November 9: The New German National Identity
The history of the evolution of Germany is summed up by two pictures taken at a distance of seventy years one from the other. The first is the photograph of a frightened boy in the Warsaw ghetto standing in front of a Nazi soldier, the second one is of another boy wearing the hat of a German policeman, happy to be welcomed as a refugee in Germany. The two pictures are symbolic of the long path of rehabilitation of a country that after the Second World War risked disappearing and becoming a simple ‘geographic entity’ (Stalin). As German philosopher Helmuth Plessner recounts in his book Die verspätete Nation, a few days after the German surrender on 8 May 1945, a friend and colleague in forced exile told him: “You really want to go back to Germany? But the country no longer exists!”
The story – as we now know – went differently, and over a quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany still exists and is a new country that no longer has enemies or territorial claims. The Federal Republic born in 1990 – and aptly named the third Germany by Michael Gehler – is a nation at peace not only with itself but most importantly with its neighbouring countries and the remaining countries of Europe. However, it was precisely in the wake of the fall of the Wall and reunification – both decisive steps in the process of European integration as they led to the abandonment of the Deutschmark (the traditional symbol of the rebirth of Germany after the Second World War) and the introduction of the Euro – that Germany understood the importance of having a national identity. Whilst the Bonn Republic was defined as a ‘post-national democracy among nation states’ (Karl Dietrich Bracher), the Berlin Republic was a democracy and nation state linked to European and Atlantic organisations. According to Lepenies, the traditional tension between Kultur and Zivilisation that Thomas Mann describes in Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man had already entirely been overcome by the events. “It is not that which we were yesterday, but what we want to be together tomorrow, that unites us in one nation”, Lothar de Maizière said in a speech on the day of the celebrations for reunification in 1990. It was clear that with reunification, national identity would change too. Constitutional patriotism and the primacy of the rule of law were no longer enough. Whilst these were the core principles of Western Germany, there was the need for something else, something of symbolical strength that would unite the two people – the Germans of the East and the West – who had been separate for around forty years.
The German political and ruling class began to question the deficit of political symbolism of the old Bonn Republic that risked reproducing itself in the new Republic of Berlin. In the years of Bonn, the key word was ‘functional’. From architectural structures to public buildings, to political semantics and institutions – everything was to be the expression of the programmatic modesty of a country without national or international ambitions. This is the reason why the national identity of Germany is profoundly different to that of any other Western country. Further, unlike other European countries and the United States, Germany lacked any real foundational myths to which to appeal. No storming of the Bastille with triggered Revolution like in France, no war of independence like in the United States, no imperial tradition like in Great Britain, no resistance like in Poland or Italy. All Germany had was the memory of the two defeats in the World Wars and of the crimes of Nazism. And no other country ever undertook a profound and intense revision of its own history to make it morally shameful like Germany did. Japan did not, Italy did not and Russia – as the heir of the Soviet Union and its crimes – did not either. In the long post-war period, German national identity came to define itself as a negative theology, as a distancing itself from Nazism that, naturally, represented a fundamental break in the history of the country.
Germany found itself a nation without a history and the question of guilt had become a central aspect of German national identity: ‘Anyone who was born a German does have something in common with German destiny and German guilt’, said Thomas Mann in 1945 from his exile in the United States. The relation between guilt and national identity is found also – albeit indirectly – in the Grundgesetz of the Federal Republic. Article 116 states that: ‘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, shall on application have their citizenship restored’. It is no coincidence that the two dates refer to the beginning and end of the Nazi regime. This is an article of fundamental importance because here – in the Constitution itself – national identity is connected to the collective guilt and responsibility for the discriminations and persecutions pursued during the dictatorship.
This was the starting point from which in the years of the Bonn Republic, both constitutional patriotism and the absence of a national symbolism consolidated. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Federal Republic began to fill this void. For some time now Germany has been undergoing a process of profound reinvention (Gian Enrico Rusconi) of itself, because the fall of the Berlin Wall represented a real new beginning (Neubeginn) in German history. A completely new page. From the so-called peaceful revolution in the former German Democratic Republic (DDR) and the fall of the Wall, an enormous and unimaginable process of cultural, social and political transformation emerged.
In 1999, the government of Gerhard Schröder introduced a reform of the right to citizenship combining ius sanguinis (right of blood) and ius soli (right of soil): a child with at least one parent who has been in Germany for a minimum of eight years has the right to German citizenship. Today, 20 per cent of the population of Germany are of foreign origins. In 2010, the then President of the Republic Christian Wulff was the first to declare that Islam was a part of German society, a sentence that would be repeated several times (not without some controversy) by other political figures including Chancellor Merkel herself. By the end of this year, further, Germany will have welcomed almost a million refugees and realistically the number is set to increase over the next few years. The Federal Republic was able to integrate other cultures and traditions in its society, recognising their cultural importance and economic potential. It is no coincidence that in Germany there has been a shift from the idea of a Leitkultur (a guiding culture or dominant culture) to the importance of a Begleitkultur (accompanying culture), of a Willkommenskultur (welcoming culture) or of a Anerkennungskultur (culture of recognition), in other words, a culture of embracing immigration. Naturally, this somewhat sudden phenomenon with massive proportions has created tensions and some intolerance, but German society seems more prepared than others to deal with these.
The Germans of the “third Germany” are increasingly less obsessed with always being top of the class at all costs – and besides, recent scandals such as Volkswagen, the Football World Cup in 2006, Siemens and Deutsche Bank demonstrate that they are evidently less than perfect, nor do they aspire to be so – and are more interested in strengthening Europe and making it (and within it the Federal Republic) more competitive in the global context.
The German Republic is the most European and potentially the most liberal (not liberalist) country of the EU, as well as being the one least characterised by political movements and extremists of anti-European parties. Certainly, forces of the extreme right exist in Berlin too, but these remain at the margins of political debate. The Berlin Republic is the most authentic paradigm of the European society, a real prototype of what we could be in the future: Europeans and international citizens of a multicultural but not relativist society, because observance of the rules of living together and respect for institutions remain unavoidable. ‘Those who arrive in Germany must comply with the existing basic consensus (Grundkonsens)’, wrote Stefan Ulrich in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on 2 October 2015.
In other words, the differences between the Germany of the seventies and eighties and Germany today are enormous. Those still trying to understand and interpret German society and culture using the categories of the past are destined to fail to grasp the deep sense of a nation that is the real beating heart of Europe. The new and positive national sentiment – not to be confused with the nationalism and imperialism of the twentieth century – is the expression of this change. Once, waving the German flag was almost a problem. Luckily, for the past twenty-five years, it has not been so. It is a normal national symbol just like it is in any other European country. The impressive architectural reconstructions, of which Berlin is the most beautiful and fascinating example, are the expression of this positive national sentiment that is also fuelled by a very specific symbolism. Germany has learnt that there also exists a past which it can recall without fear and that its own historical past need not and should not be reduced to the experience of Nazism. The best proof of this is the thousands of Israelis that in the past few years have decided to go and live precisely in Berlin.
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| L'installazione in occasione dei 25 anni dalla caduta del Muro di Berlino |
9 November is a date of fundamental significance for the history of Germany. It is not and cannot be a day for celebration, because, as well as the day of the fall of the Berlin Wall, this was also the fatal day (Schicksaltag) of the proclamation of the Republic of Weimar in 1918, of the failure of Hitler’s Putsch in Munich in 1923, and of the Nazi pogroms in 1938. As historian Winkler wrote, this is a day for reflection on the history of Germany in the twentieth century. What was achieved between 9 November 1989 and 3 October 1990 – unity in freedom – was the result of the long process of many democratic, liberal and social democratic forces and movements in the course of the twentieth century.
After giving us lessons on how they deal with their own past – and in Italy in particular, we have a lot to learn – today Germany has rediscovered a healthy national pride that, differently to the past, does not degenerate into nationalism but rather fits well with European and Western values. The reconstruction of the Berliner Schloss, the beautiful Regierungsviertel, the ‘Dem deutschen Volke’ installation at the Reichstag, are all signs of the normalisation of Germany, that is able to combine Europeanism with a new, positive national sentiment.
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