German Intellectuals and the Nazi Past [Hardcover]

This book examines the relentlessly polarized West German intellectual debates about the Nazi past.This book analyzes how West German intellectuals debated the Nazi past and democratic future of their country in increasingly polarized arguments. German intellectuals have interpreted the German stigma in divergent ways, either to defend national traditions or to condemn them, and therefore advocating non-German alternative traditions.This book analyzes how West German intellectuals debated the Nazi past and democratic future of their country in increasingly polarized arguments. German intellectuals have interpreted the German stigma in divergent ways, either to defend national traditions or to condemn them, and therefore advocating non-German alternative traditions.This book examines West German intellectual debates about the Nazi past by explaining why they were so relentlessly polarized. Germans argued about the viability of their very nationality: was it stigmatized, stained, or polluted by crimes of the Third Reich? Or was it really like any other nation? The book examines how German intellectuals either defended national traditions or condemned them and instead advocated alternative traditions. Although the book proceeds chronologically, it differs from other works, which are event-based narratives, by highlighting this underlying structure of identity and dispute.1. Stigma and structure in German memory; 2. The languages of republicanism and West German political generations; 3. The Forty-Fivers: a generation between fascism and democracy; 4. The German German - the integrative republicanism of Wilhelm Hennis; 5. The non-German German - the redemptive republicanism of Jurgen Habermas; 6. Theory and practice: science, technology, and the republican university; 7. The crisis of the republic: 19607; 8. 1967 and its aftermath; 9. The structure of discourse in the 1980s and 1990s; 10. History, multiculturalism, and the non-German German; 11. German Germans and the l#/