Identity debates in Germany

...Moderate voices like the Social Democrat historian Heinrich August Winkler—later to become an adviser to Gerhard Schroder— asked that Germans accept their status as a "post-classical nation-state...

...The president of the German Parliament, Christian Democrat Norbert Lammert, recently called for a renewed debate on the concept of Leitkultur, because "Multikulti was an illusion...

...Other elements in what Lammert called a "canon of what keeps us together" were the rule of law and everyday civility...

...DISSENT / Summer 2006 23...

...Most observers believed that Leitkultur had been rejected, not DISSENT / Summer 2006 21 least because its proponents could not say what was specifically cultural, let alone German about it...

...For many Germans, the murder of Hatun Stirticti in February 2005 was the German equivalent of the murder of Theo van Gogh—a shock causing both genuine soul-searching and scare-mongering, if not an outright "moral panic," as the Dutch writer Gert Maak called what happened in the Netherlands after Van Gogh's murder in November 2004...

...VVHAT ABOUT the country's three million Muslims...

...Hitler, Aly contended, had been, above all, a "feel-good dictator...

...The Christian Democrats, who tended to repeat, "Germany is not a country of immigration" like a mantra of exclusion during the 1980s and 1990s, can't bring themselves to put it like this anymore—though many of them might like to return to an ethnic definition of citizenship...

...Initially coined by the political scientist Dolf Sternberger, a disciple of Hannah Arendt, and then adopted by Jurgen Habermas in the mid1980s, constitutional patriotism referred to a form of political belonging centered on democratic principles and, more concretely, the achievements of the West German constitution...

...Canter Grass, most notably, started writing about the Germans as victims in the Second World War...

...Constitutional patriotism, that artificial and abstract construct designed for one-half of a divided nation, is becoming the norm, not just in Germany, but also, and maybe even more so, more widely in Europe...

...The real question is whether some of this new identity talk is likely to translate into a different set of policies, especially as far as integration is concerned...

...A logical and highly influential variant emerged with another surprise bestseller by yet another maverick historian: GOtz Aly's 2005 Hitler's People's State reinterpreted Nazi success as being based on the fact that they had given the Germans a very generous welfare state, mostly by plundering Europe...

...AngloDutch versions of multiculturalism have been abandoned...

...This new self-conception might even hold lessons for the pan-European discussion about the integration of minorities and the future of the welfare state—a discussion in which it is often assumed that there has to be a trade-off between "solidarity" and "diversity...

...It's important to note that these were always "multiculturalisms of fear," in which concessions to minorities were made pre-emptively as part of a not very coherent strategy of pacification, rather than the multiculturalisms that followed Johann Herder in positively celebrating diversity...

...old lines between left and right became blurred...

...Baden-Wurttemberg has this year become the first state to introduce a Loyalitiitspriifung comprising thirty questions that only Muslims have to answer...

...No doubt, the timing had something to do with the fact that a red-green government had, at last, amended German citizenship law, privileging jus soli over jus sanguinis and finally abandoning the purely bloodbased definition of Germanness that had been instituted under the Second Empire...

...Values seemed at most to refer to political precepts enshrined in the German Basic Law, in which case Leitkultur was really another way of saying constitutional patriotism plus the imperative to learn the German language...

...For now, they almost ritually denounce the "naïve multiculturalism" that Greens and Social Democrats allegedly dreamed about, even if it's impossible to pin22 DISSENT / Summer 2006 point any proposals in the past that ever actually advocated a multiculturalism of parallel societies...

...Today, a united Germany has hardly found consensus on its ever elusive national identity...

...Slowly, there is convergence on a definition of "Germanness" that is no longer ethnic, that is more accepting of immigrants, and that implies a less tortuous, though not complacent relation to its own past...

...Critics charged that such a concept was merely temporary compensation for a proper national identity with a richer sense of history —which was supposedly available to other, undivided nation-states...

...Skeptics also charged that, in itself, constitutional patriotism was too abstract and, as a particularly inappropriate metaphor went, "bloodless...

...It was only ten years after unification that a less self-involved and less abstract debate finally began...

...In fact, he claimed that German was "the only really German thing" that was involved in his vision of Leitkultur...

...JAN-WERNER MULLER teaches politics at Princeton University...

...and yet, both the tone and the parameters of the debate have changed profoundly, and not just because of unification...

...Paradoxically, the more Schroder himself began to dismantle the German social model, the more he defended it as an example for others...

...The writer Martin Walser, apparently taking poetic license, went furthest when he called it a typical product of the fashionable "political masturbation" of the 1980s...

...The term had been coined by the Syrian-born German political scientist Bassam Tibi in 1997 to describe a "consensus on values"—in contrast to versions of multiculturalism that supposedly implied moral relativism...

...A self-styled New Right sought a return to an unashamed defense of the national interest...

...High profile incidents such as the murder of a young Kurdish woman by her brothers have re-ignited debates about the emergence of so-called parallel societies...

...When the country was still divided, politicians and intellectuals joined in what seemed to be an interminable series of ceremonies, conferences, and televised discussions about the meaning of Germany...

...Talk of different national models in different European countries persists, but there has been much convergence in recent years...

...Here it's important to get some basic facts straight and not to conflate different categories of alleged Auslander, as frequently happens in German debates: For one, the influx of ethnic Germans from Russia and other Eastern countries has abated considerably, as has the number of asylum seekers, which peaked in the early 1990s and fell swiftly after the old—by European standards very liberal —asylum law was tightened...

...As with so many identity debates, the one in 2000 was inconclusive...

...Foreign observers with sharp tongues spoke of a new "social nationalism," as the power for peace was also to embody a social model—in contrast, of course, to the United States...

...Panglossianism ought to be resisted, but what is emerging both in Germany and in other European countries might well be described as constitutional patriotism: a pragmatic set of policies that certainly do not guarantee integration but are at least less constrained by outright denial ("we are not an immigration country") or by the rhetoric of national traditions ("republicanism forbids positive discrimination...

...However, something did change in the first years of the new century...

...that is, traditionalist subcultures in which German laws do not apply, Turkish women are imported and forced to marry, and archaic honor codes justify the cold-blooded execution of women whose major offense is to "want to live like a German woman...

...This peculiar economy, however, did not always turn on zero-sum games...

...In a peculiar and perhaps positive way, Thomas Mann's nightmare—that there will be a German Europe, rather than a European Germany—appears to have come true...

...His actual proposals, however, did not go any further than constitutional patriotism plus the German language...

...a book about the bombing of German cities, by a maverick historian, became a surprise bestseller...

...Although he gestured toward religion's playing a "significant role" in making people aware again of their own culture, Lammert was quick to reassure citizens that initiatives in this regard would have to come from within civil society, not from the state...

...Almost all countries now insist on language requirements, on citizenship tests, on "nationalizing" or "Europeanizing" Islam through the training of local imams, and finally, on more or less elaborate civic rituals and oaths for newcomers...

...Yet so far, no primary Islamic organization has emerged, for which "Muslim disunity" is usually blamed...

...Thus, discomfort with the welfare state in the present—even acceptance of its partial dismantling—and guilt about the past could now coincide...

...Second, the German state has in principle been willing to grant the status of "public law corporation" to an Islamic organization, in the way it has done with the major Christian churches and with the Jews...

...This new social nationalism went hand in hand with an apparently changed attitude to the past...

...Some observers detected a strange socio-psychological economy: the less the welfare state could render the present and the future secure, the more the past had to become a source of comfort or even an object of compassion...

...French republicanism is slowly becoming less uncomfortable with affirmative action, and the French state, rather than sticking to a strict policy of non-interference with religion, has gotten into the business of organizing its own interlocutor in the form of the Conseil Francais du Culte Musulman...

...Citizenship ceremonies tend to reflect a traditional distrust of national symbolism, while at the same time there is an increasing tendency to insist on loyalty tests...

...Germany has now fallen behind this European consensus in two respects...

...So far, there hasn't been much of a response to any of this from the Greens or Social Democrats...

...Schroder styled Germany a "power for peace" and persistently called for a more independent and, above all, more self-confident approach to foreign policy...

...After unification in 1990, many expected talk of constitutional patriotism to disappear...

...Parameters for debates about nationalism, patriotism, and integration began to shift considerably...

...And finally, there is, at least, an increasing perception that immigrants could be part of the solution to the problem of declining birth rates, rather than a threat to solidarity...

...There is at least a small historical irony here...

...In practice, pragmatism reigned, but unease lingered...

...In practice, however, Islamic organizations are already offering instruction in state schools, parallel to Catholic and Protestant instruction, if there is sufficient pupil demand...

...The dream of "post-nationalism," the hope to show other European countries how to transcend traditional nationalism, appeared to be lost...

...There hasn't been a large wave of naturalizations, and neither have the quotas for a much-trumpeted German version of a green card been filled...

...During the Bonn Republic, arguably the most successful—and morally most attractive —self-description of the country was the concept of "constitutional patriotism...

...In response, leading Christian Democrats called for a new conception of integration centered on the notion that immigrants ought to assimilate to what they called a German Leitkultur (literally: a guiding culture...

...Not surprisingly, Muslim leaders feel that such a singling out is discriminatory...

...and the possible ways in which solidarity in the past, present, and future might hang together have become significantly more complicated...

...At the same time, the legal changes that were to recognize Germany as a "country of immigration" have so far not had the effects that friends and foes expected...