1. Introduction

  1. Luuk van Middelaar (2016), Vom Kontinent zur Union, Berlin, pp. 299ff.
  2. There is still no common political will for a truly European shared perspective on the shape of things to come. As for criticism of the half-hearted nature of the Brussels compromise, see the proposals from the head of Kiel’s Institute of the World Economy, Gabriel Felbermayr, “Was die EU für die Bürger leisten sollte,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 7th 2020.

3. The turning-point in German policy towards Europe

  1. Ashoka Mody (2018), Eurotragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts, Oxford University Press.
  2. Wolfgang Schäuble, “Aus eigener Stärke,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 6th 2020.

4. AfD at the interface of the European/German unification process

  1. Whatever feelings then may have been still in play, west Germans (according to their age) can mouth the now usual phrase of the “happy” event of reunification for personal reasons, because this reminds them of the sheer happenstance of their place of birth and has brought to light comparative life stories which they could live out with the deep satisfaction that their less-favoured countrymen and women would at least get the chance of some poetic justice.

5. The shock of Erfurt is an all-German problem

  1. See the impressive book Der Riss: Wie die Radikalisierung im Osten unser Zusammenleben zerstört (Berlin, 2020), pp. 61, 72ff, 135ff, 145ff, 166ff and 209ff. In it the journalist Michael Kraske reports on the details of such cases without any hint of west-German arrogance. He pays tribute to the courage of east Germans who freed themselves on their own from a repressive regime and to the impositions and insults they faced from the start of the historic change in 1990. He also does not forget to point out that the leadership of the right-wing cadres which initially gave the indigenous scene its organising potential came out of the west.

6. One frontline, two viewpoints

  1. Axel Schildt (2017), “Anti-communism from Hitler to Adenauer,” in Norbert Frei and Dominik Rigoll (eds), Anti-communism in its Era, Göttingen, pp. 186–203.
  2. Kraske, op. cit., p. 57.

7. Policy towards the past in the old federal republic

  1. Ulrich Herbert (2017), Geschichte Deutschlands im 20. Jahrhundert, Munich, p. 667.
  2. Michael Frey (2020), Vor Achtundsechzig, Göttingen, pp. 199ff.
  3. Jacob S. Eder (2020), Holocaust-Angst, Göttingen.
  4. That may not be true to the same extent for the asylum-rights debate following the Balkan wars. In the context of asylum-seekers’ refuges burnt down as much in the west as in the east, the collapsing illusion “We’re not an immigration country” became the topic of the dispute.

8. The absence of the public sphere in GDR times—and thereafter

  1. From the normative viewpoint of the rule of law a recently published investigation is interesting for differentiating between the two systems: Inga Markovits (2019), Diener zweier Herren: DDR-Juristen zwischen Recht und Macht, Berlin; see the review by Uwe Wesel in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 28th 2020.
  2. Annette Simon (2019), “Wut schlägt Scham,” in Blätter, October, p. 43ff.
  3. Ibid., p. 43.
  4. Berliner Zeitung, April 6th 2020.

9. What’s still lacking and what counts now

  1. Two very different recent historical contributions: Norbert Frei, Franka Maubach, Christina Morina and Mark Tändler (2019), Zur rechten Zeit, Berlin; Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk (2019), Die Übernahme, Munich.
  2. “Diese Reise hin zu etwas, das wir noch finden wollten” conjured up and lamented today by Thomas Oberender (2020), Empowerment Ost, Stuttgart.