Michael Naumann
GERMAN IDENTITY AND THE EMERGENCE
OF GERMAN NEONATIONALISM
" Undoubtedly, the idea oj the nation re-emerges as a mental image and as
a will, but also as a center oj identification in our political
consciousness.
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Egon
Bahr,
1982
*
A common, mutual feeling of alienation has always been
a metaphor for the loss or an imagined absence of political liberty in
Germany. Coined by Hegel, adopted by Marx, and spread by
Marx's philosophically inclined disciples, the word today describes a
feeling of imprisonment by omnipotent circumstances of moder–
nity-Heidegger' s
Geworfenheit.
Whether people really are "impris–
oned" is another matter. It is certainly true, though, that new cen–
tralized forms of federal government have turned old-fashioned
political organizations into obsolete dinosaurs that neither provide a
matrix of political consciousness nor serve successfully as instigators
of political actions. And it is in the wake of this crisis of political rep–
resentation that Germans look for ersatz solutions, for a bridge
between a happy private and a felicitous societal existence.
If
one
cannot be a part-let alone free master-of an anonymous political
process, one can at least feel part of the nation. Nationalism pro–
vides the mortar for a bridge between the "alienated" individual
and the surrounding society. Alienation breeds nationalism. In fact,
nationalism has accompanied the German experience of modernity.
The German sociologist Plessner once noted in his brilliant
essay on the "late German nation" that the nineteenth century's
discovery of the instrumental character of rational methodology in
society, business, and politics was felt as a "cultural shock"-a loss
of liberty during a long industrial process of change-" a process
that tore down everything without giving anything in return but the
prospects of future power and influence ." Germany's historical
emergency exits out of the maze of modernity were revolution
(1848) and, after its failure, emigration. Yet the easiest justification
'Egan Bahr, as aide to Willy Brandt, was the architect of
Ostpolitik.
