독일 분단과 통일과정에서의 탈민족 담론과 정치

Abstract

The West German postnationalism had developed itself on its initial stage, not so much of coming to terms with the national past of the Nazism but as effect of the Adenauers policy of Western integration. The self-consciousness of various political and economic developments in FGR was based on a new postnational identity among not a few liberal or left intellectuals in West Germany. Coped with the nationalistic political forces that strived for a re-nationalization of the divided Germany the postnational exponents confirmed the tendency of the West Germans to a separated national identity and stood up against a compelled German national consciousness as a whole. The universalistic norm and value which the postnational intellectuals advocated could be confirmed only by breaking off with the negative national history and tradition, as the Habermas constitutional patriotism could be seen. They had nothing so in common with a ideological system legitimation, as with the achieved democratic political culture through the self-reflexive confrontation with the Holocaust. The West German advocates for the bi-nationalization thesis were characterized by the fact that they had argued most ardently for the recognition of the East German State as a second German state and for the respect for its system. In recognition of the other they could find their own specifics out and develop a self-identity. It should be remarked that the German-German contacts and cooperation through the Ostpolitik had also brought forth a sense of distance and difference towards the national partner and strengthened the separated self-identity, at least in West-Germany. But they had been not able to consider of the disequilibrium and inhomogeneity of the separate developed national consciousness in two German states. In addition, in the critical phase of German reunification 1989/1990 the postnational exponents had a disregard of the dynamic relationship of the democratic revolution and the coming national desire in East Germany and could not make a proper counterproposal to the existing national expectation of the East Germans.