Germany's New Right

Jacob Heilbrunn

From Foreign Affairs, November/December 1996

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Summary:  Not skinheads in jackboots but journalists, novelists, professors, and young businessmen constitute the German new right. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, they have sought the "normalization" of German history, a revival of nationalism, and recognition that Germany is the most powerful country in Europe. When confronted with the Nazi past, they talk about Stalin's crimes and complain of an oppressive "political correctness." Violence against immigrants is answered with complaints of attacks against Germans. Though not a political movement, the new right is extending the boundaries of the politically acceptable.

Jacob Heilbrunn is an Associate Editor at The New Republic.

LIBERATING NATIONALISM FROM HISTORY

When the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989, a number of observers predicted that a reunited Germany would begin experimenting with its newfound power and revert to the bellicose habits of the past. The Bonn political elite, however, has been remarkably resistant to change. While Chancellor Helmut Kohl has flirted with attempts to "normalize" Germany's Nazi past and create a self-confident nation, and the Bavarian Christian Social Union has bucked the pro-Europe course, he and his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) have not deviated from their efforts to submerge a unified Germany in a federal Europe that boasts a common currency. Nor have any of the other major political parties, from Kohl's coalition partner, the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), to the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Even the antinomian Greens embrace the idea of a centralized Europe as a means of diluting German economic and military power. In his new book, The Wrong Path of Nationalism, Heiner Geissler, former general secretary of the CDU, expresses the conventional wisdom: "Germany has achieved its great successes in economic, social, and foreign policy not as a classical nation-state, but rather as a democratic, cosmopolitan, and European-oriented country."[1] Konrad Adenauer's famous campaign slogan, "No Experiments!" remains the unofficial motto of postwar Germany.

Since 1989, however, this doctrine has begun to be challenged by the elite that first created, in the nineteenth century, the idea of a unified German nation: German intellectuals. A change is taking place in Germany, not at the political but at the intellectual level. Whether or not it turns into a political movement or is taken up by one of the established political parties, the change will have a serious impact on Germany's redefinition of its identity and interests in the new Europe. Fought largely over the lessons of the past, today's and coming battles about national pride could well shape Germany's future. In modern Germany politics does not make history; history makes politics.

A profound move to the right has been taking place among Germany's best-known novelists, such as Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Martin Walser. Bonn University political scientist Hans-Peter Schwarz, the biographer of Adenauer, has recently written a book entitled The Central Power of Europe, calling for a recognition of German power. But no heretics have attacked the dogmas of the old Federal Republic of Germany more passionately than the nationalist intellectuals who lead what has become known as the Neue Rechte, or new right. The German new right consists not of skinheads in jackboots but journalists, novelists, professors, and young lawyers and business executives. Its champions include former Chancellor Willy Brandt's widow, Brigitte Seebacher-Brandt, the filmmaker Hans Jurgen Syberberg, the playwright Botho Strauss, the historian Ernst Nolte, CDU parliamentarian Heinrich Lummer, and sympathizers such as the self-described "German-Jewish patriot" and historian Michael Wolffsohn. Paradoxically, the new right is made up of nationalists from both ends of the political spectrum. Nationalists on the left hope to remake the SPD; nationalists on the right, the Free ...

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