A New German Identity

Abstract

In the Spring of 1990, when the former British prime minister, Mrs Thatcher, assembled the so-called Chequers Seminar — in anticipation of a meeting with Chancellor Helmut Kohl — to give her an assessment of German ‘national character’, the renowned academics painstakingly examined a list of alleged attributes gleaned from German history between 1871 and 1945. Perhaps they began with ‘aggressive’ and ‘angst-ridden’, but then may have paused, realising that with the rest of the alphabet to consider, there was a formidable list of negative adjectives that they might have to add.