Germany: A Nation Emerging from Ethnic and Cultural Heritage

Abstract

How do the Germans conceive of themselves, what is their understanding of nation and citizenship, how do they relate to other people, how do they see their role in the European Union and how are they perceived by other people? These are the questions which come up when we want to know what makes the specific German nation and identity; I will deal with them in six steps. First, I will look back to the formation of the idea of the German nation and of German identity in the historical process from the German Enlightenment, beginning in the 1770s, to the founding of the nation state in 1871 and to the further shaping of this idea by the Kaiserreich, the Weimar Republic and the regime of Nazism. Then I will ask how the Germans related themselves to their nation and their identity after the defeat of the Nazi regime and after their separation in two states; and I will deal with the question how the Germans’ view of Nazism developed in the postwar decades from the fifties to the nineties. Afterwards, we will look into how the Germans’ values and their commitment to democracy have changed in the postwar decades. The topic of the next step will be the Germans’ relation to immigrants to their country. Later, we will turn to the Germans’ attitude toward the European Union. Finally, I will point out how the German culturalist and legalist integration model works (Plessner 1959; Dahrendorf 1968/71; Wehler 1987a,b; James 1989; Dumont 1991; Brubaker 1992; Dann 1993: 50–84; Doering-Manteuffel 1993; Giesen 1993; Kallscheuer and Leggewie 1994; Wehler 1995; Behr 1998; Rieger 1998; Joppke 1999; Rubio-Marin 2000).