Sex and the City: Thoughts on Literature, Gender, and Normalization in the New Germany

Abstract

In June 2008 the Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel noted “economic success today means education [Bildung] for all.”¹ But what does Bildung mean 20 years after the establishment of a “normal” state? Goethe’s notion of Bildung as the secular self-betterment and social self-realization in an imagined Germany is clearly no longer applicable in the newly realized “normal” state of Germany. The great British historian of Germany and Austria Peter Pulzer, as early as 1994, thought about what becoming normal would mean for Germany.² He stressed the continuation of the Western ideals and structures inherent in the German Federal Republic but also saw them under strain. But what about the older ideals such as Bildung that the Germans, both East and West, had relied on to define themselves as a cultural rather than a political nation? What does Bildung mean 20 years after reunification? Merkel sees Bildung as a universal goal that is the result of economic success (this before the tottering of the Euro zone) rather than individual achievement. She sees it as part of the commerce of modernity, now a universal goal of all Germans because of the supposed economic advantage of reunification.