Columbia International Affairs Online

CIAO DATE: 10/07

German Politics and Society

Vol. 23, No. 4, Issue 77 (Winter 2005)

Articles

• Rwanda and the Politics of Memory

  Jutta Helm

  This paper examines the German response to Rwanda's genocide, an important concern that previous research largely has ignored. Like the United States, Great Britain, France (up to mid-June l994) and other powers, Germany chose the role of bystander, observing and condemning the genocide, but failing to act. At first glance, this might appear unsurprising. The frequently cited "culture of reticence" in foreign affairs would seem to explain this posture of inaction. However, a second look uncovers several factors that could lead one to expect a German engagement in efforts to halt the genocide. By l994, Germany had contributed military and medical units to ten humanitarian efforts, including two United Nations missions in Cambodia (1991-1993) and in Somalia (1992-1994).5 Moreover, the Federal Republic's staunch support for human rights, as well as its considerable diplomatic and foreign aid presence in Rwanda, might have suggested a visible response to the mounting evidence of genocide. Why did this not occur? Why was there so little public discussion of German obligations to take steps to halt the genocide? On the one hand, answers to these questions are important in order to test previous research on the factors that led to states' participation in humanitarian interventions. On the other, they are significant for the inner-German debate about history and memory. Can the memory of the Holocaust inform debates about Germany's international obligations? How and under what circumstances might considerations of political morality shape foreign policy decisions?6

• Fashioning the Socialist Nation: The Gender of Consumption in Slatan Dudow’s Destinies of Women

  Elizabeth Mittman

  In the following article, I sketch two major pressures driving this film's peculiar recuperation of traditional representations of femininity alongside the rhetoric of equal rights. The first is the development of a Cold War politics of consumption, which, as recent research has shown, was crucial for national and cultural identity formation in the period of reconstruction after World War II. If, in the 20th century, political citizenship was "recast as consumer behavior,"2 the postwar context of divided Germany offers a particularly powerful example of the complex imbrications of ideological and material cultures. As Ina Merkel's work amply illustrates, the competitive discourse of East versus West shaped GDR consumer culture from the outset.3 In addition, the implicit tension between the austere ideal of a new socialist producer nation and its population's unbroken, modern drive toward consumption appears to be at least superficially resolved along gender lines. Following prewar cultural formations, consumers were gendered as female, in contrast with male-identified producers.4 Thus, women could be mobilized as symbolic warriors along the battlefront between two economic systems. Frauenschicksale refers us repeatedly to the precise terms of this conflict.5

• GDR Rock goes West: Finding a Voice in the West German Market

  Edward Larkey

  Culture in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) is often characterized as isolated from that of the West, with artists locked behind the Iron Curtain, having no opportunities to interact directly with global trends. While this may be true to a great extent for the general population, we should not close our eyes to the actual cross-border movements of artists and art forms that did take place in that regime. Many producers of artistic texts interacted with the West—not just well-known writers and theater directors like Christa Wolf or Bruno Besson, but also rock bands. Indeed, a few privileged GDR bands, belonging to the group of Reisekader (travel functionaries) were granted permission to travel to the West. An analysis of their interactions with their domestic audiences and with audiences in the West gives a more nuanced view regarding the nature of cultural globalization that continues into the 21st century, and provides insights into the role of cultural industries in cultural and political change today. The story of these bands contributes to our knowledge on how GDR authorities were unable to perceive and manage cultural creativity in an era of networked, flexible, and relatively autonomous creators.

• Germany’s Future Political Challenges: Imagine that The New Yorker Profiled the German Chancellor in 2015

  Beverly Crawford

  What follows is a fictitious scenario, a "thought experiment," meant to project a particular future for Germany if certain assumptions hold. Scenarios are hypotheses that rest on a set of assumptions and one or two "wild cards."1 They can reveal forces of change that might be otherwise hidden, discard those that are not plausible, and describe the future of trends that are relatively certain. Indeed, scenarios create a particular future in the same way that counterfactual methods create a different past. Counterfactual methods predict how events would have unfolded had a few elements of the story been changed, with a focus on varying conditions that seem important and that can be manipulated. For instance, to explore the effects of military factors on the likelihood of war, one might ask: "how would pre 1914 diplomacy have evolved if the leaders of Europe had not believed that conquest was easy?" Or to explore the importance of broad social and political factors in causing Nazi aggression: "How might the 1930s have unfolded had Hitler died in 1932?" The greater the impact of the posited changes, the more important the actual factors that were manipulated. Assuming that the structure of explanation and prediction are the same, scenario writing pursues a similar method. But, instead of seeking alternative explanations for the past, scenarios project relative certainties and then manipulate the important but uncertain factors, to create a plausible story about the future.

• The State of the Federal Republic: German Governance in an Era of Change

  Gregory Baldi

  Simon Green and William E. Paterson, eds., Governance in Contemporary Germany: The Semisovereign State Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
  Gordon Smith, William E. Paterson, and Stephen Padgett, eds., Developments in German Politics 3, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003)

  Among the subdisciplines of political science, comparative politics is arguably the most prone to periodic fads and fashions. Arguments and ideas that dominate academic debates for one generation of comparative graduate students may well seem like curious historical artifacts by the time the next cohort arrives. Indeed, the great majority of comparative books and articles have an active shelf life of only a few years and, with some notable exceptions, works that do find their way into the current discourse are often cited only as examples of the old paradigms or simply used as markers that show how far the field has come in the intervening period. Some may argue that such rapid depreciation is hardly a drawback in an academic field. Instead, they view it as a reflection of the vibrant character of an active and advancing discipline.