemed to jeopardize relations with Russia; on the other hand, the German government preferred the politically less controversial integration into the EU, which increasingly fulfilled the same functions that NATO accession once had. While Germany supported the candidates’ rapprochement with NATO, the decisive political initiative for the second enlargement at the 2002 Prague summit came from the US.

NATO-​Russia Relations Until the Ukraine crisis in 2014, NATO pursued an ambitious agenda in its relations with Russia. Within the alliance, Germany in particular had advocated a cooperative approach towards Moscow. The political framework for their bilateral relationship is the ‘Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation’ of May 1997. In this document, which reflects the cooperative spirit of the 1990s, the two sides not only agreed on numerous areas of cooperation, but also described their view of each other. NATO and Russia no longer defined each other as adversaries, but aimed to build a ‘strong, stable and enduring partnership’. Moreover, in return for NATO’s enlargement, which had already begun, Moscow was given political assurances that—​under the circumstances prevailing at that time—​the alliance would not transfer nuclear weapons or deploy substantial numbers of troops to its new member states (Rühle, 2014). In 2002 the two sides further deepened their cooperation by establishing the NATO-​ Russia Council (NRC), which allowed NATO members and Russia to discuss a wide range of security issues. Finally, bilateral cooperation enjoyed high priority in NATO’s 2010 Strategic Concept. In it, NATO governments defined cooperative security in the Euro-​Atlantic area (i.e. security cooperation with non-​NATO countries) as the alliance’s third core mission, among collective defence and crisis management. However, relations between Russia and NATO have deteriorated since 2014. Because Russia annexed Crimea and destabilized Eastern Ukraine, NATO has suspended cooperation. Even more serious than the temporary end of practical cooperation is the massive loss of trust and the revival of traditional threat perceptions, especially in some East-​Central European countries. The fact that NATO’s wish for a strategic partnership did not come true was not only due to the continuing power asymmetry between the US and Russia but above all, to the lack of a stable basis of common interests. Moreover, there is no common vision of what bilateral relations and the desired Euro-​Atlantic

594   Markus Kaim security order should look like. Moscow claims the right to veto all important security issues on the continent. Moreover, the Russian leadership demands that the post-​Soviet space be recognized as Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence. This cannot be accepted by the alliance because it contradicts fundamental principles, such as the right to choose one’s alliance freely, as laid down in the Charter of Paris of 1990. The alliance has responded to the Russian action aggression against Ukraine with the most far-​reaching military reform since the end of the Cold War, aimed at strengthening and adapting its defence capabilities. As a result, collective defence has once again become a core mission: The Readiness Action Plan (RAP) adopted at the Wales Summit in 2014 contained reassurance and adaptation measures. With reassurance, for example through more exercises and increased airspace surveillance, the alliance is signalling to its members that they can rely on NATO’s promise of support. As part of the adaptation, the alliance is increasing its operational readiness and response capability, for example through a new rapid reaction force in Eastern Europe (Kaim and Klein, 2014). Germany is actively participating in this policy: At the beginning of 2017, NATO began deploying battle groups to Poland and the Baltic States. This ‘Enhanced Forward Presence’ (EFP) serves to secure the Eastern European states and deter threats to the alliance area. The four multinational battle groups each consist of 1,000 troops reinforcing the host nation forces. Each of these formations is led by a framework nation—​Great Britain, Canada, the US, and Germany. In this context, Berlin has assumed the leadership of the battlegroup in Lithuania. Currently some 500 members of the Bundeswehr are deployed to strengthen multinational cooperation and joint defence readiness (Glatz and Zapfe, 2016). Germany also plays a key role in the build-​up of the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF). This so-​called spearhead of NATO is an essential contribution of the alliance to deterrence and defence in Europe. It is characterized by a high level of readiness and responsiveness—​it should be able to be deployed wherever it is needed within 48 to 72 hours. For 2023, Germany will take over the VJTF as lead nation and provide up to 2,700 soldiers. At the same time, however, it has been a concern of Germany to continue the dialogue with Russia and to maintain the institutions necessary for this purpose. For this reason, the Merkel government has rejected calls by some NATO members to terminate the NATO-​Russia Founding Act or to permanently suspend NRC meetings. Germany has always argued that such institutions were created precisely for difficult political times and that they should be preserved for better ones. The situation in Ukraine has been a topic at NRC meetings ever since. Russia and NATO have also briefed each other on upcoming exercise plans. This kind of exchange should help reduce the risk of misunderstandings and misperceptions. Moreover, from Germany’s perspective, dialogue with Russia remains central to restoring transparency and reducing risks in a European security environment that has changed significantly after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The Merkel government also sought to strike a balance within NATO on another issue, namely whether Ukraine and Georgia should receive a Membership Action Plan (MAP). On this issue, there had been two camps within the alliance since the Bucharest

GERMANY AND NATO    595 summit in 2008: In the eyes of Washington and many Eastern European NATO members, Russia was pursuing a hegemonic policy based on the establishment of zones of influence. Moscow accepted neither NATO’s core values nor the territorial status quo in Europe. Cooperation with Russia was therefore limited, and a Russian veto on the admission of new members to NATO would not be acceptable under any circumstances. Against this background, the Bush administration supported the admission of Ukraine and Georgia. Germany took a different view—​the Merkel government argued for consideration of Russian interests and favoured close ties between Moscow and NATO. While Berlin welcomed the admission of Croatia and Albania, it has since rejected the invitation of Ukraine and Georgia to join the MAP. Germany thus reaffirmed its traditional position of supporting the alliance’s ‘open door’ policy as long as this did not lead to irreparable damage to relations with Russia. Negotiations between these two camps resulted in a compromise. On the one hand, the two countries were not offered admission to the MAP; on the other, the final declaration of the Bucharest summit stated that Ukraine and Georgia would be members of the alliance one day and that their efforts in this regard were welcomed. US observers in particular have interpreted this episode as an expression of a fundamental transatlantic conflict and have accused Germany of transforming itself from a reliable ally into an ally ‘that has blocked US goals on almost every important issue’ (Bandler and Mitchell, 2009, p. 76). However, this interpretation overlooks the fact that the consideration of Russian interests has been a constant of German NATO policy since the end of the Cold War. It is true, however, that German NATO policy has been increasingly willing to assert German interests in the alliance at the expense of transatlantic unity (Schreer, 2009).

NATO Operations Beginning with the Balkan operations in the 1990s, NATO redefined its purpose and expanded its mandate to include crisis management outside the alliance area and on behalf of the United Nations. This shift was formally codified in NATO's official mission statement, the ‘Strategic Concept’ published at the 2010 Lisbon Summit: ‘Crises and conflicts beyond NATO’s borders can pose a direct threat to the security of Alliance territory and populations. NATO will therefore engage, where possible and when necessary, to prevent crises, manage crises, stabilize post-​conflict situations and support reconstruction’ (NATO, 2010, p. 19). Since then, NATO has officially ceased to be an alliance focused strictly on collective defence and has taken up the cause of conflict management, if necessary, using military force mandated by the UN. Germany was initially sceptical of NATO's conflict management operations, as its first post-​World War II military deployments in the early 1990s were largely limited to supporting United Nations humanitarian missions. Although these operations were explicitly designated as non-​combatant, they had nonetheless generated considerable controversy in Germany, where the country was already debating the purpose of its armed

596   Markus Kaim forces. Legally, it was not until the Federal Constitutional Court's ruling in July 1994 that it was clarified under what conditions Germany could participate in international operations that did not serve national or collective defence. Today, these missions are possible in a multilateral format (NATO/​EU/​UN), must be mandated by both the UN and the German parliament, and are primarily an expression of solidarity with allies. Regional or conflict-​specific considerations, on the other hand, now play only a subordinate role. German involvement in post-​ Cold War NATO interventions—​ in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Libya—​has ranged from reluctant participation to outright abstention. Germany has never really embraced the idea of NATO deployments outside NATO territory, but it lacks a coherent alternative strategy to deal with crises in the Euro-​Atlantic periphery. Berlin’s historically rooted aversion to military intervention, combined with the legal hurdles posed by its constitution, has contributed to this strategic incoherence and made German participation in NATO operations difficult (Keller, 2012). Although fundamental opposition to expeditionary operations is a thing of the past, German governments’ room for manoeuvre is severely limited. According to surveys, public support for out-​of-​area operations of the armed forces is continuously unstable and by no means unconditional: The German population favours the deployment of the Bundeswehr for reconstruction and stabilization purposes, but not for combat operations. This explains the rapid decline in public approval when a deployment fails to achieve its objectives or even, as in Afghanistan, when the security situation in the country deteriorates significantly. In this context, the general aversion to Bundeswehr participation in combat operations is largely due to the unwillingness of the Bundestag to support a mission when it is designated as a combat mission. For example, during the thirteen years of ISAF (2001-​14), German governments under Chancellors Schröder and Merkel sought to downplay the Afghanistan mission by avoiding the terms war or combat. Instead, they have referred to the mission as reconstruction, stabilization, or peacekeeping. Although these terms also appear in several NATO documents, the reality on the ground was quite different, namely that German troops had been involved in fighting a Taliban insurgency for years, a fact that Berlin was reluctant to acknowledge. Overall, this domestic situation led to an ambivalent Afghanistan policy in Germany, which on the one hand showed great civilian engagement, but on the other resisted demands from its Western partners to take greater military risks in Afghanistan and thus share the burden of the mission more equitably. At times, this not only undermined Germany's role as a loyal ally of the US, but also called into question the credibility of alliance commitments as a whole (Kaim, 2008). The accusation that Berlin was shying away from military risks in Afghanistan being already a heavy burden on German NATO policy, the Libya crisis in spring 2011 only made things worse. In March 2011, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973, which called for the establishment of a no-​fly zone to protect civilians against Muammar Gaddafi’s violent repression of the Libyan protest movement. While France, the UK, and the US voted in favour of a no-​fly zone, Berlin abstained, siding with states such as

GERMANY AND NATO    597 Russia and China. Moreover, the German government refused to participate in the subsequent multinational military operation to implement the resolution and withdrew all Bundeswehr soldiers from NATO-​led operations in the Mediterranean. The following NATO mission, Operation Unified Protector, also took place without German participation. This German ‘Sonderweg’ in the Libya intervention not only drew harsh criticism from within Germany, but also severely damaged the trust of the allies (Ischinger, 2012).

Germany in NATO—​Future Challenges After the end of the Cold War, the developments of NATO and German security and defence policy took familiar paths. Bonn (and later Berlin) followed the different aspects of NATO's transformation with the necessary processes at the national level. Although Germany's adaptation to the changed international environment was closely linked to the alliance's transformation, differences remain among NATO members on the future development of the alliance. This finding is not per se a warning sign of transatlantic alienation, and conflicts over certain issues are not in themselves anything new within the alliance. However, the international and domestic context for these conflicts has changed. For in a multipolar world in which NATO faces new and old geopolitical rivals, its political unity and the alliance's ability to act have become hard currency in international relations. As a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Germany to mediate between the existing camps within the alliance while still pursuing German interests in Brussels. This will be illustrated in the following with three examples: the relationship of NATO and the security dimension of the EU, the issue of burden sharing within the alliance, and the future of nuclear sharing.

NATO and EU`s Common Security and Defence Policy During the Cold War a security role for Western Europe was conceivable only within the framework of transatlantic security relations, i.e. in NATO and thus under US leadership. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequent disappearance of the common threat it posed, EU members began to develop a security institution without the US. This development continued throughout the 1990s, and in 1999 the crucial agreement on the creation of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) was reached. Although still a less robust and well-​defined security organization than NATO, the EU took steps in 2009 to further strengthen CSDP. The Lisbon Treaty contains language which calls for continued cooperation between member states for common

598   Markus Kaim defence via ‘solidarity’ and ‘mutual assistance’ clauses. However, it includes the caveat that ‘commitments and cooperation in this area shall be consistent with commitments under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which, for those States which are members of it, remains the foundation of their collective defence and the forum for its implementation’ (Hauser, 2013). To date, CSDP has been somewhat subordinate to NATO, as the alliance NATO retains the right of first refusal to deal with a crisis before the EU might take action. Nevertheless, the EU has conducted approximately thirty missions over the past fifteen years in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. According to the guidelines of the European Security Strategy adopted by the EU in 2003, all CSDP missions should be deployed as part of a comprehensive approach, encompassing civilian and military elements. As a mechanism for projecting military force, or ‘hard power’, the CSDP has had only limited success. Three main weaknesses have emerged in the implementation of CSDP. The first is a distinct lack of agreement among EU member states on an overall strategy. This lack of unity is responsible for the EU’s frequent inaction, whether in developing more sophisticated policies or in responding quickly and effectively to crises. The second vulnerability is a set of capability gaps which have become obvious in recent years, notably during the crises in Libya and Mali. Finally, there has been a lack of permanent and effective coordination with NATO as the EU’s strategic partner. If one follows the political rhetoric, Germany seems determined to develop the EU into a genuine security provider in international relations, and the Merkel government has taken some important steps in this regard (Iso-​Markku and Müller-​Brandeck-​ Bocquet, 2020). However, the concrete measures—​further developing CSDP structures, integrating civilian and military capabilities, and strengthening Europe’s defence industry—​are largely intergovernmental in nature, which significantly reduces effectiveness in this policy area. Since the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court on the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, it has also become clear that the integration of the Bundeswehr into a European army would have to overcome high hurdles. Not only would this require a constitutional amendment explicitly stipulating the renunciation of state sovereignty, but it would also have to be approved by a referendum. However, whether other European governments, such as those of Poland or France, are pursuing a supranational vision of a "Europe of defence" at all must be seriously doubted, e.g. in continuity with his predecessors French President Macron has emphasized that Europe will never replace national defence policies. Rather, he speaks of a ‘Europe of defence’ that is to focus first and foremost on improving military capabilities. Likewise, there is no consensus on the level of ambition, i.e. for which tasks the EU military capabilities should be further developed. Germany has supported several CSDP missions over the past decade. However, when these have involved the threat or use of military force, Berlin has taken only a subordinate role. Instead, the Merkel government has focused on strengthening local security forces and building civilian capabilities in various crises. Moreover, it has become clear that, from the German point of view, the ESDP must not be conceptualized as a counterweight to the US, but rather as an instrument to expand European influence within the

GERMANY AND NATO    599 alliance and to strengthen the ‘European pillar’ of NATO (Rynning, 2017; Bunde, 2021). For this reason, Berlin has not shared recent French proposals of ‘strategic autonomy’ or ‘European sovereignty’, or has done so only half-​heartedly. In contrast to the French leadership, Berlin also always regarded the Trump administration as an exception to the rule and was confident that the US would return to its traditional role as a European security provider after the end of Donald Trump’s term in office (Gotkowska, 2020). In this respect, Germany can feel vindicated: Since the "rediscovery" of the alliance with the inauguration of Joe Biden, there has also been a noticeable rapprochement between the transatlantic partners. Unlike his predecessor, President Biden has consistently underscored the value of NATO to US foreign policy and the importance he places on allies, coordinating with the alliance on several key issues. Biden's most important message for NATO is that the US needs partners and alliances in the world today and that America has no closer allies than the Europeans to solve global problems. The more credibly the Biden administration pursues this policy and the more seriously it coordinates its security interests with Berlin, the weaker German support for CSDP will become.

Burden-​Sharing The need for Germany to do more in its strategic environment entered the broader public discourse with the 2014 Munich Security Conference. In their speeches then-​ Federal President Gauck, then-​Foreign Minister Steinmeier, and then-​Defence Minister von der Leyen pointed out that, in view of its increased geo-​economic weight and interdependence in a globalized world, Germany needed to take a more active role on the world stage and assume more responsibility in international affairs. A ‘culture of restraint’ that has grown out of the historical experiences of the Federal Republic must not be allowed to become a ‘culture of staying out’. Instead, Germany must be prepared to engage earlier, more decisively, and more substantially in foreign and security policy (Giegerich and Terhalle, 2016). This claim was put to the test a short time later by the security upheavals in the European neighbourhood, especially Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and its support for separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine These developments prompted NATO allies to increase pressure on Berlin to translate its economic strength into a more engaged role in foreign and security policy as well. Looking at the last few years, it certainly seems that Germany is willing to comply with these demands in NATO: In 2013 Berlin provided a conceptual contribution with the Framework Nation Concept (FNC) to address the shortfalls in the military capabilities of the European NATO allies through more effective defence cooperation. To this end, the German proposal called for European nations to join together in so-​called ‘clusters’: smaller nations, each with its own specialized military capabilities, join a larger framework nation that also contributes its capabilities, coordinates cooperation within the multinational group and provides basic logistics or infrastructure. This pooling is intended to preserve key

600   Markus Kaim military capabilities and strengthen the European contribution within NATO (Glatz and Zapfe, 2017). Germany itself has led an FNC grouping since 2014 as a framework nation with twenty-​one participating nations now. In addition to Germany, fifteen other both NATO and EU member states are represented. In addition, there are Switzerland, Norway as a NATO member state, and Austria, Finland, and Sweden as EU members. Another example is German defence spending. At the 2014 NATO Summit in Wales, those allies whose defence spending as a share of GDP is currently below the benchmark of at least 2 per cent of their GDP have committed to increase defence spending in line with GDP growth and move toward the 2 per cent benchmark within ten years to close NATO’s capability gaps. The lack of adequate burden-​sharing in the alliance, in which the US accounts for more than 70 per cent of defence spending, has been decried by previous US governments, but under President Donald Trump the pressure has become particularly intense. Germany was still at only 1.57 per cent in 2020, but has made significant progress in this area in recent years (2018: 1.23 per cent; 2019: 1.36 per cent), partly due to pressure from the Trump administration. And even the counter-​arguments put forward by German politicians do not simply amount to evading financial responsibility: For historical reasons, Germany has been reluctant to engage in military force in the post-​Cold War era. Both internally and at the European level, there has been little desire for Germany to match its continental economic dominance with military power (Rynning, 2013). There is also a perception that reducing NATO contributions to a crude GDP rubric neglects more vital questions of complexity and efficiency. Even if the goal is fully met, critics argue, a target such as a percentage of GDP says nothing about force size, operational capability, readiness, modernization, or interoperability (Krause, 2019). How the Covid-​19 pandemic will effect transatlantic burden-​sharing must remain an open question at this point. Not only in Berlin, but also in many other European capitals, there is talk of budget cuts after the end of the acute crisis. These could also affect Germany’s ability to act in security policy, especially in the form of cuts in the defence budget. Whether these fears will materialize cannot be predicted with certainty at this point in time, especially since the transatlantic debate on fair burden-​sharing is also a factor working in the opposite direction (Morcos, 2020).

Nuclear Sharing Germany, whose territory would have been the predestined battleground of a war in the days of the East-​West conflict, has an essential interest in exerting influence, however limited, on NATO’s nuclear planning as determined by the US. However, the privileged role that Germany held in NATO nuclear planning at the time of the East-​West conflict, compared to other non-​nuclear weapon states, is a thing of the past. Nevertheless, Germany continues to participate in NATO’s nuclear deterrence posture through ‘nuclear sharing’. This is because the alliance declares itself to be a ‘nuclear alliance’ and

GERMANY AND NATO    601 wants to maintain nuclear deterrence as long as nuclear weapons exist. The ability to use US nuclear bombs stored in Germany with German aircraft is therefore to remain seamlessly guaranteed according to the official policy of the German government (Meier, 2016). Meanwhile, the Tornado bombers intended for this task are obsolete and are to be replaced from 2022 onwards by new aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Germany’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear sharing arrangements would negatively affect European security, in particular NATO’s Eastern flank. From a military point of view NATO’s nuclear sharing in its present form is losing importance due to the operational advantages of other nuclear weapons delivery systems. From the political perspective, however, nuclear sharing is still important for the credibility of nuclear deterrence in Europe and for NATO’s cohesion. Berlin’s withdrawal from the programme, together with the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Germany, would be perceived by Russia as a sign of a serious US–​European split. Within the government and even within the Social Democrats, who are part of it, this procurement question has sparked controversy. In May 2020, a heated debate about Germany’s future participation in NATO’s nuclear sharing kicked off, when the chairman of Germany’s Social Democratic party parliamentary group gave an interview, in which he advocated for a withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Germany and an end to Berlin’s participation in NATO's nuclear sharing, calling it a relic of the Cold War. At the same time, he did not, however, question the need for NATO’s nuclear deterrent and for the US nuclear umbrella over Europe. Germany, he claimed, would continue to actively shape NATO’s policy in the Nuclear Planning Group. He was supported by the SPD leadership, but his proposal was rejected by the SPD members of parliament responsible for security and defence policy, as well as the then-​Foreign Minister and SPD member Heiko Maas (Gavras et al., 2020). Whether Germany continues its previous role with new nuclear weapons-​capable aircraft or ‘only’ participates in the consultations within NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group, as do all NATO member states except France—​in the long run German politics will hardly be able to escape the debate on nuclear deterrence which is intensively conducted in the US and radiates into NATO but which is also brought to Germany from the French side. Politically, the desire to avoid a concrete discussion about nuclear deterrence by pointing out that the use of nuclear weapons is an unlikely option is understandable. However, this alone is not helpful for the upcoming NATO discussions on the issues and problems associated with nuclear deterrence (Rudolf, 2020).

Conclusion In its sixteen years in office, the Merkel government has largely followed the basic lines of German NATO policy, even though the alliance`s priorities have changed considerably since 2005: The era of major stabilization missions appears to be coming to an end. In contrast, collective defence once again enjoys unchallenged priority in NATO

602   Markus Kaim capitals. The alliance continues to address instability in its Southern periphery, train security forces in Iraq, counter attacks from cyberspace, and develop counter-​disinformation measures aimed at influencing decision-​making in NATO countries. In addition to its role as a military alliance, NATO has recently regained importance as a transatlantic consultation forum, in which any issue of security concern might be discussed. Building consensus in this regard is a key challenge for the alliance, which now has thirty members. Mediation between the different camps is therefore becoming increasingly difficult. Berlin now faces the challenge of balancing interests not only between the traditional antagonists Paris and Washington, but also between the new and old members of the alliance, especially with regard to Russia, as different geographic locations of NATO members also leads to different security interests, priorities, and strategies. More so than in previous decades, German NATO policy has also formulated its own positions and made its dissent with others clear, even if this has sometimes made consensus-​building within the alliance more difficult. The insistence on its own foreign policy priorities is above all the consequence of a certain normalization of German foreign and security policy, which no longer regards its NATO policy as simply following Washington. However, there is little to suggest that this behaviour represents a fundamental shift away from Germany's commitment to transatlantic security cooperation; on the contrary, after the difficult years of the Trump era, the Merkel government repeatedly defined NATO as an indispensable cornerstone of transatlantic relations and a pillar of German security policy in the final months of its term, gratefully echoing comparable signals from President Biden while repeatedly underscoring the importance of the US for European security. Meanwhile, NATO faces its next phase of transformation and adaptation. In doing so, it will have to address a complex mix of traditional and novel challenges through the strategic documents that will accompany and mark this evolution: The world of the next ten years will be very different than the world that the Alliance inhabited either during the Cold War or the decades that immediately followed. It will be a world of competing great powers, in which assertive authoritarian states with revisionist foreign policy agendas seek to expand their power and influence, and in which NATO Allies will once again face a systemic challenge cutting across the domains of security and economics. Well-​known threats like terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations will persist, even as new risks loom from pandemics and climate change, and as emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs) present both dangers and opportunities for the Alliance. (NATO, 2020)

The drafting of the alliance`s new strategic concept commissioned by the NATO summit in June 2021 will be about developing visions for the future of NATO as a political as well as military organization. It remains to be seen how actively Berlin will participate in the drafting of this document. It is already clear, however, these issues will have to be discussed in this framework that will trigger controversy in the alliance, but

GERMANY AND NATO    603 also in Germany as well—​the future of nuclear sharing, NATO’s strategy vis-​à-​vis a rising China, and the shaping of relations with Russia are just three of them. Above all, however, Berlin must set out its vision of Europe’s future role in the alliance and thus flesh out what it means to ‘become more European in order to remain transatlantic’.

Further Reading Dyson, Tom (2007), The Politics of German Defense and Security. Policy Leadership and Military Reform in the Post-​Cold War Era (New York: Berghahn Books). Rhodes, Matthew (2018), ‘Germany and the United States: Whither “Partners in Leadership”?’, German Politics and Society 36(3), pp. 23–​40. Rudolf, Peter (2020), Deutschland, die Nato und die nukleare Abschreckung (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik). Overhaus, Marco (2009), Die deutsche NATO Politik: Vom Ende des Kalten Krieges bis zum Kampf gegen den Terrorismus (Baden-​Baden: Nomos). Varwick, Johannes (2008), Die NATO: Vom Verteidigungsbündnis zur Weltpolizei?, (München: C.H. Beck).

Bibliography Arora, Chaya (2006), Germany’s Civilian Power Diplomacy. NATO Expansion and the Art of Communicative Action (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Asmus, Ronald D. (2004), Opening NATO’s Door. How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era (New York: Columbia University Press). Bandler, Donald/​Mitchell, Wess (2009), ‘Immer dieser Michel: Washington, Berlin und der Streit um die NATO-​Erweiterung’, Internationale Politik 64(3), pp. 76–​9. Bundesministerium der Verteidigung (2016), Weißbuch 2016 zur Sicherheitspolitik und zur Zukunft der Bundeswehr (Berlin: BMVg). Bunde, Tobias (2021), ‘Defending European Integration by (Symbolically) Integrating European Defence? Germany and its Ambivalent Role in European Security and Defence Policy’, Journal of European Integration 43(2), pp. 245–​61. Gavras, Konstantin, Thomas J. Scotto, Jason Reifler, Stephanie Hofmann, Catarina Thomson, Matthias Mader, and Harald Schoen (2020), NATO and CSDP: Party and Public Positioning in Germany and France (Rome: Nato Defense College). Giegerich, Bastian and Maximilian Terhalle (2016), ‘The Munich Consensus and the Purpose of German Power’, Survival 58(2), pp. 155–​66. Glatz, Rainer and Martin Zapfe (2016), NATO Defence Planning between Wales and Warsaw. Politico-​ Military Challenges of a Credible Assurance against Russia (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik). Glatz, Rainer and Martin Zapfe (2017), Ambitious Framework Nation: Germany in NATO. Bundeswehr Capability Planning and the ‘Framework Nations Concept’ (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik). Gotkowska, Justyna (2020), European Strategic Autonomy or European Pillar in NATO? Germany’s Stance on French Initiatives (Warsaw: Centre for Eastern Studies).

604   Markus Kaim Hauser, Gunther (2013), ‘The Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Challenges after “Lisbon” ’, in Sven Bernhard Gareis, Arno Tausch, and Gustav Lindström, (eds): The European Union—​A Global Actor? (Opladen: Budrich), pp. 49–​51. Ischinger, Wolfgang (2012), ‘Germany after Libya. Still a Responsible Power?’, in Kori Schake, François Heisbourg, and Tomas Valasek (eds), All alone? What US Retrenchment Means for Europe and NATO (London: Centre for European Reform), pp. 45–​59. Iso-​ Markku, Tuomas and Gisela Müller-​ Brandeck-​ Bocquet (2020), ‘Towards German Leadership? Germany’s Evolving Role and the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy’, German Politics 29(1), pp. 59–​78. Kaim, Markus (2007), ‘Die deutsche NATO-​Politik’, in Thomas Jäger, Alexander Höse, and Kai Oppermann (eds), Deutsche Außenpolitik. Sicherheit, Wohlfahrt, Institutionen, Normen (Wiesbaden: VS), pp. 87–​105. Kaim, Markus (2008), ‘Germany, Afghanistan and the Future of NATO’, International Journal 63(3), pp. 607–​23. Kaim, Markus and Margarete Klein (2014), NATO-​ Russia Relations after the Newport Summit: Reassurance, Cooperation and Security Guarantees (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik). Keller, Patrick (2012), ‘Germany in NATO: The Status Quo Ally’, Survival 54(3), pp. 95–​110. Keller, Patrick (2018), ‘Bedingt schockresistent. Zur Sicherheitspolitik der Regierung Donald Trumps, Internationale Politik 73(3), pp. 98–​102. Kramp-​Karrenbauer, Annegret (2020a), Europe Still Needs America. No Matter Who Is in the White House, We Are in This Together, (Brussels: Politico), 2 November 2020. accessed 28 July 2021 at . Kramp-​Karrenbauer, Annegret (2020b), Zweite Grundsatzrede der Verteidigungsministerin, (BMVg: Berlin), 17 November 2020. accessed 28 July 2021 at . Krause, Ulf von (2019), Das Zwei-​Prozent-​Ziel der NATO und die Bundeswehr. Zur aktuellen Debatte um die deutschen Verteidigungsausgaben (Wiesbaden: Springer). Meier, Oliver (2016), Germany and the Role of Nuclear Weapons. Between Prohibition and Revival (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik). Morcos, Pierre (2020), Toward a New ‘Lost Decade’? Covid-​19 and Defense Spending in Europe (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies). NATO (2010), Active Engagement, Modern Defence. Strategic Concept for the Defence and Security of the Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; Adopted by Heads of State and Government at the NATO Summit in Lisbon, 19–​20 November 2010 (Brussels: NATO). NATO (2020), NATO 2030: United for a New Era. Analysis and Recommendations of the Reflection Group Appointed by the NATO Secretary General (Brussels: NATO). Rhodes, Matthew (2018), ‘Germany and the United States: Whither “Partners in Leadership”?’, German Politics and Society 36(3), pp. 23–​40. Rudolf, Peter (2020), Deutschland, die Nato und die nukleare Abschreckung (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik). Rühe, Volker (2019), ‘Opening NATO’s Door’, in Daniel S. Hamilton and Kristina Spohr (eds), Open Door: NATO and Euro-​Atlantic Security after the Cold War (Washington DC: Johns Hopkins University), pp. 217–​33. Rühle, Michael (2014), NATO Enlargement and Russia (Rome: NATO Defense College)

GERMANY AND NATO    605 Rynning, Sten (2013), Germany is More than Europe Can Handle: Or, Why NATO Remains a Pacifier (Rome: NATO Defense College). Rynning, Sten (2017), ‘The Divide: France, Germany and Political NATO’, International Affairs 93(2), pp. 267–​89. Schreer, Benjamin (2009), ‘A New “Pragmatism”: Germany’s NATO Policy’, International Journal 64(2), pp. 383–​98. Szabo, Stephen F. (2006), ‘Enlarging NATO. The German-​American Design for a New Alliance’, in Helga Haftendorn, Georges-​Henri Soutou, Stephen F. Szabo, and Samuel F. Wells (eds), The Strategic Triangle. France, Germany, and the United States in the Shaping of the New Europe (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press), pp. 327–​49.

CHAPTER 33

G ERMAN-​A ME RI C A N REL ATIONS FROM 194 5 TO THE PRESE NT Klaus Schwabe

German-​American relations took a new turn as a result of the Second World War. They encompassed no longer the whole of the former ‘Reich’, but only its Western part. East Germany came under Soviet control. Because of the Cold War West Germany had to rely on American military protection based on nuclear superiority to fend off the superior conventional military manpower of the USSR. Security became West Germany’s major concern. Economic, financial, and cultural issues remained secondary. This essay focuses on the all-​important security aspects of German-​American relations within the changing context of a ‘benevolent’ American ‘Empire’ (Gassert, 2020, pp. 579–​94).

From Surrender to Statehood (1945–​55) In the twentieth century a single date marked a turning point in German-​American relations: 11 December 1941, the day when Nazi Germany declared war against the US, suddenly transforming it into a ‘European power’, while Hitler posed as the exclusive protector of the European ‘authoritarian states’. President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the destruction of Hitler’s Europe his military priority. Eventually, mostly American troops liberated the Western and Southern parts of Europe. Much earlier the US government had committed itself after the war to help keeping Germany under tight control. After all, the ‘German problem’—​essentially the 80 million Germans who still had the strongest economic capacity in Europe—​remained despite the demise of Hitler’s empire. Potentially, Washington was convinced, the Germans continued to be a threat to their neighbours. Until German reunification in 1990 and beyond, this initial impulse guided American policy in Europe.

GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS FROM 1945 TO THE PRESENT    607 Shortly after victory the four occupying powers agreed to treat Germany as an administrative unit to be de-​nazified, demilitarized, and democratized, thus being prevented from becoming another threat to peace. Defeated Germany was divided into four zones of occupation with each assigned to one of the occupying powers. As the administrative capital for all of Germany (excluding its Polish-​occupied Eastern provinces), Berlin, located in the midst of the Soviet zone, became the seat of an Allied Control Council and was itself submitted to four-​power rule. The initial plan to coordinate the victors’ German policies soon proved unrealizable; the Soviet zone was transformed into a communist satellite. In early 1946 the first serious Cold War crisis broke out in the Middle East. With this context in mind US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, in September 1946, asked for the economic and political rehabilitation of Germany—​and if unavoidable without Soviet participation. The status of the Polish-​occupied parts of Germany was to be left open (Restatement of Policy in Germany, 6 September 1946, in Küsters, 2000, p. 289). In early 1948, the Soviets left the Allied Control Council and for nine months imposed a blockade on non-​communist West Berlin hoping to get all of Berlin under their control. To the Germans, mere objects of this development, the danger of a division of their country seemed to be looming on the horizon. Indeed, the US government eventually had included West Germany alone into the Marshall Plan for American financial aid to Western Europe. Ever closer American-​German commercial and financial cooperation followed. Decades later, under the administration of Richard Nixon and afterwards, this relationship underwent some serious crises resulting from a growing American trade deficit and payment imbalance vis-​à-​vis Germany (Larres, 2022). In the long run, however, it continued to offer immense economic advantages to American-​German trade—​a ‘stroke of good luck’ for export-​oriented West Germany. Having become an integral part of America’s global trade ‘hegemony’ proved to be highly advantageous (Gassert, 2020, p. 589). In the meantime, as a reaction to the Soviet blockade of West Berlin, the German image of America, West Germany’s new protector against the USSR, began to improve. The division of Germany was completed when a West German Federal Republic (‘the Bonn Republic’) was founded on 23 May 1949, albeit subject to a rigid Western allied ‘occupation statute’. As it turned out, this was a highly successful attempt at nation-​ building. Not accidentally, a little earlier in April 1949, the NATO Treaty had been signed committing the US to a European role of ‘double containment’. It was the containment of both actual Soviet expansion and potential German superiority. A few months later the Soviet Union proclaimed an (East) ‘German Democratic Republic’ (GDR). The division of Germany was accomplished and dominated American-​German relations until 1990 (Schwabe, 2011b, pp. 180–​202). The newly founded Bonn Republic pursued the three objectives of gaining control over its own domestic and foreign affairs, attaining full international equality and respectability (Gleichberechtigung) and bringing about German unification. As Konrad Adenauer, the future West German Chancellor, had recognized at an early stage, to attain these priorities required America’s sustained support. West Germany had to adjust to the American model of multilateral international relations and cooperation,

608   Klaus Schwabe not least to overcome European reservations vis-​à-​vis the former enemy and facilitate Germany’s international comeback (Schöllgen, 2013, pp. 29–​30; Schwarz, 1994, vol.1, pp. 55–​7). The American-​fostered multilateral model triumphed when on 9 May 1950, exactly five years after the allied victory, France, inspired by Jean Monnet and yielding to American prodding, announced the Schuman Plan for integrating the Western European coal and steel industries and thus to put an end to Franco-​German rivalry. From then on, up to the era of President Donald Trump, the US mostly though not always supported European integration as the best framework to co-​opt Germany into the West (Schwabe, 1998, pp. 37–​45; Schwabe, 2016, pp. 232–​58; Larres, 2022). For years the German Left, inspired by the charismatic Social Democratic party (SPD) leader Kurt Schumacher, was fiercely opposed to Adenauer’s pro-​Western commitment insisting as a priority on a permanent neutralization of a unified German nation that would become a part of a neutral European ‘Third Force’ in the East-​West conflict. The West German economic boom and the poor Soviet treatment of ‘their’ Germans made this neutralist alternative less popular. In the late 1950s this led to a pro-​Western reorientation of the SPD, even though some anti-​American neutralism lingered on as an alternative to Adenauer’s and his successors’ pro-​Western concept (Granieri, 2004, p. 144). In 1950 the Cold War adopted a military character: communist North Korea invaded the Western-​oriented southern half of the country. As an ominous parallel to the situation in Europe, the war in the Far East unleashed a panic in West Germany, especially once the GDR raised armed police forces. Top American generals demanded a West German contribution to a military containment of Soviet Russia in Europe. In August 1950 Adenauer joined them, partly because the American request made it possible for his government to dispose of the occupation regime in return for West German rearmament (Junker, 2004, vol.1, pp. 8–​9). France objected, however, and proposed a supranational European Defence Community (EDC) following the model of Monnet’s Schuman Plan as a framework for German rearmament. Negotiations dealing with that alternative dragged on for years until in 1954 the French parliament rejected it. With some American prodding, on 23 October 1954, the three Western allies and West Germany agreed on a German military contribution within NATO and the simultaneous offer of sovereignty to the Federal Republic except for issues related to West Berlin and German reunification (Loth, 2000, pp. 124–​40, 266–​93, 294–​334) .

Cold War and German Unification The validity of this agreement depended on full-​hearted US support through NATO. This was a commitment that henceforth dominated German-​American relations. Its implementation, however, became controversial, when during the early 1960s the US

GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS FROM 1945 TO THE PRESENT    609 replaced its strategy of ‘massive’ nuclear ‘retaliation’ in case of any Soviet aggression with the concept of a ‘flexible response’ to a Soviet military threat. If there was a military confrontation with Moscow, the US would only use nuclear weapons to protect West Germany as the ultimate last resort. The new strategy was tested during the course of a ‘second Berlin crisis’ in the years after 1958. It resulted from a Soviet ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of Western allied troops from West Berlin and in 1962 led to the construction of a Wall to seal off East Germany, including East Berlin, from the Federal Republic. This confrontation triggered a German-​American crisis of confidence. A ‘flexible response’, Adenauer feared, was insufficient to deter Soviet Russia from bringing West Berlin under its control. Without consulting the Adenauer government it seemed that the US under President John F. Kennedy had reacted too weakly to the Soviet challenge in Berlin by including attempts at an East-​West détente in the response to the Soviet threat. Adenauer viewed the crisis as a matter of life and death and felt betrayed. In early 1963 he reacted by concluding a special Franco-​German treaty of friendship although Gaullist France had distanced itself from NATO (Trachtenberg, 1999, pp. 185–​90, 286–​99). Kennedy, alarmed by the prospect of a German desertion of NATO, saw to it that the Bonn parliament confirmed West Germany’s loyalty to NATO and thus disowned Adenauer. In order to comply with the German request to be consulted in matters of high strategy the US government under President Lyndon B. Johnson agreed to the creation of a ‘nuclear planning group’ which permitted German participation in strategic decisions of NATO (Schake, 2004, vol. 1, pp. 237–​9). Fighting a bloody war in Vietnam America simultaneously intensified its efforts to bring about a détente in Europe. Now headed by the SPD party leader and Chancellor Willy Brandt (1969–​74), the Bonn government followed suit. Under the motto of a ‘change through rapprochement’ West Germany initiated the conclusion of a series of treaties (‘Ostverträge’, 1970–​73). They combined a Soviet de facto recognition of West Berlin’s ties with the Federal Republic with a Western recognition of the GDR and a general renunciation of force in Europe. It was supplemented by a vague Soviet agreement to leave the door open for German reunification as a result of national self-​determination and peaceful change. After serious initial doubts America began to fully support the German version of détente, although it was fiercely opposed by the CDU (Smyser, 1999, pp. 255–​67). The Soviet government, eager to have sanctioned its Second World War gains by way of a similar all-​European agreement and thus to cement its rule in Eastern Europe, won the West over for its proposal. It had become palatable to the West as it paid lip service to a commitment to civil rights in all of Europe. Called the ‘Final Helsinki Act’, it was signed in August 1975 and obliged all signatories to adopt a policy of disarmament, détente, and peaceful change of the status quo in line with the principle of national self-​determination. By implication, it encompassed the possibility of German unification. The Helsinki Charter was the crowning achievement of a Western policy that pursued a credible détente along with a credible containment of Soviet power. Under

610   Klaus Schwabe President Jimmy Carter (1977–​81) and SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (1974–​82) this policy suffered a set-​back as the American President, in Schmidt’s eyes, lacked consistency in his policy of détente and deterrence. In line with all previous West German governments, Schmidt also suspected that the US, eager to promote American-​Soviet disarmament, sponsored a selective détente by singling out long-​range strategic nuclear weapons which threatened the US (SALT II), while ignoring the regional military security situation in Central Europe. European security appeared to be endangered by both Soviet superiority in conventional weapons, such as tanks, as well as by newly installed medium-​range nuclear weapons. For a while, Carter had hoped that neutron bombs would balance this disparity and had already won Schmidt over for the deployments of such weapons. He soon changed his mind, however, thus exposing Schmidt, not least in his own party, to massive protests against the development and deployment of these new weapons (Steininger, 2014, pp. 578–​606, 621–​3; Schwabe (2004), vol. 2, pp. 6–​8). Although let down by Carter, in December 1979 Schmidt secured the adoption by NATO of a so-​called ‘doubletrack decision’. This combined continued efforts at a NATO-​Soviet détente—​by attempting to persuade the USSR to give up its medium-​ range missiles—​with NATO-​sponsored preparations to station its own medium-​range missiles in Europe, just in case the USSR failed to comply. President Carter espoused the doubletrack decision, although he differed from Schmidt in openly supporting the rising anti-​communist Solidarność movement in Poland. In line with the American Congress, he also was opposed to a pet project of Bonn’s Social Democratic governments: a Soviet-​ sponsored natural gas pipeline connecting Siberia with Europe. Unable to win his party’s support for NATO’s doubletrack decision, which Schmidt himself had helped to bring about, the Chancellor was forced by his own party to resign. Progress proved possible after a CDU government led by new Chancellor Helmut Kohl (1982–​98) had taken over. Undaunted by huge Left-​wing mass demonstrations exposing strong anti-​American overtones, but strongly supported by US President Ronald Reagan (1981–​89), Kohl succeeded where Schmidt had failed: on 23 November 1983 he was able to muster a parliamentary majority in support of the doubletrack decision (Schwabe, 2011a, pp. 65–​94). Medium-​range nuclear weapons soon began to be deployed in Western Europe, above all in West Germany. In the long run, Kohl’s parliamentary victory helped to pave the way to genuine East-​West détente. At least in part, this was due to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s new leader since 1985, who embarked on a ‘Perestroika’, a programme of radical domestic reforms. Détente and disarmament were to assist him in implementing the renewal at home. At least partly to ease Cold War tensions, the new Soviet party leader withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan after Moscow had attempted to subjugate Russia’s Islamist neighbour for many years. Even more importantly, he yielded to Western pressure and proposed the mutual removal of intermediate-​range nuclear forces. Reagan supported this new departure and after several previous summits with

GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS FROM 1945 TO THE PRESENT    611 Gorbachev, on 8 December 1987 the two Superpowers agreed on an ‘INF Treaty’ which led to the mutual destruction of SS 20 missiles. Despite German-​American disagreements regarding short-​range missiles and conventional forces, in February 1989 a follow-​up meeting to the Helsinki conference agreed on negotiations, which aimed at a mutual reduction of conventional military forces in Europe. This commitment largely removed the immediate threat of a Soviet-​ NATO military clash in Europe. The possibility of German unification by peaceful means appeared vaguely on the horizon. Dismissing criticism of some leaders of the SPD, who called the pursuit of German unification a ‘living lie’, Kohl upheld this claim. So did Reagan when on 12 June 1987 at the Brandenburg gate in Berlin, he appealed to the Soviet leader: ‘Herr Gorbachev, tear down this wall’ (Schöllgen, 2013, pp. 214–​20; Schwabe, 2011b, p. 409). President George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s successor, continued his predecessor’s policy of coupling a military détente with the advocacy of self-​determination in Eastern Europe including, of course, the GDR. To enhance West Germany’s international prestige he praised it as America’s ‘partner in leadership’. In the late summer of 1989, a free election in Poland and mass demonstrations in Eastern Europe and the GDR portended fundamental changes. Bush assured Germany’s European neighbours that he did not share their fear of an enlarged, unified Germany and of ‘past spectres’. At no time after 1945 did the American-​German couple function more efficiently than in the months prior to German unification. In the early fall of 1989 unrest in the GDR as well as in Eastern Europe increased, while economic conditions in Soviet Russia and in the GDR dramatically deteriorated. After the Berlin Wall had fallen, Bush joined Kohl’s German policy of maintaining pressure in the German Question on the Soviet government, but avoided any kind of triumphalism, in order not to undermine Gorbachev’s own domestic position. Simultaneously, Kohl adopted America’s conditions for German unification: Germany had to be unified in a peaceful manner, it had to remain a full member of NATO and thus to accept the continued deployment of American military forces, including nuclear weapons, on its territory. Any German neutralism, which Gorbachev, in line with strong forces within the German Left kept advocating, was unacceptable. Germany also had to extend its commitment to further European integration and to accept the definite cession of its Eastern provinces to Poland. This was the condition Kohl found most difficult to sell in his own party. In exchange, Bush was opposed to continued German reparations to any of its former adversaries and, generally, succeeded in overcoming European reservations regarding the rebirth of a united German nation-​state. Most importantly, the US government, along with its German ally, put through the diplomatic procedure by which German unification was to be achieved. He rejected the idea of a general peace conference, which would have indefinitely delayed German unification. Instead, the US government had the so-​called ‘two-​plus-​four’ procedure

612   Klaus Schwabe adopted by Great Britain and France—​meaning that only the two Germanys plus the four occupying powers were admitted to the negotiations and that the complicated terms for domestic unification were to be reserved to agreements between the two Germanys. Peace-​making was thus vastly speeded up. A Soviet-​American summit held in Washington from 31 May to 3 June 1990 removed the last and most difficult obstacle—​ the continued membership of a united Germany in NATO, on which the West insisted but which the USSR had so far rejected. In this crucial meeting Gorbachev personally yielded and agreed to let the German people themselves decide the future of Germany’s treaty alignment after unification. In fact this meant, of course, the united country would be able to join NATO. German membership of NATO and the principle of national self-​determination were thus reconciled. In the face of heavy doubts among his advisers Gorbachev, looking forward to German financial aid, did not go back on this all-​important concession, although it did not even exclude the deployment of German or NATO troops in the former GDR. In exchange, Germany renounced the acquisition of nuclear forces of its own. Its conventional armed forces were to be reduced by 50 per cent. Soviet Russia was to be reimbursed for the costs arising from the withdrawal of its troops from German territory, while NATO—​i.e. primarily the US—​were permitted to stay on. Signed in Moscow on 9 September 1990, the so-​called ‘Two-​plus-​Four-​Treaty’ sealed the peace concluded between a unified Germany and the victors of the Second World War. The success of combined American-​German efforts to put an end to the Cold War and to terminate communist rule in Eastern Europe was the climax of German-​American relations as well as Germany’s role as a European power. United Germany unreservedly subscribed to its transformed European status; Russia was welcomed as a member of that new Europe. The Western powers, together with Germany, went along anxious to secure the survival of non-​communist domestic forces in the new Russia by helping Gorbachev and his adherents to save face vis-​à-​vis what Vladimir Putin later called the ‘worst geopolitical catastrophe’ in the twentieth century. In late November 1990, a summit on ‘Security and Cooperation in Europe’, the concluding follow-​up meeting of the Helsinki conference of 1975, convened in Paris to adopt a Charter for a New Europe. The document provided for a further reduction of conventional military forces of NATO and the Warsaw Pact and thus sealed the definite end of the Cold War. Much to the relief of the American and German governments the non-​communist forces in the USSR prevailed in the dramatic changes their country underwent in the following years—​the replacement of Gorbachev by his rival Boris Yeltsin and, simultaneously, the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, which was reduced to a new Russian Federation within Russia’s early eighteenth-​century borders. Despite ensuing severe economic and monetary crises, Russia did not return to communist rule and maintained its pro-​Western orientation (Zelikow and Rice, 1995, pp. 133, 149–​72, 275–​85; Küsters, 2000, pp. 817–​70; Schwabe, 2011b, pp. 412–​23).

GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS FROM 1945 TO THE PRESENT    613

Return to the Backstage: A Shift of Focus in German-​A merican Relations German unification, the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe, and the break-​up of the former Soviet Union marked a sea-​change of the political situation in the Northern half of the globe in general, as well as in German-​American relations in particular. Until then America and West Germany shared their major foreign policy objectives: containment of Soviet Russia in Europa, military deterrence, and, ultimately, peacefully overcoming Soviet control of Eastern Europa, including East Germany. In 1990 and even more so after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, these objectives were no longer valid. Instead, American and German foreign policy objectives diverged: for the US as a global player, the Middle East became the linchpin of its foreign policy. Germany’s primary interest remained European integration. To be sure, the US, as a last resort, continued to guarantee non-​nuclear Germany’s security. But the new Germany was no longer the hub of big power rivalry in Europe. In German-​American relations minor controversies and the personality factor replaced big issues. To its advantage Germany was embedded in a new multilateral world order led by the US. During the 1990s, however, there remained one immediate problem of historic significance which required a German-​American consensus: stabilizing the new Russia, finding an acceptable place for it in a post-​Cold War European order, which assured the continuation of détente. The Cold War was to leave no vestiges in the new Europe. With this situation in mind Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev’s ardently pro-​Western successor, went so far as to propose Russian membership of NATO. But these Russian expectations collided with new US President Bill Clinton’s (1993–​2001) policy of ‘enlargement and engagement’ in Europe. Clinton wanted to co-​opt the newly independent East European nations, which eagerly sought NATO protection against a resurgent Russian expansionism. This was the topic of prolonged American-​ Russian negotiations. They were accompanied by continuous American-​German consultations and German material assistance to a Russia which faced formidable economic troubles. By 1997 Clinton had succeeded in working out a compromise. The NATO alliance and Russia signed the ‘NATO-​Russia Founding Act’, which provided for continuous mutual consultations to preserve peace, while however excluding binding decisions. In exchange, Russia agreed to accept the extension of the NATO alliance into Eastern Europe. Regarding the number of nations to be invited, France, in contrast with the US, opted for a minimum number of countries. Germany brokered a comprise selecting Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Less than twenty years later the occupation and annexation of Crimea by Russia and its brutal war against Ukraine in 2022 de facto annulled the NATO-​Russia Founding Act (Schwabe, 2011b, pp. 446–​9; Herring, 2008, p. 936; Schwarz, 2012, pp. 829–​31, 860–​1). Beyond that, however, German and American international objectives diverged. America’s foreign policy was increasingly focused on the Middle East while Germany’s

614   Klaus Schwabe was centred on European integration. What to Germany used to be of secondary importance gained prominence; this was, above all, Washington’s interest in Germany’s political and military support of US foreign policy, such as Berlin’s participation in peace-​keeping missions. Germany, for its part, remained concerned with the extent to which the new American world hegemon consulted it before enlisting its support. Once again, it was an issue of ‘Gleichberechtigung’ (equality) in lieu of American unilateralism. Generally, for both allies domestic affairs gained priority. For the first time this shift of interest was highlighted in the Middle East in August 1990 and thus even before German unification. Saddam Hussein, the dictator of the oil rich Iraq, had invaded and annexed Kuwait. To Bush this aggression challenged the peaceful new world order he had just proclaimed for Europe. Authorized by a UN mandate in mid-​January 1991 he resorted to military action and defeated Iraq’s ruler. Depending on continued American support to assure the total withdrawal of Russian troops from East Germany, the Bonn government joined the international coalition to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, although it restricted its support, along with Japan, to reimbursing 10 per cent of the cost of the war (‘diplomacy by cheque book’). Once military victory was achieved, Bush limited himself to imposing military controls on the defeated foe. But Bush still lost the next presidential election in November 1992 to the Democrat Bill Clinton. Clinton and Chancellor Kohl soon became personal friends with Kohl acting as a trusted senior adviser (Schwarz, 2012, pp. 719–​20). First under Bush and then under Clinton the break-​up of Yugoslavia and the ensuing civil war tested the new German-​ American relationship. In line with France and Great Britain Bush had at first declined to recognize the new break-​away republics—​fearing for Yugoslavia what had happened in Russia, namely the creation of another multinational federation, and generally a danger to the new world order (Larres, 2004). Focusing on self-​determination and yielding to public opinion the Kohl government, however, recognized Slovenia and Croatia in late 1991. Disgusted by mounting Serbian atrocities in Bosnia (the Srebrenica massacre), Clinton in 1995 finally acknowledged that the West could no longer refuse to intervene without risking its moral credibility. Kohl had helped to persuade him; full German-​American harmony was restored. France and Great Britain broke with the former Yugoslav government. In the end, it was America who singlehandedly succeeded in brokering peace between the belligerents by way of a treaty that sanctioned the partition of Yugoslavia and was signed on American territory in Dayton, Ohio, in late November 1995. Still, peace was not yet restored in that area as Serbia resorted to ethnic cleansing in its rebellious, mostly Albanian-​speaking province of Kosovo. In vain did the United Nations (UN), after American prodding, demand the evacuation of Serbian troops from Kosovo. To Clinton this situation again demanded a humanitarian military intervention by NATO—​in American eyes not a war, but a mission to enforce an UN resolution (Bierling, 2004, pp. 212, 218–​22; Herring, 2008, 929–​34). This affected Germany, who was a member of NATO after all. The German government first declined participation in any intervention in the former Yugoslavia as this

GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS FROM 1945 TO THE PRESENT    615 amounted to sending German troops to a territory which in the Second World War had been conquered by Nazi Germany. Yielding to international pressure, in the end Kohl confirmed Germany’s loyalty to the UN and NATO, and on 27 September 1994 German Foreign Minister Hans-​Dietrich Genscher committed Germany before the UN general assembly to participate in UN-​authorized peace operations. Genscher was a senior member of the Free Democratic party, the junior partner in Kohl’s coalition government. A year later the German parliament voted for a deployment of German troops to Bosnia to assist in peace-​keeping measures. Significantly, breaking a German taboo Kohl’s social-​democratic successor, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (1998–​2005) and his Green coalition partner, in 1999 authorized German assistance in bombing strategic targets in Serbia, even though this NATO operation lacked UN authorization. Serbian Prime Minister Slobodan Milosevich finally admitted defeat and resigned. The German SPD-​Green coalition government had thus renewed the traditional cooperation between the US and Germany (Schöllgen, 2013, pp. 266–​72). This lasted only for three years, however. Soon the US was confronted with a new challenge—​Islamist terror. On 11 September 2001 the Al Qaeda network directed planes into the World Trade Center in New York as well as the Pentagon destroying two sky scrapers and killing close to 3,000 people. The American people rallied behind its President. Backed by the UN, President George W. Bush (2001–​09), Clinton’s successor, refocused American foreign policy to fighting international terrorism. His government soon named Osama Bin Laden as the terrorists’ master mind who was hiding in Afghanistan. Its Islamist ‘Taliban’ regime refused to extradite him. Greatly supported by the American public, Bush decided to declare war to eradicate this hotbed of fundamentalist terrorism. In late 2001 the US, supported by domestic enemies of the Taliban, defeated and replaced the Islamist regime in Afghanistan. Bin Laden managed to escape, however. The outside world, including Germany, Russia, and China, as well as most Arab states, sided with America. In the face of strong anti-​American and pacifist currents in his own party, the German Chancellor pledged ‘unlimited solidarity’ to the US. For the first time NATO invoked its Article 5 mutual defence warranty. Germany agreed to participate in the occupation and pacification of Afghanistan as long as America and NATO would (Larres and Hof, 2022). This consensus broke down when Bush unveiled plans for extending his crusade against Islamist terrorism into Iraq, still led by Saddam Hussein, which, he claimed, supported worldwide Islamic terrorism and possessed hidden weapons of mass destruction. In March 2003 Bush ordered a military invasion to enforce a regime change in Iraq and democratize the country. Most of the European governments, particularly in Eastern Europe, sided with the American President, but a minority of five, led by Germany and France, in part certainly inspired by anti-​war mass demonstrations all over Europe, was opposed to it. On the eve of America’s invasion of Iraq, France even threatened to veto any resolution of the UN Security Council in support of a war against the Iraqi dictator and thus forced Bush to go ahead with his war without UN endorsement.

616   Klaus Schwabe During these months, German-​American relations reached an all-​time low. In 2002 Bush and Schröder met twice to discuss the option of a war against Saddam Hussein. On 31 January 2002, Bush told the Chancellor that to thwart Saddam Hussein’s assumed terrorist plans he would first try to ‘make diplomacy work’ but that ‘the military option’ would be his ‘last choice’, which he would use it ‘if necessary’. According to his own records Schröder answered: ‘What is true of Afghanistan is true of Iraq. Nations that sponsor terrorism must face consequences. . . . If you make it fast and make it decisive I will be with you’. Thus in May 2002 Bush gained the impression that the German Chancellor would unreservedly approve a war against Saddam Hussein. This was a mistake. Schröder’s assurance was qualified: he had promised to support America only if a war against Saddam’s Iraq, like the one in Afghanistan, was a part of the world wide ‘war’ against Islamic terrorism. In Germany during the following summer America’s war plans became a public issue once more leading to widespread mass demonstrations which accompanied a highly-​ contested election campaign. On 5 August 2002 Schröder clearly distanced himself from the American President. While agreeing to put pressure on Saddam Hussein, he rejected any kind of ‘war games’ against the dictator—​certainly before a political concept existed for dealing with him in the aftermath of a war. In early September Schröder went so far as to refuse any German participation in a war against Saddam Hussein no matter whether the UN authorized it or not. For him, regime change did not justify any war—​ let alone a preventive one as advocated by Bush (Bush, 2010, pp. 233–​4; Schöllgen, 2015, pp. 588–​92, 621–​4; Bierling, 2010, 66–​75). In its resolution # 1441 of November 2002 the UN Security Council authorized only inspections of Saddam Hussein’s weapons arsenal while not denying the danger his regime embodied. Unconvinced that Saddam really wanted a war, France, Germany, and Russia (now under Putin) threatened to veto a Security Resolution in favour of a war against the dictator. Meanwhile throngs of hundreds of thousands of protesters not only in Europe, but also in America, demonstrated against Bush’s war plans. According to an EU opinion poll 82 per cent of the participants supported the Franco-​German position. As noted, united Europe split over this issue with most members, especially from Eastern Europe, siding with the American President and a minority led by France and Germany opposing him. The very future of NATO seemed to in danger (Schöllgen, 2013, pp. 276–​7). In fact, Schröder did not overlook the ultimate guarantee of German security the US provided, and avoided a complete disintegration of NATO by permitting the use by the US of military bases in Germany to supply its troops in Iraq (Bierling, 2010, p. 75; Schöllgen, 2013, p. 260). Still, the American President never forgave his former ally Schröder for his betrayal. One of Schröder’s ministers went so far as to compare Bush with Hitler—​adding insult to injury. German-​American relations reached an all-​time low. It is true that facts soon proved Schröder’s opposition to the war to be well founded. But the German Chancellor probably could have avoided a German involvement in a war against Iraq in a less blatant and offensive manner, and without risking an open

GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS FROM 1945 TO THE PRESENT    617 clash. Instead, he touted his opposition to Bush for electoral purposes as a national ‘German way’ (Schöllgen, 2013, p. 260; Steininger, 2014, pp. 766ff.; Bush, 2010, p. 234). For the rest of the war Bush suspended all personal contacts with Schröder, and resumed them only with Angela Merkel, Schröder’s successor. Meanwhile, he seems to have ordered his secret services to wiretap the Chancellor’s confidential communications as he no longer trusted the latter’s loyalty to NATO. It was only under President Barak Obama that, in reaction to Merkel’s protests, this practice was discontinued. As for Schröder, he had unleashed a serious crisis of confidence between Germany and the US (Steininger, 2014, pp. 764–​5; Badische Zeitung, 25 October 2013; Kölner Stadtanzeiger, 2 May 2014). Beyond its tactical and personal aspect this American-​German dispute reflected two diverging foreign policy concepts. Bush increasingly preferred unilateral decisions and hesitated to rely on multinational support for his concept of nation-​building. Mindful of the experience of a lost war and influenced by American-​inspired re-​education after 1945, the Bonn and Berlin governments, on the other hand, were deeply committed to a multilateral foreign policy approach relying on international institutions and mutual consultations. They rejected the concept of nation-​building by war. In the last analysis, Schröder reflected a tendency in his party (SPD) to favour an equidistance between Germany’s position vis-​à-​vis America and Russia. Some of these conceptual divergencies re-​surfaced under the presidency of Donald Trump. Bush’s own ‘war on terror’ triggered a civil war in Iraq and barely avoided disaster. The American President failed to transform this country into a stable Western-​style democracy. American public opinion grew increasingly impatient of his Middle East policies and the kind of American interventionism he stood for. In the presidential elections of 2008 the Republican candidate was thoroughly defeated (Bierling, 2020, p. 141). The newly-​elected President Barack Obama (2009–​17) had been an early opponent of his predecessor’s war against the Iraqi dictator. Not sharing Bush’s idea of America’s mission to spread democracy by military means he ordered an early and total American withdrawal from Iraq. To be sure, he was not opposed to military force as such and advocated the use of drones to avert another ‘9/​11’ but in general he relied on political persuasion, based on America’s material superiority, and multilateralism rooted in international law and order. Russia’s unilateral revisionism revealed deficiencies of this concept. Trying to make up for the losses resulting from the Russia’s collapse in the 1990s, Moscow’s new political leader Vladimir Putin in 2014 annexed Crimea and conquered the Eastern part of Ukraine (the Donbas region). The West was shocked. A new Cold War seemed imminent. Obama imposed sanctions on Russia, but avoided an open break with Putin, preoccupied by his domestic reform policy and the worldwide financial crisis (Suri, 2012, pp. 201–​4; Waldschmidt-​Nelson, 2021, pp. 488–​90). Generally, relations with Germany remained secondary in importance for Obama although the German public had enthusiastically welcomed the new President and his liberal-​reformist agenda. This helped to overcome the previous crisis in German American relations.

618   Klaus Schwabe Meanwhile, Angela Merkel (2005–​21) had succeeded Gerhard Schröder as German Chancellor. Growing up in the GDR before unification, she had joined the CDU where she rapidly rose through the ranks. Under the impact of the revolutionary developments in Europe she had become decidedly pro-​American and never lost sight of America’s position as the ultimate guarantor of Germany’s security. In contrast to Schröder she had publicly justified Bush’s war against Saddam Hussein as understandable retaliation. While Bush had warmly welcomed her in her new position, Obama regarded her as a spiritually like-​minded friend who, like him, was interested in promoting human rights, global multilateralism, and peace (Obama, 2020, pp. 471–​3, 483, 737–​40, 787). Merkel’s closeness to the President did not prevent her from carrying out a foreign policy in line with her country’s perceived immediate interests and, at times, deviating from Obama’s foreign policy decisions. However, she upheld Germany’s role in peace-​ making in Afghanistan, and since 2014 agreed to Germany’s support of NATO’s military operations to defeat the Islamic State and, in particular, to strengthen the Kurds. But generally, she avoided involvement in immediate military operations in the Middle East. This was true in particular for the intervention of the Western powers in Libya to oust its dictator Muammar Gaddafi (Vad, 2017, p. 247). Obama, for his part, found fault with Germany’s export surpluses and Merkel’s apparently rigid position regarding the payments crisis of Greece. And yet, they shared the same basic approach to international relations. Obama, never leaving in doubt America’s commitment to NATO, had no reason to question her commitment to America as a promotor of a rules-​based, humanitarian-​oriented, multilateral world order (Obama, 2020, pp. 738–​41; Larres, 2018, p. 194; Junker, 2021, p. 618). Thus Merkel completely agreed with him in condemning Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014; it amounted to a ‘clear violation of fundamental principles of international law’. With Merkel’s support, Obama demanded the immediate removal of the Russian troops from the occupied area. As Putin declined to comply, Germany as well as America imposed sanctions on Russia. In Germany only former Chancellor Schröder regarded such sanctions as useless.

Under the Spell of a New American Nationalism The Presidency of Donald Trump (2017–​21) amounted to a complete denial of the multilateral tradition America had developed since the Second World War—​the tradition from which not least Germany had benefitted so much. The new President had become known in New York City as a ‘property baron’ and later, nationally, as an entertainer (Larres, 2018, p. 194). During his presidency he eagerly cultivated these ‘qualities’. A political newcomer, a ruthless populist, and ignorant of international relations, he promised the ‘common man’ to ‘drain the swamp’ of what was to him the political establishment, primarily in Washington. In foreign policy this meant a return to a robust nationalism

GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS FROM 1945 TO THE PRESENT    619 not unknown to earlier phases in American history and similar to America’s isolationism of the 1920s and 1930s (Bierling, 2020, pp. 142–​4). During the election campaign he stood for an undiluted unilateralism and advertised himself under the slogan ‘Make America great again’. His presidency opened the most difficult phase in American-​ German relations since the Second World War, as two conflicting conceptions of foreign policy pushed against each other. In stark contrast to Trump, Merkel—​in line with all of her predecessors—​had been wedded to the multilateralism to which she believed Germany owed its unification. The differences between the two leaders were marked: President Trump, the poorly educated, tawdry, erratic, and blustering offspring of a nouveau-​rich family stood against Merkel, the daughter of a protestant minister belonging to the educated class (‘Bildungsbürgertum’), an academically trained scientist, knowledgeable in the fine arts and an increasingly experienced and tactically-​versed political leader. During his election campaign Trump had condemned Merkel’s reaction to the massive influx of refugees, to him terrorists, in calling it a ‘disaster’. Commenting on the assaults on women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015, he predicted that ‘the German people are going to riot’ against her and end up ‘overthrowing this woman’ (Larres, 2018, p. 195). After Trump had been elected President she had reasons to remind him of the multilateral and value-​based tradition of American-​European relations (Bierling, 2020, p. 154). Claiming to stand for an entirely new departure in American diplomacy Trump, on the contrary, dismissed NATO as ‘obsolete’—​meaning ‘outdated’ and not only ‘in need of repair’. He created doubts regarding America’s continuing commitment to NATO and the defence of Europe. Trump welcomed the British ‘Brexit’, called the EU a ‘foe’ of the US, at least in trade matters, and thus abandoned the American tradition of supporting the European integration process (Larres, 2022). He sought short-​sighted, unilateral American advantages in trade and stood for a selective defence of Europe favouring the nations bordering Russia (Caldwell, 2017, p. 228; Bierling, 2020, p. 159). Resenting international organizations he left a number of them, such as the Soviet-​ American treaty providing for the reduction of land-​based medium-​range missiles (INF), an agreement which during the Reagan presidency had ushered in the period of genuine East-​West détente. Trump also left the Paris agreement on climate change and suspended American participation in talks with Iran aiming at a renunciation of nuclear weapons by that theocracy (Bierling, 2020, pp. 149, 155; Ross, 2020, p. 33; Ostheimer, 2020, pp. 45–​6). Merkel to him, apparently, embodied the foreign policy which the despised Washington establishment had stood for. Domestic polarization in America thus spilled over into American foreign relations. Characteristically, Trump chose to harp on issues that had long been controversial between the US and Germany. For these controversies Berlin bore some responsibility. Still, previous administrations had preferred to treat them as secondary. They were related to Germany’s surplus in German-​American trade, inadequate contributions to its defence budget, and, above all, the project of a gas pipeline directly connecting Russia with Germany to the detriment of Poland and the Ukraine. In all three cases American complaints were justified, but Trump was the first US President to prominently advertise

620   Klaus Schwabe them. He went so far as to threaten the alliance with an American desertion of NATO if the Europeans, especially the Germans, failed to increase their defence efforts. At the end of his term, Trump ordered the transfer of a considerable number of American troops from Germany to Poland to ‘punish’ Germany for its lack of effort and for Merkel’s decision not to participate in a G-​7 meeting at the White House in the middle of the Covid-​19 pandemic (Wörner, 2020, pp. 37–​8; Thunert, 2021, p. 509). An especially contentious German-​American issue Trump persistently emphasized was the Russian-​German pipeline project called North Stream II. For a long time, the North Stream pipelines I and II had triggered bipartisan opposition in America, as it seemed to strengthen the Soviet influence on Western Europe. Not least, North Stream II threatens to expose Eastern Europe to Russian blackmail and therefore has been especially resented in Poland, while Finland supports it. As bilaterally and economically profitable to the USSR as well as the Federal Republic, it dates back to the 1960s. Viewed as a contribution to détente in line with the idea of a German equidistance to the two major Cold War powers, it was particularly popular among the Social Democrats. At the time of the negotiations of German unification, North Stream had actually helped to induce Gorbachev to accept German membership of NATO. In 2005 Chancellor Schröder endorsed the pipeline during his re-​election campaign (Schöllgen, 2017). From the American point of view, it undercut Western efforts to contain Soviet and Russian pressure on Eastern Europe. Trump was the first American to insist on sanctions being imposed on Germany to force it to abandon North Stream II altogether though the pipeline was almost completed and had absorbed huge Europe-​wide investments. Merkel responded by promising to keep Putin from abusing it for political purposes. The exacerbated dispute about North Stream reflected the fundamental conflict between Trump’s and Merkel’s concept of international relations. Already in May 2017, some of the new President’s remarks at a G-​7 meeting, where he chose to lash out against Germany’s balance of trade surplus and forgot to mention America’s commitment to NATO’s defence guarantee, raised doubts as to the President’s reliability as an ally and NATO member. Hinting at European alternatives to NATO the Chancellor reacted immediately: ‘The era in which we could fully rely on others’, she declared in a speech, ‘is over to some extent . . . that’s what I experienced during the past several days . . . , and we Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands’. She still insisted, though, on the need to retain the friendship with Western allies (Larres, 2018, p. 202; Bierling, 2020, p. 155). In the American press Merkel’s remark seemed to announce a break in Germany’s foreign policy orientation. This was not the case. True, in the German public, but also in France and elsewhere in Europe, America’s reputation had slumped to an all-​time low. The French President Emmanuel Macron bemoaned a ‘cerebral death’ of NATO. 70 per cent of those questioned in Germany advocated their country’s neutrality in case of a Russo-​American war. And yet Merkel, in the face of Trump’s public condemnation, remained silent and limited herself to stressing Europe’s inability alone to defend itself against Russia (Bierling, 2020, pp. 160, 227). There was one important area of agreement between Trump and Merkel: mindful of America’s traumatic experiences of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, Trump wished never

GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS FROM 1945 TO THE PRESENT    621 again to entangle his country in faraway wars. Merkel, on her part, was aware of the trauma the loss of Nazi Germany’s brutal war had left among most of her compatriots. She did honour the military commitments Germany had entered before she came to office but stayed away from new military hotspots like Libya or Syria. Trump, similarly, confined himself to occasional brief shows of military force against adversaries like Syria’s dictator Bashar al-​Assad, but was careful to avoid lengthy wars (Bierling, 2020, pp. 177–​8, 189, 195–​7). While carefully avoiding public criticism of Trump, the German Chancellor only once, albeit without mentioning his name, took a stand against the President’s approach to international relations. This was in June 2019 when she received an honorary degree from Harvard University. In her thank you address she advocated a global instead of national approach and cosmopolitanism (‘Weltoffenheit’) instead of isolationism in foreign affairs. Addressing her graduate audience she pleaded for ‘veritas’ and truthfulness instead of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’. None of her listeners failed to grasp to whom she referred. Her audience broke out in enthusiastic applause. Speaking at this elite university the German Chancellor had found common ground with the establishment that Trump despised so much (Satttar, 2020, pp. 4–​49). Only after Trump contested his loss of the presidential election in November 2020 did Merkel personally and publicly criticize him (Südeutsche Zeitung, 9 January 2021). Merkel congratulated the newly-​elected President Joe Biden all the more warmly. To her and most of the German public it seemed like a return to normality (Frankfurter Allgemeine, 29 January 2021). The new President indeed has eagerly reconfirmed America’s commitments to the Western world. As a first step to improve relations with Germany he reversed Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from Germany, in fact, he increased them slightly, and relegated the dispute around North Stream II to confidential negotiations and thus defused it (The Economist, 12 June 2021, p. 20). Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, however, opened another chapter in GermanAmerican relations which goes beyond the scope of this article.

Conclusion This chapter has shown that German-​American relations from 1945 to the present have not followed an uninterrupted line of continuity but rather underwent a fundamental break when Germany was reunited. Until then, and under the impact of the Cold War, Americans and Germans largely agreed on their common foreign policy priorities. The two powers shared the goal of both ultimately uniting Germany and liberating Eastern Europe from the Soviet Russian overlordship they had been subjected to as a result of the Second World War. They hoped to prevail by coupling containment with dissuasion—​ meaning the containment of Soviet political influence in Western Europe and Soviet military deterrence ultimately based on a superiority in nuclear weaponry.

622   Klaus Schwabe During the 1960s the danger of a nuclear collision between the two superpowers led to attempts at a Soviet-​Western détente. Beginning in the 1960s, West Germany closely cooperated with the US and became the engine of these efforts. The US shared the ultimate objective—​overcoming the East-​West division of Europe, which implied German unification. In 1989 success was achieved. With the collapse of Soviet rule in Eastern and Central Europe the common objective of the West became obsolete. It was replaced by combined American-​German efforts to co-​opt post-​Soviet Russia to the new concept of an all-​European system of peace-​keeping (Friedensordnung). This scheme succeeded only in a formal sense. In reality, the newly freed East European nations wanted to be spared a future Russian tutelage and wished to become an unquestionable part of the West protected by NATO. They thus stood in the way of Russian hopes to be fully admitted to the new Europe and NATO. A stalemate resulted, which has continued to this day. This also meant that Germany and the US lost the remaining focus of their European policy in the post-​Cold War era. Instead, reacting to the terrorist attack of ‘9/​11’ America turned to the Middle East and the fight against fundamentalist Islamism as the priority of its foreign policy. Soon afterwards Germany and America’s diplomatic agendas began to diverge, and when Germany refused to lend support to President Bush’s war against Iraq, German-​American relations reached a low point. In the past decade, in the light of America’s gradual retreat from the Middle East, along with Russia’s stepped-​up revisionist campaign to undo the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, the days of the Cold War and German-​American solidarity seemed to return. President Trump’s erratic foreign policy destroyed these new beginnings. America under Trump gave up its role as a European power so that it even became necessary for Chancellor Merkel to remind her German audience that their country, for its security, continued to depend on America’s nuclear guarantee. Trump’s successor, President Joe Biden, has attempted to revive the former solidarity and cooperation between Europe, Germany, and the US. However, there is now another obstacle in the way of attaining that goal: The People’s Republic of China and its global aspirations, which have become the focus of American foreign policy. This new fixation may very well lead to a new conflict of interests between Germany and America. After all, the US has become greatly absorbed by its efforts to contain China, while the Europeans, not least Germany, are eager to maintain their profitable trade with the new giant in the Far East. In view of this, it remains to be seen whether it will be possible to renew and stabilize the traditional ties between Germany and the US in a lasting way. Domestic uncertainties in the US may interfere even more with the desire to strengthen transatlantic ties. The next presidential election may lead to another Republican administration—​loyal to Trump and likely to revive the vagaries of his past foreign policy. German-​American relations will thus very much depend on the American voter together with the ability of the Republican party to distance itself from its Trumpian legacy. Only the future, then, can tell whether the Trump presidency was a mere interlude and an exception. Only the future will demonstrate whether or not,

GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS FROM 1945 TO THE PRESENT    623 and to what extent, the US will be able to return to its traditional, reliable, long-​term commitment to German-​American solidarity, cooperation with a united Europe, and adherence to a rules-​based global order.

Further Reading Hacke, Christian (2002), Zur Weltmacht verdammt. Die amerikanische Außenpolitik von J.F. Kennedy bis G.W. Bush (München: Ullstein). Hanrieder, Wolfram F. (1989), Germany, America, Europe. Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press). Junker, Detlef (ed.) (2004),The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–​ 1990, 2 vols (The German Historical Institute Washington, DC/​Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Larres, Klaus and Torsten Oppelland (eds) (1997), Deutschland und die USA im 20. Jahrhundert. Geschichte der politischen Beziehungen (Darmstadt: Wissenschafliche Buchgesellschaft). Neuss, Beate (2000), Geburtshelfer Europas? Die Rolle der Vereinigten Staaten im Europäischen Integrationsprozeß 1945–​1958 (Baden-​Baden: Nomos-​Verlag). Schwabe, Klaus (2011), Weltmacht und Weltordnung. Amerikanische Außenpolitik von 1898 (Paderborn: Schöningh).

Bibliography Badische Zeitung (25 October 2013). Bierling, Stephan (2004), Geschichte der amerikanischen Außenpolitik. Von 1917 bis zur Gegenwart (München: Beck). Bierling, Stephan (2010), Geschichte des Irakkrieges (München: Beck). Bierling, Stephan (2020), America First. Donald Trump im Weissen Haus. Eine Bilanz (Munich: Beck). Bush, George W. (2010) Decision Points (New York: Random House). Caldwell, Christopher (2017), ‘Ungleiche Paare: Merkels Verhältnis zu den amerikanischen Präsidenten’, in Philip Plickert (ed.), Merkel: Eine kritische Bilanz (Munich: FinanzBuch Verlag), pp. 226–​35. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (29 April 2021). Fröhlich, Stefan (2012), The New Geopolitics of Transatlantic Relations (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/​Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). Gassert, Philipp (2020), ‘Jenseits von Trump’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 68, pp. 579–​94. Gassert, Philipp (2021), 11. September 2001 (Ditzingen: Reclam Hundert Seiten). Granieri, Ronald J. (2004), ‘Political Parties and German-​ American Relations’, in Detlef Junker (ed.), The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, Vol.1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 141–​8. Hacke, Christian (2003), Die Außenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Von Konrad Adenauer bis Gerhard Schröder (Berlin: Ullstein). Hanimäki, Jussi M. (2021), Pax Transatlantica. America and Europe in the Post Cold War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

624   Klaus Schwabe Herring, George C. (2008), From Colony to Superpower. U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 (The Oxford History of the United States) (New York: Oxford University Press). Junker, Detlef (2004), ‘Politics, Security, Economics, Culture, and Society: Dimensions of Transatlantic Relations’, in Detlef Junker (ed.), The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War. A Handbook, Part 1: 1945–​1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1–​28. Junker, Detlef (2021), Deutschland und die USA 1871–​2021 (Heidelberg: Universitätsbibliothek). Kölner Stadtanzeiger (2 May 2014). Küsters, Hanns Jürgen (2000), Der Integrationsfriede: Viermächte-​Verhandlungen über die Friedensregelung mit Deutschland 1945–​1990 (Munich: Oldenbourg). Larres, Klaus (2022), Uncertain Allies: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Threat of a United Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Larres, Klaus and Tobias Hof (eds) (2022), Terrorism and Transatlantic Relations: Threats and Challenges (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Larres, Klaus (2004), ‘ “Bloody as Hell”: Bush, Clinton, and the Abdication of American Leadership in the Former Yugoslavia, 1990–​1995’, Journal of European Integration History 10(1) (July), pp. 179–​202. Larres, Klaus (2018), ‘Angela Merkel and Donald Trump. Values, Interests, and the Future of the West’, German Politics 27(2), pp. 193–​213 (republished in Klaus Larres and Ruth Wittlinger (eds), German-​American Relations in the 21st Century: A Fragile Friendship (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 47–​67). Loth, Wilfried (2000), Die Teilung der Welt. Geschichte des Kalten Krieges (Munich: dtv). Münkler, Herfried (2003), Der neue Golfkrieg (Reinbek: Rowohlt). Obama, Barack (2020), Ein verheissenes Land (Munich: Penguin). Ostheimer, Andrea Ellen (2020), ‘Zerstörer der liberalen Weltordnung?’, in Konrad Adenauer-​ Stiftung (ed.), Auslandsinformationen: Bündnis unter Druck. Ist der Westen noch zu retten? (Berlin: Konrad-​Adenauer-​Stiftung), pp. 45–​46: Auslandsinformationen Sonderausgabe 2020.pdf Ross, Andreas (2020), ‘Wer ist Münchens Geisterfahrer?’, in Konrad Adenauer-​Stiftung (ed.), Auslandsinformationen: Bündnis unter Druck. Ist der Westen noch zu retten? (Berlin: Konrad-​ Adenauer-​Stiftung), pp. 32–​4: Auslandsinformationen Sonderausgabe 2020.pdf Satttar, Majid (2020), ‘Heimspiel in Harvard’, in Konrad Adenauer-​ Stiftung (ed.), Auslandsinformationen: Bündnis unter Druck. Ist der Westen noch zu retten? (Berlin: Konrad-​ Adenauer-​Stiftung), pp.47–​9: Auslandsinformationen Sonderausgabe 2020.pdf Schake, Kori N. (2004), ‘NATO Strategy and the German-​American Relationship’, in Detlef Junker (ed.), The United States and Germany, vol. 1, pp. 233–​9. Schöllgen, Gregor (2013), Deutsche Außenpolitik. Von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Beck). Schöllgen, Gregor (2015), Gerhard Schröder. Die Biographie (München: DVA). Schöllgen, Gregor (2017), ‘Brandts Röhren, Putins Gas’, Süddeutsche Zeitung (27 January 2017). Schwabe, Klaus (1998), ‘Atlantic Partnership and European Integration’, in Geir Lundestad (ed.), No End to Alliance (London: Macmillan), pp. 37–​45. Schwabe, Klaus (2004), ‘Détente and Multipolarity. The Cold War and German-​American Relations’, in Detlef Junker (ed.) The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–​1990. A Handbook. vol. 2: 1968–​90 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1–​17. Schwabe, Klaus (2011a), ‘Verhandlung und Stationierung: Die USA und die Implementierung des NATO-​Doppelbeschlusses 1981–​1987’, in Philipp Gassert, Tim Geiger, and Hermann Wentker (eds), Zweiter Kalter Krieg und Friedensbewegung: Der NATO-​Doppelbeschluss

GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS FROM 1945 TO THE PRESENT    625 in deutsch-​deutscher und internationaler Perspektive (Munich: DeGruyter Oldenbourg), pp. 65–​94. Schwabe, Klaus (2011b), Weltmacht und Weltordnung. Amerikanische Außenpolitik von 1898 (Paderborn: Schöningh). Schwabe, Klaus (2016), Jean Monnet. Frankreich, Deutschland und die Einigung Europas (Baden Baden: Nomos). Schwarz, Hans-​Peter (1994), Die Ära Adenauer 1949–​1957 (Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, vol. 1) (Stuttgart: DVA). Schwarz, Hans-​Peter (2012), Helmut Kohl: Eine politische Biographie (Stuttgart: DVA). Smyser, W. Richard (1999), From Yalta to Berlin: The Cold War Struggle over Germany (New York: St. Martin’s). Steininger, Rolf (2014), Deutschland und die USA. Vom Zweiten Weltkrieg bis zur Gegenwart (Reinbek: Lauverlag). Südeutsche Zeitung (9 January 2021). Suri, Jeremi (2012), ‘Uniliteral Internationalism, Law and the First African American President’, in Julian E. Zeliser (ed.), The Presidency of Barack Obama (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 195–​211. Thunert, Martin (2021), ‘Donald Trump’, in Christof Mauch (ed.), Die Präsidenten der USA (2nd edn, München: Beck), pp. 522–​31. Trachtenberg, Marc (1999), A Constructed Peace. The Making of the European Settlement 1945–​ 1963 (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Vad, Erich (2017), ‘Angela Merkel und das Dilemma deutscher Sicherheitspolitik -​ Eingeklemmt zwischen Pazifismus und maroder Bundeswehr’, in Philip Plickert (ed.), Merkel: Eine kritische Bilanz (Munich: FinanzBuch Verlag), pp. 237–​48. Waldschmidt-​Nelson, Britta (2021), ‘Barack Obama’, in Christof Mauch (ed.), Die Präsidenten der USA (2nd edn, München: Beck), pp. 472–​97. Wörner, Nils and Philipp Dienstbier (2020), ‘Unilateralismus und Rückzug’, in Konrad Adenauer-​Stiftung (ed.), Auslandsinformationen: Bündnis unter Druck. Ist der Westen noch zu retten? (Berlin: Konrad-​Adenauer-​Stiftung), pp. 37–​38: Auslandsinformationen Sonderausgabe 2020.pdf Zelikow, Philip and Condoleezza Rice (1995), Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

CHAPTER 34

THREE CHA NC E L L ORS AND RU S SIA German-​Russian Relations Since 1990 Stephen F. Szabo

Germany’s relationship with Russia since 1990 was developed by three Chancellors with three Russian leaders. German policy can thus be divided in these three broad periods, although with a caesura coming in the Merkel years. While there have been a number of constant factors shaping the historical relationship including geography, economics, and politics, the key factor in the post-​unification period has not been German but rather the figure of Vladimir Putin. While the three German leaders since 1990 have dealt with three leaders in Moscow, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin, it has been Putin who has done the most to reshape this central relationship.

Kohl: The Romantic Phase Helmut Kohl was present at the creation of the new Germany and its relationship with Russia. He was the Chancellor of unification and drew lessons for his Russia policies from that experience. However, the enormous challenges—​economic, social, and political—​of realizing national unification and the new strategic situation in East/​Central Europe limited his resources and ability to follow through on his Russia policy. Kohl was also present at the creation of the new German-​Russian relationship having negotiated the Two Plus Four treaty which concluded with agreements on both internal unification and the external role of the newly reunified German state. Without the acceptance of the Soviet Union, Germany would not have been peacefully unified in a stable European security system. German-​Russian relations began in an atmosphere of hope, cooperation, and compromise (Szabo, 1992, pp. 120–​2). The USSR under Gorbachev reluctantly accepted a

THREE CHANCELLORS AND RUSSIA    627 united Germany in NATO in return for limits on the deployment of NATO forces on the territory of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) and treaty assurances that Germany would renounce the possession of atomic, chemical, and biological weapons. German armed forces were also limited to 370,000 personnel. Germany agreed to pay the USSR substantial sums for the costs of relocation of the Soviet military back to the USSR, a process which was not completed until 1994. The bargain that Gorbachev made was to exchange German unity for German financial and technological support for his failing economy. As one of his key advisers put it, ‘We hope that we will be saved from looming catastrophe by the German economy and German private investment’ (Stent, 1999, p. 138). This was part of the broader approach of modernization that pushed Gorbachev’s policies. He recognized the need for an opening to the West as crucial to the revitalization of the Soviet economy and the link between domestic and foreign policy. Germany was central to this policy given its role in the Western economy and the legacy of the traditional German-​Russian economic relationship in which Germany exported machinery and other industrial goods and technology in return for Russian energy and other raw materials. Germany came out of the early period of unification with a belief that the Ostpolitik of engagement with the USSR had been key to the outcome and that close cooperation with a European-​oriented USSR would be a priority. Under both Gorbachev and his successor, Boris Yeltsin, German policy was anchored on the concept of Russia as a European country in cultural, economic, and political dimensions. The priority was to securely anchor Russia in Europe with a follow-​on to the concept of Ostpolitik which saw engagement at all levels as leading to the transformation of Russia into a stable democracy. The key concepts were Wandel durch Handel (change through trade), and Verflechtung (entanglement or interdependence) (Adomeit, 2020, pp. 276–​7). This was based on a theory of development or transformation which envisioned a spillover effect from diplomatic and economic engagement leading to a transformation of Russian and Eastern European societies into open and democratic polities. Gorbachev and Yeltsin’s New Political Thinking and a Common European Home were essential to this approach being successful. Germany’s tools were almost entirely economic and cultural, so the idea of transforming Russia through these means was obvious. However, the economic partnership promised by Kohl did not materialize in the 1990s as the Russian leadership had hoped (Stent 1999, p. 172). The reconstruction and integration of the former East Germany was to quickly absorb massive amounts of resources and attention from the Chancellor. In addition Kohl had to balance his desire to shape a new relationship with Russia with the demands of his Westpolitik and the need for a stable European security structure. In Mary Sarotte’s formulation he followed an approach of using prefabricated structures rather than creating entirely new ones (Sarotte, 2015). The Two Plus Four Agreement limited Germany’s military capabilities but did not provide a pan European security system which included what soon became Russia. The Kohl government was divided on the issue of NATO’s role in the new Europe, but Defence Minister Volker Rühe and his staff took the lead in promoting NATO

628   Stephen F. Szabo enlargement to Poland (Goldgeier, 1999; Kieninger, 2020a). Kohl being an Atlanticist wanted to be in step with Washington but was not receiving clear signals over how the Clinton administration would proceed on this policy. He wanted to be sure that Yeltsin and Russia would not feel isolated and resentful and linked NATO enlargement to creating the NATO-​Russia Council as a way of including Russia while moving ahead with membership. This balancing act became more difficult with the Balkans war and the shift of Yeltsin in 1993 towards a more nationalist position which began to emphasize Russia’s sphere of influence in the former Soviet states (Adomeit, 2020, p. 281). Kohl was a convinced Europeanist and Atlanticist. His origins in the Catholic Rheinland meant, that like Adenauer, he looked west to France as the key relationship in Europe and to the US for German and European security. The end of the Warsaw Pact meant that Germany was no longer solely a Western power but now also a Central European one. It also had a new border with Poland. Kohl wanted to ensure, however, that Germany would not be the Eastern border of the West but wanted to move the West eastward to Poland’s Eastern border. This meant the eventual expansion of the EU to include the newly democratic states of central Europe, but given the slowness of EU enlargement, NATO would have to go first and provide assurances that these countries had a Western perspective (Hamilton and Spohr, 2019). At the same time, Kohl had to consider the concerns Yeltsin was raising about Russian security interests. On the other hand the role of advocate for East Central Europe meant that German policy now had to take into consideration the views of the Eastern European states, resulting in an oscillation between these two priorities and ‘an increasingly skeptical attitude toward Russia’s hegemonic ambition in the region’ (Fischer, 2020). On these points Kohl worked closely with President Clinton to support and assure Yeltsin (Kieninger, 2020b). This emphasis led to criticism of Kohl’s personalistic approach, which was labelled ‘sauna diplomacy’ by his successor, Gerhard Schröder. Kohl’s emphasis on his personal relationship with Yeltsin proved to be necessary but futile. Given the collapse of institutions within the USSR, and then Russia, personal relationships mattered a great deal as the traditional bureaucratic actors were in free fall. However Yeltsin’s alcoholism and massive personal failings meant that agreements did not matter for long as his moods and memory changed at a mercurial rate. Kohl had to get Russian forces out of the former East Germany, an effort that took four years and approximately 90 billion Deutschmarks to accomplish. It was only when the last Russian soldier departed on 31 August 1994, as one analyst put it, ‘a date that might be considered to mark real sovereign control of that territory by the unified Germany’ (Newnham, 2017, p. 46). The combination of Kohl’s preoccupation with the tasks of national unification and its consequent massive economic costs and the growing decline and anarchy in Russia left a diminished legacy. The economic relationship had grown during the 1990s with German investments in Russia climbing from the equivalent of €99 million in 1991 to around €540 million in 1998. German exports grew from around €6 billion in 1992 to €8.4 billion in 1997 before stagnating due to the Russian default crisis of 1998. This was still substantial but far from what Gorbachev had hoped for (Newnham, 2017, pp. 48–​9).

THREE CHANCELLORS AND RUSSIA    629 The Russian war in Chechnya and the Balkan wars were casting increasing shadows on the relationship when Kohl left the Chancellory in 1998, just as Vladimir Putin began to emerge as the Russian leader. This marked the end of the romantic phase of the post-​ unification period and the opening of the geo-​economic one.

Schröder and the Rise of Geo-​economics Gerhard Schröder’s chancellorship, which ran from his election in 1998 to his defeat in 2005 was characterized by a strong economic focus both domestically and in foreign policy. Both he and his Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer of the Green party, were 68ers, members of the generation of protest which shook West Germany in the late 1960s. They were the first post-​war generation to come to power in West Germany, one which grew up in the aftermath of the Second World War and had no direct experience with the Third Reich or the war. They were the beneficiaries of the German economic wonder of the 1950s and 1960s and were now leading a united Germany, but one with an economy struggling with the costs of unification and of diminishing competitiveness. In regard to Russia, they were realists with few emotional ties or memories. Schröder’s father died fighting the Russians in the East while his son was a baby. He and Fischer inherited a relatively calm relationship with Russia from Kohl, which did not require fundamental alterations (Hacke 2003, p. 464). As noted, Schröder had been critical of what he called Kohl’s ‘sauna diplomacy’ with Yeltsin and he and Fischer initially wanted to link further financial assistance to democratic reforms in Russia (Hacke, 2003, p. 464; Stent 2019, p. 81). They viewed Russia in largely economic terms. Gratitude for Gorbachev’s role in ending the division of Germany was not an important factor for Schröder as it had been for Kohl. Rather Germany’s involvement in the NATO war in Kosovo and his criticism of the Russia war in Chechnya seemed to terminate the romantic period in the relationship (Hacke, 2003, p. 465). This was the end of the Yeltsin period and Schröder regarded the new Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, as a stroke of luck for Germany. With his extensive experience in East Germany as a KGB agent and his fluent German, Putin raised expectations in Berlin. His speech to the Bundestag in 2001 was a triumph and he was called ‘Putin the German’. At this point the new Russian leader was seeking integration with the West, although this emphasis on economic integration would allow him to rebuild the Russian state and military rather than democratize Russia. This suited the German Chancellor’s economic objectives and the period of his government saw a major improvement in the German-​Russian economic relationship. He and Putin created the Petersburg Dialogue which became a major bilateral economic forum and German investment and trade with Russia increased substantially, with investments up 74 per cent and trade up 32 per cent by 2005 compared to 1999.

630   Stephen F. Szabo Russian exports tripled due to the rising price of oil as did imports (Hacke, 2003, p. 467; Newnham 2017, p. 51). The result was the creation of a substantial number of German economic stakeholders in the growing relationship (Stent, 2019) with over 6,000 German companies operating in Russia. The energy relationship was the key to all of this, as Russia provided 36 per cent of Germany’s oil and gas and Schröder took the lead in creating the Nord Stream I gas pipeline with Gazprom just before leaving office. The German split with the Bush administration over the Iraq war (Szabo, 2004) resulted in a German-​French-​Russian coalition against Bush’s war and brought Russia and Germany closer together on the strategic dimension, although it split Germany from its new central European partners. Germany under Schröder was transformed into a geo-​economic power. Under this approach, German foreign policy became increasingly based on the need to compete in a globalized economy around the primacy of exports. This geo-​economic paradigm was the result of the growing sovereignty and independence of united Germany, which was no longer bound by the imperatives of the Cold War but was now driven by its need to become competitive in the new global economy. This meant a policy which defined national interest in economic terms driven by exports and the need of the private sector to be competitive, often resulting in the subordination of such non-​economic interests like human rights and democracy promotion to economic interests. It also relied on economic instruments to impose national preferences on others and subordinated and devalued military instruments and objectives (Kundnani 2015; Szabo 2015, p. 9). At home this meant the economic liberalization of the German economy associated with the Agenda 2010 reforms pushed through by Schröder despite substantial resistance from his Social Democratic party. In the case of Russia policy this underpinned the development of the concept of Wandel durch Handel. Schröder’s labelling of Putin as a ‘lupenreiner Demokrat’ (flawless democrat) in 2004 was linked to what he saw as Putin’s efforts to reform and modernize the Russian economy and the idea that greater German economic involvement with Russia would promote further reforms which would spill over into democratic change and the rule of law. The idea was that what seemed to be happening with liberalization in the former Warsaw Pact states of Eastern Europe would be replicated in Russia (Adomeit, 2020, p. 285), i.e. political modernization would follow economic modernization. Of course, this was a plus for Germany’s economic prospects as well. Schröder stated ‘that the Russian reality as a multiethnic state would follow rules different than would be required in Holland’ (Schoellgen, 2015). He repeated this assessment to the American President, George W. Bush, that ‘there is no basis in the Russian historical experience for a true foundation of democracy’, although he was convinced that Putin wanted an effective democratization (Schoellgen, 2015). That this geo-​economic approach resulted in a subordination of concerns about human rights and democratic reforms was clear in the way the Petersburg Dialogue was essentially all about business, with little in the way of engagement of German and Russian civil society. A substantial German-​Russian lobby reached its high point during this period with such groups as the German-​Russian Forum and the Ostauschuss of the German Confederation of Industry (BDI) being the main proponents of the

THREE CHANCELLORS AND RUSSIA    631 relationship. While German foundations and non-​governmental organizations (NGOs) continued their extensive involvement with Russian society during this period, they were not involved in democracy promotion (Stent, 2019, p. 94; Szabo, 2015, pp. 47–​55; Adomeit, 2020, p. 286). The approach was compatible with the legacy of the Ostpolitik within the Social Democratic party and of the concept of Wandel durch Annäherung or change through rapprochement, which guided the policies of Willy Brandt in his German version of détente. When Schröder left office at the end of 2005 he continued to support this close economic relationship and ended up as the Chair of the Nord Stream board and an apologist for Putin long after his reform and Western integration period was over. Here was a clear example of how Handel can produce a different kind of Wandel (Newnham, 2017, pp. 52, 53).

The Merkel Years: Disillusionment and Resistance The chancellorship of Angela Merkel which ran from 2005 to 2021 was one which saw a continuous deterioration in the relationship. As her biographer Stefan Kornelius put it, she and Putin have parallel lives, being almost of the same age sharing an East German experience and spending sixteen years together in power. ‘It is hardly surprising that their personal relationship has an enormous influence on German-​Russian relations in general. In this instance, foreign policy definitely has a personal dimension’ (Kornelius, 2013, p. 183). As Germany’s first Chancellor from the former East Germany, Merkel has what Kornelius called a private Russia and a business Russia. Fluent in Russian she had a long and positive relationship with Russian culture but political Russia, the Russia of Putin, is another matter. ‘For Merkel, the fall of the Berlin Wall was a liberating experience, whereas for Putin . . . it was a deeply traumatic event . . . a historic defeat’ (Kornelius, 2013, p. 183; Stent, 2019, pp. 86–​7). While Merkel wanted to move away from the Schröder-​Putin ‘bromance’ and toughen German policy, the geo-​economic legacy of the Russia lobby , the so called Putin Verstehers or Putin sympathizers, limited her ability to do so. Cautious almost to a fault, she also led a grand coalition with the SPD. Her Foreign Minister for eight of her years in office was Frank Walter Steinmeier, a protégé of Schröder and a proponent of a new policy of Annäherung durch Verflectung (rapprochement through entanglement or interdependence), an updating of the Bahr/​Brandt concept (Stent, 2019, p. 99). In the assessment of a number of analysts, Merkel, while more willing to raise concerns about human rights and democracy, ‘was not willing to sanction Russia or its leadership for violations of human rights or other common norms. Like her predecessor, she focused on fostering commercial and economic cooperation’ (Forsberg, 2016, p. 24).

632   Stephen F. Szabo Signs of Russia’s turning away from ‘New Thinking’ were already apparent in Putin’s first term with his speech in 2007 at the Munich Security Conference railing against the American unipolar world and NATO as an adversary of Russia. Merkel had been sensitive to the concerns Russian officials had been raising about NATO enlargement. Along with France she opposed George W. Bush’s attempt at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest to offer membership in the Membership Action Plan (MAP) of NATO—​ a precursor to full membership—​to Georgia and Ukraine. The then US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, later wrote that Merkel resisted this as she did not trust the Georgians, ‘whom she saw as still corrupt and . . . that the Ukrainian governing coalition was a mess’ (Rice, 2011, p. 671). A bitter exchange erupted between Steinmeier and Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski after Steinmeier stated that Georgia could not be granted MAP status due to its frozen conflicts to which Sikorski replied that ‘If NATO had taken that view, West Germany wouldn’t have been admitted in 1949. You were one big frozen conflict until 1990’ (Rice, 2011, p. 673). Merkel finally compromised on language that ‘Georgia and Ukraine will become members of NATO’. Here again Germany’s balancing act between its relations with Russia and with its EU and NATO partners in Eastern Europe came out into the open. This was followed by the Russia-​Georgia war in 2008, an event which hardened Merkel’s view of Putin and was a precursor to her position in the course of the Ukraine crisis. The German-​Russian relationship had some breathing space during the interregnum of the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev (2008–​12). This was the period when the young Russian leader tried to modernize the Russian economy and Russian society along the lines set out by Gorbachev. This coincided with the CDU-​FDP coalition in which the hapless Guido Westerwelle served as Foreign Minister. During his first trip to Moscow as Foreign Minister in November 2009, the German Liberal was effusive in his desire for a close relationship with Russia. ‘Without ifs, ands or buts: we want a strategic partnership with Russia,’ Westerwelle said at his meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov’ (Deutsche Welle, 2009). We want more than just a trade and economic relationship,’ he said. ‘From justice to culture we want to work together and build a deeper friendship between our two peoples.’ He also kept a human rights dimension in his approach meeting with Russian opposition figures and was later critical of the suppression of gay rights. While proclaiming a Modernization Partnership with Russia, Westerwelle reiterated the linkage between economic and social modernization in a speech at the end of his tenure and the return of Putin as President in May 2012 (Foreign Office, 2012). The return of Putin had seen major protests and a crackdown on civil society, including raids on the offices of German political foundations which criticized him. As Sabine Fischer concludes, ‘For the first time, decision makers in Berlin were forced to reconsider the basic assumptions guiding their policy toward Moscow, namely that a values based rapprochement was possible. If there ever was a true turning point in Germany’s thinking about Russia, that was it’ (Fischer, 2020). Merkel’s closest adviser and spokesman on Russia policy, Andreas Schockenhoff, pushed a resolution through the Bundestag which was critical of the Putin crackdowns.

THREE CHANCELLORS AND RUSSIA    633 While it was toned down by the Foreign Ministry, it reflected a growing disillusionment with Russia among the expert community in Germany (Forsberg, 2016, p. 27). The arrest and conviction of the Pussy Riot dissidents was a major factor in this deterioration. The end of the Medvedev period marked the end of the period in which the German-​Russian relationship had grown closer and opened what one observer has labelled Frostpolitik (Forsberg, 2016). When Putin stated that he and Medvedev had agreed from the beginning that they would switch jobs in 2012, Merkel felt she had been duped by this ‘castling’ move (Stent, 2019, p. 101). The 2013 federal election resulted in a second grand coalition between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats under Merkel. Steinmeier returned as Foreign Minister. He made an effort to stabilize the relationship and return to a ‘Modernization Partnership’ with Russia as well as a concretization of the strategic partnership called for earlier by Schröder. Schockenhoff was replaced as the Special Envoy to Russia by the SPD’s Gernot Erler, who was seen as more sympathetic to Russia and Putin. The situation rapidly deteriorated with the Russian intervention in Ukraine, including the annexation of Crimea. This came at the end of CDU/​CSU-​FDP coalition with Westerwelle visiting the Maidan and voicing support for the EU agreement with Ukraine. Steinmeier returned to the Foreign Ministry and became actively involved with his French and Russian counterparts in mediating an agreement with the Yanukovych Government which soon fell apart with the Ukrainian President fleeing the country. Germany then became the central Western player in the search for a diplomatic solution (Fix, 2018). Berlin took the lead as the most important Western power closest to Ukraine with a major strategic stake in the region. In addition to its geo-​economic relationship with Russia, its Russia policies had been based on the geopolitical fact that, ‘As a nuclear power with a relatively unpredictable leadership, questionable internal stability, and a history of hostility toward the West, Russia could again become a threat to Germany’ (Speck, 2016, p. 4). In addition, given the enlargement of NATO and the EU eastward, Germany now had allies and key partners in the region between it and Russia. Until Ukraine, the German working assumption was that Russia wanted to be integrated into the West. This ended with Ukraine and Crimea. Angela Merkel spent more time than any other leader in conversations with Putin as did Steinmeier with Lavrov. She made European unity a fundamental element in her strategic response, with France as the key European partner and the US as a backup over the horizon. She and Obama agreed that military force was not an option and they turned to sanctions combined with diplomacy and support for Ukraine as the keys. She was able not only to craft an EU consensus on sanctions but kept the sanctions regime intact during her chancellorship, a remarkable feat. Her continued diplomatic efforts with Putin concluded with the Minsk II agreement which stabilized but did not resolve the conflict. She tried to maintain a balance with Russia, refusing to participate in the 2015 commemoration of the end of the Second World War in Moscow but attending a ceremony for Russian soldiers at a cemetery the next day. She and Steinmeier emerged from the experience deeply shaken in regard to Putin’s credibility, especially after the shooting down of a civilian Malaysian aircraft in June

634   Stephen F. Szabo 2014, for which Russia denied any responsibility despite clear evidence to the contrary. Merkel was to tell President Obama, after one of her calls with Putin, that ‘he lives in another world’ from that of his Western counterparts (Stent 2019, p. 103; Newnham 2017, pp. 55–​6). Steinmeier who had continuously called for ‘building bridges’ to Russia and had criticized Western ‘sabre rattling’ over Ukraine finally fell silent, although as President he later offered a plan for the implementation of Minsk II which was seen as favourable to Russia. There were repeated incidents of outright lying by Russian officials, most notable that by Foreign Minister Lavrov over the so-​called Lisa incident. This was a case of Russian disinformation, which spread a false story that a young woman of Russian heritage living in Berlin had been abducted and raped by a Muslim refugee. Despite repeated disclaimers by the German government that this had not happened (Meister, 2016), German leaders came to realize, as Hannes Adomeit notes, that Putin’s idea of modernization was of the Russian armed forces not of Russian society (Adomeit, 2020, p. 290). After the 2017 Bundestag election, a new grand coalition emerged led by Merkel but now with a new Foreign Minister, first until early 2018 Sigmar Gabriel and then Heiko Maas, both from the SPD. While the party continued to cling to its Ostpolitik legacy, the relationship with Russia continued to deteriorate. Putin was recklessly aggressive in using hybrid warfare techniques, including a cyber attack on the Bundestag. German federal prosecutors accused Russian authorities in the 2009 assassination of a Chechen man with Georgian citizenship in Berlin. Germany provided medical treatment for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny following his poisoning in 2020 and called for EU sanctions on the Belarusian leader for the violent treatment of protestors in the wake of fraudulent elections. The fact that Merkel personally cited Russia as behind the Navalny poisoning was significant as was her statement to the Bundestag of her frustration with Russia over the 2015 hacking of the Bundestag, which became known in May 2020. ‘I can honestly say, it pains me. On the one hand, I strive daily for a better relationship with Russia, but then on the other we see that there is solid evidence showing that Russian forces are also involved in such activities. This really does add tension to our work towards and our desire for better relations with Russia. It’s also an issue I can’t quite dismiss internally, I find it quite uncomfortable’ (Deutsche Welle, 2020). Foreign Minister Maas announced a new Ostpolitik in November 2018, which reflected the growing disillusionment with Russia: We also need a new Ostpolitik, that is, a European Ostpolitik that also shows new ways to cooperate with Russia in the interests of all European countries—​and not merely those chosen by Russia—​given the dangerous silence between Washington and Moscow. This new Ostpolitik must also reach out to Eastern Partnership countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, which in many ways are as European as we are in how they think and feel. It must take into account the needs of all Europeans—​those of the Baltic states and Poland, as well as those of the western countries (Mass, 2018).

THREE CHANCELLORS AND RUSSIA    635 Maas came under criticism within the SPD and his more balanced approach was countered by calls from some in the party for the unilateral removal of all American nuclear weapons from Germany and a new Ostpolitik which would be more accommodating to Russia (Dettke, 2020). These proposals from Rolf Muetzenich, the SPD parliamentary leader and Matthias Platzeck, a party leader in Eastern Germany, were designed to position the SPD on the Left for the 2021 Bundestag election. They reflected the inclination of many in the party towards an equi-​distancing between the US and Russia, an old tendency reinforced by the Trump years. As Ulrich Speck pointed out, ‘while Ostpolitik during the Cold War was aimed at bringing political change in the east, and was oriented toward central Europe no less than toward Russia, today the term has often become shorthand for good relations with the Kremlin’ (Speck, 2018). This position today alienates Poland and the Baltic states as well as the US. As Maas has stated, ‘if Russia defines itself more and more in distinction even in antagonism to the West, then this changes the reality of our foreign policy’ (Speck, 2018). During this same period Merkel allowed the Nord Stream II (NSII) gas pipeline project to be initiated, due in part to pressure from the SPD ministers. After Steinmeier had moved to become the German President in January 2017 he was replaced by Sigmar Gabriel, another Schröder protégé who continued to support the NSII. This period coincided with the Trump administration, meaning that the German government had little support on Russia from the White House and had to deal with the most important Putin Versteher in the West, Donald G. Trump. While Merkel took a tough line on the Navalny poisoning and his detention upon his return to Russia, she did not cancel or delay the pipeline project. Maintaining a geo-​economic approach, she continued to separate commercial from strategic interests although NSII has created a split with the US under both Trump and Biden.

Conclusion At the end of the Merkel era, German policy towards Russia was fundamentally changed. The loss of trust of German leaders and the expert community in Putin and his government is fundamental and long-​lasting. Without trust, dialogue and compromise is not possible and this has undermined the foundations of the German approach to Russia. Thomas Bagger, a close aide of Steinmeier both in the Foreign Office and in the President’s office, concurred that many of the key assumptions underlying Germany post-​1990 policies have been disappointed and require a rethinking (Bagger, 2020). The power relationship between the two countries has shifted in dramatic ways since German reunification and the break-​up of the Soviet Union. What the Soviets termed the correlation of forces has shifted markedly in Germany’s favour (Newnham, 2017, pp. 56, 57; Fischer, 2020). Germany has emerged as the leading power in the EU with the third most important economy in the world while Russia is a nuclear power with a failing economy almost totally dependent on the export of fossil fuel. It is facing a grim

636   Stephen F. Szabo demographic and political future and relies entirely on coercion, corruption, and the threat of military force for its influence. German leaders have a greater degree of self-​ confidence in their ability to shape the relationship than do Russian leaders and believe that the mutual dependence is weighted in Germany’s favour. Economics still remains a key factor in the German approach although strategic concerns have grown. While a number of German leaders wanted to put the Nord Stream II project on the table in response to the Navalny poisoning, Merkel has persevered with the project continuing the compartmentalization of economics and politics. The separate worldviews of economic and security elites remain in tension (Gustafson, 2020, pp. 354–​ 89). The Russia lobby within German business remains as does support in the Left party, the SPD, and the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Eastern Germans remain more positive on Russia as well (Berlin Pulse, 2021). Yet the Greens and most Christian Democrats remain critical of the Putin system. Many questions about the continuity of Russia policy after the departure of Angela Merkel from the Chancellery remain open, but it seems clear that the structural foundations and key assumptions have shifted decisively. German and Western policy since the late 1960s has followed the Harmel Approach of NATO that balances détente with defence, and dialogue with resistance, incentives, and pressure. This is clearly the preferred policy of most German decision-​makers, but one which has been undermined by Putin’s Russia. German policy-​makers face a dilemma, ‘how to manage future relations with Russia when Moscow shows no interest in cooperating with Germany and the EU, but continues to play a vital role in key international conflicts’ (Meister, 2020b, p. 2). Germany sees Russia engage in the Middle East in places like Libya and Syria while the EU is divided and the US is disengaging. Russia remains a partner on the Iran nuclear deal. Although it has few allies, Putin has been shaping an alliance relationship with China which enhances his leverage. Yet Russia remains a revisionist power, a spoiler, and not a power which can be believed or which has an interest in creating order. Even more unsettling for German analysts is the growing belief that the Putin system requires an external threat and a rejection of Western values. These values and the model of an open society are incompatible with the legitimacy of the current Russian system so that any version of rapprochement or a new Ostpolitik is seen as more threatening than a policy of Western confrontation (Adomeit, 2020, p. 291). The Harmel policy now only has one leg, that of defence as the dialogue leg goes nowhere with a system based on the Siloviki, the security forces. German policy-​makers need to shape a policy of selective engagement in areas where it needs to work with Russia while being realistic about the very real limits of engagement and the nature of the Putin system. There will be no Western resets. The successor to Angela Merkel has little room for manoeuvre. As Liana Fix argues, there will be ‘a strong focus and a tough stance on Russia’s global influence, especially when it comes to cyber operations, disinformation, corruption, the undermining of democracy, and the growing Russian-​Chinese alignment’ (Fix, 2020). Policy will be based on an analysis of the Putin system as it is not as it is wished to be (Meister, 2020b). German leaders will continue to mix a combination of sanctions, public diplomacy, and internal resilience

THREE CHANCELLORS AND RUSSIA    637 with a renewed effort at strengthening its defence through both NATO and the EU. They will need to play the long game of waiting out the Putin regime. Without a return by Russian leaders to a version of the Gorbachev policies, there is little hope for a relaxation of tensions or for a more normal relationship.

Further Reading Fix, Liana (2021), Germany’s Role in European Russia: A New German Power? (London: Palgrave Macmillan). Sarotte, Mary (1989), The Struggle to Create Post Cold War Europe: Updated Edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015). Spohr, Kristina (2020), Post Wall Post Square How Bush, Gorbachev, Kohl and Deng Shaped the World After 1989 (New Haven: Yale University Press). Stent, Angela (1999), Russia and German Reborn: Unification, the Soviet Collapse and the New Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Szabo, Stephen F. (2015), Germany, Russia and the Rise of Geo-​economics (London: Bloomsbury).

Bibliography Adomeit, Hannes (2020), ‘Bilanz der deutschen Russlandpolitik seit 1990’, SIRIUS, Zeitschrift fuer Strategische Analysen 4(3), pp. 276–​92. Bagger, Thomas (2019), ‘The World According to Germany: Reassessing 1989’, The Washington Quarterly 41(4), pp. 53–​63. Berlin Pulse (2021), Berlin: Koerber Stitung (https://​www.koer​ber-​stift​ung.de/​en/​the-​ber​ lin-​pulse). Dettke, Dieter (2020) ‘Returning to the Past to Win the Future: The SPD in Search of a Long Term Strategy’, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 21 May 2020. (https://​w ww.aicgs.org/​2020/​05/​returning-​to-​the-​past-​to-​win-​the-​future-​the-​spd-​in-​ search-​of-​a-​long-​term-​strategy/​) Deutsche Welle (2009), ‘German Foreign Minister Seeks Improved Relations with Russia’’ (https://​www.dw.com/​en/​german-​foreign-​minister-​seeks-​improved-​relations-​with-​russia/​ a-​4911294) Fischer, Sabine (2020), ‘What Russia Doesn’t get About Germany’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 22 September. (https://​carne​gie.ru/​com​ment​ary/​82769). Fix, Liana (2020), ‘The End of the Merkel-​Putin Couple’, Internationale Politik, 21 January 21. https://​ip-​quarte​rly.com/​en/​end-​mer​kel-​putin-​cou​ple. Fix, Liana (2018), ‘The Different Shades of German Power: Germany and EU Foreign Policy During the Ukraine Conflict’, German Politics 27(4), pp. 498–​515. Forsberg, Tuomas (2016), ‘From Ostpolitik to Frostpolitik? Merkel, Putin and German Foreign Policy Toward Russia’, International Affairs 92(1), pp. 21–​42. German Foreign Office (2012), ‘Speech by Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle at the German-​ Russian NGO Conference’. (https://​www.auswa​erti​ges-​amt.de/​en/​newsr​oom/​news/​130​425-​ bm-​r-​rus-​ngo-​konf/​254​722). Goldgeiger, James (1999), Not Whether but When: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution).

638   Stephen F. Szabo Gustafson, Thane (2020), The Bridge: Natural Gas in a Redivided Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Hacke, Christian (2003), Die Aussenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: von Konrad Adenauer bis Gerhard Schroeder (Frankfurt: Ullstein Verlag). Hamilton, Daniel and Kristina Spohr (2019), Open Door: NATO and Euroatlantic Security After the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press). Kieninger, Stephan (2020a), ‘Helmut Kohl and NATO Enlargement: The Search for the Post-​Cold War Order’, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. (https://​www.aicgs.org/​ 2020/​07/​helmut-​kohl-​and-​nato-​enlargement-​the-​search-​for-​the-​post-​cold-​war-​order/​) Kieninger, Stephan (2020b), ‘New Evidence from the Clinton Presidential Library on Bill Clinton and Helmut Kohl’s Diplomatic Relationship’, History News Network, 16 February. (http://​hnn.us/​arti​cle/​174​323). Kundnani, Hans (2015), The Paradox of German Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press) Kornelius, Stefan, (2013), Angela Merkel: The Chancellor and Her World (Surrey: Alma Books). Maas, Heiko (2018), Speech ‘Courage to Stand Up for Europe: #Europe United’, German Foreign Office, 13 June 2018. (https://​www.auswaertiges-​amt.de/​en/​newsroom/​news/​maas-​ europeunited/​2106528) Meister, Stefan (2020a), ‘The End of German Ostpolitik’, German Council on Foreign Relations, Policy Brief no. 22 (September 2020). Meister, Stefan (2020b), ‘The Geopoliticization of Russian Politics’, International Politik Quarterly, 29 October 2020. (https://​ip-​quarterly.com/​en/​geopoliticization-​russian-​politics) Meister, Stefan (2016), ‘The ‘Lisa Case’: Germany as a Target of Russian Disinformation’, NATO Review, 25 July. (https://​www.nato.int/​docu/​rev​iew/​artic​les/​2016/​07/​25/​the-​lisa-​case-​germ​ any-​as-​a-​tar​get-​of-​russ​ian-​dis​info​rmat​ion/​index.html) . Newnham, Randall (2017), ‘Germany and Russia Since Reunification: Continuity, Change and the Role of Leaders’, German Politics and Society 35(1), pp. 42–​62. Rice, Condolezza (2011), No Higher Honor: A Memoir of my Years in Washington (New York: Crown). Sarotte, Mary (2015), 1989: The Struggle to Create Post Cold War Europe: Updated Edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Schoellgen, Gregor (2015), Gerhard Schroeder: Die Biographie (Munich: Deutsche Verlags Anstalt). Speck, Ulrich (2018), ‘Toward a New Ostpolitik’, Berlin Policy Journal blog, 7 October 2018. (https://​berl​inpo​licy​jour​nal.com/​tow​ard-​a-​new-​ost​poli​tik/​). Speck, Ulrich (2016) ‘The West’s Response to the Ukrainian Conflict: A Transatlantic Success Story’, Transatlantic Academy, Research report no. 4. Stent, Angela (1999), Russia and German Reborn: Unification, the Soviet Collapse and the New Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Stent, Angela (2014), The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-​Russian Relations in the Twenty First Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Stent, Angela (2019), Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest (New York: Twelve). Szabo, Stephen F. (1992), The Diplomacy of German Unification (New York: St. Martins Press). Szabo, Stephen F. (2004), Parting Ways: The Crisis in German-​American Relations (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution). Szabo, Stephen F. (2015), Germany, Russia and the Rise of Geo-​economics (London: Bloomsbury). Voice of America (2020), ‘Merkel: Hard Evidence of a Russian Cyber Attack on German Parliament’, 13 May. (https://​www.voanews.com/​europe/​merkel-​hard-​evidence-​russian-​ cyber-​attack-​german-​parliament)

CHAPTER 35

A QUARTER CENT U RY OF GER MAN REL ATI ONS W I T H THE IND O-​PAC I FI C Volker Stanzel

The major driving force behind Germany’s relationship with the Asia-​Pacific was always economic interest. At the same time, Germany, although active across the whole region, never developed as close political relations with South and Southeast Asian countries as it did with China, Japan, and Korea. Today, China is Germany’s major economic partner outside the European Union (EU). The Indo-​Pacific’s recent political volatility has, more out of necessity than volition, stimulated German political interest in the region, which is a new and unsettling challenge for Germany’s Asia policy. With the onset of industrialization in Germany, (not-​yet-​unified) German countries’ trade developed worldwide, including in the Indo-​Pacific (Fukuoka, 2018, pp. 44–​52). This led German traders to request their governments to provide diplomatic protection, and first agreements were concluded in 1861 between Prussian and other German states and China, Japan and Siam. After German unification in 1871, between 1885 and 1899, the country established colonies in New Guinea, Samoa, and other Pacific islands, as well as in Tsingtao (today: Qingdao) in China. Political relations were meant to support economic activities and lacked concept and strategy. At the same time, cultural relations experienced a boom at least equivalent to economic engagement. German explorers, researchers, and artists were active in major and less prominent places anywhere from Central Asia to East, Southeast, and South Asia. Colonialism proved a short-​lived experience, terminated by the First World War, and the time span between the two World Wars was too short to revitalize economic activity to any sustainable extent in Asia. During the interwar years political relations were of marginal importance, even though German military experts contributed to training the Chinese armed forces, both on the side of the KMT government and through the Comintern on the side of the Chinese Communist party (CCP). Even ambitious schemes like the Anti-​Comintern Pact and

640   Volker Stanzel the ‘axis’ between fascist Japan and Nazi Germany never acquired political or military importance of any tangible impact. After the Second World War, the lack of political interest in Asian affairs in both the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) continued despite the latter’s ideological closeness to the communist regimes in the region. Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic, even refused to recognize Taiwan as ‘China,’ despite American pressure to do so (West Germany diplomatically recognized The People’s Republic of China only in 1972). Things changed in the 1960s when West Germany, with annual growth rates of up to 10 per cent, continued to experience its ‘economic miracle’. It was based on exports and led to a rapid re-​engagement with the countries in the Asia-​Pacific who, under the American security umbrella, began to enjoy their own boom. With the end of the times of rapid growth in both Germany and Japan in the late 1970s and 1980s respectively and with China overtaking Asia’s so-​called ‘Four Little Tigers’ (Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore) in the 1990s, the economic and political relationship between Germany and Asian countries began to take their present shape. Today, German trade with the Indo-​Pacific region is, with intra-​EU and US trade, one of the three pillars supporting German export-​led economic growth, and German trade with the region still continues to expand. From €163 billion in 2004, it rose to €412 billion in 2018. The share of German trade with the Indo-​Pacific region measured against its trade with the whole world has increased from 12.4 to 17.1 per cent in the same period. This trend explains the level of Germany’s economic engagement with China—​ something unlikely to change over the next few years but possibly in the medium-​term time range. At the same time, two other factors shape German activities in the Indo-​Pacific region. As more and more Japanese and Korean production sites are outsourced to other Asian countries or to Eastern Europe, imports are declining, as are German exports to Korea and—​insignificantly as yet—​Japan. That specific kind of shift in trade flows will continue, with higher growth rates today increasingly being achieved in countries such as India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Already the ASEAN region, with its almost 600 million inhabitants, makes for about 6 per cent of world trade (India only 2 per cent) and the EU is ASEAN’s most important trading partner, Germany alone makes up one-​ third of EU trade with the region (German Asian-​Pacific Association, 2019, pp. 1–​2). In view of China’s overwhelming increase in strength resulting in risk-​prone political volatility and with ASEAN evolving into a supranational entity in its own right, Germany finds itself drawn into the region’s political problems. Should the American administration continue to act on what President Joe Biden initiated in his first months in office—​increasing cooperation with major partners in the region, to curtail China’s influence especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine created new doubts about China’s own ambitions in the world—​Germany and the other EU countries, will be sucked into the political and security affairs of the region, whether they like it or not. When in 2012 the High Representative for Foreign Affairs of the EU, Catherine Ashton, signed a joint statement with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that both

A QUARTER CENTURY OF GERMAN RELATIONS WITH THE INDO-PACIFIC    641 partners would cooperate more closely in the Asia Pacific in security matters, it indicated already a new thinking in Europe (European External Action Service, 2012, pp. 1–​2). In a keynote speech unthinkable only a few years ago, the German Minister of Defence, Annegret Kamp-​Karrenbauer, stated in November 2019 in Hamburg, ‘Our partners in the Indo-​Pacific region . . . feel increasingly pressured by China’s claim to power. They want a clear sign of solidarity. For valid international law, for intact territory, for free shipping. It is time for Germany to send out such a signal by showing its presence in the region with its allies’ (Kramp-​Karrenbauer, 2019). Since then, Germany has followed the British and French examples in setting up intelligence and 2 +​2 talks with Japan, and sending a frigate to make a port-​call in Japan in August 2021. The recent reassessment of German Asia policy resulted in a government document released in September 2020: Policy Guidelines for the Indo-​Pacific (Government of the FRG, 2021). Their purpose, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas explained, was to balance Germany‘s cooperation with the countries of the region ‘based on rules . . . and not on the law of the strongest’, thus indicating a critical attitude towards China’s recent heavy-​handed regional policies. France and the Netherlands developed similar strategy papers and on 16 April 2021, EU member states adopted guidelines to be the basis for their strategy for the Indo-​Pacific (Emmot, 2021b).

China, Part 1: Almost Synonymous with ‘Asia’ By the beginning of the 1990s, German-​Chinese relations were in difficult straits. The primary reason was political. After 4 June 1989 and the bloody end to the protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing and other places in China, Western countries had imposed sanctions on the People’s Republic that included economic coercion measures. In Germany the public’s attitude was especially critical due to a particular German backdrop. On 9 November of the same year, Germany had seen the fall of the Berlin Wall followed by that of the Iron Curtain, the end of communism across Europe, and the reunification of Germany. The communists in Beijing did not seem to be a partner representing the future of German-​Chinese relations. As a consequence, for example, the Dalai Lama was welcomed in Germany at various times, even speaking at a day-​long event in parliament in 1995. The second reason was an economic one. The demonstrations of 1989 in China had been prompted less by the wish for political reforms but more by an economic crisis, which had led to inflation rates of up to 28 per cent. After the suppression of protests, the Leftists within the Communist party stymied a return to Deng Xiaoping’s policy of Reform and Opening. It took until 1992, when Deng Xiaoping, in a series of speeches in the South of China, where economic reforms had proved most successful, overrode his opponents and relaunched his economic reform policies. German politicians from early

642   Volker Stanzel on supported Chinese efforts to improve economic relations. Most prominently among them was Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who in 1995 paid a highly publicized visit to the Chinese armed forces. Once Party General Secretary and President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Zhu Rongji had fully taken hold of the reins of China after Deng Xiaoping’s death in 1997, economic relations between the two countries quickly got back on track. In Germany in 1998 a new government had come to power—​a coalition of the Social Democratic and Green parties under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. Schröder focused on the economy with a vengeance. When he understood that Zhu Rongji was running against Leftist opposition in pushing for structural reforms in China, it became a major motive for Schröder to support China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, and that in turn became a source of the personal rapport established between Zhu and the Chancellor. German-​Chinese economic relations began to flourish again, and both trade and investments grew continuously. For German industry with its specific character—​ namely building machinery and industrial plants rather than consumer products, it was not difficult to follow the Chinese playbook: Entering into large joint ventures with Chinese state-​owned companies (SOE), even if it entailed sharing technological secrets with Chinese partners, proved highly profitable in that it opened the Chinese market. An early case in point of the pattern was the Volkswagen (VW) joint venture of 1984 though the original model for this kind of cooperation was established by the Swiss elevator company Schindler in 1979. The partnership between VW and its Chinese joint venture partners resulted in VW products dominating the Chinese car market for many years. By the second decade of the twenty-​first century one-​third of VW’s worldwide turnover came from the company’s China business (Karnitschnig, 2020). Another symbol of the close Chinese-​German relationship and its drawbacks was the maglev train (‘Transrapid’) constructed in Shanghai. In return for the chance to build the world’s first commercially-​run maglev train, Siemens and ThyssenKrupp handed over the technological know-​how of the high-​tech rail system. Shortly after the train began its regular operation in 2004 from Pudong airport to the Pudong district of Shanghai, Chinese engineers were discovered going through the files of the engine construction designs in the middle of the night, leading to the suspicion that they were after technological secrets. With Zhu Rongji—​one of the major supporters of the project—​ having retired in 2003, further plans were soon shelved. The more time passed, the more two unique factors turned out to significantly impact the political and economic relationship. One is based on a specific human element in official German-​Chinese relations, the other is the special role then German Chancellor Angela Merkel played. Both factors momentarily exercised a stabilizing function. Given Germany’s economic interest in China, from early on German politicians across the political spectrum were personally engaged in trying to promote bilateral ties, and a large number of them developed knowledge of China to a degree that is unusual, even if hard to measure. The same is true in industry and science, and the same is also true the other way around. While the intensity of consultation mechanisms between

A QUARTER CENTURY OF GERMAN RELATIONS WITH THE INDO-PACIFIC    643 the US and China is second to none, for China, trade with its immediate geographical neighbours is of primary importance, as is the case for Germany regarding the EU (and to some extent with respect to the US). Therefore it is particularly salient that since 2011 China and Germany have been holding regular Cabinet meetings, consultations Germany has with no other country outside Europe, and China, except with the US (Virtual Sino-​German government consultations, 2021). In addition, almost seventy dialogue mechanisms have been established, such as German-​Chinese dialogues on the environment or the rule of law. This allows a large number of the elites of both countries to develop a good degree of knowledge and understanding of each other, which in turn has led to a certain degree of mutual trust, independent of changes in personnel and governments. This is even more remarkable considering the image of China’s policy and politicians among the wider public in Germany is not a positive one (Silver et al., 2020). The Germans are interested in China’s culture and they admire China’s rise, but Chinese politics are looked upon with distrust. The reasons are obvious: the human rights situation, the image of China as a communist dictatorship that ruthlessly suppresses its people, and China’s robust behaviour in foreign affairs, all of this is exacerbated by Xi Jinping’s domestic policies. Against this backdrop, German civil society organizations have, for a long time, acted as a bridge between the sceptical German public and the government. About 200 German NGOs constituted the largest informal European presence in China until the CCP under Xi Jinping placed them under strict official supervision or drove them out of the People’s Republic altogether, while China established nineteen Confucius Institutes in Germany. Both sides are aware, however, that it is still economics that drives the relations between Beijing and Berlin. The second most remarkable factor in German-​Chinese relations is the role of Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor from 2005 to 2021. Regarded with distrust and believed to be an enemy of China because she was raised in communist East Germany but had turned her back on it, she seemed to confirm suspicions when in late 2007 she received the Dalai Lama in her office. Several months of a Chinese boycott of official exchanges with Germany ensued until an unofficial compromise on how Germany would—​or would not—​talk to the Dalai Lama was reached. In the following years, Angela Merkel turned out to be a guarantor of stability and continuity in German-​Chinese relations (Barkin, 2020). The reason was precisely that she was raised in the GDR. She knew a socialist system and its methods of governance, be it with German or Chinese characteristics, from her own personal experience. She therefore possessed a degree of understanding for her interlocutors in Beijing in ways she probably shared with no other Western head of government. This element in the relationship was reinforced by her personal engagement. Since 2006 she has visited China and received high-​ranking Chinese visitors in Germany more frequently than any other Western head of government. Merkel got to know Xi Jinping before he became General Secretary of his party. The relationship resulted in both sides taking each other seriously even when they discussed controversial subjects such as China’s wishes regarding Germany’s finance, economic, or investment policies

644   Volker Stanzel or Merkel’s discussion of human rights in China, Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or the South China Sea. Despite their very different values and interests, this rapport between the Chancellor and Xi Jinping and other Chinese interlocutors contributed to Germany remaining among the very few EU countries which still pushes openly for the adoption of human rights resolutions regarding China in multilateral fora.

China Part 2: Plenty of Problems China is Germany’s third-​ largest trading partner, just behind France and the Netherlands. China surpassed the US, Germany’s most important trading partner outside the EU, in 2016. Today public opinion largely views ‘Asia’ as equivalent to ‘China’. The trade volume between the two countries increased significantly to €206 billion in 2019 and €212 billion in 2020, despite the Coronavirus pandemic. In 2018, German exports to China rose to €96 billion (2013: €66.9 billion), while imports from China increased to €110 billion, accounting for 48 per cent of trade with the Indo-​Pacific region. Beyond that, what is called German-​Chinese trade is in fact much more. Due to close cooperation between German industry and that of other European countries, many smaller or larger companies elsewhere in Europe are tied into the German-​Chinese economic exchange, benefitting from it or suffering with it. That is a situation where not only is there a tangible interest in most of the EU in profitable German-​Chinese relations but also where German opinions on how to deal with China, be they from business or from the government, have a high degree of influence on opinion-​building processes in other European countries (Shambaugh, 2020, pp. 251–​79). Trade is not all there is to economic relations. About 5,200 German firms are currently operating and employing more than one million staff in China (while 2,500 Chinese companies have a seat in Germany). This has been a boon for German industry. That said, it has come at a price, and the sharing of technological secrets is not the only one. As a rule (with notable exceptions), foreign companies may not have more than 49 per cent ownership of a company in China (as of 2018: 51 per cent). This allows Chinese business partners to have a significant influence on the company and through them, also the state or state agencies in provinces or cities. This influence can be fatal when a regional government wants to promote indigenous industries. With the decisions made by the nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party of China in October 2017, companies are required to permit the establishment of party units in companies, thus allowing even stronger influence and information-​gathering by the Chinese state (and possibly industrial competitors); and with the Central Committee decisions of 29 October 2020 China will pursue a strategy of reshoring—​called ‘dual circulation’—​which will limit China’s exposure to international markets (Xi, 2017). At the same time, the Chinese government decided to outlaw all connections to the internet via protected private VPN providers, thus opening the path to—​official or private—​hackers into company secrets in China.

A QUARTER CENTURY OF GERMAN RELATIONS WITH THE INDO-PACIFIC    645 There is another problem caused by China’s new economic strength and its drive to invest abroad. In Germany, the activities of foreign investors are not restricted the way they are in China. When in early 2017 the German robot-​maker Kuka was bought by a Chinese investor, the loss of high-​tech expertise was viewed with suspicion by public opinion in Germany, but the government and the German federation of industry maintained that a free market economy should remain free and not be constrained by considerations of reciprocity. When later in 2017 however, an unknown Chinese investor bought about 10 per cent of the shares of Germany’s Deutsche Bank, demands for investment screening directed at China and reciprocity regulations increased. This was accompanied by a lively discussion about possibly denying the hi tech internet company Huawei access to the German (and perhaps the European) market. At the July 2017 EU Summit, new French President Emmanuel Macron demanded tougher investment screening measures. While this was supported by Chancellor Merkel and the Italian Prime Minister, the other heads of state and government were not convinced of such measures. In 2016, what the German media later called a ‘Chinese blitz’, Beijing acquired total or partial ownership of fifty-​eight German companies. The transaction volume had also increased sharply—​a total of at least €11 billion in 2016 (as much as the volume of the past ten years added together) (Stanzel, 2017). Ironically, this was a development in the context of ‘Made in China 2025’, a Chinese policy initiative to boost innovation and domestic growth, patterned on Germany’s ‘Industrie 4.0’ strategy (Tatlow et al., 2021, pp. 131–​48). While so far the two economies complement each other, China’s focus on Germany’s modern technologies may make it a competitor in the future, whereas Germany still has the edge currently. This perspective together with the wide-​spread assumption that there is increasingly less of a level playing field for foreign companies in China alarmed German corporations. In turn, in 2016, China’s news agency Xinhua responded to the new mood of German public opinion with a commentary, which had the headline, ‘Time for Berlin to sober up from China-​phobic paranoia’ (Zhu Dongyang, 2016). Already in 2013 during a visit to Kazakhstan, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a scheme to develop Central Asia. This was a ‘new Silkroad’, an overland continental infrastructural network, and a ‘maritime silk road’ through Southeast and South Asia, crossing the Indian Ocean to Africa. The idea was to use concrete and steel, produced in excess beyond Chinese infrastructure investment needs, and Chinese labour forces to help the participating countries develop as part of a bridge for China’s industries. The idea caught on quickly, especially as the Chinese government intimated that $900 billion worth of credit would be provided to finance new projects. A version of the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI), as it was called later, was included in the Communist party’s statutes at the nineteenth party congress in October 2017 (Chatzky and McBride, 2020). Despite doubts about the ability of recipient countries to repay their loans, and fears of increasing dependence on China of some of the recipient countries, German industry soon felt the impact of the temptation to attract Chinese investments on its very doorstep. China initiated the formation of a group of Eastern and Southeastern European states—​the ‘17 +​1’, which included initially eleven and later twelve EU member states.

646   Volker Stanzel The ‘17+​1’ consisted of a loose assembly of states to help Beijing examine opportunities for Chinese BRI investments in Eastern, Southeastern, and Southern Europe. At a conference in Budapest on 27 November 2017 Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang promised investments to the tune of €3 billion. With China interacting on various layers of multi-​and bilateral relations with the EU and its member states, in 2016 the European Commission had already felt compelled to warn that despite cheap loan offers from China to finance rail, road, or port projects, EU rules for proper procurement procedures must still be followed (even the German city of Duisberg had agreed to become the final destination for Chinese BRI trains running across the Eurasian land bridge). But there is also the fear that the desire to gain access to cheap money from China can make EU countries more pliable to follow China’s political wishes. In June 2017, at the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council when the EU drafted a resolution addressing Chinese human rights violations, it was vetoed by Greece, one of the 17 +​1 members. Against that backdrop, in 2017, in a speech in Paris, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel ironically applied the traditional Chinese ‘One-​China-​ Principle’ (which demands the acceptance that there is only one China, which includes Taiwan and Tibet) to the new situation in Europe. He demanded that China adhered to the ‘One-​Europe-​Principle’ (China Radio Online, 2017). In 2016, the German government supported the EU’s decision to deny long-​coveted Market Economy Status to China, and Germany’s Minister of Economics, Brigitte Zypries called upon China, albeit in vain, to include guarantees on free trade and fair competition in the final communiqué of a May 2017 conference on BRI (Turcsanyi and Kachlikovarnal, 2020). In 2021, however, disillusionment with China’s many unfulfilled promises led to a virtual 17 +​1 summit where not all leaders from member countries attended—​a ‘loss of face’ for Xi Jinping. The scene thus seems set for further uncertainty about where German-​Chinese relations are headed. Xi Jinping’s policies have only helped to deepen the new distrust. Breaking its treaty obligations in Hong Kong and unilaterally terminating the period of ‘One country two systems’, which had been contractually agreed with the UK, Hong Kong’s former colonial power, to last until 2047, was met with rather helpless consternation and protests in Berlin. It was feared that Taiwan’s already precarious security was now seriously threatened. The treatment of Uyghurs in the Western Chinese province of Xinjiang, approaching what some democratic governments termed cultural genocide, has led to even further friction between those governments and China. In retaliation for sanctions imposed by the EU on four people and one provincial institution deemed responsible for the suppression of the Uyghurs, Beijing imposed its own sanctions on European institutions, such as all of the member states’ ambassadors in the EU’s Political and Security Committee (PSC), the largest European think tank on China (the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin) and on ten individuals, mainly members of the European Parliament (EP) (Emmott, 2021a). Such actions, now termed ‘wolf diplomacy’ in China’s media, seemed to confirm a sentiment already reflected in January 2019 by Germany’s industrial federation’s umbrella organization (the BDI). The paper adopted

A QUARTER CENTURY OF GERMAN RELATIONS WITH THE INDO-PACIFIC    647 the term ‘systemic competition’ from previous German Foreign Ministry statements for the new nature of the relationship between European democratic market economies and communist-​led China (Mair, Strack and Schaff, 2019, pp. 1–​22). Since then, the term has also been used by the EU Commission in its reports (Kaim, 2020). Germany’s position in the world is defined by two major parameters: its integration into the EU and its alliance with the US. With the Trump presidency making America an unreliable partner in supporting the liberal international order and China placing ever more emphasis onto its bilateral relationship with Germany, it was feared that at one point Berlin might be tempted to look to China for support in its international strategic endeavours. However, China playing off one EU member state against the other and against the Commission, its robust and expansionist foreign policy, its repressive policies at home, and not least its handling of the pandemic in 2020/​21 has led to increasing scepticism over the longer-​term benefits of the close cooperation with China Germany and Europe had become used to (Lam, 2015, pp. 192–​206). The Biden administration’s efforts to put transatlantic policy towards China on a new and more stable footing has helped pave the way to a reassessment of Germany and Europe’s China policy. An indication of how far the Sino-​EU policy and economic process had evolved was displayed by the last leg of the EU-​China negotiations of a Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) (EU-​China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, 2020). The investment treaty had been negotiated for seven years and was envisaged to be concluded under the German EU presidency in the second half of 2020. With the lively discussions over how to deal with China in the future, doubts over the need for such an agreement had arisen in Europe to a degree where both Chinese and European negotiators foresaw the possible collapse of the talks. It took the personal engagement of both Xi Jinping and Chancellor Merkel to get at least a rudimentary version of the agreement signed on 30 December 2020, a version that still needed work on most crucial points. It also required ratification by the EP and the EU members’ national legislatures—​in danger after China imposed its sanctions against members of the EP and all PSC ambassadors (Lau, 2021). Fifty years after the establishment of diplomatic relations it therefore seems that the ground on which the relationship between the Federal Republic of Germany and the People’s Republic of China is built has become increasingly shaky. And this means that European-​Chinese relations do not seem bound for a bright future either.

Japan: A Civil Society Story Since the 1990s German-​Japanese relations have experienced a sea-​change. On the one hand, there was a newly rising China, increasingly attractive as an economic partner for both countries. On the other hand in Japan, after the bubble of rapid economic development had burst in late 1990 and while no one entertained the vision of ‘Japan as Number

648   Volker Stanzel One’ (Ezra Vogel) anymore, the country had entered a period of sluggish development. Only reluctant reforms of the economy’s structural weaknesses was undertaken. By the 1990s both Germany and Japan were mature and highly developed industrialized countries whose relationship was characterized by mutual relaxed political confidence and a considerable trade exchange (€44.2 billion in 2018). It made Japan Germany’s second-​most important trade partner in the Indo-​Pacific and brought a certain stability to their economic exchanges. Germany and Japan are no longer countries of economic ‘miracles’ but are able to rely on solid foundations built in the recent past. While there is a certain saturation with each other’s goods in both markets, production structures are similar and allow for deep cooperation. Suppliers from Germany, for instance, produce for customers directly in Japan, where there is local expertise and greater adaptability. Frequently, there is also coordination of the production of German and Japanese companies in third countries like China or in Southeast Asia. As export-​dependent nations, Germany and Japan share an interest in further enhancing cooperative components of the liberal international order so as to better deal with global problems, be they financial crises, climate change, terrorism, or pandemics. Both countries therefore often cooperate strategically in multilateral fora, such as the G8, the G20, or the interregional discussion forum between Asia and Europe (ASEM). Both countries also seek global disarmament and non-​proliferation of nuclear weapons, and together with India and Brazil, permanent membership of the UN Security Council (Stanzel, 2017). Rare as they are, misgivings between the two countries do occur. Both countries fought hard to overcome the global financial crisis of 2008/​09 with as little damage as possible to their economies. But for Germany, the global crisis was followed by the Euro crisis, which severely affected a number of European countries. Japanese observers expected and feared that the Euro would fall apart; they looked hard at how Berlin handled the crisis. In 2013, after the new Japanese government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had taken over, austerity-​leaning Germany looked with suspicion at ‘Abenomics’, which tried to push the Japanese economy out of stagnation by making available easy money in great volumes. Brexit brought both governments together in their regret at losing a proponent of liberal trade policies in the EU. For Germany, however, the possibility of having major Japanese corporations and banks move their headquarters to Germany seemed at least like a consolation prize for a while—​until Japan was the first country to conclude a trade agreement with post-​Brexit Britain at the end of 2020. One incident that weighs heavily on the bilateral relationship is the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, which followed the earthquake and the tsunami of 11 March 2011. German society, struggling with its decision to exit the civilian use of nuclear power by the early 2030s, paid close attention. German Chancellor Merkel, a trained physicist, insisted on having learned a lesson from Fukushima and decided to follow the recommendation of an ‘Ethics Commission’ to speed up terminating the use of nuclear energy and phase out the last reactors by 2022. That decision was not welcomed by the Japanese government which wished to continue operate as many as possible of Japan’s fifty-​four reactors.

A QUARTER CENTURY OF GERMAN RELATIONS WITH THE INDO-PACIFIC    649 Civil society in Japan, however, took note, and it seems that the inability of the Japanese government to restart even a small number of reactors for a decade after Fukushima is related to the impact of the German decisions on public opinion in Japan (Stanzel, 2018, pp. 166–​84). If both countries are today among the ‘most liked’ nations in the world in international polls, then this is due to their cultural soft power but also their commitment to solving global problems (Gallup, 2021). However, their bilateral relationship today is characterized neither by particular intensity nor by strategic cooperation. The official relationship needs little investment of political energy: in comparison with Angela Merkel’s frequent visits to China, the German Chancellor mostly visited Japan when attending multilateral events; bilateral visits occured rarely. Whether that will change with the new German government in power since December 2021 remains to be seen. Germany and Japan continue their traditional cooperation mostly only in the fields of science and culture. From the Goethe Institute with the ‘Villa Kamogawa’ in Kyoto and the Japanese-​German Centre in Berlin, the spectrum ranges from the Siebold Prize, awarded by the federal president for scientific achievements of young Japanese researchers, to the regular successes of Japanese films at the Berlinale film festival, and the mutual recognition of artists such as Kaii Higashiyama and Kenzo Tange in Germany, and Doris Dörrie and Gert Knäpper in Japan. In Germany thousands of people take part in the annual cosplay-​meetings; whilst Japan has ‘Oktoberfests’ all the year round. The celebration of the 150th anniversary of the establishment of official relations between Germany and Japan in 2011 in the year of the ‘triple catastrophe’ (earthquake, tsunami, nuclear incident at Fukushima) yet with more than 1,000 events in Japan, many of them organized by Germans devoted to help Japanese in need, showed how much of the bilateral relationship rests on the shoulders of civil society institutions. In effect it is the academic and artistic associations, and the German-​Japanese Societies (Deutsch-​ Japanische Gesellschaften; close to fifty in Germany) and the Japanese-​German Societies (Nichidoku Kyokai; more than sixty in Japan) that constitute the actual backbone of German-​Japanese relations. In order to lay the ground for mutually beneficial relations in the future, in 2021, the year of the 160th anniversary of their diplomatic relationship, Germany established the position of ‘Patron of German-​Japanese Youth Cooperation’ and nominated its Federal Minister for Youth and Families, Franziska Giffey, to take that post.

India: Hope Ever Springs Anew Considering the lack of intense German-​Indian political and economic exchanges, it may be surprising that there is considerable depth to cultural relations between the two countries. Yet this fact reflects the lack of colonialist or imperialist potential of a

650   Volker Stanzel Germany split into a multitude of small states well into the second half of the nineteenth century, while even at that time, German explorers and scientists had already travelled all across Asia. German writers such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller adopted Indian motifs in their work, philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer integrated much of what they learned about Buddhism into their thought, and names like Wilhelm von Humboldt, Friedrich Schlegel, and Max Mueller continue to represent German research on Indian culture. Politically, while India was a British colony, Germany established only a consular representation at the end of the nineteenth century. After the Second World War, however, both countries quickly normalized relations, with India being the first country in the world to declare that the state of war had ended. During the Cold War, India, leaning towards the Soviet camp, entertained close political relations with the GDR. Given the role of the state in India’s economy and its slow pace of development, which never enabled economic relations to advance much, one might speak of ‘mutual benign neglect’ (Lemke and Wagner, 2021, pp. 1–​4). Today the rhetoric has changed, but the structure of the relationship has not. In the year 2000 both countries agreed on an ‘Agenda for German-​Indian Partnership in the 21st Century’. At the time they also coordinated their efforts to become new Permanent Members of the UN Security Council, together with Brazil and Japan. That was the time when India, as a member of the so-​called ‘BRICS’ countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), seemed poised to quickly overtake the pace of development in China. However, structural problems, poverty, a high inflation rate, and low educational standards continued to stand in the way of India’s ambitious reform plans. However, the long-​term perspective is India becoming the world’s third-​biggest economy eventually (CEBR, 2021. Thus bilateral trade, with €21.4 million in 2018, is only one-​tenth of Germany’s trade with China. Even that suffices to make Germany India’s most important trading partner in Europe, but for Germany India ranks somewhere in the middle of the list of economic partners. German enterprises make use of India’s expertise in IT, but investment remains low: 1,700 German companies are represented in India (compared with 5,200 in China). If there is improvement, it shows more in the investment Indian companies pursue in Germany, and in the number of Indian students in Germany—​almost 16,000 in 2016—​where today they constitute the third-​largest group, after Turkey and China. If there are obstacles in German-​Indian relations, they consist of India’s persisting lag in infrastructural modernization (starkly evident in its handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, and in the increasingly strong ethno-​nationalist tendency of Indian politics since the early 2000s. In 2011/​12 Germany held a ‘Year of Germany’ in India. It was named: ‘Infinite Possibilities’, an ambitious title—​or perhaps a reflection of the hope with which both countries see the promise the relationship seems to hold. This hope is so far unfulfilled. It is alive, however, as the India-​EU Summit on 8 May 2021 showed when both sides decided to continue their negotiations of the Free Trade Agreement that had been suspended in 2013 (Chaudhury, 2021).

A QUARTER CENTURY OF GERMAN RELATIONS WITH THE INDO-PACIFIC    651

The Koreas: The Unexpected Boom The Kingdom of Korea, the most isolated country in East Asia in the nineteenth century, allowed official relations with other countries only after being forced to do so militarily by Japan in 1876; a first trade treaty with Germany was concluded in 1883. Korea became a Japanese protectorate in 1905 and a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945. As a consequence, the reception of German culture and technology took place mainly through Japanese mediation. Still, their common fate as divided nations brought the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Federal Republic of Germany close to each other soon after the Korean war. Germany became Korea’s most important economic partner just behind the US. The fact that about 40,000 Koreans or Germans of Korean extraction live in Germany today—​coal mine workers and nurses who came to work to the Federal Republic in the 1960s, and their descendants—​testifies to that past (Hartmann, 2015). German unification in 1990 led to increased Korean political interest in Germany. The question was less whether Korea might emulate Germany’s policies but more whether Korea might learn from Germany on how to handle the economic and social difficulties inevitably arising after eventual unification of the Korean peninsula. However, the Cold War ended without a change in government in Pyongyang. The ROK’s rise to one of the most important economies in the world had an impact on trade and investment exchanges between the two countries with Germany becoming Korea’s most important partner in the EU. The ‘unexpected boom’ only came, however, after the EU concluded a Free Trade Agreement with Korea in 2011. With custom duties abolished, German industry found Korea a ready customer, especially for cars and machinery. Today, Korea, Germany’s third-​most important trade partner in Asia, is the only East Asian country with which Germany has a significant trade surplus (€9 billion out of a trade exchange of €25 billion in 2016). If that ‘boom’ has been unexpected, in the case of North Korea—​the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)—​the opposite may be said. East Germany was the DPRK’s most important partner after the Soviet Union and China and a major provider of development aid—​to a degree that Kim Il Sung offered asylum to East German leader Erich Honecker after the fall of East Germany. The impact of the implosion of the Soviet bloc on North Korea led the West German government to assume that North Korea was ready to reform its economic system at least as much as China. Diplomatic relations were established quickly in 1991, business contacts followed, and the Pyongyang leadership was approached on various levels. However, all came to naught when it transpired that North Korea’s priority lay in developing its nuclear and missile arsenal, leading to sanctions being imposed by the UN Security Council. Today, the relationship is governed mainly by Germany’s efforts to support the UN’s sanction regime against the DPRK.

652   Volker Stanzel

Conclusion Germany and the EU are facing formidable challenges. After sixteen years of governments led by Angela Merkel, the new German government will have to find its bearings in the post-​Merkel era. France will be torn asunder by the battle between incumbent President Emmanuel Macron and populist Rightist presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. Increasing fissures are opening up inside the EU between populist governments, not least in the east of the continent, and the established institutions in Brussels. Both the EU and Britain continue to be in the process of finding a constructive post-​Brexit modus vivendi. The transatlantic relationship has to succeed with its reset after the tumultuous Trump years. All of these challenges are daunting but only the challenge from the People’s Republic of China raises the question of the resilience and even the survivability of the EU as it presently exists. Assuming Xi Jinping will stay in power for the foreseeable future (in dictatorships with repeated power struggles, always a looming question), the pressure from a China buoyed by its economic success and its successful totalitarian handling of the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020/​21 will continue. And if the years since the nineteenth party congress are a reliable indication, and if the 20th Party Congress in Autumn 2022 does not initiate greater political changes, it will be relentless pressure. Here, Germany’s role as the most important player in Europe will be essential to turn uncertainty into rational, constructive, and future-​oriented policies. The question will not only be whether the EU can get itself back on track as a relatively homogenous actor. Not a Superpower, it will have to make full use of its advantages as a multilateralist agent, a setter of norms in the legal as much as in the economic sphere. The EU will need to translate its strengths as a global economic power and a force of liberal democratic values into sufficient influence to continue what the Western world’s previous China policies achieved: China needs to continue its previous path into the fold of the international system (of which it is, after all, one of the greatest beneficiaries). Robert Zoellick’s objective, as expressed in 2005, to turn China into a ‘responsible stakeholder’ remains the goal. When considering China’s transformational successes so far in many areas, this remains a distinct possibility. But the EU needs to develop a realistic sense of purpose and the determination not to be pushed aside by the rough new kid on the block. For that, the transatlantic relationship will be as crucial as in the past. In addition, much more so than in the past, success hinges on Europe’s ability to enter into cooperative arrangements with the major countries of the Indo-​Pacific. These countries are Japan, India, Korea, Australia, and the Southeast Asian nations. They have interests and in many cases values that coincide with those of the EU, including Germany, and of non-​EU states such as the UK. They also have a long experience in dealing with Beijing. The objective ought to be the development of an enhanced quality of cooperation, including, for instance, establishing new connectivity models (also in cyber space), restructuring supply lines, and jointly analysing and combating threats to the rule of international law.

A QUARTER CENTURY OF GERMAN RELATIONS WITH THE INDO-PACIFIC    653 It remains to be seen whether Germany and Europe will prove able to muster the political energy necessary to focus on such a task. At least, the various 2021 guidelines for policies in the Indo-​Pacific devised by Germany, the EU Commission, and other actors are a promising step into the right direction.

Further Reading Bersick, Sebastian, Michael Bruter, Natalia Chaban, Sol Iglesias, and Ronan Lenihan (eds) (2012), Asia in the Eyes of Europe: Images of a Giant (Baden-​Baden: Nomos). Cabestan, Jean-​Pierre (2019), China Tomorrow: Democracy or Dictatorship? (Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Rowman & Littlefield). Fackler, Martin and Yoichi Funabashi (eds) (2018), Reinventing Japan: New Directions in Global Leadership (Santa Barbara and Boulder: Praeger). Hilpert, Hanns Günther und Christian Wagner (2016), Sicherheit in Asien: Konflikt, Konkurrenz, Kooperation (Baden-​Baden: Nomos). Kanehara, Nobukatsu (2020), Rekishi no kyokun: ‘Shippai no honshitsu’ to kokka senryaku (Tokyo: Shinchosha). Liu, Mingfu (2015), The China Dream: Great Power Thinking & Strategic Posture in the Post-​ American Era (New York: CN Times Books). Shambaugh, David (ed.) (2020), China & the World (New York: Oxford University Press).

Bibliography Barkin, Noah (2020). ‘What Merkel Really Thinks About China—​and the World’, Foreign Policy Online, 12 December 2020. https://​foreig​npol​icy.com/​2020/​12/​31/​what-​mer​kel-​rea​lly-​ thi​nks-​about-​china-​and-​the-​world/​ (Accessed 25 February 2021). Chaudhury, Dipanjan Roy (2021). ‘India and EU to Resume Negotiations for FTA after 8 Years; Launch Comprehensive Connectivity Partnership’, The Economic Times E-​Paper, 9 May 2021. https://​econom​icti​mes.ind​iati​mes.com/​news/​econ​omy/​fore​ign-​trade/​india-​and-​eu-​to-​res​ ume-​negot​iati​ons-​for-​fta-​after-8​ -​yrs-​laun ​ ch-​compre​hens​ive-​conne​ctiv​ity-​part​ners​hip/​arti​ cles​how/​82482​463.cms (Accessed 11 May 2021). Chatzky, Andrew and James McBride (2020), ‘China’s Massive Belt and Road Initiative’, Council on Foreign Relations Newsletter, 28 January 2020. https://​www.cfr.org/​backg​roun​der/​chi​nas-​ mass​ive-​belt-​and-​road-​ini​tiat​ive (Accessed 19 April 2020). Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) Online report, 26 December 2021, India to become 3rd largest economy in 2031, says CEBR (livemint.com) (accessed 15 January 2022). China Radio Online (2017), ‘China Reacts to Statements by Gabriel about the “One Europe Principle” ’, China Radio Online, 6 December 2017. http://​ger​man.cri.cn/​3185/​2017/​08/​31/​ 1s268​783.htm (Accessed 15 December 2017). Emmott, Robin (2021a). ‘EU Envoys Agree First China Sanctions in Three Decades’., Reuters, 17 March 2021. EU envoys agree first China sanctions in three decades (yahoo.com) (Accessed 14 January 2022). Emmott, Robin (2021b), ‘EU Sets out Indo-​Pacific Plan, Says It’s Not ‘Anti-​China’, Reuters 19 April 2021. Available at: https://​www.reut​ers.com/​world/​china/​eu-​sets-​out-​indo-​paci​fic-​ plan-​says-​its-​not-​anti-​china-​2021-​04-​19/​ (Accessed 3 May 2021).

654   Volker Stanzel EU-​China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (2020), European Commission online, 30 December 2020. https://​trade.ec.eur​opa.eu/​doc​lib/​docs/​2020/​decem​ber/​tradoc​_​159​242. pdf (Accessed 3 May 2021). European Commission Directorate-​General for Trade, European Commission online, 3 June 2021 Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)—​Trade—​European Commission. https://​ec.eur​opa.eu/​trade/​pol​icy/​countr​ies-​and-​regi​ons/​regi​ons/​asean/​ (Accessed 15 January 2022). European External Action Service online, 12 July 2012, “Joint EU–​US Statement on the Asia-​ Pacific Region’. https://​eeas.eur​opa.eu/​archi​ves/​dele​gati​ons/​india/​docume​nts/​press​_​cor​ ner/​press​_​rel​ease​_​13_​07_​20 ​ 12.pdf (Accessed 15 December 2017). Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung online, 26 December 2017., ‘Ökonomen-​Studie: Indien wird 2018 zur fünftgrößten Wirtschaftsmacht’, FAZ.NET. Available at: https://​www.faz.net/​aktu​ ell/​wir​tsch​aft/​mehr-​wir​tsch​aft/​oekono​men-​ind​ien-​wird-​2018-​weltw​eit-​fue​nftg​roes​ste-​ wirts​chaf​t sma​cht-​15358​436.html (Accessed 26 December 2017). Fukuoka, Mariko (2018), Puroisen-​Higashi-​Ajia-​ensei to bakumatsu-​gaikō (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai). Godement, Francois (2020), ‘China’s Relations with Europe’, in David Shambaugh (ed.), China & the World (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 251–​79. Gallup,, February 2021 Country Ratings. https://​news.gal​lup.com/​poll/​1624/​perc​epti​ons-​fore​ ign-​countr​ies.aspx (Accessed 15 May 2021). German Asian-​Pacific Association (2019), ‘German Trade with Asia Grew at an Above-​Average Rate in 2018’. https://​www.oav.de/​filead​min/​user​_​upl​oad/​1_​Me​ldun​gen/​Allgem​ein/​ap_​190​ 2_​Au​ssen​hand​el_​2​018.pdf (Accessed 25 October 2020). Government of the Federal Republic of Germany (2021), ‘Policy Guidelines for the Indo-​ Pacific Region: Germany-​Europe-​Asia: Shaping the 21st Century Together’ (Preliminary Translation of the Executive Summary). https://​ran​gun.diplo.de/​blob/​2380​824/​a27b6​ 2057​f2d2​675c​e2bb​fc5b​e010​99a/​pol​icy-​gui​deli​nes-​summ​ary-​data.pdf. (Accessed 25 October 2020). Hartmann, Lisa. (2016). Die südkoreanischen Migranten und ihre Integration in Deutschland in Stüve, Klaus and Hermannseder, Eveline, Migration und Integration als transnationale Herausforderung, (Cham: Springer), 125–​152 Kaim, Markus (2020), ‘Is Germany Considering Maritime Missions in Asia?’, The Diplomat online. https://​thed​iplo​mat.com/​2020/​01/​is-​germ​any-​cons​ider​ing-​marit​ime-​missi​ons-​in-​ asia/​(Accessed 24 October 2020). Karnitschnig, Matthew (2020), “How Germany Opened the Door to China—​and Threw Away the Key’, POLITICO online, 10 September 2020. https://​www.polit​ico.eu/​arti​cle/​ germ​any-​china-​econ​omy-​busin​ess-​tec​hnol​ogy-​indus​try-​trade-​secur​ity/​ (Accessed 20 October 2020). Kramp-​Karrenbauer, Annegret, Speech by Federal Minister of Defence at the Bundeswehr University Munich (bmvg.de), 7 November 2019 Lam, Willy Wo-​Lap (2015), Chinese Politics in the Era of Xi Jinping: Renaissance, Reform, or Retrogression? (New York and London: Routledge). Lau, Stuart (2021), ‘EU Trade Chief Says Efforts to Ratify China Deal “Suspended”’, POLITICO. https://​www.polit​ico.eu/​arti​cle/​eu-​trade-​chief-​says-​effo​rts-​to-​rat​ify-​china-​deal-​suspen​ ded/​(Accessed 11 May 2021). Lee, Eun-​Jeung and Hannes B. Mosler (2017), Facetten deutsch-​koreanischer Beziehungen. 130 Jahre gemeinsame Geschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH).

A QUARTER CENTURY OF GERMAN RELATIONS WITH THE INDO-PACIFIC    655 Lemke, Jana and Wagner, Christian (2021), ‘India: An Ambivalent Partner for the West. Growing Commonalities, Growing Differences (Berlin: SWP Comment)’. https://​www.swp-​ berlin.org/​10.18449/​2021C30/​ Mair, Stefan, Friedolin Strack, and Ferdinand Schaff (2019), China—​Partner and Systemic Competitor. https://​engl​ish.bdi.eu/​publ​icat​ion/​news/​china-​part​ner-​and-​syste​mic-​com​peti​ tor/​(Accessed 19 February 2020). Silver, Laura, Kat Devlin, and Christine Huang (2021), ‘Unfavorable Views of China Reach Historic Highs in Many Countries’, Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. Online report, 6 October 2020, https://​www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​glo​bal/​2020/​10/​06/​unfa​vora​ble-​ views-​of-​china-​reach-​histo​ric-​highs-​in-​many-​countr​ies/​ (Accessed 26 October 2020). Stanzel, Volker (2015), ‘Germany and Japan: A Comeback Story’, The Globalist online, 7 March 2015. https://​www.thegl​obal​ist.com/​germ​any-​and-​japan-​a-​comeb​ack-​story/​ (Accessed 28 December 2020). Stanzel, Volker (2018), ‘A Nuclear Fall-​ Out Turning Political. The German-​ Japanese Relationship and the Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Incident’, in Joanne Miyang Cho (ed.), Transnational Encounters between Germany and East Asia since 1900 (Oxford and New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 123–​142. Stanzel, Volker (2017). Machtverschiebungen in Ostasien. Chinas Welt und Europas Platz darin. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur-​und Völkerkunde Ostasiens (OAG): OAG-​Notizen (Tokyo), 06/​2017, 9-​20. http://​oag.jp/​img/​2017/​06/​1706_​China_​Europa.pdf Tatlow, Didi Kirsten, Hinnerk Feldwisch-​Drentrup, and Ryan Fedasiuk (2021), ‘Technology Transfer from Germany’, in William C. Hannas and Didi Kirsten Tatlow (eds), China’s Quest for Foreign Technology. Beyond Espionage (London and New York: Routledge), 131–​48. Turcsanyi, Richard and Kachlikovarnal, Eva (2020). The BRI and China’s Soft Power in Europe: Why Chinese Narratives (Initially) Won. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs Vol. 49(1) 58–​81. The BRI and China’s Soft Power in Europe: Why Chinese Narratives (Initially) Won (sagepub.com) Virtual Sino-​German Government Consultations (2021), Continuing Dialogue and Expanding Cooperation, 28 April. https://​www.bund​eska​nzle​rin.de/​bkin-​en/​news/​germ​any-​china-​ 1898​824 (Accessed 7 May 2021) Wu, Wendy (2018), ‘Foreign investment in China is “not a level playing field, but a one-​way street” ’, South China Morning Post. Availab https://​www.scmp.com/​news/​china/​diplom​acy-​ defe​nce/​arti​cle/​2040​983/​fore​ign-​inv​estm​ent-​china-​not-​level-​play​ing-​field-​one (Accessed 20 December 2018). Xi, Jinping (2017), Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, (Beijing: Waiwen Chubanshe) Zhu, Dongyang/​Xinhua (2016), ‘Commentary: Time for Berlin to Sober up from China-​ phobia Paranoia’, Xinhua, 28 October. http://​en.peo​ple.cn/​n3/​2016/​1028/​c90​000-​9134​089. html (Accessed 20 December 2018).

PA RT V

L O OK I N G BAC K WA R D A N D F ORWA R D

CHAPTER 36

ANGEL A MERKE L I N P OW E R How Influential was the Merkel Era? Stefan Kornelius

Merkel’s chancellorship has always been a mystery. For more than sixteen years, Angela Merkel fascinated people with her inscrutability and mysteriousness. From the very first moment of her life as a politician, she retained an enigmatic and hidden character. That always kept the mystery surrounding her personality and her politics alive. ‘Merkel’s secret’, the ‘Merkel method’ or the ‘character of the Chancellor’ were popularly discussed subjects in the search for a supposedly unfathomable personality. Merkel connoisseurs were repeatedly asked to divulge information from inside the corridors of power, as if these traces led to a hitherto undiscovered Angela Merkel, to a kind of second personality in which the politician’s claim to power and ambition were more easily revealed. Merkel initially encouraged this curiosity, probably unintentionally. It was never her style to discuss emotions, to psychologize about herself, or to promote character discussions. Her taciturn and introspective nature was practically instilled in her—​in the parish household of Templin, where secrets and silence was a basic technique in dealing with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) regime. When Angela Merkel, as a physics student in Leipzig, was sought to be recruited by the State Security Service as an informal collaborator, she rebuffed these advances by saying that she could not keep a secret. This was a grotesque distortion of the truth. Over the course of her tenure, Merkel perfected the ability to withstand pressure, keep political opponents guessing, to wait and stay quiet. This deliberate ambiguity prevented wear and tear in day-​to-​day political business and proved to be a helpful steering tool, especially in international politics and for Germany’s leadership role in the European Union (EU). What had proven to be a successful political technique over many years was given a final boost at the end of her term in office. The deliberate decision not to run again in the 2021 federal election and the planned end of her career would have given Merkel the opportunity to use the final phase in office to put her legacy in order. But once again,

660   Stefan Kornelius she chose to remain silent. The Covid-​19 pandemic forced her to conduct government business at full intensity until the start of the Bundestag election campaign. In this exceptional situation, she evaded all stocktaking, requests for interpretation, and attempts to spin her story. Merkel left office with the intention of not writing a memoir. She refused all requests for interviews and documentaries. She wanted her chancellorship to retain the mysterious aura it had carried for so long. Above all, she was convinced that her work would speak for itself and ideally could only be assessed by historians—​with a distance in time and a calm eye. She herself, in any case, was not willing to aggressively influence the writing of history. This decision reflects an important conviction of Merkel’s: successes and failures in political work usually balance each other out. Ideally, they described a kind of parabolic curve of progress and regression, of improvement and social change. Government work, Merkel believed, ideally adds up to positive results. This attitude is typical of the analytical nature of Merkel’s personality. She is a scientist who sees politics as a business of compromise, a convergence on a negotiating line where the central point stands for a zero-​sum game. Every decision in favour of one’s own position can then be counted as a success. Merkel’s years in government were marked by this search for small advantages, compromises, and, above all, by perseverance and resilience in moments of crisis. As a result, her policies produced a remarkable continuity in times of global turbulence. For the German people, whose welfare Merkel promised to serve in her oath of office, the years were characterized by stability despite all the change and crisis. The country was largely spared national catastrophes, disasters, self-​inflicted political harm, or even economic problems. The Merkel era was a time of continuity and reliability, but also a time of risk aversion. The major moments of crisis in the Western world—​such as the economic upheavals following the global financial crisis or the destabilizing power of populism—​hardly affected the Federal Republic.

Period of Upheaval and Crises The idea of stable governments is rooted in the German constitutional system. Since 1949, the Federal Republic has been led by only seven Chancellors. Three of them ruled the country for longer than a decade—​Konrad Adenauer for fourteen years, Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel for sixteen years each. Nevertheless, continuity of government cannot be taken for granted, especially in times of social distress. Declining party loyalty, growing personalization, radicalization, and ever greater difficulties in communicating politics in the digital storm of opinion all argued against a long Merkel tenure. Both nationally and internationally, Merkel’s chancellorship coincided with a period of fragmentation and reorganization. The unipolar moment of the US ended abruptly

ANGELA MERKEL IN POWER    661 on 11 September 2001. Liberal and secular democracies as models of order met their opponents. Only a few years after Merkel took office, the notion of perpetual growth and the power of globalization suffered a major setback when, in September 2008, the US financial system began to tumble in the sub-​prime crisis. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers triggered a global financial and debt crisis. By this time, the EU had left behind its years of growth and enlargement and suffered a severe regulatory setback when a European Constitutional Treaty failed over the objection of the citizens of France and the Netherlands. Attacks on Europe’s order mark the entire chancellorship. The US financial crisis triggered a banking crisis in Europe, which spilled over into a sovereign debt crisis and finally into a veritable crisis over the existence of the common currency, the Euro, and thus of the single market. This seven-​year struggle over the European order ended in a serious conflict with Greece over the European economic and growth model. That period was immediately followed by the next challenge to the European order. The 2015 refugee crisis preluded a debate about the openness of Europe, the viability of the Schengen concept, and the single market. As the number of migrants grew steadily, the national party landscapes in Europe also radicalized, and a new, Right-​ wing nationalist constituency emerged. A central component of the agenda of these parties was and is the renationalization of politics, up to and including the dissolution of the EU. Nationalist governments in Central Europe, such as Poland or Hungary, pursued an explicit inward-​looking policy at the expense of the idea of the Community. So did the UK, which had been struggling for its place in Europe since joining the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973. With the UK’s painful process of leaving the EU between 2016 and 2021, renationalization reached its climax—​albeit without being copied by other members in the end. This destabilization of the European order from within was accompanied by attacks against the Union from outside, namely from Russia and China. Both saw an advantage in fragmenting Europe’s cohesion. After the 2008 Georgian war, Russia pursued a buffer policy aimed at keeping the European order at a distance. This policy culminated in the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the occupation of the Donbass by Ukrainian separatists. Finally, the struggle over democracy and the West culminated with Donald Trump’s presidency from 2017 to 2021, whose destabilizing power reached far into the EU. The populist style and departure from treaty fidelity and predictability were emulated around the world. Angela Merkel once again found herself in the role of preserver and crisis manager. It fell to her to uphold the old model of order and the idea of multilateralism. In this phase, she even was perceived as the ‘saviour of the West’ and alliances like NATO and the EU. Even during the last moment of her chancellorship, during the Covid-​19 pandemic, Merkel favoured joint solutions over national advantages. She decided to procure vaccines equally for all members of the EU. And she even rewrote her debt policy to maintain European competitiveness.

662   Stefan Kornelius

Europe Merkel’s chancellorship was driven by a constant onslaught of crises. At all these moments, Merkel spoke of the centrifugal forces that were testing the system. She saw it as her task to work against these forces to preserve Germany’s prosperity and piece. This policy of preservation applied above all to the EU. Already in her second year in office, Merkel entered a crisis management mode, the first of many. In the first Council presidency under her leadership, Merkel set out to give the EU a new legal framework after attempts to establish a European constitution had failed. The German presidency in 2007 then laid the foundation for the EU’s Lisbon treaty, which again provided the framework for all decision-​making within the EU until the end of Merkel’s chancellorship. But even this treaty left a huge gap: There was no regulatory mechanism for budgetary policies, handling of debt, and fiscal policies of the members. These shortcomings had already been recognized when the single currency was introduced, in the run-​up to the Maastricht treaty. Now, however, a double crisis revealed the design flaws of the European economic and monetary order. After the collapse of Lehman Brothers in mid-​September 2008 and the nationalization of the two largest mortgage banks in the US, the German government had to act quickly to prevent German monetary institutions from being infected. On 10 October 2008, Berlin provided loans and guarantees amounting to half a trillion Euros. Merkel had initially underestimated the crisis and relied on the self-​healing powers of the financial sector. However, unstable banks also caused turmoil on the German markets and led to fears of a run on savers’ credit balances. That’s why Merkel and Finance Minister Per Steinbrück decided to intervene. A short time later, the Bundestag passed the Financial Market Stabilization Act. Merkel’s budgetary and financial policy principles were tested and consolidated during these crisis years. Her confidence in the financial industry was severely shaken. The attitude brought up the image of the ‘Swabian housewife’ who never lives beyond her means. Merkel developed her tough fiscal policy line, which she translated into an austerity programme in the new coalition with the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP). In 2009, the Bundestag anchored the debt brake in the Basic Law, constitutionally banning overborrowing. While Germany emerged from the immediate financial crisis largely unscathed, reports of falsified budget figures in Greece shook the financial markets in October 2009. The over-​ indebtedness of the Southern members of the Eurozone in particular, their spending spree and the distress of many banks in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal quickly drew attention to the vulnerability of the Eurozone. To balance their national budgets, countries in earlier years would have been forced to cut their debts. Now, membership in the Eurozone made that impossible. At the same time, the cost of refinancing debt rose as markets grew restless, turned away, or bet with new financial instruments on a rise in interest rates.

ANGELA MERKEL IN POWER    663 In February 2010, the European Council spoke out for the first time about that ticking time bomb. Merkel, while always promising solidarity, demanded tough restructuring and debt relief measures to regain the confidence of the markets. In doing so, her basic economic ideas clashed massively with the statism and Keynesian ideas of the debt-​ridden sates. However, they knew France was on their side, especially during François Hollande’s presidency. On 2 May 2010, the Eurogroup and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) pledged aid of €110 billion to guarantee Greece’s solvency and prevent the collapse of the Greek banking system, which threatened the intertwined European banking landscape. Only a few days later, Merkel had to increase the sum to €440 billion in a spectacular about-​face. As in the Lehman crisis, she had to act to avert damage to her own country. The new sum was used to create the European Financial Stabilization Facility (EFSF), which was later transformed into the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). It took Merkel, her European colleagues, and the European Central Bank (ECB) until 2012 to get the debt crisis under control and build a framework of institutions and laws for stabilization. Spectacular summit moments like the G-​20 meeting in Cannes in November 2011, resignations by Greek governments and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, course corrections on both the German and French sides, and a forceful intervention by the European Central Bank (ECB) were necessary to contain the problem. However, the crisis did not disappear entirely. The Greek debt problem jeopardized the Euro until July 2015 and necessitated a total of three rescue packages. Talks on the third package with the Left-​wing government of Alexis Tsipras and the flamboyant Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis pushed Merkel to the limits of her negotiating skills. Driven by ever-​new Greek demands, the sudden scheduling of a referendum, and under domestic political pressure from her own parliamentary group and from her Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, Merkel only managed to commit Greece to economic reforms at the very last moment. It was precisely in the final phase of the Euro drama that Merkel saw Europe in a new light. Whereas at the beginning of the financial crisis she wanted to prevent state intervention and preferred to hold banks responsible, she was now filled with fears of a collapse of the European currency and thus of the Union altogether. Time and again, she warned of a domino effect that would be triggered by Greece’s exit from the Eurozone. Although European banks were now protected from the tumbling Greek government bonds, the signal to the markets would nonetheless have been devastating. Europe would be willing to drop a member if speculative pressures only got high enough. Italy and possibly other states could have met a similar fate. A geopolitical argument was also driving Merkel at this point: The Greek Left-​wing government was openly flirting with Russia. After leaving the Eurozone and possibly even the EU, that would have created a security risk on the Southeastern flank of the Community and caused destabilizing effects in the Balkans. As the refugee crisis would show shortly thereafter, the Union’s Achilles’ heel was exposed not an hour’s flight southeast of the German border.

664   Stefan Kornelius The years of crisis in the Eurozone gave Merkel a new sense of Germany’s power in the Union and her new leadership role. That was a telling moment, and one which demonstrated the country’s economic strength. Germany bore the brunt of guaranteeing the bailout funds, while at the same time the Chancellor found herself in the minority with her economic policy ideas. The Euro crisis turned into a conflict over the fundamental economic direction of the continent. The trauma of inflation and currency collapse is entrenched in the political genetics of the Federal Republic. Also, the Chancellor from East Germany knew first-​hand about the effects of state despotism and a controlled economy. This combined experience seemed inconceivable given the Federal Republic’s raison d’état, which is absolutely committed to European integration. On 12 July 2015, in Brussels, Merkel was once again able to reconcile the two contradictory strands. The price was high, but so was the reward. Merkel’s role as the most powerful leader in Europe was consolidated, Germany’s dominant role in the EU accepted. Two other major crises contributed to her exceptional role in Europe: the war in Ukraine in 2014 and the migration crisis that rolled over Europe in the summer of 2015. After Russian troops occupied Crimea and Russian-​backed separatists engaged in the secession of the Donbass, Merkel was charged with a geopolitical mediating role. For the first time, her negotiating skills were sought outside the EU’s borders. US President Barack Obama showed reluctance, he did not want to be drawn into the conflict and declared Russia a regional power. Moreover, Merkel was the politician in the Western camp with the best understanding of Russian President Vladimir Putin. During most of 2014 Merkel was absorbed by acute crisis diplomacy, engaging the Russian President in a seemingly endless dialogue about the occupation and its consequences. At the same time, Merkel managed to unite the EU in its stance on Russia, adopting a sanctions regime and keeping members in line. This unity was obviously not expected by Putin, who knew and regularly exploited the European polyphony. Merkel then continued the mediation talks in bilateral meetings with Putin on neutral ground before using the commemorations of the allied landings in Normandy to establish a permanent circle of talks—​the Normandy format. But another nine months would pass before Merkel ventured, not without risk, into Moscow and arranged direct negotiations with Putin, the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the separatists. The Minsk talks on 11 February 2015 lasted seventeen hours and resulted in an agreement that has not been implemented to date, but has nonetheless given the conflict a political benchmark against which the Russian President could be measured. In this year of negotiations, Merkel earned a reputation as a persistent crisis manager and an authority on conflicts outside Europe. She rallied the EU by repeatedly involving French President Hollande in the negotiations. In preserving European stability, she took on a role that had previously been filled by the US, and which President Obama willingly handed over to her. Europe’s weight in the transatlantic relationship was thus strengthened. No sooner had the parallel crises in Greece and Ukraine subsided, a new crisis emerged –​one which the EU had suppressed for too long. In the early summer of 2015,

ANGELA MERKEL IN POWER    665 public attention turned to the thousands of refugees crowding into the EU. Although Merkel and her Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière had pointed out the dramatic situation months earlier, it was the end of the Greek financial crisis and a chain of symbolic events that catapulted the refugee issue into the consciousness of the German public. The unfolding drama permanently changed Merkel’s chancellorship. While the public reacted favourably to the refugee movement in the first few weeks, the mood changed quickly after up to 10,000 refugees set out on a desperate march from Budapest to the Austrian border on 4 September. The people, mostly from Syria, were instrumentalized, as it were, by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who wanted to put the blame for the liberal refugee policy squarely on Germany but also on the EU. In those challenging months Merkel was a driven, moral politician but also a coldly calculating realist one. Abroad, she set out to negotiate an agreement with Turkey to keep refugees at bay. At home, Merkel’s political base was crumbling, the coalition was tottering under pressure from her sister party, the Christlich Soziale Union (CSU). The radical Right-​wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) was rising to new heights. In the European alliance, Merkel had recognized and communicated early on that the burden-​ sharing between states set out in the Schengen treaty and the arrangement for the initial reception of migrants in states with an external border led to untenable conditions. First, Germany, as an economically prosperous nation with liberal asylum laws, remained the migrants’ preferred destination. And second, nothing changed the root cause of the problem: the civil war in Syria and Turkey’s openness to migrants from Central Asia kept the pressure on unabated. A quick solution was initially offered by a refugee agreement with Turkey, which the EU negotiated in just six months. The deal led to a significant reduction in numbers as early as November 2015. While at the peak of the migration wave 206,000 people were arriving in Germany per month, the number levelled off at around 15,000 from April 2016 onward. During this phase, Merkel was praised above all for her humanitarian stance, which differed from the political line taken by other European leaders. Time Magazine ennobled her as ‘Person of the Year’. But her attitude was also interpreted by her opponents as a gesture of invitation to migrants. The Right wing called her a traitor and blamed her for selling out Germany’s interests. In that heated atmosphere, Merkel gave up convincing the public with a broad set of arguments. The atmosphere was too charged, her audience did not accept differentiated views anymore. Merkel was convinced that a migration was a pan-​European problem for many decades to come. This problem could only be solved by all European nations jointly and, above all, by tackling the root causes in the migrants’ countries of origin. Secondly, Merkel was concerned that once again one of the fundamental pillars of the EU—​this time the principle of free movement and thus the Schengen system—​would be irretrievably destroyed if she had agreed, for example, to a national border closure. Closing the borders would also have damaged the internal market—​a crucial argument for Germany as an export nation with important supply chains in Central Europe. Third, she was convinced that closing borders would not deter migrants but only shift the

666   Stefan Kornelius problem—​for example to the Balkans, where she feared for violence or even military escalation. Admittedly, her appeals for joint de-​escalation in Europe had little effect. Even at the end of her chancellorship, the EU was far from agreeing on a unified migration and asylum policy system. However, the pressure-​packed crisis months from August 2015 to March 2016 solidified the image of a liberal head of government who transcended national borders and stuck to her convictions against major obstacles.

Populism The summer of 2016 brought two events that were to change Merkel’s role in the world and in Europe, but also her own life planning. On 23 June, a significant 51.9 per cent of the British electorate voted in a referendum for the country to leave the EU. For the first time in its history, the Union was to shrink rather than grow. The symbolic significance of this decision was evident: had Europe lost its magnetic power and reached the zenith of its geopolitical importance? For Merkel, however, the effect within the EU was crucial: Depending on how the exit talks went, a precedent would be set for nationalist imitators, of which there were several in the Union. Centrifugal forces emanating from Poland or Hungary were already tugging at the EU’s cohesion. On the other end of the spectrum French President Emmanuel Macron did not make a secret of his preference for a strengthened core Europe. Merkel’s goal was to maintain the EU’s size and orientation. This was in Germany’s interest. The pan-​European economic market best served its interests since Germany is located in the geographic and economic centre of the Union. The second event of 2016 was only indirectly related to Brexit, but it fit into a major trend that challenged all democracies of the Western world, and became a threat to multilateralism and the liberal world order: the rise of nationalists, populists, liars, and agitators. In the US, Donald Trump was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate on 24 August. On 8 November, he was elected President with a majority in the electoral college but a minority of electoral votes. Merkel, who had studied Trump’s character in advance and took his announcements and campaign promises deeply seriously, reacted downright brusquely. In a brief statement, she offered Trump ‘close cooperation’ but listed conditions: cooperation would be based on values—​‘democracy, freedom, respect for law and human dignity, regardless of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views’ (quoted in Larres, 2018, pp. 193–​4). This was tough language for an ally. Faced with the looming attack on her system of values and order, and worried about an electoral success by the radical Right-​wing French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in May 2017, Merkel decided to run for office again, for a fourth time. Merkel had toyed with the idea of leaving office on her own terms in 2017 but had long hesitated to make the decision. After Trump’s victory, even outgoing President Obama publicly

ANGELA MERKEL IN POWER    667 urged her to run for a fourth term, saying in Berlin: ‘If she decides to run again, she will indeed bear great responsibility’ (Obama, 2016). Trump’s presidency turned into a severe test for Merkel’s resilience. Germany, the EU, and NATO, the idea of multilateralism, and the entire Western world found themselves under severe pressure. Politics in Europe was frozen by the President’s unpredictability. His trade policy swings, the dismantling of the transatlantic defence alliance, and the opaque relationship with Russia’s President Putin proved to be unnerving. The US, historically part of the European power pattern, turned into a threat. In style and action, Trump set new standards, which immediately found imitators in Europe. The populist, fact-​free rhetoric stood in stark contrast to Merkel’s sober manner and meticulous, methodical way of thinking. Just a few months into the Trump presidency, after the G-​7 meeting in Taormina, she said at a beer festival near Munich, ‘the times when we could completely rely on others are a bit over’ (Merkel, 2017). The phrase was interpreted as a sign of disengagement and a move towards strategic autonomy for Europe, but the context was more mundane. Merkel did not plan to initiate a change in strategy with an opinion expressed in a beer tent, but rather to escape pressure from her coalition partner and the opposition, who would otherwise have accused her of an uncritical relationship with Trump. Thus, Merkel found herself in a limbo position in which, on the one hand, she wanted to maintain the alliance with the US out of her deepest conviction, and on the other hand, keep the greatest possible distance from Trump. In her entire chancellorship, Merkel held a deep conviction about the irreplaceability of the US as a global leader for democracy and Western ideas. In her tenure all US presidents were trusted partners, despite occasional irritations as during the robust transatlantic exchanges in the wake of the Iraq war or the phone-​tapping incident during the Obama presidency. Nonetheless, the Trump presidency confirmed an opinion she had formed for some time: that the US was in a deep identity crisis, triggered by glaring educational deficiencies and social inequality. Merkel, who had always felt deep admiration for the US, felt alienated. Her relief when Joe Biden took over from Trump was palpable. The Trump presidency reinforced the perception by many that Merkel was the only remaining leader of global stature in the group of liberal democracies. The New York Times named her the ‘leader of the free world’. Merkel backed up this claim by repeatedly emphasizing the importance of international rules, multilateralism, and treaty compliance. By being consistent in her actions towards Trump, she held up an alternative political model to smaller nations in Europe and helped preserve the essence of the Western democratic model for the post-​Trump era. Merkel summed up her judgement of Trump in a speech she delivered to Harvard University’s 368th commencement ceremony on 30 May 2019. ‘More than ever, we must think and act multilaterally rather than unilaterally, globally rather than nationally, cosmopolitan rather than isolationist.’ And later, in a thought on courage and truthfulness, she said: ‘This includes not calling lies truths and truths lies. . . . Our individual freedoms cannot be taken for granted, democracy cannot be taken for granted, peace

668   Stefan Kornelius cannot be taken for granted, and neither can prosperity’ (Merkel, 2019). The Harvard liberal community bid Merkel farewell with frenetic applause.

Conclusion: Germany’s Rise Angela Merkel left office with the firm intention to wait for the verdict of the historians. Her calm and composure testified to the fact that, as she saw it, she had done her best. Indeed, no one would accuse her of having lacked zeal, perseverance, tenacity, and intellect. In contrast to her predecessor it was this calm, at times hesitant and calculating style of governing, that was to become so defining of her sixteen years in office. Merkel governed unideologically and in a quiet manner. She neither basked in triumph, nor did she lose herself in anger. Her upbringing as a natural scientist has been credited for this deliberative, analytical style. In fact, one probably needs to go deeper to locate character traits such as modesty and unpretentiousness. Merkel led the country through an unparalleled chain of crises. In his account of the chancellorship, Ralph Bollmann draws parallels to Helmut Schmidt, who also unpretentiously and wisely steered the country through difficult times (Bollmann, 2021, p. 11). Such a comparison ends quickly, however. Merkel’s chancellorship came at a time of unparalleled global and societal upheaval. The rise of China put pressure on the geopolitical order, the US succumbed to nationalist fever, and the EU and thus the most important pillar for German stability came under existential pressure on several occasions. A pandemic forced the world to a standstill. Societies became more open, mobile, and informed. The digital revolution was the most important driver of change. Merkel was always accused of being exclusively reactive, responding to crises only. ‘Visions’ or her own ideas of grand reform or a ground-​breaking innovation for the EU had not been on her mind. Merkel would dismiss that argument with a mild smile. Her political experience and even more her life experience as a citizen of the GDR taught her that revolutions are not to be planned. Even the few abrupt changes of course during her own chancellorship, such as the decision to end nuclear power in Germany, followed a disruptive event—​in this case, the reactor disaster at Fukushima. In Merkel’s view politics is stringing together a continuum of small and well-​ calculated decisions to preserve and improve the status quo. Merkel shielded Germany from major economic crises or security threats, she carefully steered society in a more liberal and open world, and she averted major threats such as the collapse of the currency, the onslaught of hundreds of thousands of migrants, or the pandemic—​all of which can be called a success. As Chancellor, she was always sceptical of the visionary gesture. She was uncomfortable with the big talk that she often observed in French politicians. She acknowledged macho, blustering appearances with a sneer. She found Vladimir Putin’s poses of masculinity—​on horseback, among wild animals or fishing—​laughable.

ANGELA MERKEL IN POWER    669 This attitude repeatedly led to fierce political dissent. Emmanuel Macron, France’s third president during Merkel’s chancellorship, virtually flooded the EU with reform ideas. In his Sorbonne speech on EU reform, her advisers identified more than eighty different proposals. Merkel did not dismiss the ideas on principle—​what she deemed feasible was negotiated in the Aachen treaty of 18 January 2019. But she distrusted the grand reform gesture for its lack of practicability. She knew it was impossible to implement such a grand design jointly with twenty-​seven other heads of government. Even more, Macron’s very ideas for reshaping Europe clashed with the Merkel government’s principal strategic focus. The Chancellor was a supporter of the intergovernmental method; she valued exchanges in the European Council and made the body the EU’s most important steering instrument. She disapproved of a shift of power in favour of the Commission and resisted the idea of a core Europe because both models either stood in contrast to her understanding of legitimacy or they clashed with German interests. Located in the centre of Europe, Germany benefits immensely from open borders to the East and West. Macron’s drive to shape the future caused her suspicion. She always detected a fair amount of national interest on the part of the Frenchman. Whenever Merkel changed course—​usually late and after much deliberation—​she explained the new policy in detail. When the 2020–​21 Covid-​19 pandemic forced her to move away from her trademark budgetary convictions on debt and austerity, Merkel cited concerns about the looming economic collapse of the EU. Of course, it was already clear at that point that she would not have to answer for the consequences. Admittedly, this balance sheet is not complete. For the apparent normality of Merkel’s chancellorship conceals a shift in the European power structure that, under normal circumstances, would have given rise to heated debate and, no doubt, even aggression and conflict. There is this more important, almost dangerous legacy of this Chancellor: Under Angela Merkel’s leadership, Germany has matured into the sole leading nation on the European continent. This process was neither intended nor does it follow a plan. The increase in power happened gradually, virtually from crisis to crisis. It was facilitated by many factors. First and foremost, there was Germany’s continuing economic strength, which grew out of its export business and would have been inconceivable without the advantages of the single market. This strength has in turn created dependencies, especially in Central Europe, where German industry has established a kind of extended workbench with an attached logistics centre. Germany also benefitted from the self-​inflicted weakening of the classic European balancing powers, France and Great Britain. While France missed out on important reforms in the early years of the new millennium and was put on the defensive by weak presidents, the UK bid farewell to the European concert and sought its salvation in nationalism. Perhaps the most important reason for Germany’s rise to power was Merkel herself. Her rational, sober manner provided no target for conflict. Her compromise-​seeking nature catapulted her time and again into the role of arbitrator of last resort. At countless European Councils, she played the role of the honest broker whose authority tipped the scales at the end of a dispute. The compulsion to play the role of a mediator also explains

670   Stefan Kornelius why the Merkel government was effectively denied the visionary move, the provocation, the pioneering role. Germany’s task was to balance the European poles, not to play with the weights of power. Thus, Germany assumed a leadership role that historically always promised strife and conflict in Europe. This process was accompanied by heated debates in foreign policy circles. Not a year went by without a representative of the state leadership calling for more assumptions of responsibility, for example at the Munich Security Conference. In the literature, the debate had been boiling up since the mid-​2010s. Herfried Münkler’s book on Germany as ‘Macht in der MItte’ (power in the middle) most sharply analysed the dual role Berlin would have to play as a restrained hegemon. Political scientist Stephan Bierling states: ‘German power will not only generate defensive reflexes, if Berlin uses its prominent role to advance integration, strengthen the EU and ensure cooperation among its members. . . . The recipe is therefore “embedded hegemony”. German leadership embedded in European institutions and cushioned multilaterally, bearing the disproportionate burden of securing and advancing the Union’ (Bierling, 2014, p. 271). Historian Andreas Rödder posed the rhetorical question, ‘Who is afraid of Germany?’ Political scientist Hans Kundnani pointed out what a recurring source of instability Germany’s middle position has been, speaking of a ‘geo-​economic semi-​hegemony’ but warning against hysteria: ‘The reason, however, why Germany is not suited to be a hegemon lies less in its timidity about this role than in its self-​centeredness and prevailing, short-​term thinking’ (Kundnani, 2016, p. 160). Merkel could do little with these theoretical discussions. She established an era in which Germany grew with its responsibilities while experiencing the limits of its capabilities. As the Chancellor of stability and continuity, she fit effortlessly into the continuum of German post-​war politics. As Europe’s first balancer, she fended off existential crises for the community of Europeans and practised the art of preservation. The historical significance of her chancellorship stems from the sheer volume of these crises and her unflagging ability to calmly and objectively ‘work through’ problems in highly dynamic times, as Merkel would say in a Protestant cool tone. Once, the Chancellor was asked what she was looking forward to when she showed up in the office in the morning. Her sober answer: she enjoyed dealing with problems.

Further Reading Bierling, Stephan (2010), Vormacht wider Willen: Deutsche Außenpolitik von der Wiedervereinigung bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: C.H. Beck). Bollmann, Ralph (2021), Angela Merkel: Die Kanzlerin und ihre Zeit (Munich: C.H. Beck). Kornelius, Stefan (2013), Angela Merkel: Die Kanzlerin und ihre Welt (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe); English translation (2014): Angela Merkel: The Chancellor and her World (London: Bloomsbury). Langguth, Gerd (2005), Angela Merkel (München: dtv). Münkler, Herfried (2015), Macht in der Mitte: Die neuen Aufgaben Deutschlands in Europa (Hamburg: Edition Körber-​Stiftung).

ANGELA MERKEL IN POWER    671

Bibliography Bierling, Stephan (2010), Vormacht wider Willen: Deutsche Außenpolitik von der Wiedervereinigung bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: C.H. Beck). Bollmann, Ralph (2021), Angela Merkel: Die Kanzlerin und ihre Zeit (Munich: C.H. Beck). Kornelius, Stefan (2013), Angela Merkel: Die Kanzlerin und ihre Welt (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe); English translation (2014): Angela Merkel: The Chancellor and her World (London: Bloomsbury). Kundnani, Hans (2016), German Power: Das Paradox der deutschen Stärke (Munich: C.H. Beck). Langguth, Gerd (2005), Angela Merkel (München: dtv). Larres, Klaus (2018), ‘Angela Merkel and Donald Trump. Values, Interests, and the Future of the West’, German Politics 27(2), pp. 193–​213 (republished in Klaus Larres and Ruth Wittlinger (eds), German-​American Relations in the 21st Century: A Fragile Friendship (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 47–​67). Lohse, Eckart and Markus Wehner (2009), Rosenkrieg. Die Große Koalition 2005–​ 2009 (Köln: Fackelträger). Merkel, Angela (2019), ‘Rede bei der 368. Graduiertenfeier der Harvard University’, 30 May (Cambridge, MA): https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=​9ofED6BInFs Merkel, Angela (2017), ‘Rede der CDU-​Vorsitzenden bei der CSU in Trudering’, 28 May 28. https://​www.sueddeutsche.de/​politik/​g-​7-​krise-​wir-​europaeer-​muessen-​unser-​schicksal-​ in-​unsere-​eigene-​hand-​nehmen-​1.3524718 Münkler, Herfried (2015), Macht in der Mitte: Die neuen Aufgaben Deutschlands in Europa (Hamburg: Edition Körber-​Stiftung). Obama, Barack (2016), ‘Pressekonferenz von Bundeskanzlerin Merkel und dem Präsidenten der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, Berlin, November 11, 2016’. https://​www.bund​esre​gier​ ung.de/​breg-​de/​aktuel​les/​presse​konf​eren​zen/​pres​seko​nfer​enz-​von-​bund​eska​nzle​rin-​mer​ kel-​und-​dem-​praes​iden​ten-​der-​vere​inig​ten-​staa​ten-​von-​amer​ika-​bar​ack-​obama-​am-​17-​ novem​ber-​2016-​844​476 Assessed 08/​2021. Rödder, Anders (2018), Wer hat Angst vor Deutschland? Geschichte eines europäischen Probblems (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer). Roll, Evelyn (2009), Die Kanzlerin: Angela Merkels Weg zur Macht (erweiterte Neuausgabe, Berlin: Rowohlt).

CHAPTER 37

L EADERS IN PA RT NE RSH I P Germany in the Biden Era Jackson Janes

Over 200 years ago Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stated a dilemma in the form of a question: Germany, where is it? I don’t know where to find this land’ (Smith, 2020). Germany has gone through many iterations in its turbulent evolution into what it is today. But today, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) can easily be found and described, as did its former President Joachim Gauck, as ‘the best we have ever known: a stable democracy, free and peace loving, prosperous and open, a champion of human rights, a reliable partner in Europe and the world, an equal partner with equal responsibilities’ (Gauck, 2014). Germany is the largest country in Europe, the fourth-​largest economy in the world and a powerful leader in the European Union (EU). This evolution has occurred in the blink of an historical eye following a catastrophic path in the first half of the twentieth century to arrive at Gauck’s description after overcoming its recovery and division in the second half. In 2019 the Federal Republic celebrated its seventieth anniversary and that of its constitution: the Basic Law which of course became the foundation of a united German state in 1990. The success of the Federal Republic was based on the commitment to forging a strong democracy, reconciling with its neighbours and with Israel, as well as building a strong European community along with the country’s dedication to being part of the West’s defence during the Cold War period. The commitment of the US to defending the fledgling West German Republic along with its European allies has become a central foundation of partnership. On this basis Germany was eventually to gain its unification as well as its recognized leadership within both the European arena as well as in the broader scope of transatlantic and indeed global relations. While Germany is clearly recognized as a major player on the world stage, over the past three decades it has been continually reminded that the world in which it has been able to re-​establish itself as a strong economy and a stable democracy is now demanding more from the country which has become the de facto leader of Europe. The former

LEADERS IN PARTNERSHIP    673 Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski phrased that demand in 2011 in Berlin in a dramatic way. ‘You have become Europe’s indispensable nation. You may not fail to lead: not dominate, but to lead in reform’ (Sikorski, 2011). But the question Schiller and Goethe asked remains relevant: Where will we find Germany in the coming years as it responds to these expectations? And how will those responses impact relations with the US which is now going through its own transformations under the presidency of Joe Biden?

Partnership in Leadership: From Challenge to Choice In 1989, President George Herbert Walker Bush defined the FRG on its fortieth anniversary from an American point of view: ‘You have inspired the world by forcefully promoting the principles of human rights, democracy and freedom. The United States and the Federal Republic have always been firm friends and allies but today we share an added role: partners in leadership.’ Bush added the following sentences to that recognition: ‘Of course leadership has a constant companion: responsibility. And our responsibility is to look ahead and grasp the promise of the future’ (Bush, 1989). At the time of that speech, Germany was still a divided nation. Yet, the German reaction to that speech was not exactly jubilant. The idea of being a leader was still an idea caught between the legacy of Germany’s recent past and the uncertainty of the future of Europe just as major transformations were beginning to spread around the continent. A year later in 1990, a united Germany was only starting to grasp what Bush might have meant in what he proclaimed as the emergence of a Europe whole and free and the responsibilities which accompanied that vision. Over the next thirty years Germany was to wrestle with the meaning of responsibilities across a wide spectrum of transformations not only in Europe but around the world. The impact of an enlarging EU and NATO seemed to represent the triumph of democracy in the post-​Cold War era. But there were many other less glorious events, such as the outbreak of the wars in the Balkans, the first war with Iraq in 1990, the attacks of 9/​11, and the beginning of endless military campaigns in Afghanistan and then Iraq in 2003, as well as a worldwide recession. All of these developments reminded us that we were all far from any idea of the ‘end of history’ (Fukuyama, 1993). As Germany is wrestling with its changing roles in Europe, the US has been facing challenges accompanied by both domestic and foreign policy debates over assumptions about its role on the world stage. The hubris of the initial years after 1990, which celebrated the US as the winner of the Cold War, generated clashes within the country over changing priorities and policies. Such debates were to be heightened by the vulnerabilities and indeed anxiety experienced in the wake of the 9/​11 attacks. Over the following two decades, responses involved on the one hand the initiation of what President George W. Bush labelled a ‘global war on terror’, and on the other

674   Jackson Janes hand transformations within American society creating economic burdens and social cleavages (Larres, 2003). Since 1990, Americans have seen six Presidents in the White House trying to deal with these formidable challenges all of which became part of an increasingly polarized atmosphere. Consensus has become much harder to forge amidst these controversies, not only at home but also among allies, including with Germany. Both America and Germany were going through cathartic changes at the same time and along that path were changes in both perceptions and expectations of each other. The Federal Republic has only experienced four Chancellors since 1990. Immense challenges occurred along the way, such as managing the strains of unification, overcoming economic recessions, engaging in wars in the Balkans and Afghanistan, steering the EU through a major currency crisis, and dealing with enormous waves of migration. As in the US, forging a policy consensus around these challenges was to cause serious rifts in German society. Within the larger framework of German-​American relations, there were also clashes along the way, particularly over the Iraq war in 2003, managing the global recession in 2009, strains over American intelligence policies in Germany, and continuing tensions over the issues of burden-​sharing within NATO or in trade relations, more recently including a worldwide response to the Covid-​19 pandemic. Most of these issues were already present during the presidential terms of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. The tensions between Berlin and Washington over the invasion of Iraq came only two years after the widespread expressions of national empathy and solidarity with the US after the attacks on 9/​11 and they were not to be overcome during the tenure of President Bush or his successors. The residual tensions of that experience remain a factor in the relationship. Even though Germans were to be largely supportive of Barack Obama following his election in 2008, frictions arose over the revelations of US intelligence operations in Germany, criticism of Germany’s lagging defence budget and capabilities, as well as differences over dealing with the continuing turbulence in the Middle East. Nevertheless, the relationship between Chancellor Merkel and President Obama were marked by cooperation and consensus on climate policy, dealing with conflicts with Russia over Ukraine, and in general sharing commitments to global governance. Obama’s popularity in Germany remained at historically high levels compared with other US presidents; this helped to facilitate a stable dialogue between Berlin and Washington.

And Then Came President Donald Trump The unexpected presidency of Donald Trump provoked a kind of whiplash impact on German society following the era of Obama. Serious animosity between Berlin and

LEADERS IN PARTNERSHIP    675 Washington emerged in several areas. The high levels of popularity enjoyed by Barack Obama in Germany were to plummet under Trump in the wake of his aggressive posture towards Chancellor Merkel and the antics of his language and behaviour as President among American allies in general. Trump’s four years have left nagging questions in the German capital about the future of US politics and several issues entail difficult exchanges between Washington and Berlin. Trump regarded the EU as an economic adversary and questioned NATO’s value. He held Germany in particularly low regard, critical of its trade surpluses and even suggesting that Berlin owes ‘vast sums of money’ to the alliance and America. The feeling in Germany was mutual. In 2020, Merkel publicly referred to ‘the limits of populism and denial of basic truths’ without naming names while clearly referring to Donald Trump (Larres, 2018). In May 2020, Merkel declined, in the midst of the global Covid-​19 pandemic, to attend an in-​person G7 summit at Camp David. Shortly thereafter, Trump ordered some 10,000 US troops from Germany—​which many Germans understood as a direct reaction to Merkel’s decision. Public opinion polls in Germany indicated that Trump had done real damage to German perceptions of the US (Poushter and Schumacher, 2020). Although the pressure Trump exerted on Germany to increase its defence expenditures and capabilities was to produce a change in Berlin’s budget priorities, it also generated discussions about the need to enhance thinking about dealing with a more unpredictable America connected to a debate about how, where, when, and why Germany needed its relationship with the US. Merkel posed the challenge by identifying the changes she observed in 2017. ‘The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over. We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands’ (Henley, 2017). However, what that meant in real terms was yet to be defined.

And Then Came President Joe Biden While welcoming with great relief Joe Biden’s election and his public desire to rebuild relations with Germany and Europe, Germans shared their hope that he would restore a sense of ‘normality’ to German-​American relations in Washington. But there also remained uncertainty about whether the Biden presidency would be restoration or perhaps only an interruption of the impact of what Trump represented, given the large number of Americans who had voted for Trump. One survey commissioned by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) revealed that 53 per cent Europeans agreed or strongly agreed that ‘after voting for Trump in 2016, Americans cannot be trusted’. A large majority of Germans worried that the US political system was somewhat or completely broken and that the populism represented by Trump under the slogan ‘America First’ might be a more long-​ term change of direction in the US with implications for alliances and partnerships.

676   Jackson Janes Questions about how much of ‘America First’ thinking was now a part of the fabric of American foreign policy remained open even under the more friendly-​sounding President Joe Biden (ECFR, 2021). Of course, the various decisions made by the Biden administration, such as rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, negotiations with Iran, and the World Health Organization (WHO), and reaffirming the US commitment to NATO’s Article 5 were warmly greeted in Germany as was the effort to extend arms control with Russia, an offer to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear programme and re-​engage with the UN Human Rights Commission, and efforts to reform the World Trade Organization (WTO). By the time Biden was travelling to Europe for the first time as President (it also was his first foreign trip as President), attitudes had changed significantly, with the majority of Europeans having far greater confidence in the new President and opinions towards the US rebounded significantly in a positive direction. Yet other issues remained more difficult to deal with. Some of them represented differences over Germany’s capacities and indeed divergent interests while others were a result of changes within the larger environment around the globe. Still others were shaped by the self-​perceptions of both Americans and Germans and their corresponding expectations of each other. For a large part of the Federal Republic’s history, Germany had been an object of American foreign policy as the front line of the Cold War with heavy dependence on the US for its security. But in the years following unification Germany was to become more of a subject of American policy in dealing with issues well beyond the German-​American arena. The difference was one shaped by more American expectations with less patience with Germany seeming to remain uncertain or unwilling to meet them, whereas Germans were less inclined to defer to US interests such as in relations with China. This represents a long-​term transition which has not been and will not be free of friction. By looking at selected challenges and choices Germany faces in the Biden era, the parameters of priorities, policies, and politics become a mix of short-​and longer-​term adjustments to how, when, where, and why Germany and the US need each other.

Nord Stream II The clash over the obstruction of the Nord Stream II gas pipeline represents a combination of clashes between Germany and the US. It echoes divergent perceptions towards Moscow at a time of many instances of Russian threats. These threats proliferated regarding Ukraine, including the illegal annexation of Crimea. There were human rights violations directed at opposition groups in Russia and in particular at Alexi Navalny. Moscow made great efforts to support and shield the dictator Alexander Lukaschenko in Belarus and to orchestrate cyber attacks on both Germany and the US by Russian-​based groups. Russian agents even carried out contract murders in Germany (and Britain).

LEADERS IN PARTNERSHIP    677 All these developments raise questions about how to respond to a more aggressive Russian posture across many fronts, embodied by Vladimir Putin. The primary question was always: how? German attitudes towards Russia share all these concerns but there remains a deep-​seated emphasis on the need to sustain dialogue with Moscow despite these clashes. President Biden’s decision to meet with the Russian President in June of 2021 amidst these frictions seemed to suggest he agreed. His response to critics of the meeting was to say—​I’m meeting with Putin not despite our differences but because of them. Nevertheless, finding consensus on dealing with Putin, who can be expected to remain in office until at least 2036 if his health remains good, will be hampered by the clash over how to respond to both the challenges Russia represents, as well as the reality of Russia as a nuclear power and a strategic player in Europe and also in other global arenas such as Syria. The pipeline has been a thorn in the German-​American dialogue throughout all of these challenges. After becoming President Joe Biden did not immediately alter the objections to the pipeline which had already arisen in the Trump administration. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle expressed their opposition to the pipeline as well, demanding that the new Secretary of State Anthony Blinken make clear the need to comply with sanctions on any companies working on the completion of Nord Stream in line with the ‘Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act’ (Department of State, Bureau of Energy Resources 2021). However, the State Department decided in late May 2021 to wave sanctions on individuals involved in the company overseeing Nord Stream II, making clear that the relationship with Berlin could be better sustained without further debate in light of other competing issues in which German cooperation is expected. Nevertheless, the issue remained a heated controversy in Congress and Biden faced severe criticism for his decision, including during the 2022 mid-​term congressional elections. In Germany, the debate over Nord Stream also continued. The German government under Chancellor Merkel remained committed to finishing the pipeline, supported by the German business community, and pushed back on American pressure. The post-​Merkel government has also had to deal with this complex and controversial issue. The Greens oppose Nord Stream II and in the post-​Merkel era were drawn into the debate. Negotiating this issue within the post-​Merkel coalition government in Berlin has proved both challenging and of enormous importance not only in Germany but also for relations with Washington. Criticism of the US in German circles stresses that US sanctions on German or European companies are illegal extraterritorial applications, which generate popular distrust of US policy. This criticism also argues that the danger of Russian influence via the pipeline is exaggerated adding that the US continues to deal with Moscow on other fronts as well, including importing oil from Russia. A central factor in this stand-​off remains how the security of Ukraine is impacted by the pipeline project, while other European partners have also expressed concerns about the dangers of the project (Wettengel, 2021).

678   Jackson Janes Regardless of how Germany’s post-​Merkel governments are constructed, Germany’s relations with Moscow remain an important factor for both Germany and German-​ American relations for the foreseeable future. This is not a new challenge, however. The relationship between Germany and Russia is a complicated mix of policies and perspectives which at times have been and remain difficult to harmonize. Earlier phases of German-​American relations were challenged by efforts to deal with the Soviet Union prior to unification in order to serve dual purposes, which often conflicted. During the post-​unification period, that complexity continued to be further forged by Germany’s historical and difficult relations with Eastern European nations. Over many decades various slogans were used to capture German policy directions with Moscow: Change through Accommodation, Change through Trade, Accommodation through Networking, or Change through Modernization. These policies were all built on the premise of a two-​track relationship made up of negotiation where possible and confrontation where necessary. Regardless of the precise composition of the post-​Merkel governments in Berlin, there will be more of this dynamic in Berlin and it will make for equally challenging discussions with Washington. Germany will continue to shape its policies with a realization that its capacity to deal with Russia also continues to depend on Washington. But equally emphasized in Berlin is that Russia remains an important part of Europe and dialogue is essential. Germany will continue to shape its policies with the realization that its capacity to deal with Russia relies on the quality of its relationship with the US. Threading that needle in Berlin will be as complicated as it has been in the past. Equally difficult will be its capacity to cope with conflicting interests in dealing with Moscow within the EU in which a consensus on responses to Russia is as yet absent.

The Emergence of China An equally challenging problem for Germany, if a more recent one, is China. As the Biden administration puts in place a policy to compete more effectively with Beijing, it will be looking to its European allies for support. Given the increasing significance of China in Germany’s economic framework, the response from Berlin will likely be an effort to steer a path away from a policy of confrontation. At the end of 2020, the EU, led by Berlin, completed an investment deal with Beijing before the incoming Biden administration was in place. Given the fact that China has become Germany’s largest trading partner, that may not be surprising. Yet the message received in Washington was that Berlin does not want to have to choose between Washington and Beijing and it does not want to approach relations with China in a framework that resembles in any way the Cold War analogy. The investment deal remains controversial in Europe as well and it has hit obstacles to being ratified in the European Parliament due to aggressive Chinese sanctions placed on people and

LEADERS IN PARTNERSHIP    679 institutions who are critical of China. How that will be resolved within both Germany’s domestic framework as well as within the EU remains to be seen. Chancellor Merkel stated recently that while Europe and the US should develop joint approaches, ‘that doesn’t mean that our interests will always converge’. One needs to remember that in the sixteen years of her term, Merkel visited China with huge business delegations twelve times. As economic links grew, so did political links. Berlin’s strategy towards Beijing paralleled a version of ‘Wandel durch Handel’ or change through trade as shaped earlier around relations with the Soviet Union and then Russia. At the time, the US shared Germany’s expectation that China’s authoritarian politics would evolve into a more liberal, more democratic system through growing economic interdependence. But this has changed. As China has increased its authoritarian policies towards Hong Kong and refused to deal with criticism regarding human rights issues, Germany is increasingly facing questions about its efforts to balance the dependency it has on China for its prosperity against the dependency it has on the US for its security, making for difficult choices ahead for the post-​Merkel generation in Berlin. The fact that China will be the most important agenda item for the Biden administration and for the US for the foreseeable future suggests that forging a consensus across the Atlantic will not be easy. That was on display at the G7 summit in the UK in June of 2021 in the formulation of the final statement issued at the end of the summit in which relations with China were described as made up of cooperation, completion, and systemic rivalry (G7 Communiqué, 2021). Chancellor Merkel has been steadfast in wanting to avoid approaches which increase confrontation between the China and the West. In January 2021, Merkel argued that case. ‘I would very much wish to avoid the building of blocs . . . I don’t think it would do justice to many societies if we were to say this is the United States and there is China and we are grouping around either one or the other. This is not my understanding of how things ought to be’ (Lau and Gehrke, 2021). This is an argument in favour of multilateralism but it also suggests that Berlin is not in favour of making choices and that may be a difficult position to sustain as the confrontation between Washington and Beijing continues to fester. A related problem within that challenge is the difficulty of matching strategies and their tools. Germany is struggling with the problem of forging effective tools to deal with an increasingly confrontational Chinese approach in dealing with Berlin when it comes to German criticism of China’s treatment of the Uighurs or human rights in Hong Kong. The US is confronting China as a military threat as well as an economic competitor and it has the tools to respond. Neither Germany nor Europe has the military resources to match American capacities and the ability of Europe to exert pressure on China is limited to selected sanctions. Here again, the post-​Merkel coalition governments in Germany will need to decide how much Berlin can and wishes to coordinate its capacities with Washington in presenting China with an effective response to its challenges. There is also the question of how much influence Germany can exercise in Washington to coordinate a shared

680   Jackson Janes approach to the dimensions of competition, decoupling, competition, and cooperation. None of that is going to be easy within Europe let alone across the Atlantic. The increasing importance of this challenge was reflected in the NATO meeting in June 2021 in which the leaders gathered in Brussels after the prior G7 meeting in Cornwall. They stressed the need for China to uphold its international commitments and to engage China to defend Western security interests. It was the first time the NATO members had recognized the rise of China as a ‘security risk and a challenge to the rules-​based international order’. Given the high priority that President Biden has placed on the challenges of China for the US, he emphasized the importance of a consensus with European allies. Germany will be a major player in forging what responses are possible.

Defining Defence Another continuing issue for Germany within its European framework as well as with transatlantic relations is German defence spending and the NATO-​agreed goal that allies devote 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to defence by 2024, as stipulated in a previous NATO summit in 2014. While the German defence budget has significantly increased over the past few years, Germany is not expected to reach that target soon. With the American focus increasingly on China and the Asian region, Washington will expect more from NATO allies in Europe to bear a larger share of the burden of defence and deterrence configured for dealing with Russia. In his initial message to European allies, President Biden stressed in contrast to Donald Trump that ‘the alliance transcends dollars and cents; the United States’ commitment is sacred, not transactional. NATO is at the very heart of the United States national security, and it is the bulwark of the liberal democratic ideal—​an alliance of values, which makes it far more durable, reliable, and powerful’ (Biden, 2020). Yet, the concrete metrics of defence policy will necessitate real capabilities and resources. Europe as a whole has the potential for both with France and Britain owning nuclear deterrents and Europe’s defence industries capable of producing tanks, missiles, and aircraft. Clearly bringing those capacities up to scale remains a challenge, as is the ability to overcome the disparate attitudes towards a common defence policy in Europe, let alone gathering public support for it, particularly in Germany. Public opinion polls in Germany illustrate a sharp divide over defence spending or the need for German military might to be actually deployed in a crisis, including in defence of NATO allies. The next governments in Berlin will have to find common ground in a coalition on these issues. As the US continues to shift its focus to the Asian Pacific theatre, the relevance of Europe for American defence posture will be shaped by its capacity to respond to threats in its own neighbourhood. Achieving consensus on these dimensions within the NATO

LEADERS IN PARTNERSHIP    681 alliance will be the core challenge in the coming years as the recent discussion of the new NATO strategic concept has outlined. Germany’s role will again be central as it occupies the central strategic space within the NATO strategy. But coming to grips with that role will require a significant change in the mindset in Germany (Terhalle and Giegerich, 2021).

Trade Troubles Economic issues will continue to be on the transatlantic agenda in the form of trade negotiations and Germany’s role will again be of central strategic importance. The frictions generated by the Trump administration through the imposition of Section 232 national security tariffs on steel and aluminum remain under negotiation, and Biden’s talk of ‘Buy American’ for his emphasis on restoring American jobs continues to worry Europeans in general and Germany in particular with its large export market in the US. Discussions of a common platform for digital policies are on the agenda as is the formation of a proposed Trade and Technology Council. The EU is in charge of mapping trade policy but as is also the case with China, Germany has a very influential voice on the range of issues in the negotiations. A key common concern will be efforts to deal with needed reforms in the WTO. The devil is always in the details when it comes to trade relations. Dealing with regulatory rules and standards or getting agreement on a global corporate minimum tax may be possible but the diversity of views can interfere with more comprehensive efforts as was learned in the futile effort to forge a transatlantic trade and investment treaty. During Biden’s visit to Europe, a breakthrough in one sector was achieved: it was decided to put aside the dispute over aircraft subsidies involving Boeing and Airbus. Biden stressed that this was achieved not with a view that Europe is a foe, as portrayed by his predecessor, but rather as a partner in another instance of dealing with increasing competition with Chinese aerospace competition. The expectations on both sides of the Atlantic remain cautious when it comes to dealing with systemic trade challenges stemming particularly from China. And they are also as much a factor in domestic politics as in the negotiations. The Biden administration has signalled plans to give this area greater attention. There are obvious opportunities for enhanced EU-​US cooperation here but also some possible minefields. On the one hand, the Biden administration is expected to see regulation of online platforms and antitrust rules for ‘Big Tech’ as bigger domestic priorities, thus bringing Washington and Brussels closer together than before. Here Germany’s role will be critical when it comes to dealing with such thorny issues as data transfer policies or digital taxation which can be interpreted in Washington as primarily aimed at American companies.

682   Jackson Janes

Climate Consensus It is in the area of climate change where Germany and the US under a Biden administration have a particularly open opportunity to find common ground. With the possibility of the Green party becoming part of a governing coalition in the post-​Merkel period, the commitments in Berlin and Washington to achieve climate neutrality can lend themselves to sharing technological progress as well as policies and cooperation. Both countries will have to confront the transitions in developing new economic opportunities in tandem with the climate policies envisioned. This means facilitating industrial transformation in carbon-​intensive regions and assisting workers who are forced to change jobs. President Biden has reinforced this with his slogan, ‘When people talk about climate, I think jobs’. German reaction to this approach is both welcoming and complimentary. Should the Greens become part of a future coalition in Berlin this will presumably be an area of enhanced cooperation.

Covid Legacies The first item mentioned in the concluding statement of the G7 meeting in June of 2021 was devoted to the Covid-​19 pandemic and the need to enhance cooperation in dealing with future global health challenges. The aims to expand the reach of vaccines worldwide, reform and strengthen the WHO, and establish cooperation across multiple sectors to ensure preparedness for the next pandemic were labelled as the first priority. Yet even here there was friction with Washington involving the release of patents to expedite vaccination distribution. As Germany is home to a major pharmaceutical sector, the response from Berlin was not as supportive as in other European countries. Finding regulatory agreement remains a challenge. Nevertheless, the flurry of advisory groups and task forces assigned to this and related issues is another signal of reinforced cooperation.

Outlook: Germany as Leader in Partnership Throughout these examples, among many others, the strategic importance of the German-​American dialogue is clearly visible within the layers of transatlantic relationships.

LEADERS IN PARTNERSHIP    683 Given the end of the Merkel era and in light of these challenges, how will the next governments in Berlin commit to a leadership role within Europe and with the US? What changes can be expected among patterns of continuity? The new coalition led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz was quickly confronted with this question in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Germany has acquired a reputation as a facilitator, broker, and donor in multi-​level dimensions within Europe, the transatlantic arena, and indeed on the global stage. In the transatlantic relationship, the key European relationship for the Biden administration will be with Germany. As the strongest economy and political heavyweight in the EU, Biden will require leadership from Berlin in securing an effective transatlantic partnership. Whoever assumes the leadership role in Berlin will need to articulate how they see Germany’s responsibilities in the coming years and what sort of relationship they envision with the US. A report from the Munich Security Conference released before the November 2020 elections focused on Germany’s challenges at length. It argued: The world is witnessing a Zeitenwende, the turn of an era and the beginning of a new, more dangerous one. For Germany, which had settled into the liberal international order like hardly any other country, it represents a particularly substantive challenge. Foreign policy ‘certainties’ have become fragile. Although many in Germany are beginning to recognize the enormous challenges, Berlin is struggling to make the necessary adjustments. The watchword is Wendezeiten, we need to embrace change. Only by doing so can the European Union—​and with it Germany—​become capable of acting in an increasingly rough security environment. (Munich Security Report, 2020)

The Biden foreign policy team is made up of people who are familiar with Germany and Europe is general. The Secretary of State Antony Blinken spent years in Paris and accompanied Biden throughout his time as Vice President. The ability to find common ground between Biden’s administration will no doubt be enhanced by these previous records of contacts. The Biden presidency represents a chance to transform the US-​German partnership as a catalyst for transatlantic relations by thinking globally about the challenges ahead. Joe Biden has signalled his commitment to the many organizations and institutions in which Germany and the US have shared interests and leadership roles. Yet Germany’s pivotal position in Europe and its policy decisions in the world arena remains of consequence for the US. That is particularly the case with an eye on the unpredictable fall-​out of Brexit and the future of the relationship between the UK and the EU in question. Britain’s ability to assist the US in bridge-​building within Europe was dramatically curbed by Brexit. Germany has thus both an opportunity and a need to take advantage of this transformation. But it will have to overcome a tendency to be driven by caution and more by courage and convictions. Leadership will require clear messages about objectives, including the reality of burdens and capabilities. Leadership means being ready to

684   Jackson Janes accept shared risks and the ability to take decisions, in the face of uncertainty. EU High Representative Josep Borell has said that Europe has to learn the language of power and to aspire to a role in world politics. As Europe’s leader in partnership, Germany can contribute to that goal in the era of President Biden, who presents an opportunity to reset the transatlantic relationship with a renewed sense of shared purpose as outlined in the G7 concluding statement as well as at the NATO summit. In so many ways Germany has been the beneficiary of an international order, which provided a re-​emergence of the Federal Republic as, in President Gauck’s words, the ‘best Germany we have even known’ (Gauck, 2014). It is now the responsibility of Germany to sustain that combination of liberty, prosperity, and democracy for itself and its allies. That, hopefully, is where Germany will be found in the coming years. Chancellor Scholz took a major step in that direction in his speech on Feb 27, 2022 when he proclaimed ” our greatest strength is our alliances.

Further Reading Bagger, Thomas (2019), ‘The World According to Germany: Reassessing 1989’, Washington Quarterly 41(4), pp. 53–​63. Froehlich, Stefan (2021), The End of Self-​Bondage: German Foreign Policy in a World without Leadership (New York: Springer). Kupchan, Charles (2012), No One’s World: The West, The Rising Rest and the Changing Global Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Terhalle, Maximillian and Bastian Giegerich (2021), The Responsibility to Defend: Rethinking Germany’s Strategic Culture (London: Routledge). Ther, Philip (2016), Europe Since 1989 (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Zoellick, Robert (2020), America in the World: A History of US Diplomacy and Foreign Policy (New York: Twelve).

Bibliography Biden, Joe (2020), ‘Why America Must Lead Again’, Foreign Affairs (March/​April). https://​ www.foreignaffairs.com/​articles/​united-​states/​2020-​01-​23/​why-​america-​must-​lead-​again Bush, George H.W. (1989), ‘A Whole Europe, A Free Europe’ (‘Partners in Leadership’ speech), 31 May 1989, Mainz, Germany, in George H. Bush, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George Bush, vol. 1, January 20 to June 30, 1989 (Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990), pp. 650–​4. Carbis Bay G7 Summit Communique (13 June 2021). https://​www.whitehouse.gov/​briefing-​ room/​statements-​releases/​2021/​06/​13/​carbis-​bay-​g7-​summit-​communique/​ Department of State, Bureau of Energy Resources (2021), Guidance, ‘Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act (PEESA), as Amended’ (9 April 9). https://​www.state.gov/​protecting​europes-​energy-​security-​act-​peesa/​ ECFR, European Council on Foreign Relations (2021), Policy Brief ‘Crisis of Confidence: How Europeans See Their Place in the World’ (9 June). https://​ecfr.eu/​publication/​ crisis-​of-​confidence-​how-​europeans-​see-​their-​place-​in-​the-​world/​

LEADERS IN PARTNERSHIP    685 Fukuyama, Francis (1993), The End of History and the Last Man (New York: HarperCollins). Gauck, Joachim (2014), Opening Speech at the 50th Munich Security Conference, 2014 (31 January). https://​www.bundespraesident.de/​SharedDocs/​Reden/​EN/​JoachimGauck/​ Reden/​2014/​140131-​Munich-​Security-​Conference.html Henley, John (2017), ‘Angela Merkel: EU cannot completely rely on US and Britain any more’, The Guardian (28 May): https://​www.theguardian.com/​world/​2017/​may/​28/​merkel-​says-​ eu-​cannot-​completely-​rely-​on-​us-​and-​britain-​any-​more-​g7-​talks Larres, Klaus (2003), ‘Mutual Incomprehension? U.S.-​German Value Gaps over Iraq and Beyond’, Washington Quarterly 26(2), pp. 23–​42. Larres, Klaus (2018), ‘Angela Merkel and Donald Trump: Values, Interests, and the Future of the West’, German Politics 27(2), pp. 193–​213. Lau, Stuart and Laurenz Gehrke (2021), ‘Merkel sides with Xi on avoiding Cold War blocs’ (26 January): https://​www.politico.eu/​article/​merkel-​sides-​with-​xi-​on-​avoiding-​cold-​war-​blocs/​ Munich Security Report, special edition (2020), Zeitenwende. Wendezeiten (special edition of the Munich Security Report on German Foreign and Security Policy, October). MSC_​ Germany_​Report_​10-​2020_​Engl.pdf Poushter, Jacob and Shannon Schumacher (2020), ‘Americans and Germans Head into 2021 with Divergent Opinions on Transatlantic Alliance’, Pew Research Center Report (23 November). https://​www.pewresearch.org/​global/​2020/​11/​23/​americans-​and-​germans-​ head-​into-​2021-​with-​divergent-​opinions-​on-​transatlantic-​alliance/​ Sikorski, Radek (2011), ‘I fear German power less than German inaction’, speech at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (Berlin, 28 November). https://​dgap.org/​en/​events/​ i-​fear-​german-​power-​less-​german-​inaction Smith, Helmut Walser (2020), Germany: A Nation in Its Time. Before, during and after nationalism, 1500–​2000 (New York: Liveright Publishing/​W.W. Norton). Terhalle, Maximillian and Bastian Giegerich (2021), The Responsibility to Defend: Rethinking Germany’s Strategic Culture (London: Routledge). Wettengel, Julian (2021), ‘Gas Pipeline Nordstream 2 links Germany to Russia but splits Europe’, Clean Energy Wire (14 June 2021). https://​www.cleanenergywire.org/​factsheets/​ gas-​pipeline-​nord-​stream-​2-​links-​germany-​russia-​splits-​europe

Index

For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Tables are indicated by t following the page number

A Acheson, Dean, 67 Adenauer, Konrad domestic policy of, 14, 218 foreign policy of, 1, 14, 26, 45, 62, 67, 86, 89, 91, 607–​9 governments of, 59, 147t political style of, 37, 45 Afghanistan German involvement in, 18, 150–​51, 482, 517, 569–​7 1, 578–​79, 596–​97, 616, 618 NATO operations in, 577–​82 Soviet War in, 94, 119, 121, 610–​11 UN conference on, 482, 484 US invasion of, 17, 615 African diaspora, 334t, 418, See also diversity Agenda 2010, 17, 54, 222–​23, 252, 257–​59, 260–​ 61, 630. See also welfare state Allemann, Fritz René, 25 Alliance ‘ 90/​The Greens. See Green Party Allied Control Council, 13–​14, 62, 85, 607 Alternative for Germany (AfD), 33, 172, 244 creation of, 240–​41 electoral successes of, 53–​54, 221, 225, 228, 240, 352 impact of, 157, 518–​19, 536–​37 program of, 241–​43 support base of, 41, 190, 219, 237, 243, 356, 411 Altmaier, Peter, 535 Amsterdam Treaty [1997], 480, 497, 514–​17 anti-​Semitism, 12, 34–​35, 238, 331, 397–​98, 401–​4, 409–​10, 411. See also Holocaust architecture, 11, 37–​38, 50, 205–​6, 451

asylum law, 323–​24, 325–​26, 330–​32, 336, 426, 501, 544–​45, 665. See also immigration Auerbach, Philipp, 397–​98, 404 Austria, 83, 87–​88, 95, 219, 331–​32. See also Austrian State Treaty Austrian State Treaty [1955], 87–​89 Ayim, May, 424, 428–​29

B Baer, Susanne, 207–​8 Baerbock, Annalena, 227–​28, 358 Bagehot, Walter, 46, 161–​62, 169 Bahr, Egon, 92 Balkan Wars, 1, 479–​81, 515–​16, 520–​21, 595, 614–​15, 673. See also Yugoslavia banking system, 285–​86 challenges for, 298, 573, 662 cooperative, 291–​92, 294–​97 history of, 288–​89, 291, 298 private, 287–​88, 294–​97 regulation of, 286–​92 savings, 288–​90, 294–​97 Barzel, Rainer, 149 Basic Law compared to Weimar constitution, 25, 50 legitimacy of, 185–​86 provisions of, 25, 139, 183–​85, 185t, 199, 205–​6, 252, 253, 254–​55, 381–​82, 434, 535–​36, 662 reforms of, 180–​81, 192, 536 and reunification, 27–​28, 46, 129, 131 Bavaria, 220–​21, 544–​45 Becher, Hilla and Bernd, 452, 462 Becher, Johannes R., 40

688   Index Becker, Wolfgang, 444 Berlin as capital of Germany, 8–​9, 47–​48, 50, 157, 433 cultural institutions of, 453–​57 division of, 25, 30, 62, 64, 91, 425, 607 (see also Berlin Blockade; Berlin Wall) Berlin Blockade [1948], 60, 85–​86, 103, 425–​26, 607 Berlin Republic, 17, 433 Berlin Wall erection of, 16, 84–​85, 88–​91, 113, 327, 452, 608–​9 fall of, 27–​28, 41, 95–​96, 119–​21, 126–​27, 497 impact of, 327–​28, 425–​26 “wall in the head,” 120, 455–​56 Beuys, Joseph, 452, 459, 461, 462 Biden, Joe, 2, 3–​4, 446, 675–​76 transatlantic policies of, 18, 54, 356–​57, 359, 599, 602, 621, 647, 679, 680, 681–​82, 683–​84 Biermann, Wolf, 116–​17, 436, 452 Bisky, Lothar, 235–​36 Bismarck, Otto von, 9–​10, 197–​98, 251, 254, 304, 473–​74 Bitburg Affair, 400–​1, 402, 403 Blair, Tony, 222, 257, 483 Blinken, Antony, 677, 683 Blue Cards, 333. See also immigration Böckenförde, Ernst-​Wolfgang, 207–​8 Böll, Heinrich, 432, 436 Bolshevik Revolution, 18, 59–​60 Bonn Accords [1954], 561 Bonn Republic, 19, 25, 50–​54, 157, 607–​8. See also Federal Republic of Germany Borell, Josep, 683–​84 Börneplatz, 388–​89, 402–​3 Bracher, Karl Dietrich, 27–​28 Brandt, Willy and domestic politics, 50, 64–​65, 149, 168–​69 foreign policy of, 1, 26, 60, 63, 64–​65, 91–​93, 609 as mayor of West Berlin, 91 Braun, Volker, 442 Brecht, Bertolt, 19, 40–​41 Bretton Woods system, 74, 75, 272–​73, 561 Brexit, 323, 330, 352–​53, 472, 504, 529, 545–​47, 619, 648, 666, 683

Brezhnev, Leonid, 92, 93, 94, 121, 122 Broder, Henryk, 396, 411–​12 Brussig, Thomas, 439 Bubis, Ignatz, 401–​2, 403–​4, 408–​10 Bundesrat, 25, 173–​74, 182, 184–​89, 206–​7, 536, 537 Bundestag criticism of, 164, 173–​75 elections to, 145, 157–​58, 164–​65, 216, 217, 218–​19, 234 functions of, 25, 30, 139–​40, 161, 162–​64, 166, 167–​7 1, 206–​7, 510, 514, 536–​37, 576–​77 oversight of, 171–​74 (see also vote of confidence) Russian hacking of, 634 Bush, George H.W., 65, 96–​97, 98, 119–​20, 131, 611, 614, 673 Bush, George W., 65, 77, 257, 498, 521–​22, 594–​ 95, 615–​17, 618, 622, 630, 632, 673–​74 Byrnes, James F., 83, 84, 607

C Cabinet of Ministers, 143–​44, 152, 182 capitalism, 9, 18, 62, 86–​87, 119–​20, 128, 132, 217, 218, 241–​42, 251, 252–​55, 261, 271, 279, 304–​5 carbon emissions, 53, 344–​45, 347, 349, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357–​59, 682 Carter, Jimmy, 65, 77, 609–​10 Catholic Church, 381, 382, 383–​84, 385–​88, 388t, 392 Central Council of Jews in Germany, 396–​99 Chancellery, 143t, 144, 151–​52 Chancellor election of, 25, 139–​40, 148, 167–​69 (see also vote of confidence) federal office, 129, 140–​42, 147t, 151–​52 Chernobyl, 142, 342, 343, 344–​45 China and climate policy, 348, 352 during the Cold War, 72–​73, 91, 93, 640, 651 diplomatic relations with, 54, 359, 549, 615, 636, 639–​40, 643, 647, 652, 678–​80 economic relations with, 265, 346–​47, 548–​49, 572, 622, 639, 640, 641–​47, 678–​80 human rights in, 641–​42, 643–​44, 646–​47, 679

Index   689 Chirac, Jacques, 497, 498 Christian Democratic Union (CDU) history of, 26, 59, 104, 110–​11, 145, 217–​18, 219–​20, 224 program of, 216, 218–​21, 349, 551 Christian Social Union (CSU) history of, 26, 59, 145, 350–​51 program of, 216, 217, 218–​21, 518–​19, 544–​45 relations with the CDU, 220–​21 Churchill, Winston, 63, 64, 82–​83 citizenship, 2, 239–​40, 323, 324, 330, 333–​34, 634 Clay, Lucius, 85–​86, 90–​91 Climate Action Program 2020, 351 climate change, 227–​28, 241–​42, 340, 343, 434, 682. See also energy; environmental policy coalition, 50, 139–​40, 145–​46, 153–​54, 157–​58, 167, 179, 190–​91, 192, 269. See also coalition treaty coalition committees, 146–​48 historical coalitions, 147t coalition treaty, 165, 167, 168, 175, 236, 336 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), 73–​74, 497 Common European Asylum System (CEAS), 331–​32, 544–​45 Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), 509, 510–​12 Germany’s contributions to, 512–​19, 543–​44 implementation of, 519–​23 Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), 547, 597–​99 Communist Party of Germany (KPD), 15, 83, 86–​87, 104, 208, 429 Confederation of Free German Trade Unions (FDGB), 111–​12 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), 93–​94, 96–​97, 475, 476, 513. See also Helsinki Accords Constitutional Court. See Federal Constitutional Court consumption, 2, 14–​15, 53, 84, 121, 266, 273, 278, 339–​40 containment, 61–​62, 241 Copenhagen Accord [2009], 349 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon; CMEA), 113, 130 Council of Economic Advisers (SVR), 275

Covid-​19 pandemic, 1–​2, 54, 164, 168, 173–​74, 175, 192, 226, 260, 261–​62, 316, 333, 335, 354–​55, 485, 486, 487, 504, 505, 506, 538–​39, 547–​48, 568–​69, 574, 575, 600, 619–​20, 637, 659–​60, 661, 674, 675, 682 Crimea, 1–​2, 93, 225, 356, 486, 504–​5, 538–​39, 543, 579–​80, 582, 593–​94, 599, 613, 617, 618, 633, 661, 664, 676 Cuban Missile Crisis, 64–​65, 91 cultural institutions, 108–​9, 451, 453, 457 Czechowski, Heinz, 441

D de Gaulle, Charles, 64–​65, 71, 72, 493, 546 de Maizière, Lothar, 47–​48, 131, 405 Democratic Farmers’ Party (DBD), 111–​12 democratic legitimacy, 162–​63, 179, 193, 497–​98, 536 demographics, 191, 277, 312–​15, 332, 336, 367, 368–​7 1, 369t, 544–​45 debates about, 374–​75 generational concepts in, 371–​74, 375–​77 outlooks on, 377–​78 Deng Xiaoping, 641–​42 Détente, 64–​65, 71, 72–​73, 76, 91–​94, 115, 328, 475, 591, 609–​11, 613, 619, 620, 622, 630–​31, 636 Deutschmark, 14–​15, 28, 74, 98, 116, 130–​31, 254–​56, 272–​73, 328, 404, 628 di Fabio, Udo, 207–​8 Die Linke, 157, 190, 216, 235–​37, 243–​44, 471 history of, 222–​23, 235–​36 program of, 237, 536–​37 diversity, 392–​93, 420–​22, 423, 424. See also identity; xenophobia division of Germany, 59–​60, 62–​63, 82–​83, 84, 87–​88, 99, 183–​84, 372–​73, 434, 474, 607, 629 Documenta, 457–​58 doubletrack decision, 65, 94, 119, 610. See also NATO Dulles, John Foster, 62, 68 Düsseldorf Art Academy, 452, 459

E Easter March, 38–​39 Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), 254–​55, 345, 494–​95, 500, 512–​13, 531. See also Euro

690   Index Economic Miracle, 14–​15, 19, 36–​37, 69, 218, 252, 253, 268, 327, 426–​27, 442, 530, 640 education, 9, 53, 188, 315, 316, 369–​70, 372, 390–​91 Electoral Alternative Labour and Social Justice (WASG), 236 electoral districts, 164, 165 electoral system, 51–​52, 161, 165, 166, 167, 234 Elysée Treaty [1963], 491, 492, 493–​94, 498, 499, 501, 505–​6, 530–​31 Energiewende, 187, 218, 339, 340, 347–​48, 351, 353, 356, 357–​58. See also energy energy consumption of, 339 nuclear, 168, 187, 218, 343, 349, 648–​49 regulation of, 187, 188, 340 renewable, 218, 346–​47, 354 (see also Energiewende) sources of, 339, 341, 347–​48, 349–​50, 353, 630 Energy Union, 352–​56 environmental policy, 17–​18, 53, 142, 339, 343–​51. See also climate change; Energiewende; energy of the EU, 344–​45, 347–​49, 352–​56 political activism and, 124–​25, 221, 226, 227–​28, 341–​43 Euro, 17, 240–​41, 274–​75, 278 Euro Crisis [2009], 225, 240–​41, 260, 261, 377, 471, 484–​86, 500–​1, 518–​19, 540–​43, 648, 661, 662–​64. See also sovereign debt crisis European Central Bank (ECB), 29, 254–​55, 274, 286, 354, 472, 485–​86, 495, 500–​1, 503, 531, 537–​38, 541–​42, 575, 663 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), 67, 68–​69, 340–​41, 493 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), 211 European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), 211, 324 European Court of Justice (ECJ), 29, 335, 472, 513–​14, 536, 545, 547–​48 European Defense Community (EDC), 67, 86, 608 European Economic Community (EEC), 67, 68–​69, 71, 329–​30, 493, 661 European Security Conference, 91, 92, 93. See also Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe

Euroscepticism, 280, 471, 496, 501, 504, 505, 518–​19, 536–​37, 538, 539, 547–​48 Extra-​Parliamentary Opposition (APO), 38–​39

F family policies, 218, 241–​42, 315–​16, 317, 318, 375–​76, 377, 378. See also welfare state Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 400–​1, 402, 403, 408 Federal Banking Supervisory Authority (BaFin), 286 Federal Central Bank, 50, 51, 254–​55, 269, 272, 286 Federal Constitutional Court, 205–​11 jurisdiction of, 25, 199, 203, 208–​10, 538 justices of, 206–​8 moral authority of, 210–​11 rulings of, 30, 86–​87, 150, 165, 172, 323–​24, 392, 480, 576–​77 Federal Court of Justice, 204–​5 Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), 154, 325–​26 Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). See also Bonn Republic creation of, 25, 59, 62, 103–​4, 199, 252, 268, 269, 271–​72, 607 federalism cooperative federalism, 180–​81, 183, 185–​86, 192–​93, 200–​1, 203, 212, 324–​26 division of powers under, 184–​89 German characteristics of, 46–​47, 48, 179, 183–​84, 192–​95, 200, 269 history of, 181–​83 and justice system, 200–​1 and territorial organization, 183–​84 theories of, 180–​81 feminism, 39, 124–​25, 422 Filbinger, Hans, 398 film, 11, 34–​35, 116, 237–​38, 434, 444–​45, 457–​58, 649 fine arts. See also cultural institutions; film; literature, poetry debates in, 450–​52 exhibits, 455 (see also Documenta) in the GDR, 455–​57 international recognition for, 452–​53 painting in, 459–​62

Index   691 performance in, 459 photography in, 462–​63 sculpture in, 459–​62 Fischer, Joschka, 30, 343, 345, 482, 517, 629, 632, 642 Fleischmann, Lea, 396, 411–​12 Ford, Gerald, 77 foreign policy challenges in, 18, 479, 482, 484, 486–​88, 590, 617 development of, 2, 62, 72, 270–​7 1, 357, 399, 425, 469, 473–​75, 479, 561–​62, 602, 613, 630 (see also multilateralism) and European Union, 469–​73, 509–​12, 530–​32 (see also Common Foreign and Security Policy) France. See also Franco-​German relations and European integration, 60–​61, 73, 346, 491, 515, 598, 608 and German unification, 47, 97, 478 as a nuclear power, 29, 680 and Russia, 502, 504–​5, 543 Franco-​German relations development of, 491–​96, 502–​3, 530–​31, 628 in European context, 496–​99, 502–​4, 505, 513, 521, 529–​30, 531, 548–​50 and the Eurozone crisis, 500–​1, 541 problems in, 54, 492 and the refugee crisis, 501–​2 Free Democratic Party (FDP), 172, 224–​26, 228, 358, 409–​10 Free German Youth (FDJ), 111–​12 Free Voters (FW), 221 Fukushima, 168, 228, 342, 349, 350–​51, 648–​49, 668

G Galinski, Heinz, 398, 404, 408 Gauck, Joachim, 599, 672, 684 Gauland, Alexander, 242, 411 Geiger, Theodor, 37–​38 generations. See also demographics of 1968, 372 concept of, 368, 371–​72 of the internet, 373 and politics, 373–​74, 377–​78 of the transition, 372–​73

German Democratic Republic (East Germany) arts in (see fine arts: in the GDR; literature: in the GDR) churches in, 40, 47–​48, 124–​25, 385–​87 collapse of, 16, 41, 94–​96, 117–​18, 121–​27 creation of, 84–​87, 103, 105, 112–​13 escape from, 88, 90, 113, 122–​23, 272 modernity in, 15–​16 opposition movements in, 40–​41, 115, 116–​ 17, 124–​26 political system of, 16, 40–​41, 105–​12, 183 transformation of, 96–​99, 127–​29, 130–​32 (see also Reunification) German Question, 28, 29, 60, 62–​63, 84–​85, 86, 87–​88, 93, 96–​97, 103, 471, 591–​92, 611 German Trade Union Association, 269 Germany’s Europe policy coordination of, 534–​40 ideas for, 530–​32 outlooks for, 549–​50 theories of, 532–​34 Giscard d’Estaing, Valery, 494–​95, 499 globalization, 41, 189–​90, 236, 258, 308–​9, 450, 473, 660–​61 Godesberg Program [1959], 26, 217 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 40–​41, 47, 65, 94–​96, 97–​ 99, 109–​10, 121–​22, 131, 477–​78, 610–​11, 612, 626–​27 Göring-​Eckardt, Katrin, 31 Grass, Günter, 422–​24, 432, 434–​35, 437, 439–​40 Great Britain. See United Kingdom Great Recession [2008], 274–​75, 316, 354–​55. See also Euro Crisis Green Party, 1, 2, 31, 150–​51, 172, 190, 218–​19, 226–​28, 234, 236, 239–​40, 342, 409, 481, 482, 505, 515, 629, 682 Grimm, Dieter, 207–​8 Grjasnowa, Olga, 411, 419–​20 Gruhl, Herbert, 342 Gruppe 47, 432 guest workers, 329–​30, 334–​35, 417, 423–​24, 425, 426–​27, 462

H Habermas, Jürgen, 19, 26, 46, 473, 475–​76, 477 Hackenberg, Helmut, 125–​26

692   Index Hager, Kurt, 122–​23 Hallstein Doctrine, 89 Hartz IV, 222–​24, 258–​59 Haußmann, Leander, 444 Havemann, Robert, 115 health insurance, 252–​53, 259, 306–​7, 314–​15, 317–​18, 374–​75, 391–​92. See also welfare state Heinemann, Gustav, 37–​38, 45 Heisig, Bernhard, 451, 453, 455–​56 Helsinki Accords, 93–​94, 98, 475–​76, 477, 479, 609–​10, 611, 612. See also Conference on Security and Cooperation Henckel von Donnersmarck, Florian, 444–​45 Herzog, Roman, 54, 207–​8 Hettche, Thomas, 439 Heuss, Theodor, 37 Historikerstreit, 26 Hitler, Adolf, 12–​13, 18, 35, 36–​37, 62, 198–​99, 204, 444–​45, 589 Hollande, François, 500–​1, 502, 541, 659, 663 Holocaust, 13, 406. See also anti-​Semitism; Central Council of Jews in Germany; Jewish communities explanations of, 8, 26 memory politics of, 30, 398–​400, 402, 403, 406, 407, 408, 409, 410, 440, 462 Sinti and Roma in, 419 Honecker, Erich, 40–​41, 106, 107, 115, 116, 117, 122–​24, 125–​26, 456, 651 Hungary, 52, 84, 95, 123, 130, 328, 330, 331–​32, 426, 498, 503, 504, 546, 547–​48, 592, 661, 666 Hussein, Saddam, 257, 481, 614, 615–​16, 618

I identity. See also race; xenophobia definitions of, 403, 420–​22 development of, 417–​18 national, 26, 241–​42, 406, 417–​19, 427–​28, 433, 474 regional, 182–​84 significance of, 422–​24 Immendorff, Jörg, 452, 460, 461 immigration. See also asylum; Blue Card; Federal Office for Migration and Refugees

from East Germany, 327–​29, 426 from the EU, 330, 333 EU policies on, 324, 330 German positions on, 219, 221, 241, 323, 332–​33, 378 German law on, 323–​26, 405, 410 from outside the EU, 329–​30 statistics on, 53–​54, 333–​34, 370–​7 1, 405, 410 and welfare state, 334–​35 India, 329, 349, 581–​82, 640, 648, 649–​50 intermediate-​range nuclear missiles, 65, 610–​11 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 265, 274–​ 75, 277, 500, 541, 663 interpellations, 171–​73. See also Bundestag: oversight functions of Iran, 326, 517, 519–​20, 521–​23, 619, 636, 676 Iraq, 18, 77, 325, 481–​82, 517–​18, 521–​22, 570, 571, 614, 615–​17, 630, 674 ISIS, 325, 569, 571, 618 Islam, 241–​42, 382, 392–​93, 411 Israel, 396–​97 German relations with, 329, 399–​400, 411–​ 12, 672

J Japan, 342, 376, 639–​40, 641, 647–​49, 651 Jelinek, Elfriede, 442–​43 Jenninger, Philipp, 403, 404, 408–​9 Jewish communities. See also anti-​Semitism; Central Council of Jews in Germany; Holocaust controversies within, 399–​404 participation in, 382, 396–​97 recent trends in, 408–​10, 422 Russian-​speaking, 331, 396–​97, 404–​7 Jirgl, Reinhard, 439 Johnson, Lyndon B., 69–​7 1, 72, 90–​91, 609 Johnson, Uwe, 432 Juncker, Jean-​Claude, 352, 503 June 17 [1953] Uprising, 112–​13, 437

K Kaiser, 8–​9, 197–​98, 474. See also Wilhelm II Kampmann, Anja, 446 Karlsruhe, 37–​38, 204–​6 Kennan, George, 61

Index   693 Kennedy, John F., 69–​70, 89–​91, 609 Khrushchev, Nikita, 89–​90, 94–​95 Kiefer, Anselm, 452–​53, 459–​60, 461, 462 Kiesinger, Kurt Georg, 38, 91–​92 Kinkel, Klaus, 30, 515 Kissinger, Henry, 71, 72–​73, 74–​75, 76, 77, 359 Kohl, Helmut domestic politics of, 149, 150, 330, 343, 515 and European integration, 28–​29, 484–​85, 495, 497, 498, 513–​14, 537–​38 foreign policy of, 18, 65, 494–​95, 515, 531–​32, 610, 614, 626–​29, 641–​42 and Reunification, 1, 46, 95–​97, 98, 128–​29, 131, 255–​56, 308, 475, 611 Korean War, 86, 268, 608, 651 Kosovo, 18, 30, 226–​27, 345, 480–​81, 515, 516–​ 17, 520, 614, 629. See also Balkan Wars; NATO: and the Balkans Kracht, Christian, 439 Kramp-​Karrenbauer, Annegret, 219–​20, 590 Krenz, Egon, 107, 125–​26, 128 Kretschmann, Winfried, 227, 350–​51, 358 Kurz, Sebastian, 219 Kyoto Protocol, 340, 345, 348, 349

L Lafontaine, Oskar, 27–​28, 222–​23, 236, 256–​57, 311 Lagarde, Christine, 354, 503 Lambsdorff, Otto-​Graf, 254 Landtag. See federalism Lang, Michel, 396, 411–​12 Laschet, Armin, 220, 221, 358, 505 Lavrov, Sergey, 632, 633–​34 Le Pen, Marine, 501, 505, 652, 666–​67 Left Party. See Die Linke legal code, 201–​2, 203 Legien, Carl, 10–​11 Leibholz, Gerhard, 207–​8 Leipzig, 16, 125–​26, 127–​28, 133, 197–​98, 204–​5, 261–​62, 419, 439, 455, 659 Liberal Democratic Party (LDPD), 104, 110–​12 Libya, 331–​32, 469, 482–​83, 484, 487, 519–​20, 581–​82, 596–​97, 598, 618, 620–​21, 636 Liebknecht, Karl, 11 Limbach, Jutta, 207–​8

Lindner, Christian, 225, 226, 352 Lisbon Treaty [2007], 358, 499, 518, 519–​23, 531–​32, 536, 539–​40, 598, 662 literature central themes in, 433–​34 controversies in, 435–​38 German novels, 438–​40 (see also poetry) politics in, 434–​35 Loest, Erich, 439 Lübbe, Hermann, 26 Lucke, Bernd, 241, 242 Lueg, Konrad, 451–​52 Lüpertz, Markus, 452–​53, 460, 461 Luxemburg, Rosa, 11, 19

M Maas, Heiko, 355–​56, 601, 634–​35, 641 Maastricht Treaty [1992], 28–​29, 254–​55, 485, 495, 498, 513–​14, 536, 537, 540, 662 Macron, Emmanuel, 54, 494, 502–​3, 504–​5, 518–​19, 542–​43, 546, 590, 598, 620, 645, 652, 666, 669 Marcuse, Herbert, 38 Marshall Plan, 67, 84, 268, 426–​27, 607 Merkel, Angela diplomacy of, 54, 349–​50, 494, 572, 589–​90, 617, 618–​21, 631–​35, 643–​44, 664, 677, 679 domestic politics of, 187, 218–​20, 349, 648–​49 early career of, 345, 618 and Euro Crisis, 540–​49, 572–​73, 662–​64 European policies of, 346, 348–​49, 357–​60, 499–​505, 517–​19, 535–​36, 575, 662–​66 political style of, 2, 531–​32, 619, 621, 659–​60, 661, 668–​70 and the refugee crisis, 53–​54, 221, 327, 331–​32, 544–​45, 664–​66 Merz, Friedrich, 219–​20 Meuthen, Jörg, 241, 242–​43 Michel, Charles, 354 Minister (federal office), 142–​43, 154–​57 Mitscherlich, Margarete and Alexander, 36–​37, 38 Mitterrand, François, 28, 128–​29, 131, 494–​95 Modrow, Hans, 128 Monday Demonstrations, 125, 372–​73 Monnet, Jean, 66–​67, 608

694   Index multilateralism concepts of, 563–​64 economics and, 571–​75 effective, 519–​23, 524, 589–​90 German development of, 268–​69, 473, 561–​ 62, 563–​64, 582–​83, 589–​90, 619 humanitarian areas of, 564–​69 and peace-​keeping, 576–​82 reflexive, 530–​31, 535

N Nachmann, Werner, 398, 400, 404 National Democratic Party (NPD), 208, 234, 409 National Socialism, 12–​13, 30, 34–​35, 36–​37, 198–​99, 267, 323, 455, 474. See also Hitler; Holocaust nationalism, 18, 27, 46, 182, 340–​41, 405, 427–​28, 470–​71, 474, 480, 618–​21, 661, 669 NATO and the Balkan Wars, 516–​17, 595, 614–​15 enlargement of, 469, 480, 486, 497, 592–​93, 627–​28, 633 and the EU, 472–​73, 513–​14, 515, 519, 547, 597 German contributions to, 30, 481, 570–​71, 576–​82, 590, 595–​97, 599–​600, 608, 629, 680 German membership in, 28, 61–​62, 63, 97–​98, 131, 470–​7 1, 474–​75, 477–​78, 486, 589–​90, 591, 609, 611–​12 and the Middle East, 481–​82, 615–​16 nuclear sharing within, 600–​1 and Russia, 2, 129, 131, 477–​79, 486, 593–​95, 599, 613, 620, 626–​27, 632 US commitment to, 86, 619–​20, 680 West German policy on, 590–​91 Navalny, Alexei, 359, 504–​5, 634, 635, 636, 676 Nazism. See National Socialism neo-​liberalism, 17–​18, 51, 75, 224, 236, 254, 261–​ 62, 318, 335, 374, 376, 377 new dualism, 161–​62, 164, 169–​70 Nice Treaty [2003], 480, 497–​98, 517–​18 Nixon, Richard, 60, 71–​77, 343, 590 Nord Stream, 347, 350, 351, 355–​57, 359, 630, 631, 635, 636, 676–​78 North Korea, 64, 608, 651 nuclear weapons, 91, 593, 600–​1, 608–​10, 611. See also SS-​20 missiles opposition to, 38–​39, 343, 635

O Obama, Barack, 543, 572–​73, 577–​78, 617–​18, 633–​34, 664, 666–​67, 674–​75 Oder-​Neisse border, 24, 28, 47, 64–​65. See also Poland: German relations with Ollenhauer, Erich, 25 ordo-​liberalism, 240–​42, 252–​53, 260, 261, 345, 504, 533–​34, 540–​41 Osman, Nedjo, 418–​19 Ostalgie, 132, 444 Ostpolitik, 26, 52, 60, 65, 91–​93, 115, 347, 475, 591, 627, 630–​31 new Ostpolitik, 479, 634–​35, 636

P parliamentarism, 161–​64, 174–​76 Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), 48, 128, 129, 190, 222–​23, 235–​36, 372–​73, 515 PEGIDA, 241, 242–​43, 372–​73, 444 Penck, A.R., 452, 460–​61 pensions, 9–​10, 258–​59, 309–​10, 312–​15, 368, 374–​75, 376. See also Agenda 2010; welfare state Perestroika, 40–​41, 94, 96, 109–​10, 117, 121–​22 Petersberg Agreement [1949], 62 Petry, Frauke, 241, 242 Pieck, Wilhelm, 104, 107 Pirate Party, 234, 237–​40, 243–​44 Pleschinski, Hans, 439, 440 Pleven, René, 86 poetry, 440–​42 Poland and the EU, 355–​56, 504, 547–​48, 598, 661, 666 German relations with, 45, 47, 64–​65, 93, 97, 327, 328, 333–​34, 402, 496, 607, 632, 672–​73 (see also Oder-​Neisse border) politics in, 45, 52, 94–​95, 115, 122, 504, 611, 661 and security, 350, 592, 594, 598, 613, 619–​20, 632, 635 Polke, Sigmar, 452–​53, 459, 462 populism, 33, 41, 51, 52, 216–​17, 220, 236, 237, 618–​19, 652, 660, 666–​68, 675–​76 Potsdam Conference [1945], 1, 13–​14, 60, 64–​65, 92, 327 Prague Spring [1968], 92, 95, 115, 122, 330–​31 President (Bundespräsident), 25, 50, 140–​41, 142, 149, 151, 168

Index   695 proportional representation, 145, 161, 164–​65, 167, 179, 234, 343 Protestant Church (EKD), 40, 106, 110–​11, 124–​25, 381, 385–​88, 391–​92 Prussia, 9–​10, 181, 182, 197–​98, 639–​40 Putin, Vladimir, 356–​57, 359, 481, 543, 612, 617, 618, 620, 626, 629–​30, 631–​35, 636–​37, 664, 677

R race, 416–​18, 420, 428, 429. See also African diaspora; diversity; identity; xenophobia Reagan, Ronald, 17, 119–​20, 374–​75, 400, 610–​11 Rechtsstaat, 46, 213 refugee crisis [2015], 2, 220–​21, 237, 241, 501, 535, 544–​45, 661 Reich-​Ranicki, Marcel, 436, 439 religion. See also Catholic Church; Islam; Protestant Church in the GDR, 385–​87 historical legacy of, 383–​84 loss of, 387–​88 after reunification, 387–​91 and the state, 381–​82 in West Germany, 384–​85 Reunification. See also Two-​plus-​Four Agreement early attempts at, 63, 89, 92 economics of, 46–​47, 49, 129, 130–​31, 255–​56, 273 (see also Trusteeship Agency) international considerations for, 47, 96–​99, 121–​27, 128–​29, 476–​78, 495, 531, 611–​12, 620 politics of, 41, 47–​48, 50–​54, 129, 216 process of, 46–​48, 119–​20, 183 significance of, 27–​28, 62–​63, 120, 344, 429, 445, 496 social dimensions of, 127–​28, 132, 307–​10, 328, 427–​28 Richter, Falk, 444 Richter, Gerhard, 444–​45, 451–​52, 456–​57, 460, 461, 462 Roma, 417, 418–​19, 424. See also Holocaust Roosevelt, Franklin D., 34–​35, 82–​83, 606 Rostock, 408, 427–​28 Rothemund, Marc, 445 Round Table talks, 16, 127–​28

Russia conflict with Ukraine, 2, 351, 356, 359, 475, 479, 487–​88, 543–​44, 593–​94, 633–​34, 661 disinformation in, 481 German relations with, 30, 359, 502, 543–​44, 592, 593, 612, 626–​35, 677, 678 international cooperation with, 520–​21 and NATO, 475, 479, 486, 592, 593–​95, 613, 627–​28, 632 resource imports from, 347, 349–​50, 351, 353, 356–​57, 629–​30 sanctions on, 225, 350, 504–​5, 543–​44, 617, 618, 664

S Saarland, 183–​84 Sarkozy, Nicholas, 496, 497, 499–​501, 541 Schabowski, Günter, 126–​27 Schäuble, Wolfgang, 48, 517, 535–​36, 540–​41, 663 Scheffler, Erna, 207–​8 Schirach, Ferdinand von, 443–​44 Schirrmacher, Frank, 375, 409, 432, 436–​37 Schlink, Bernhard, 439 Schlöndorff, Volker, 444–​45 Schmid, Carlo, 38 Schmidt, Helmut, 1, 50, 65, 76–​77, 93–​94, 149, 168–​69, 251, 276–​77, 399, 494–​95, 591, 609–​10, 668 Scholz, Olaf, 2, 142–​43, 145, 158, 167, 223–​24, 355–​56, 536–​37, 549–​50, 575 Schröder, Gerhard domestic policies of, 1, 54, 150–​51, 187, 256–​ 58, 311 (see also Agenda 2010; Hartz IV) foreign policy of, 1, 257, 481–​82, 497, 498, 516–​17, 531–​32, 533, 596, 614–​15, 616–​17, 618, 620, 629–​31, 642 industry relations of, 345–​46, 347, 631 on social democracy, 222, 257, 347 Schulz, Martin, 223–​24 Schumacher, Kurt, 14, 25, 608 Schuman Plan, 67–​68, 608 Schuman, Robert, 67 Secretaries of State, 154–​57 parliamentary, 144–​45, 154 Seehofer, Horst, 220–​21, 544–​45 September 11 [2001] attacks, 17, 257, 433–​34, 459, 481–​82, 517, 523, 615, 622, 660–​61, 674

696   Index Shevardnadze, Edward, 47, 97–​98, 99, 477–​78 Sikorski, Radek, 350, 632, 672–​73 Sitte, Willi, 450 Social Democratic Party (SPD) cooperation with CDU, 26, 145–​46, 192, 351, 352 foreign policy of, 30, 64–​65, 91–​92, 601, 608, 609, 617, 634, 635 in the GDR, 83, 104 program of, 25–​26, 51, 217, 221–​24, 254, 256–​57, 280, 311, 347–​48, 353 in Weimar, 10–​11 social market economy, 17–​18, 251, 257–​58, 340 development of, 210–​11, 218, 251–​55, 261, 271–​72 Socialist Unity Party (SED) creation of, 15, 83, 104 dismantling of, 126, 128, 190 program of, 16, 88, 95–​96, 105, 112, 113–​14, 115–​16, 123–​24 working of, 16, 105–​8, 110–​12, 117, 122–​23, 386 Söder, Markus, 220–​21 Sonderweg, 8, 30, 470, 473–​75, 479, 482–​83, 596–​97 South Korea, 64, 608, 640, 651 sovereign debt crisis, 17–​18, 260, 298, 299–​300, 344, 350–​51, 472, 484–​86, 499–​501, 540, 660–​61, 663. See also Euro Crisis Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD), 85–​86, 104, 105 Soviet Occupation Zone, 24, 82–​83, 84, 85, 86, 89, 104–​5, 181, 267, 425, 607 Soviet Union collapse of, 45, 405, 612–​13, 628 East German relations with, 15–​16, 40–​41, 93, 96, 103, 109–​10, 112, 117, 122–​23, 478 (see also German Democratic Republic; Soviet Occupation Zone) military of, 61, 94–​95, 121, 606, 610, 626–​27 as a model of modernity, 15–​16 reform in, 94–​95, 113, 115, 117, 121–​27 and Reunification of Germany, 99, 129, 131, 478, 626 (see also Reunification of Germany) West German relations with, 65, 89, 91, 115, 477, 626–​27 (see also division of Germany; Ostpolitik, Two-​plus-​Four Treaty)

SS-​20 missiles, 65, 94, 119, 456–​57, 610–​11 Stalin, Joseph, 40, 82–​86, 87–​88 Stalin Note [1952], 63, 87–​88, 89 Stasi, 16, 107–​8, 125 Steinbrück, Peer, 573–​74, 662 Steinmeier, Frank Walter, 599, 631, 632, 633–​34, 635 Sternberger, Dolf, 46 Storch, Beatrix, 240, 241 Strauß, Franz Josef, 116, 219 Struck, Peter, 169 Süsterhenn, Adolf, 27

T television, 121, 327–​28, 372, 444–​45 terrorism, 17, 173, 326, 396, 443–​44, 452, 501, 615 war on, 150–​51, 470, 481–​82, 517, 615–​16, 617, 673–​74 Thatcher, Margaret, 128–​29, 131 theater, 419, 444 Timmermans, Frans, 354, 503 trade in emissions, 345 with East Asia, 622, 640, 642, 644, 647–​48, 650, 651 and European cooperation, 68, 268–​70, 538 historical development of, 266–​67 imbalance of, 275–​77 with Russia, 629–​30 with Soviet Union, 94, 627 theoretical approaches to, 270–​7 1 with the US, 68–​69, 73–​74, 607, 619–​20, 681 trade unions, 10–​11, 14–​15, 48, 236, 251–​54, 269, 273, 309, 316, 334–​35 Treaty of Moscow [1970], 93. See also Ostpolitik Trittin, Jürgen, 345 Truman, Harry, 66 Trump, Donald, 2, 77, 278, 355, 356–​57, 519, 522–​23, 562, 567–​68, 577–​78, 590, 598–​99, 600, 608, 618–​21, 666, 667–​68, 674–​76 Trusteeship Agency (Treuhandanstalt, THA), 48, 130, 255–​56 Tübke, Werner, 453 Turkey, 329–​30, 331, 333, 501, 545, 665 Turkish Germans, 324, 329–​30, 331, 416–​17, 420, 423–​24, 426–​28. See also diversity; guest workers

Index   697 Two-​plus-​Four Treaty, 47–​48, 97–​98, 129, 131, 477, 591–​92, 611–​12, 626, 627–​28. See also Reunification

Volkswagen, 12–​13, 257–​58, 311, 346, 642 von der Leyen, Ursula, 51, 354, 355–​56, 503, 599 vote of confidence, 64–​65, 148, 168

U

W

Ukraine, 2, 350, 351, 356, 359, 475, 479, 502, 504–​5, 543–​44, 593–​95, 603, 619–​20, 632, 633, 664. See also Russia: conflict with Ukraine Ulbricht, Walter, 16, 40–​41, 87, 90, 104, 106, 107, 115 unemployment, 132, 222–​23, 253, 254, 256–​57, 258–​59, 260, 274–​75, 310–​12, 354, 373, 376 unification. See Reunification United Kingdom (UK) demographics in, 369t economy of, 51, 279, 293, 304 and European integration, 73, 480, 504, 513, 546, 547, 652, 661 (see also Brexit) German relations with, 47, 97, 103, 128–​29, 477–​78, 497 political system in, 50, 51–​52 as a world power, 52, 70, 474 United States (US) alliance with Germany, 60, 63–​64, 65, 268, 477–​78, 481–​82, 519, 543, 589–​90, 599, 672, 675–​76 disagreements with Germany, 1, 18, 482, 498, 590, 595, 618–​21, 674–​75, 676–​78 economy of, 49, 52, 73–​75, 265, 272–​73, 279, 572, 660–​61, 681 and energy policy, 356–​57 and European integration, 60–​61, 66–​76 federal model of, 181, 183, 200 justice system in, 200, 206, 207 as a model of modernity, 7–​8, 14 occupation of Germany, 82–​83, 84–​87, 103, 425–​26, 606–​8 politics in, 17, 34–​35, 54, 75–​76, 355, 666, 673–​74

Wagenknecht, Sahra, 236, 237, 241 Walser, Martin, 408–​9, 432, 436, 437–​38 Warsaw Pact, 63, 94, 97, 107–​8, 122, 129, 589, 592, 612, 628 Weidel, Alice, 242 Weimar Republic, 10–​11, 19, 24, 25, 36, 50, 59, 149, 168, 204, 206, 381–​82, 384, 444–​45, 456 Weisband, Martina, 238 Weizsäcker, Richard von, 28, 403 welfare state. See also Agenda 2010; Hartz IV; unemployment benefits of, 17, 305–​7 development of, 48, 251–​53, 304–​5 evaluation of, 17–​18, 260–​62, 304–​5, 317 and immigration, 323–​24, 330, 334–​35 problems of, 51, 254, 307–​16 reforms of, 222–​23, 255–​59 Wende. See German Democratic Republic: transformation of; Reunification Wenzel, Olivia, 417–​18 Westerwelle, Guido, 581, 632, 633 Wilhelm II, 9, 197–​98, 474 Wolf, Christa, 435, 436–​38 World War I, 8–​9, 10–​11, 18, 24, 83, 198, 267, 417, 423, 639–​40 World War II, 24, 82, 83, 327, 370, 405, 423, 425, 614–​15

V Verheugen, Günter, 30 Vienna Summit [1961], 89–​90

X xenophobia, 427. See also Rostock Xi Jinping, 3–​4, 355, 643–​44, 645, 646–​47, 652

Y Yalta Conference, 64–​65, 82–​83, 92 Yugoslavia, 1, 329–​30, 479–​80, 486, 513, 515–​16, 520–​21, 614–​15. See also Balkan Wars

Z Zweigert, Konrad, 207–​8