Jan Palmowski

In search of the German nation: citizenship and the challenge of integration

This article argues that, with the notable exception of the Third Reich, citizenship in Germany was never intrinsically related to race, nor was it essentially distinguished by ethnicity. Defining citizenship by descent while maintaining cultural ideals of nationhood did not represent some idealistic clinging to a mythical Volk, but instead constituted a successful means to define a national community during the ‘short’ twentieth century, when the German polity experienced a series of existential transformations. This makes the subsequent reconstitution of citizenship and nationhood all the more remarkable. Since the mid-1990s, Germans have overcome their scepticism about dual citizenship in an EU context, and jus soli has been included in the 1999 citizenship law as providing a legal entitlement to citizenship. While the practical impact of this law has been modest, the law is best considered as a milestone in a national debate about integration and cultural specificity. This debate was no longer about whether, but about how to integrate the foreign nationals living in Germany. Germans have accepted that theirs is a country of immigrants.

Building an East German Nation: The Construction of a Socialist Heimat , 1945–1961

Following the GDRs surprising collapse in 1989, historians have produced a range of studies that have added new contours to its state and society and contributed to a much fuller understanding of the reasons for East Germanys implosion. As scholars became more aware of the “limits of dictatorship” in the GDR, however, the longevity of a state that lasted for almost as long as the second German Empire became all the more perplexing. In response to this problem, a number of historians reflected on approaches practiced by historical anthropologists and sociologists, to explore the distinctive nature of GDR life in its everyday manifestations. Inspired by the pioneering work of Alf Ludtke and Lutz Niethammer, they began to investigate the history of everyday life at the workplace, within and across generational and gender divides, and in areas such as consumption and leisure.

Regional Identities and the Limits of Democratic Centralism in the GDR

Through the administrative reform of 1952, which replaced the five federal states with fourteen districts, the GDR became by far the most centralized state in German history. There has been a remarkable scholarly consensus that following on from this reform state and party were successful in overcoming regional and local identifications. Historians and social scientists discerned a revival of regional identifications from the late 1970s, and explained this as a popular response to the re-evaluation of regional traditions by state and party. This article demonstrates, by contrast, that regional traditions were alive and well throughout the existence of the GDR. Whereas it is true that during the 1960s and the 1970s the state tried to popularize its districts, state and party were always constrained by other, conflicting concerns. Most importantly, the popular demand for leisure and entertainment could be met most easily (and most cheaply) with folklore. Moreover, accentuating regional diversity through local tradition became crucial in a small country in which travel opportunities abroad were extremely restricted. The evolution of local identifications in the GDR points to the limits of a dictatorship. The SED was severely constrained by the divergent interests of different cultural actors, and by the partys acceptance that it needed to respond to popular cultural desires. This article also shows how, over the 40 years of the GDRs existence, distinctive local identities developed and evolved without ever being closely linked to socialism or the state. This insight is indispensable for understanding how the GDR dissolved in 1990, and the persistence of regional specificities and identifications that long outlasted the GDR.

Speaking Truth to Power: Contemporary History in the Twenty-first Century

More than forty years ago, the Journal of Contemporary History (JCH) was created with a distinctive mission: to study and discuss Europe’s recent past, even if this stirred up controversy in contemporary political debates. The editors were keen to overcome the fragmentation that had accompanied the professionalization of the historical discipline, in order to explore the big issues of the twentieth century, particularly those of the first half.1 For any contemporary reader it would have been obvious that the critical events requiring explanation began with the Great War and the Russian Revolution and culminated in the second world war. The focus had to be on the violence and mass atrocities of the two world wars and the nature of the regimes that had brought about such unprecedented horrors.