Abstract
In the context of the crisis of globalization and the new affirmation of national identities, the European Union has seen the growth of populist parties in many countries. After the 2019 elections, the sum of the two conservative and Eurosceptic groups in the European Parliament (“Identity and Democracy” and “European Conservatives and Reformists”) reached 138 members, becoming potentially the third most popular group after the Popular and Socialist ones. This trend has not spared Germany, the most important power on the continent, where Alternative für Deutschland has achieved important results in all elections, both regional and federal. The German case is particularly interesting not only in relation to the general trend in Europe, but also in light of Germany’s relationship with its own national identity after 1945. The first part of this chapter aims to analyze the AfD phenomenon and its reasons. The second part is dedicated to a brief investigation of the complex process of German national unity and the formation of its identity.
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Notes
- 1.
In the Land of Thuringia, after the elections of 27 October 2019, a tacit alliance between CDU (Christlich Demokratischen Union Deutschlands), FPD (Freie Demokratische Partei), and AfD was formed at regional level in support of the liberal candidate Thomas Kemmerich. This agreement was, however, much criticized by national leaders, contrary to any agreement with AfD and after only 28 days the Kemmerich cabinet resigned.
- 2.
It must be said that both Angela Merkel and Ursula von der Leyen have criticized this decision and expressed the will of going on with the aid-plan.
- 3.
On the Kyffhäuser meeting of 14 September 2017 see https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article168663338/Gauland-fordert-Recht-stolz-zu-sein-auf-Leistungen-in-beiden-Weltkriegen.html (14 May 2020).
- 4.
The definition of Prussia given by Frederick II’s aide-de-camp Georg Heinrich von Behrenhorst remained famous: “Die preußische Monarchie bleibt immer—nicht ein Land, das eine Armee, sondern eine Armee, die ein Land hat, in welchem sie gleichsam nur einquartiert steht” (The Prussian monarchy is not a country that has an army, but an army that has a country in which it is simply quartered).
- 5.
The issue of national redemption had also a vast literary echo. Among the most famous members of this movement were Heinrich von Kleist Berthold Auerbach, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, and Hermann Löns.
- 6.
The philosopher Arnold Gehlen, resuming Fichte, confirmed more than a century later the specialty of the German people, observing that: “Sonderstellung und Einzigartigkeit des deutschen Volkes, dass es zufolge seiner Sprache die Bereitschaft und Fähigkeit hat, Ideen ins Leben zu übersetzen. Im Unterschied zur Weltanschauung des “toten Mechanismus” anderer Völker (…)” (The special position and uniqueness of the German people derives from the fact that, thanks to its language, it has the readiness and ability to translate ideas into life. In contrast to the worldview of the “dead mechanism” of other peoples).
- 7.
Compared to similar nationalistic developments in other European countries, the German one took on a very particular dimension also because of the specificity that the Romantic movement had in Germany. Once again, language played a central role in the cultural dimension. Studies in Germanic philology became very popular and no less important was the rediscovery of ancient Germanic law and popular traditions. As for philology and popular traditions, a very clear example was the works of the Brothers Grimm.
- 8.
Among the initiatives undertaken in defense of the “German spirit,” there were several book-burnings, in which copies of the Napoleonic Civil Code regularly ended up in the flames. Another disturbing aspect concerned the growing manifestations of anti-Jewish hostility. Although not yet classifiable as racial but rather as social, it tended to identify in the Jew and their determination to safeguard their own traditions, both religious and linguistic and social, the quintessential alienation from the German community. Contrary to what was said a few decades later, however, during debates on the granting of legal equality, it was not forbidden that Jews could obtain it, if that they “stopped being Jews.” In Germany, more than elsewhere, the fundamental question of assimilation for the Jewish people in Europe was beginning to arise on a large scale.
- 9.
In 1848, the German population was almost 46 million, while France, traditionally the demographic giant of the continent, had about 31 million inhabitants.
- 10.
Literally “popular,” from the German term “das Volk” (people), but with a clear nationalistic and anti-Semitic political connotation, referring to all the associations or activities that referred to the spirit of the German people.
- 11.
One of the most famous hymns of East Prussia, written by Königsberg composer Herbert Brust in the early 1930s, refers to it as “Land der dunklen Wälder und kristall’nen Seen” (Land of dark forests and crystal clear lakes). These images are in perfect neo-romantic style, stimulating a sense of Sehnsucht, of nostalgia, which after 1945 and the loss of the territories east of the Oder, would turn from a metaphysical fact into a concrete political fact.
- 12.
Alfred Hugenberg, member of the Krupp board of directors, was one of the founders of the Pan-Germanic League.
- 13.
It should be remembered that, with the exception of the 1903 elections, after its birth and until 1912 the German Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) had no parliamentary weight proportional to its electoral strength. Further proof of the ideological atmosphere of those years was the massive membership of the Deutsche Vaterlandspartei, a patriotic formation founded in 1917 in support of the militarist line of Field Marshals Paul von Hindeburg and Erich von dem Ludendorff and which in less than a year exceeded one million members.
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Giannotti, A. (2022). Alternative Für Deutschland and the Origins of the German Sonderweg. In: Lebedeva, M., Morozov, V. (eds) Turning Points of World Transformation. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1758-5_13
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