Columbia International Affairs Online

CIAO DATE: 10/07

German Politics and Society

Vol. 24, No. 2, Issue 79 (Summer 2006)

Articles

• Theodor Heuss and German-Jewish Reconciliation after 1945

  Jay Howard Geller, History, University of Tulsa

  Since 1949, the Federal of Republic of Germany’s titular head of state, the Federal President (Bundespräsident), has set the tone for discussion of the Nazi era and remembrance of the Holocaust. This precedent was established by the first Bundespräsident, Theodor Heuss. Through his speeches, writings, and actions after 1949, Heuss consistently worked for German-Jewish reconciliation, including open dialogue with German Jews and reparations to victims of the Holocaust. He was also the German Jewish community’s strongest ally within the West German state administration. However, his work on behalf of the Jewish community was more than a matter of moral leadership. Heuss was both predisposed towards the Jewish community and assisted behind-the-scenes in his efforts. Before 1933, Heuss, an academic, journalist, and liberal politician, had strong ties to the German Jewish bourgeoisie. After 1949, he developed a close working relationship with Karl Marx, publisher of the Jewish community’s principal newspaper. Marx assisted Heuss in handling the sensitive topic of Holocaust memory; and through Marx, Jewish notables and groups were able to gain unusually easy access to the West German head of state.

• The Origins of Party Discipline: Evidence from Eastern Germany

  Louise K. Davidson-Schmich, Political Science, University of Miami

  In Germany, the Bundestag and the Landtage (state parliaments) in the old Länder (states) have such consistently high levels of party discipline that there is not enough variance to determine the cause of this behavior. The creation of five new democratic state legislatures after the fall of the German Democratic Republic, however, provides a unique opportunity to investigate the origins of party voting. I test which of three hypothesized institutional mechanisms for this practice— the need to keep an executive in office, efficiency incentives, or electoral concerns—was primarily responsible for the emergence of party discipline in the new Länder. The evidence indicates that the need to support the executive branch is the primary cause of party voting. This finding helps explain both the unexpected rise of western German-style party discipline in the eastern states following unification, well as the persistence of the seemingly outdated practice of party discipline in contemporary Germany as a whole.

• “We Don’t Want To Be the Jews of Tomorrow”: Jews and Turks in Germany after 9/11

  Y. Michal Bodemann, Sociology, University of Toronto, and Gökçe Yurdakul, Sociology, Brock University

  This article examines how German Turks employ the German Jewish trope to establish an analogous discourse for their own position in German society. Drawing on the literature on immigrant incorporation, we argue that immigrants take more established minority groups as a model in their incorporation process. Here, we examine how German Turks formulate and enact their own incorporation into German society. They do that, we argue, by employing the master narrative and socio-cultural repertoire of Germany’s principal minority, German Jewry. This is accomplished especially in relation to racism and antisemitism, as an organizational model and as a political model in terms of making claims against the German state. We argue that in order to understand immigrant incorporation, it is not sufficient to look at state-immigrant relations only—authors also need to look at immigrant groups’ relationships with other minority groups.

• The Myth of German Pacifism

  Brian C. Rathbun, Political Science, McGill University

  Germany’s behavior during the lead-up to the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003 seemed to confirm that the country is marked by a strategic culture of pacifism and multilateralism. However, a closer look at German actions and pattern of participation in military operations reveals that German pacifism is a myth. There was no cross party consensus on German foreign policy in the 1990s around a principled opposition to the use of force. Even in the early years after the Cold War, the Christian Democrats began very quickly, albeit deliberatively and often secretively, to break down legal and psychological barriers to the deployment of German forces abroad. Pacifism persisted on the left of the political spectrum but gave way following a genuine ideological transformation brought about by the experience of the Yugoslav wars. The nature of Germany’s objection to the Iraq invasion, which unlike previous debates did not make ubiquitous references to German history, revealed how much it has changed since the end of the Cold War. Had the election in 2002 gone differently, Germany might even have supported the actions of the U.S. and there would be little talk today of a transatlantic crisis. It is now possible to treat Germany as a “normal” European power.