scholarly journals Renewing Democracy: The Rise of Green Politics in West Germany

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Stephen Milder ◽  
Konrad H. Jarausch

The September 2013 Bundestag election, which reelected Angela Merkelas chancellor, was a clear defeat for the Green Party. Alliance 90/TheGreens (henceforth the Greens) fared far better than the Free DemocraticParty (FDP), which failed even to score the five percent of the vote requiredfor representation in parliament, but still fell from 10.7 percent to 8.4 percent,losing five of their sixty-eight seats in parliament. Since in March ofthat same year, surveys had shown their support at 17 percent, this disappointingresult forced Jürgen Trittin, the leader of the parliamentary delegationto step down.1 In many ways, this perceived electoral debacle markedthe end of an era. The former Federal Minister of the Envi ron ment, whohad originally joined the party in 1980, told reporters that “a new generation” would have to step forward and lead the party into the 2017campaign. This statement suggested not only that the Greens’ rebelliousfounding impulse was spent, but also that they had become part of theestablishment in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), now requiring areinvigoration of their own. Since the Greens were once expected to be littlemore than a short-lived byproduct of the social conflicts of the 1970s, acloser look at the party’s founding moment at the beginning of the 1980smight shed new light on its current predicament.

1995 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 693-709
Author(s):  
Arne Gieseck ◽  
Ullrich Heilemann ◽  
Hans Dietrich von Loeffelholz

An analysis of the effects of the last wave of migration into West Germany on labor markets, public finances and economic growth, this study points at the often ignored fact that the migrants were rather successful in finding jobs and thus helped in eliminating labor shortages in certain industries. Simulations with a macroeconometric model for the FRG indicate that in 1992 the GDP was almost 6 percent higher than without migration, that 90,000 jobs were created and that migration created a surplus of DM14 billion in the public sector, compared to the baseline. This study also makes clear, however that these effects mainly depend on a quick absorption of migrants by FRG labor markets, and as to the social system, the relief may be only transitory.


ZDM ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regina Bruder

AbstractIn Germany, the Abitur is the highest qualification granted at the end of secondary education after 12 or 13 years of schooling; it provides a general university entrance qualification. Traditionally, written and oral examinations are required to obtain the Abitur. Until 1990, there were mainly decentralized examinations in mathematics in West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany [FRG]), which were taken after 13 school years, and a centralized examination that students took after 12 years of school in East Germany (German Democratic Republic [GDR]). In the unified Germany, examinations are now increasingly set by the 16 individual federal states. This paper has a special focus on changes and permanent features in the written Abitur examination in mathematics in Germany in the context of the social changes caused by the German reunification in 1990. These changes since 1990 are described with regard to the initial situation and framing conditions for the written Abitur examination. Two time periods are considered: (1) the examination situation in the FRG and GDR before 1990 and (2) the changes in the five eastern German federal states (former GDR) under the system change and accession to the FRG after 1990 but before the PISA shock.


2015 ◽  
pp. 99-103
Author(s):  
Evgeny L. Kauganov

Analyses the attitudes towards the Nazi past that existed in West German society from 1945 through the 1950s. The author considers the social and political situation in the Federal Republic of Germany, the concept of “zero hour”, and collective guilt thesis that were tackled in the publications of sociopolitical character. The author concludes that in Germany in the post­war period, a specific “victim’s mentality” prevailed that rejected the idea of collective guilt and responsibility for the Nazi crimes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-132
Author(s):  
Stephen F. Szabo

The German election of 2017 has produced an unstable government which is unlikely to offer the kind of leadership in foreign and security policy that Europe and the larger West need in a turbulent time. Chancellor Angela Merkel will be in a weaker position than before with the loss of key cabinet positions to the Social Democrats and the Bavarian Christian Social Union. Many will be looking past her as the struggle to succeed her will in - crease. The key foreign policy agenda will include Europe and the Franco- German relationship, Russia, Turkey and Transatlantic relations. Merkel 4.0 is likely to be a transitional and unruly government that will bridge the end of the Merkel era and the start of one led by a new generation of leaders.


Author(s):  
D. Cherns

The use of high resolution electron microscopy (HREM) to determine the atomic structure of grain boundaries and interfaces is a topic of great current interest. Grain boundary structure has been considered for many years as central to an understanding of the mechanical and transport properties of materials. Some more recent attention has focussed on the atomic structures of metalsemiconductor interfaces which are believed to control electrical properties of contacts. The atomic structures of interfaces in semiconductor or metal multilayers is an area of growing interest for understanding the unusual electrical or mechanical properties which these new materials possess. However, although the point-to-point resolutions of currently available HREMs, ∼2-3Å, appear sufficient to solve many of these problems, few atomic models of grain boundaries and interfaces have been derived. Moreover, with a new generation of 300-400kV instruments promising resolutions in the 1.6-2.0 Å range, and resolutions better than 1.5Å expected from specialist instruments, it is an appropriate time to consider the usefulness of HREM for interface studies.


2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40
Author(s):  
Vera Eccarius-Kelly

The article examines trends in voting preferences and voting behavior of Turkish-origin German voters. Despite only representing a small percentage of the total German electorate, Turkish-origin voters are gaining an opportunity to shape the future political landscape. While the Social Democrats have benefited most directly from the minority constituency so far, this author suggests that the Green Party is poised to attract the younger, better educated, and German-born segment of the Turkish-origin voters. All other dominant national parties have ignored this emerging voting bloc, and missed opportunities to appeal to Turkish-origin voters by disregarding community-specific interests. 


Author(s):  
Ieva Rodiņa

The aim of the research “Historical Memory in the Works of the New Generation of Latvian Theater Artists: The Example of “The Flea Market of the Souls” is to focus on the current but at the same time little discussed topic in Latvian theater – the change of generations and the social processes connected to it, that are expressed on the level of world views, experiences, intergenerational relationships. Most directly, these changes are reflected in the phenomenon of historical memory. The concept of “postmemory” was defined by German professor Marianne Hirsch in 1992, suggesting that future generations are closely related to the personal and collective cultural traumas of previous generations, which are passing on the past experience through historical memory, thus affecting the present. Grotesque, self-irony, and focusing on socio-political, provocative questions and themes are the connecting point of the generation of young Latvian playwrights born in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including such personalities as Jānis Balodis, Rasa Bugavičute-Pēce, Matīss Gricmanis, Justīne Kļava, etc. However, unlike Matīss Gricmanis or Janis Balodis who represent the aesthetics of political theater, in Justīne Kļava’s works, sociopolitical processes become the background of a generally humanistic study of the relationships between generations. This theme is represented not only in “The Flea Market of the Souls”, but also in other plays, like “Jubilee ‘98” and “Club “Paradise””. The tendency to investigate the traces left by the Soviet heritage allows to define these works as autobiographical researches of the identity of the post-Soviet generation, analyzing life in today's Latvia in terms of historical memory. Using the semiotic, hermeneutic, phenomenological approach, the play “The Flea Market of the Souls” and its production in Dirty Deal Teatro (2017) are analyzed as one of the most vivid works reflecting the phenomenon of historical memory in recent Latvian original drama.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (S336) ◽  
pp. 201-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Moscadelli ◽  
Alberto Sanna ◽  
Ciriaco Goddi

AbstractImaging the inner few 1000 AU around massive forming stars, at typical distances of several kpc, requires angular resolutions of better than 0″.1. Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) observations of interstellar molecular masers probe scales as small as a few AU, whereas (new-generation) centimeter and millimeter interferometers allow us to map scales of the order of a few 100 AU. Combining these informations all together, it presently provides the most powerful technique to trace the complex gas motions in the proto-stellar environment. In this work, we review a few compelling examples of this technique and summarize our findings.


1989 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Eckersley

The predominantly new middle-class social composition of the green movement has become a matter of increasing interest in the wake of the success of green parties and the growth of an international green movement. This paper considers the concept of the ‘new class' in relation to two explanations for the social composition of the green movement. The class-interest argument seeks to show that green politics is a means of furthering either middle-class or new-class interests while the ‘new childhood’ argument claims that the development of the green movement is the result of the spread of post-material values, the main bearers of which are the new class. Against these arguments a more comprehensive explanation is presented, which focuses on the education of the new class and its relative structural autonomy from the production process.


2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 681-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARCUS M. PAYK

While it is well known that German conservative intellectuals were skeptical or indifferent to the Federal Republic of Germany established in 1949 and to its democratic founding principles, this essay shifts attention to a specific mode of right-wing acceptance of the new order. Focusing on Hans Zehrer, a renowned journalist and notorious opponent of democracy in the Weimar Republic, I will demonstrate how right-wing intellectuals interpreted West Germany's political system as a post-liberal order after the “end of politics”. But this vision of transcending societal and intellectual conflicts in a meta-politics was neither entirely new nor simply raked up from the late 1920s but reshaped to fit the postwar sociopolitical context. The essay illuminates several intellectual connections between Weimar-era neoconservatism and the specific conservative consensus formed after 1949, but it also explores personnel continuities within a network of right-wing journalists as well as continuities in the field of journalistic style.


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