Thesis--Bonn. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 498-515).

Inaugural-Dissertation--Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Münich, 1982. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-331) and index.

This thesis examines how national identities change and evolve through time. In that sense, it joins other studies that have studied the mechanisms for changes in national identities. While some authors have tended to focus on state structure, institutional changes (i.e. the creation of federal institutions that encourage regional identities) or belief systems, this study argues that political parties play an important role on national identity formulation. Essentially, this study will establish the argument that political parties have an impact on the direction of national identity. Using HI it will illustrate that the institutional framework in which political parties operate affects the direction that they will push national identity towards. Indeed, political actors have a vision for national identity and they will articulate and redefine how national identity is conceptualized but not freely. Rather, how institutions guide actors, preferences and ideas is central to understanding why national identity takes the form and direction that it does. Using the case study of Germany (1949-1969), it will demonstrate that the CDU sought to define German national identity as one based on Christian weltanschauung, integration with the west (westbindung) and social market economy (sozialen Marktwirtschaft) and that with each notion the influence of the Basic Law and previous political institutions could be felt as emphasis would be put on how each concept was related to “freedom”, “individual rights” and “democracy”.

Challenges to the legitimacy of established collective memory can prove so inflammatory that mass violence, ethnic cleansing and even genocide have followed in their wake. However, if few doubt that the ethno-nationalist memory wars during the 1980s collapse of Yugoslavia contributed to the real wars and ethnic cleansing witnessed in the 1990s, no previous research has been able to explain why this is so. This paper pinpoints the determinant variable and causal link between attacks on memory and subsequent mass violence (or a lack thereof). It uses a theoretical model that ties together memory, legitimacy and power to compare the cases of West Germany’s 1968 student movement and Serbia’s 1986-1989 anti-bureaucratic revolution before establishing that the level of prior state repression is one factor that determines whether memory challenges will turn violent. The paper recommends further theory building over the permeable boundary that separates state and civil society, particularly in terms of how accessible state functions are to those social movements that seek to challenge and delegitimise memory.

Even after 10 years, countries under transition are still on their way to becoming developed, internationally competitive countries. At this stage it is helpful for business cooperation to know whether managers in countries undergoing transition are behaving like socialists or Western managers, or somewhere in between. Many joint ventures and other alliances between Western companies and companies in countries in transition are seeking to establish new markets with new products or new technologies (i.e., new processes). They are risky because the returns are uncertain. Understanding the risk attitudes of managers in countries in transition can explain different investment behavior and provide vital information for installing the right incentives. This study compares the risk attitudes of Chinese, eastern, and western German managers. Chinese managers' risk attitudes seem to be more similar to the attitudes of western German managers than to those of their counterparts in eastern Germany. Some of the reasons and consequences are discussed in this article.

Seit Ende der sechziger Jahre wird mit unterschiedlicher Intensität auf die Innovationskrise und auf den Rückgang der Investitionstätigkeit deutscher Unternehmen hingewiesen. Zur Zeit wird dieses Thema vor allem im Zusammenhang mit der abnehmenden Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der deutschen Unternehmen im internationalen Vergleich wieder intensiv diskutiert. Mangelnde Innovationen und daraus resultierende Investitionslücken führen danach nicht nur zu einem verringerten Wirtschaftswachstum, sondern erschweren darüber hinaus auch den noch immer nicht vollständig bewältigten Strukturwandel. Dabei scheinen Innovationen und Investitionen auch für die neuen Bundesländer von besonderer Bedeutung zu sein, wenn sie ihren Anschluß an die internationale Wettbewerbssituation bewältigen wollen. Die vorliegende Untersuchung fragt auf der Basis des Risk-/Return- Paradoxon, ob sich das Innovationsverhalten in den neuen Bundesländern von dem in den alten Bundesländern unterscheidet.

Traditionally, German citizenship has been viewed as one that embraces a common culture and heritage. The attributes of this culture and heritage are closely associated with the national identity of Germany. However, this national identity has been challenged, both through the tumultuous events of Germany’s twentieth century as well as the allegations that the basis for German citizenship is exclusionary and contributes to a racist understanding of German national identity. This thesis investigates such allegations through a particular category of citizenship, Aussiedler, those who were considered German based upon their lineage and upholding of German culture and tradition, although they lived in Central and Eastern Europe, sometimes for generations. By analyzing Aussiedler from the context of its creation as a category in the aftermath of the Nazi dictatorship through to its modifications following the end of the Cold War the fluid nature of German national identity is traced through a shifting citizenship policy. / Graduate / 2017-12-15

Thesis (M.A.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanties, English Literature, 2013 / This dissertation functions as an exploration of German author Bernhard Schlink’s engagement with the genre of Vӓterliteratur (Literature about Fathers). By examining how Schlink has used adaptations of this genre in his novels The Reader (1998), Homecoming (2009) and short story Girl with Lizard (2002), this project will attempt to ascertain the extent to which one can view these texts as part of a new wave of father writing that has emerged in the German post-unification space. The question dominating this research project and contained in the first part of the title: “How do I speak about the Past”, implies that part of this research will examine Schlink’s portrayal of the second-generation’s attempt to understand and give voice to their experiences in postwar Germany. As such, my work engages with the emergence of Vӓterliteratur as being the result of an incomplete attempt by second-generation Germans to confront Germany’s national traumatic past during the 1968 Student Movement. However, while Schlink’s work demonstrates a familiarity with the content, structure and themes present in the first wave of Vӓterliteratur he appears to rewrite these into a fictionalised format, demonstrating the continued need in German society to work through the past. In many respects the texts selected for analysis in this dissertation deviate from the traditional conventions found within the earlier father novels, and interestingly appear to emphasise the previously marginalised role of women both during and postwar. What I will demonstrate is that while Schlink’s work makes use of the conventions found in Vӓterliteratur, and by doing so explores the postwar relationships between fathers and sons, it also indirectly engages with the experiences of German women and their own perpetration of, or suffering as a result of the patriarchal attitudes present in, Nazism. Through this dual portrayal (the presence of both men and women) Schlink gives a new perspective to the complexities of German postwar life as seen through the eyes of the second-generation.

This thesis analyses international state behaviour by countries that share a historic legacy, and examines the delicate relations between West Germany, Austria and Israel in the wake of the Second World War as a case study. In it I propose a model - 'diplomacy of memory' - for this currently untheorized form of diplomatic conduct in order to explain how countries use official memories of their past on the international stage. Linking the interdisciplinary concept of collective memory with International Relations, my study characterizes the practice of 'diplomacy with memory' as a distinct policy undertaking that shapes and broadcasts historical narratives internationally for strategic foreign policy objectives. To empirically test the diplomacy of memory model, this thesis investigates the two cases of West German-Israeli and Austrian-Israeli relations in the aftermath of World War II. Within these selected pairs, four core bilateral debates are analysed: first, reparation payments to Israel in 1951/52; second, the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1960/61; third, the Six-Day War in 1967 and fourth, the Yom Kippur War and oil crisis of 1973. While the first two cases explore how the memory of the Nazi past is leveraged as part of later diplomatic strategies, the latter two, which concern West Germany's and Austria's reaction to the Middle East conflict, reveal a more subtle connection between national memories and foreign policy choices around key international conflicts. This study engages in historical inquiry, based on archival documents and other primary sources in all three countries, to demonstrate how a country's collective memory is invented and deployed on the international stage. Combining the theoretical aim of specifying the link between national narratives and diplomacy with the qualitative analysis of two historic cases, this thesis rests at the intersection of International Relations and History.

本文主要目的在研究西德政府的安全政策為何。第二次世界大戰後,德國一分為二,直到一九九0年才再度統一,分裂過程總計四十年之中久。在這段漫長路途中,德國問題不只和心繫祖國一統的德意志人民有密切關係,也牽涉到忽緊忽鬆的東西關係。畢竟,德國問題不只是德國人的家務事,也牽動著東西兩大陣營在歐洲的均勢角逐。由於是牽一髮而動全局的關鍵所在,在這場零合競爭中,德國的再統一在一九八九年之前似乎只是個夢想而已。固然,德國的再統一印證了天下合久必分,分久必合的說法,但是過於強調這種說法,所可能犯的錯誤就在於,將統一視為一種只是水到渠成的時 間問題,而忽略了過程的探討。僅管戈巴契夫的新思維(New Thinking)和東歐人心思變是兩股將兩德推向統一的重大力量,但之前西德政府長期的努力也是功不可沒。倘若沒有艾德諾(Konrad Adenauer)政府的固本培元,布朗德(Willy Brandt)政府的認清時機及順水推舟以及施密特(Helmut Schmidt)政府的前瞻務實,那麼統一是否能在柯爾(Helmut Kohl)政府時期順利和平的完成,不也是個疑問。因此,本文的研就希望瞭解,在戰後的國際體係下,艾德諾政府及施密特政府的安全政策為何,成就為何?三者差異為何?所面臨的困境為何?