Joschka Fischer and the making of the Berlin Republic: an alternative history of postwar Germany

395 Pages·2008·3.83 MB·English

by  Paul Hockenos

Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic
Other books by Paul Hockenos
Free to Hate: The Rise of the Right in Post-Communist
Eastern Europe
Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars
Joschka Fischer and the Making
of the Berlin Republic
An Alternative History of Postwar Germany
Paul Hockenos
1
2008
3
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LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Hockenos,Paul,1963–
JoschkaFischerandthemakingoftheBerlinRepublic:analternative
historyofpostwarGermany/PaulHockenos.
p. cm.
ISBN:978-0-19-518183-8
1.Fischer,Joschka.2.Politicians—Germany—Biography.
3.Germany—History—1945–4.Politicalculture—Germany—
History—20thcentury.I.Title.
DD290.33.F57H632007
943.088’2092—dc22 2007012081
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaonacid-freepaper
To Jenni
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Preface
This book is a result of my living in Germany and writing about German
andEuropeanaffairsfornearlytwentyyears.Itwasprettymuchbychance
that, in the fall of 1983 on a college year abroad, I landed in West
Germany’s southwesternmost corner, in the little university city of Frei-
burg.ThiswasattheheightoftheFederalRepublic’s‘‘HotAutumn,’’the
timeofcountry-wideprotestsagainstthestationingofintermediate-range
nuclearmissilesinWestGermany.Igladlytaggedalongtothedemonstra-
tions that October, one of over a million protesters insisting that NATO
haltdeploymentofitsU.S.-made‘‘Euromissiles.’’AlthoughthePershingII
and Cruise missilesarrivedshortly thereafterand I eventuallyreturned to
upstate New York, issues associated with Cold War Europe and the two
Germanys lured me back to the continent. I would come and go from
Germanyafterthat,includingsomelongerstintsawayduringthenineties
asaforeigncorrespondentinHungaryandacivilianmemberoftheinter-
nationalpostwarmissionsintheBalkans.ButatsomepointBerlinbecame
my permanent home. It wasn’t a conscious decision—or one that I ever
seriouslyreconsidered.
For years I had considered writing something longer about Germany’s
protestmovements,theGreens,andthenatureofGermany’sliberalmeta-
morphosis. I wanted to relate the Germany that I knew to non-German
readers, and to show how it got that way. But I also wanted to convey
the content and evolution of some of the public debates in Germany,
debates that fall outside the parameters of narrower political discourses
elsewhere.Theseareoftenrichdiscussions—partofasophisticatedStreit-
kultur—that,Ifelt,couldpossiblyinjectfreshcriticalthinkingintodebates
viii PREFACE
beyond Europe’s borders, not only in the United States. A political bio-
graphy of Joschka Fischer struck me as the means to accomplish both of
theseaims.
Although no one German scholar has endeavored to write an entire
historyofpostwarGermany‘‘frombelow,’’thereexistsawealthofexcel-
lentGermansources,themostsignificantfor thisprojectIidentifyinthe
chapters’ end notes. (There is, thus, no biblography.) I feel compelled,
however, to mention a number of key sources here. Among the existing
GermanbiographiesofFischer,SibylleKrause-Burger’sJoschkaFischerwas
importantformyearlychapters.ThosewrittenbyMatthiasGeisandBernd
Ulrich, Christian Y. Schmidt, and Michael Schwelien, were also very
helpfulatdifferentpoints.Also,neverfarfrommyreachwerethestandard
worksofcontemporaryGermanhistory,includingthoseofManfredGo¨rte-
maker, Christoph Kleßmann, Konrad Jarausch, among others, as well as
one of the newer postwar histories, Edgar Wolfrum’s fine Die geglu¨ckte
Demokratie. It is imperative to pay tribute to the foremost scholar of the
Federal Republic’s protest movements, the Hamburg historian Wolfgang
Kraushaar.Hisvoluminousstudiesandeditedcollectionshavecontributed
uniquely to documenting and understanding postwar Germany’s social
movements.Nevertheless,itisencouragingthatanewgenerationofschol-
ars, too young to have participated in the student movement, as did
Kraushaar and others, is beginning to examine the period from fresh
standpoints.
Anoteonsourcing:alldirectquotesinthetextthatcomefromsecond-
arysourcesarecitedinthenotes.Thosethatarenotfootnotedcomefrom
interviewsconductedbymebetween2004and2007.
Inexpressingmygratitudetothosewhoaidedthisproject,Istartwiththe
German Marshall Fund of the United States, whose fellowship made this
book possible in the first place. The book was part of a process and an
important stage was a Bosch Public Policy Fellowship at the American
Academy in Berlin in 2000. The manuscript passed through the hands of
more than one editor and I am thankful to each in a different way. They
includeDediFelman,ElishevaUrbas,andDavidMcBride.Iwouldalsolike
toexpressmysincerethankstothefollowingpeople,whocommentedon
parts of the manuscript and offered valuable advice: Bill Martin, Jenni
Winterhagen, Matthew Hockenos, Anne and Warren Hockenos, Robert
Van Meter, Sascha Mu¨ller-Kraenner, Detlev Claussen, Uli Cremer, Jim
Ogier, Eric Chauvistre, Thomas Pampuch, Christoph Becker-Schaum, and
PREFACE ix
HajoFunke.Needlesstosay,someofthesecriticsobjectedtocertainpoints
or accents, and thus cannot be held responsible for the work’s content or
flaws. As always I am in debt to Cecelia Cancellaro of Idea Architects,
whose deep love of books makes her the fine agent that she is. Werner
Kraemerwasselflessinprovidingtechnicalassistance.Ialsothankmymany
colleagues at Die Tageszeitung and especially those in its archives—above
all,RandyKaufmann.Ialsoacknowledgetheresourcesandpatientstaffsof
the Staatsbibliothek Berlin, the APO-Archiv at the Free University, the
Berlin Institute for Transatlantic Security, the Archiv Gru¨nes Geda¨chtnis,
the Informationsdienst fu¨r kritische Medienpraxis, and the Lucy Scribner
LibraryatSkidmoreCollege.