MICHAEL NAUMANN
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although he does not believe in a reunified German nation unless the
political and ideological schism of Europe evaporates, he firmly
states that the "Germans have a right to pursue their national inter–
ests just as the Americans and the British." The only trouble with
such a truism lies in the fact that there are two Germanies with
wildly diverging interests; and each can-and does-easily lay claim
to national sanctity.
So while politicians are busy developing a national symbolism
adaptable to a rather complicated political reality, "nationalism" is
fulfilling a completely different role on a lower level of German poli–
tics. Jiirgen Habermas was one of the first to discover some years
ago that "the national question [in Germany] becomes an equiva–
lent for dispositions that aim against the central state." According to
this theory, people in the German regions felt misrepresented by a
more and more effective centralized government. An "official" leg–
islative and judicial process that places nuclear power plants in the
middle of a cherished landscape and a government that cuts auto–
bahns through ancient forests is experienced as the bureaucratic
enemy
par excellence.
Unable and unwilling to cope with the problem
on an institutional basis (political reforms in the last twenty years
have greatly diminished chances for participation; more than
100,000 local politicians have lost, if not their jobs, at least their hob–
bies), opposition against big government and big bureaucracy tends
to focus on traditional emotional issues out of the symbolic treasure
chest of German nationalism. Like elsewhere, the most dramatic
German mass movements have always been organized around
Gefu'hls-issues;
and the ecological
movimento
of the seventies was no
different. Nuclear power plants, problems of air and water pollution
were seen as modern, typical manifestations of technical and civili–
zational contradictions . Most of all, though, they were experienced
as threats against regional and national identities: ecology in West
Germany had (and still has) a romantic, patriotic undercurrent that
swept conservative farmers, Protestant believers, and socialist stu–
dents into bizarre grand coalitions.
The sixties had brought dogmatic theorizing in the name of
Wissenschaft
and Karl Marx-from Kant to Hegel and onwards to
Marx, Lenin, and up to Lukacs: The bookshops in the university
towns were filled to the rim with the "classics"; the theoretical
refinement of the German left was astounding, its solidarity with
every international cause that fit the framework of its ideology was