JAN-WERNER MOLLER
German Intellectuals and Democracy: The
End of an Era?
T
HE REGULAR REPORTS
about the "crisis" or even the "death" of
the intellectuals not only tend to be greatly exaggerated, they
also have a way of being refuted almost as soon as they are
made-and of haunting the prophets of doom much more than the
intellectuals themselves. And yet there is currently a sense in Germany
that an era is coming
to
an end in which intellectuals-or to be more
precise, West German intellectuals-played a special role as what they
themselves conceived as "suspicious" and "skeptical" democratic citi–
zens. This self-conception contributed much to the prominence-and
success-of a particular generation of postwar intellectuals who are
now slowly departing from the public stage. But this role also had its
internal paradoxes and limits which have become increasingly apparent
in recent years.
Nowhere else-with the obvious exception of France and some East–
Central European countries-do intellectuals play such a large role.
Only in Germany does one find intellectuals such as social philosopher
Jurgen Habermas claiming the first two pages of newspapers; only in
Germany could a critic, literally tearing apart the latest book by Gunter
Grass, make the title page of the country's most important magazine,
Der Spiegel;
only in Germany does one find political scientists regularly
publishing popular books on the state of the nation, often with pictures
of themselves looking diffident and angst-ridden on the front cover; and
only in Germany would a random flicking through TV channels
inevitably lead the viewer to one of the numerous "talk shows" in which
a small round of intellectuals earnestly debate political-cum-philosoph–
ical topics on an almost daily basis. None of this is
to
say that intellec–
tuals actually "lead public opinion," as the German concept of
Meinungsfuhrer
would suggest. In fact, as is becoming clearer with
hindsight, German writers and thinkers were at their best when reacting
against firmly entrenched, but morally compromised authority, rather
