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of persecuted Jews.
But the complex implications of the emigres' legacy for the new
Germany go further. The emigres' experience was part of the basis for
the generous asylum provisions of Article 4 of the Federal Republic's
Basic Law. This once read, simply and eloquently, that the right to po–
litical asylum shall not be abridged. Along with Article 1, which asserts
that "the dignity of the human being shall not be infringed," and makes
the defense of human rights the primary duty of the state, it marks a fun–
damental break with the Nazi past. But Article 4 spoke only of political
refugees, and was never intended to sanction open borders.
The cosmopolitanism the Nazi-era emigres embodied in their expe–
riences and represented in their thought, and that had been so eloquently
proclaimed, at least in West Germany, and in the form of socialist inter–
nationalism in East Germany, as a way for Germans to distance them–
selves from the Nazi past, rests on uneasy foundations. Germans clearly
remain unwilling to adjust their conception of citizenship and national
identity, which still emphasizes blood ties and culture, to fit the multina–
tional and multicultural facts of their social existence. The uncertainties
of post-industrial life, combined with those of unification, have produced
tensions and insecurities that easily induce xenophobia.
In
the elite as well, a new spirit is awakenin-g-. --'A"-s----'the postwar era
ends, long-suppressed particularisms return. Sociologist Wolf Lepenies
noted as early as 1991 that for some intellectuals the legacy of the emi–
gres has become less interesting than a renewed search for German iden–
tity: "A new
Korpsgeist
is in demand," he writes, "and old inhibitions can
be given up." That trend began before unification, in the Historikerstreit
and, more seriously, in other efforts by members of the political estab–
lishment to step out of the shadow of Nazism and to rehabilitate a
specifically German past. This is the background to current criticism from
the right of Germany's alleged over-dependence on its links with the
West, as well as recent efforts to bring out the "modernizing" aspects of
Nazism. Attempts by some conservatives to invoke liberal--sounding cul–
tural pluralism as a way of opposing multiculturalism are part of the mix.
For these writers, cultural pluralism is good, so long as the peoples of
each culture remain in their original homelands.
Such intellectual moves are hardly limited to Germany. But in that
country today, the problem of even acknowledging the existence of a
multicultural society, more 'broadly the difficulties oflearning to tolerate,
accept, and work through ambiguities and contradictions of any sort,
have hardly been faced, let alone solved. The deep tension between an
apparently liberal allegiance to a culture of tolerance and open debate
