Abstract
Looking at campaign posters on the eve of the European elections in 1994, the viewer could almost believe the voters had hung their psyches out to dry. ‘Jobs, jobs, jobs,’ was one popular motif. Gangbusting, featuring shackled hands behind a pinstriped jacket, was another. But security, spelled out in red letters, was the clear favorite of both major parties. In the Christian Democratic version, a grandparent and grandchild were seen from the rear, hand in hand, bathed in autumnal light, with the parent generation conspicuously missing. In the Social Democratic variation, a young father, himself a disappearing species, was snoozing in a rowboat, with his young son, no common species either, snoozing on his chest. Tied securely to the pier, the boat was going nowhere.
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Notes
See Christian Joppke, Mobilizing Againt Nuclear Energy (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1993).
Haig Simonian, ‘A Monumental Task’, Financial Times (19 April 1995).
Peter Schneider, Paarungen (Berlin, 1992).
Harm G. Schröter, ‘Ou en est la technologie allemande?’, Géopolitique (Winter 1993–4), p. 56,
Nathaniel C. Nash, ‘Germany Shuns Biotechnology’, New York Times, 21 December 1994.
See Caroline Southey and Daniel Green, ‘Euro-MPs reject patents for genetic engineering’, Financial Times, 2 March 1995, ‘Bioetica, bocciata la direttiva europea’, Il Sole-24 Ore, 2 March 1995;
Dieter E. Zimmer, ‘Freiheit oder Frevel’, Die Zeit, 3 March 1995, ‘Capitol Hill comes to Europe’, The Economist, 15 April 1995.
See Nina Grunenberg, ‘Die Diktatur des Zwecks’, Die Zeit, 10 June 1994;
Raimund Hasse and Bernhard Gill, ‘Biotechnological Research in Germany, Problems of Political Regulation and Public Acceptance’ in Uwe Schimank et al. (eds), Coping with Trouble (Frankfurt and New York, 1994);
Franz Thoma, ‘Warum Deutschland zurückgefallen ist’ in Dagmar Deckstein (ed.), Wovon wir künftig leben wollen (Munich, 1994), p. 30.
Werner Sombart, Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen Sozialismus (Tübingen, 1906) (trans. Why Is There No Socialism in the United States, White Plains, NY, 1976).
See Dagmar Deckstein, ‘Der Streit um kalte Limonade’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 9 June 1994, ‘Streik gegen die Postreform’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 21 June 1994.
Barthel Schölgens, ‘Medienstandort Deutschland,’ Die Politische Meinung, May 1994.
See Nathaniel C. Nash, ‘German Telephone Pie Is Just Too Big to Pass Up,’ New York Times, 30 January 1995; ‘Bertelsmann joins up for European online venture’,
Martin Dickson, ‘We’re trying to connect you…’ Financial Times, 16 June 1994, Financial Times, 2 March 1995,
Louise Kehoe and Paul Taylor, ‘Europe’s PCs to the Phone, Please,’ Financial Times, 6 March 1995.
See ‘Lieber gar nicht’, Der Spiegel, 13 June 1994. Quentin Peel, ‘Lean Eagle Fights a Fat Turkey’, Financial Times, 6 July 1994. Plans for an interactive video system were stiil another example of Telecom’s problems. In summer 1995, it was announced that plans to test the new system in 4500 households were stalled till the coming year. The legal and technical complexities of German federalism, reserving responsibility for broadcasting to the respective states, were cited as one obstacle. But critics also charged that the scheme was over-complicated, testing too many new technologies in too many cities. As might be imagined, money was still another bottleneck. In addition to network upgrades, the tests were expected to cost $58 million. But the EU, a major funding source, had not agreed on contract language for the projects (Wall Street Journal, 31 July 1995). Meanwhile, for a standard of comparison, the middle-sized, middle-western state of Iowa, with a population under 4% of Germany’s, had installed a state-wide fiberoptic network, including an interactive video system, linking schools, state offices and public buildings in all of the state’s 99 counties, for an aggregate cost of about $180 million. ‘The Wiring of Iowa’, The Economist, 15 July 1995.
‘Der Nationalstaat und die Volkswirtschaft’ in Max Weber, Landarbeiterfrage, Nationalstaat und Volkswirtschaftspolitik, Vol. 2 (Tübingen, 1993). See Wolfgang Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics (Chicago and London, 1984), pp. 35–40.
‘Politik als Beruf’, (Tübingen, 1992). Adequately, if not ideally, translated in Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber (New York and Oxford, 1958).
Named for its sponsor, Henry Morgenthau Jr, who was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of the treasury. See Karl Hardach, The Political Economy of Germany in the Twentieth Century (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1980), pp. 91–5.
See John H. Backer, Winds of History (New York, 1983), Ch. 4.
See David Schoenbaum, ‘Ziehvater der D-Mark’, Die Zeit, 22 June 1990,
Jean Edward Smith, Lucius D. Clay (New York, 1990), pp. 481–85, Backer, Winds of History, pp. 225–7.
See John Gimbel, Science, Technology and Reparations, (Stanford, CA, 1990), passim.
See A. J. Nicholls, Freedom with Responsibility (Oxford, 1994), pp. 143 ff.
Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations (New Haven and London, 1982), Ch. 4, especially pp. 79–82.
See Theodor Eschenburg, Die Herrschaft der Verbände (Stuttgart, 1955). Cf. Giersch et al., The Fading Miracle, pp. 74 ff., pp. 112 ff.,
Volker Berghahn, The Americanisation of West German Industry (New York and Leamington Spa, 1986, Ch. 3).
For an overview, W. R. Smyser, The Economy of United Germany (New York, 1992), pp. 18–31. Cf. Giersch et al., The Fading Miracle, Chs. 4–5.
One warm admirer, the French economist-turned-insurance executive, Michel Albert, in fact, refers to it generically as ‘Rhenish’ capitalism, as opposed, that is, to the ‘American’ variety. See Michel Albert, Capitalisme contre Capitalisme (Paris, 1991; Capitalism against Capitalism, London, 1993).
For one standard of comparison, German companies between 1970 and 1989 financed 67% of their investment from retained earnings, British companies 45%. Goodhart, ‘The Reshaping’, p. 19. For another, there were about 180 new stock issues in Britain in 1993 alone. Between 1984 and 1994, there were only about 200 in Germany. David Waller, ‘Frankfurt’s Role Consolidated,’ German Banking and Finance supplement, Financial Times, 31 May 1994.
See Andrew Fisher, ‘Cracks around the Edges’, Financial Times, 27 February 1995. Cf. Smyser, The Economy of United Germany, pp. 90–2.
Steven Pearlstein, ‘Fleet Afoot, Firms Restyle US Economy’, International Herald-Tribune, 5 July 1994; ‘Bounding Gazelles’, The Economist, 28 May 1994.
Michael Lindemann and David Waller, ‘Insider on the Outside’, Financial Times, 29 July 1994.
Cf. Sylvia Nasar, ‘The Oil-Futures Bloodbath’, New York Times, 16 October 1994, for an entertainingly unconventional post-mortem on Deutsche Bank’s intervention in the market operations of Metallgesellschaft, a large industrial client, and the $1.3 billion loss that resulted.
See Jeremy Edwards and Klaus Fischer, Banks, finance and Investment in Germany (Cambridge, 1994), esp. pp. 228 ff and OECD Wirtschaftsberichte Deutschland, OECD, Paris 1995, pp. 152–5.
By 1994 the original codetermination model applied to about 30 companies, the revised model to circa 570, employing about 4.5 million. See Peter J. Katzenstein, Policy and Politics in West Germany (Philadelphia, 1987), Ch. 3; Smyser, The Economy, pp. 80–3; Berghahn, The Americanisation, op. cit., pp. 203–30; René Lasserre, ‘Les différents modes de cogestion’ in Le Gloannec, L’Etat de l’Allemagne, p. 349.
For broadcasting, see Kenneth Dyson, ‘Regulatory Culture and Regulatory Change’ in Kenneth Dyson (ed.), The Politics of German Regulation (Aldershot, 1992). For higher education, see Katzenstein, Policy and Politics, pp. 76–80. Cf. Goodhart, ‘The Reshaping,’ pp. 25–7.
Ruling on a fair-trade suit against the Deutsche Bundesbahn, the German rail system, which leases commercial space at Hamburg’s main station, the federal High Court in Karlsruhe also declared that it was illegal to sell shirts or shoes as nominal travel necessities during evening hours or on Sundays (German News, 20 June and 24 August 1995). See Dyson, ‘Theories of Regulation’, pp. 14–18, and Gerhard Lembruch, ‘The Institutional Framework of German Regulation’ in Dyson (ed.), The Politics of German Regulation, ‘The German model is a combination of targeted interests, comprising the co-determinative democracy of the factory floor, the negotiated contractual democracy of collective bargaining, and the consultative democracy of electoral politics.’ Otto Jacobi, ‘Tarifdemokratie — zur Zukunft der Arbeitsbeziehungen’ in Warnfried Dettling (ed.), Perspektiven für Deutschland (Munich, 1994).
By comparison, Irish shops close at 5 p.m. and Danish at 5.30 p.m. On the other hand, French, Greek, Swedish and Spanish shops have no fixed closing time at all. Craig R. Whitney, ‘Comfortable Germans Slow to Change’, New York Times, 16 January 1995. That Germans look enviously at the Dutch, whose shops officially close at 6:30, but who recently allowed so-called evening shops to operate between 4 p.m. and midnight, is a commentary on German restrictiveness, especially considering that the evening shops must be licensed, and the authorities allow only one per 15,000 residents. ‘Holland käuft bis um Mitternacht’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 8 August 1994.
Lothar Julitz, ‘In Deutschland bringen Dienstleistungen das Wachstum’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 21 February 1995.
Anthony Hartley, ‘O! What a Fall Was There’, The National Interest, Spring 1994.
See Peter J. Katzenstein, Policy and Politics, Chs 3 and 7; David Schoenbaum, ‘Nazi Murders and German Politics’, Commentary, June 1965.
Irony again, Thatcher, has nothing very good to say in her memoirs about the nominally conservative Kohl. But she expresses a grudging regard for his Social Democratic predecessor Helmut Schmidt, who, although a ‘socialist’, has a profound understanding of the international economy, and a deep respect for orthodox public finance. Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York, 1993), p. 83. See Katzenstein, Policy and Politics, p. 364.
For an exemplary examination of the inertial, even entropic tendencies of German parliamentary politics, see Rolf Zundel, Das verarmte Parlament (Munich, 1980).
See Marsh, The Germans (London, 1989), pp. 62–8, 79–80.
For a briskly furious and frequently entertaining tour of the grassroots political landscape by social scientists turned local politicians turned social scientists, see Erwin K. und Ute Scheuch, Cliguen, Klüngel und Karrieren (Reinbek, 1992).
The bellwether study, of course, remains Robert Michels, Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie (Leipzig, 1911).
Hans Peter Stihl, ‘Verweigerung ist ein schlechter Ratgeber’, speech delivered at the opening of a conference on ‘Initiative der deutschen Wirtschaft zur Verbesserung des Innovationsklimas’, 13 May 1994.
Toqueville’s classic Democracy in America is the definitive statement of the American case. Frederic Spotts and Theodor Wieser, Italy: A Difficult Democracy (Cambridge, 1986)
and Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work (Princeton, 1993), are recent statements of the Italian one.
With its big, entrepreneurial media houses, extensive infrastructure and at least 100 million native German speakers as potential consumers, Germany is made to be a media capital, says Barthel Schölgens of the Adenauer Foundation. At thge same time, while media titans, like Bertelsmann and Leo Kirch battle Disney, Time Warner, Rupert Murdoch et al. for satellite access in a combination gold rush and Star Trek, German federalism, with its considerable stake in the status quo and the respective states’ own public channels, has frustrated consensus in even such basic questions as the relationship of the new media to the existing ones, or who will produce, receive and pay for what when it eventually arrives, e.g., in Saxony or Hamburg. See ‘Medienstandort Deutschland’, ‘There’s nothing cooking here,’ says Helmut Thoma of the commercial channel, RTL, in a recent interview. ‘Who wants all that?’ See Petra Pfaller, ‘Wea wüh des ois?’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 6 June 1994.
Detlef Essinger, ‘Der neue Goldrausch’, Suddeutsche Zeitung, 3 September, 1995.
See Peter Glotz, Rita Süssmuth and Konrad Seitz, Die planlosen Eliten, pp. 278 ff.; Kurt Biedenkopf, ‘Deutschland als internationaler Wirtschaftsstandort’, Europa-Archiv, 13–14/1994, pp. 411 ff.
See W. R. Smyser, ‘America’s German Central Bank’, Washington Quarterly, Spring 1994.
A conference of the 16 state-level German ministers of agriculture in March 1995 both personified and acted out the problem of accommodating Polish, Hungarian, Czech and Slovak farm products without swamping the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, not to mention domestic producers. West German farmers, they noted with concern, work 34 ha., while Czech co-ops work 5000 at lower wages. But there was no consensus on conversion of co-ops to private holdings. Western ministers favored marketing agreements. Eastern ministers, who inherited their own co-ops from their communist predecessors, favored ‘a developing common market,’ but contingent on unspecified structural reforms over an unspecified transitional period (German News online news service, 10 March 1995). Unsurprisingly, Hungary’s deputy ministry of agriculture, Jenö Rednagel, complained that EU exports to Hungary had increased by 3 times since 1991, but Hungarian exports to the EU had declined by a third, and Hungarian production now comprised only 1% of the EU’s strictly regulated farm imports. He was ‘perplexed,’ he added, by West European anxiety about being flooded with Hungarian produce (CET online news service, 7 April 1995). Only a few months later, a set of reports by Franz Fischler, the European Union (EU) Commissioner for Agriculture, confirmed that Rednagel’s bafflement was, if anything, understated. Far from inundating Western Europe in hams and slivovitz, the studies found, the 10 post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe were likely to take until the year 2000 just to reach their pre-1989 agricultural production levels. As their per capita income grew, while their farm productivity lagged, they would then become net importers, not exporters, of food and agricultural products, with Hungary, Bulgaria and Estonia as the only exceptions. On the face of it, Fischler’s report looked like good news for West European farmers. Yet to post-Communist Central and Eastern Europeans, it must have looked like Catch-22. The report seemed to say that, if they became efficient farm exporters, this would jeopardize their EU application by threatening beneficiaries of the proverbially extravagant agrarian status quo. On the other hand, if their farm sector lagged and stagnated, as seemed probable, this would jeopardize their EU application too. Who in Western Europe wanted to take on another 10 poor cousins and long-term welfare clients? see Caroline Southey, ‘East Europe faces painful road to heart of Union’, Financial Times, 26 July 1995.
For another perspective on what the authors of a recent study call the ‘pension time bomb’, one need only look at the ratio of people over 65, of retirement age or older, to people between 15 and 64, i.e., of traditional working age. All things being equal, according to a 1995 report of the Federal Trust, the 1990 EU average of 21.4% will rise to 42.8% by 2040. But the 1990 German average of 23.7% will rise to 47.1%, exceeded only by Italy’s 48.4%, and the Netherlands’ 48.5%. Samuel Brittan, ‘Defusing Pension Time Bomb’, Financial Times, 16 March 1995.
Viz. Jean-Paul Picaper, ‘L’Allemâgne en quête de son identité’, Géopolitique, Winter 1993–4, pp. 98 ff.
Michael Lindemann, ‘East Germany’s jobs upheaval’, Financial Times, 20 July 1995.
Fred Klinger, ‘Aufbau und Erneuerung: Über die institutionellen Bedingungen der Standortentwicklung in Deutschland’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 17/94, 29 April 1994.
For a thoughtful, balanced and very French discussion, see Emmanuel Devaud, ‘Perspectives fin de siecle’, Géopolitique, Winter 1993–4. For the British equivalent, cf. ‘Model Vision: A Survey of Germany’, The Economist, 21 May 1994.
See Peter Paret, Yorck and the Era of Prussian Reform (Princeton, 1966), Chs 4–6.
David Marsh, ‘The costs of competing’, Financial Times, 6 March 1995, ‘Herr Lazarus’, The Economist, 18 March 1995.
Measured against UK =100, German unit labor costs were 128.8, French 114, Japanese 113, Canadian 99.7, Italian 93.2, American 83.3. Samuel Brittan, ‘Three Big Cheers for no “Beef”’, Financial Times, 26 May 1994.
See Konrad Seitz, Die japanisch-amerikanische Herausforderung (Munich, 1991), passim.
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard (New York, 1960), p. 40. The original — ’Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi’, (If we want everything to remain as it is, everything will have to change) — is even more emphatic than the translation.
See Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo (Milan, 1960), p. 42.
German Social Democrats had, in fact, been deeply ambivalent about nationhood from their earliest beginnings. Dedicated like all good Marxists to the proposition that the worker has no fatherland, and characterized as ‘unpatriotic bums’ by the emperor himself, they learned from World War I that their constituents felt otherwise. Rightwingers nonetheless charged with some success that Social Democratic dovishness had been a major contributor to German defeat. Determined after World War II to take and hold the patriotic high ground, they then pushed hard for national unification while the majority of the electorate moved westward toward NATO and European unity. What was new about Brandt’s message — and also unique, as it later turned out — was its appeal to productive, democratic West Germans to regard Social Democrats as the natural representatives of a new and legitimate West German patriotism. See Erich Matthias, Sozialdemokratie und Nation (Stuttgart, 1952);
Lewis J. Edinger, Kurt Schumacher (Stanford, 1965);
Carola Stern, Willy Brandt (Reinbek, 1988);
David Binder, The Other German (Washington, 1975).
See Barthel Schölgens, ‘Medienstandort Deutschland’, Die Politische Meinung, May 1994.
See Norbert Lammert, ‘Wie sollte die Hochschulpolitik reformiert werden?’ Wirtschaftsdienst, May 1994;
Hansgerd Schulte, ‘Les Universités allemandes entre l’Est et l’Ouest’, Géopolitique, Winter 1993–94; Der Spiegel, 23 May 1994, p. 87.
Karl Otto Hondrich, ‘Totenglocke im Elfenbeinturm’, Der Spiegel, 7 February 1994.
Schröter, ‘Ou en est la technologie allemande’, ‘Lieferanten für den Umweltschutz,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 27 June 1994, ‘Forsche Schrittmacher,’ Der Spiegel, 27 June 1994, pp. 82–4. C.f. Volker Wörl, ‘Der Umweltschutz: ein Riesenwachstumsmarkt’ in Deckstein (ed.), Wovon wir künftig leben wollen, German News, 13 September 1994.
Andrew Fisher ‘Bundesbank criticises DM200 bn aid to east’, Financial Times, 21 July 1995;
Andrew Fisher, ‘Banks’ big adventure’, Financial Times, 11 August 1995. See Jörg Rösler, ‘Privatisation in East Germany — Experience with the Treuhand’, Europe-Asia Studies, 3/94.
See Nathaniel C. Nash, ‘Zeiss bears brunt of German Unity’, New York Times, 8 November 1994.
Nathaniel C. Nash, ‘Waking an old East German Giant’, New York Times, 3 December 1994.
H.-J. Queisser, ‘Brief aus Yokahama’, Physikalische Blätter, 49 (1993), No. 5, p. 385.
It would be hard to think of an example of less conventional corporate planning than Daimler-Benz’s reported interest in acquiring and restoring Margaret Mitchell’s Atlanta house in time for the 1996 Olympics. ‘One of the reasons we got into this project is that we… are familiar with Gone with the Wind,’ said Bernd Harling, the company’s American PR officer. Jerry Schwartz, ‘Margaret Mitchell’s Atlanta Home Gets a Reprieve’, New York Times, 18 December 1994.
By the year 2000, Mercedes estimated, it would build up to 10% of its cars outside Germany, compared with 2% in 1995. Meanwhile, Lufthansa announced plans to shift accounting work to India and maintenance activities to Ireland. Christopher Parkes, ‘19,000 jobs to go as Daimler-Benz chief warns on costs rise,’ Financial Times, 13 April 1995.
Gillian Tett, Andrew Fisher and Andrew Hills, ‘When strength is weakness’, Financial Times, 9 August 1995. Symptomatically, the proud unveiling of the new Airbus A319 in late summer 1995 only barely drowned out a swelling chorus of anxious employees. Although Airbus had finally reached the promised land of profitable operation, its Dutch affiliate, Fokker, was a loser, and the company looked to DASA to fill the gap. The powerful mark and weak dollar only added to the problem of export competitiveness in a fiercely-competitive and export-dependent industry. Of 4400 DASA jobs in Bremen alone, half were believed at risk, and of 40,000 DASA jobs overall, 7500 of the, Airbus-related, 15,000 were expected to be gone by 1998 (German News, 23 and 24 August 1995).
In 1982–3, at Teltschik’s instigation, Kohl was the first German chancellor to visit China, Indonesia and Pakistan. In 1995, Indonesia was featured guest at the giant Hanover trade fair. Michael Lindemann, ’Germany begins Indonesia catch-up’, Financial Times, 5 April 1995. Meanwhile, Osram, the world’s second biggest lighting producer, has quintupled foreign sales since 1989–90, a consortium including BMW, Daimler-Benz, Siemens, Telekom, ABB and Lufthansa has announced plans for infrastructural development of the Chinese coast from Shanghai northward, and Daimler Benz plans substantial investments in Vietnam. In summer 1995, a single visit by a delegation including China’s party secretary and head of state concluded with eight agreements, covering DM180 million in German development aid, and DM4.1 billion in contracts with German firms, about a third of the total with Daimler-Benz. The price to China included human rights reminders from Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel and Federal President Roman Herzog, presentation of a list of names from Amnesty International, and a small pro-Tibet demonstration. German News, 13 July, 1995. See Andrew Baxter, ‘Osram Switches Gaze to Far-flung Markets’, Financial Times, 23 January 1995; ‘Daimler-Benz will massiv in Vietnam investieren’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 6 July 1994;
Victor Mallet, ‘Siemens gains stake in Thai rail contract’, Financial Times, 16–17 July 1994,
Angelika Buchholz, ‘Aufträge im Wert von fünf Milliarden Mark’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 7 July 1994.
Judy Dempsey, ‘Germany takes axe to the public sector’, Financial Times, 15–16 April 1995.
Andrew Fisher ‘Longer German shop hours urged’, Financial Times, 11 August 1995, German News, 11 and 19 August 1995;
Nathaniel C. Nash, ‘What’s in Store for Retailers in German? Later Hours’, New York Times, 12 August 1995.
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© 1996 David Schoenbaum and Elizabeth Pond
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Schoenbaum, D., Pond, E. (1996). From Industrial Park to Theme Park?. In: The German Question and Other German Questions. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375161_3
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