UCSB Hist 133C
Prof. Marcuse
Nov. 24, 1998
GERMAN HISTORY SINCE 1945

Lecture 17: Who is "a German"? (McDonald's und Das Volk)

1. Administrative / Announcements / Preliminary
   • Q5 on Tuesday: What "lessons" does Fulbrook (pp. 349-69) draw from German history since 1945?
   • pick up Q4 and remaining journals after class
2. Günter Wallraff: "Eating is Fun"
   • Germans and corporate capitalism
     • consequences for the merging of East and West
   • Germans and foreigners
     • Kohl in 1985: "… a murder, as they unfortunately happen again and again, as do murders of German citizens, when the murder is a citizen of a foreign country"
       agenda of "normalization": Bitburg, border with Poland, "historians' controversy," dedication of Washington Holocaust museum, visit to Ernst Jünger ("Storm of Steel," ca. 1926)
   • issue of citizenship: ius sanguini (blood); ius soli (earth)
     • West Germany and political asylum
     • times of full employment
     • welfare state
3. Right-wing extremism after Unification
   • Unification alternatives:
     • annexation under Article 23 of the Basic Law: "This law applies for now on the territory of the states of Baden, Bavaria, Bremen, …. In other parts of Germany it will go into effect after they become members."
     • redrafting of the constitution under Article 146: "This basic law will lose its validity on the day that a constitution takes effect, which has been ratified by the German people in free elections."
     • decision after the March 18, 1990 East German parliamentary election: CDU 41%, DSU 6%; BFD 5%; SPD 22%; PDS 16%; Bündnis 90: 3%.
   • consequences: property claims, employment, rent, vocational and higher education, child care, abortion, workplace culture; laws, taxes, driver's licenses
   • Eisenhüttenstadt ("Iron Works City"), 1992 incident and interview
   • Rostock, 1990; Hoyerswerda, Brandenburg, 1991; Mölln, Solingen, Lübeck, 1992
   • Lübeck, Nov. 1994