The New German Question

Several studies have been conducted to try and understand and explain the morphological and syntactic aspects of adult second language acquisition (SLA). Two prominent hypotheses that have been put forward concerning late L2 speakers' knowledge of inflectional morphology and of related functional categories and their feature values are the Impaired Representation Hypothesis (IRH) and the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH). The cross-linguistic comparison of the acquisition of questions in German and French provided in this study offers a new perspective to differences and similarities between first language acquisition (FLA) and adult SLA. Comparing a Germanic and a Romance L2, differing not only in their overall linguistic properties (such as i. e. OV/VO, V2, clitics), but explicitly in the formation and regularities of questions, we present striking similarities in adult SLA, and irrespective of the first and the second languages and of instructed versus non-instructed learning. The investigation of the adult SLA of morphological and structural aspects of questions in French and German strengthens the assumption that the acquisition of morphology and syntax is connected in French and German FLA but is disentangled in adult SLA. Our data reveal variability of question syntax, and with the syntactic position of the verb in particular. Instead of discovering the correct position of the verb at a certain stage of acquisition which can be accounted for by parameter setting in FLA, the adult learners gradually approach the target word order but still exhibit a great deal of variation after several years of exposure to the L2. The findings provided here contradict the predictions of the MSIH (Prévost/White 2000; Ionin/Wexler 2002; among others), for not only morphological features, but syntactic finiteness of finiteness are problematic in adult SLA, and that the Impairment Representation Hypothesis (IRH) (Beck 1998; Eubank 1993/1994; among others) accounts for these differences in first and second language acquisition. IRH and FDH mirror our findings, by predicting the use of (domain-general) strategies instead of agreement or feature checking mechanisms.

The post-war question of German guilt resonates in contemporary world politics, framing the way actors and observers conceptualize collective responsibility for past wrongs in diverse polities. This article examines the responses of Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers to the ‘German question’: in what sense are ordinary citizens collectively accountable for state crimes and how should they respond to the legacy of past wrongs? Arendt and Jaspers agree on conceiving collective responsibility in terms of a liability predicated on political association that does not impute blame. However, they disagree on the value of the sentiment of guilt in politics. For Jaspers, a spreading consciousness of guilt through public communication leads to purification of the polity. But Arendt rejects guilt in politics, where publicity distorts it into a sentimentality that dulls citizens' responsiveness to the world. These contrasting responses are employed to consider how members of a ‘perpetrating community’ might be drawn into a politics of reconciliation. I suggest that Arendt's conception of political responsibility, conceived in terms of an ethic of worldliness, opens the way for understanding how ‘ordinary citizens' might assume political responsibility for past wrongs while resisting their identification as guilty subjects by a discourse of restorative reconciliation.

The 'German Question' dominated much of modern European history. In 1945, Germany was defeated and conquered. Yet, the Second World War did not destroy the foundations of her economic power. Dr TamAis VonyA³ revisits Germany's remarkable post-war revival, tracing its roots not to liberal economic reforms and the Marshall Plan, but to the legacies of the war that endowed Germany with an enhanced industrial base and an enlarged labour force. He also shows that Germany's liberal market economy was in reality an economy of regulated markets, controlled prices and extensive state intervention. Using quantitative analysis and drawing on a rich historiography that has remained, in large part, unknown outside of Germany, this book reassesses the role of economic policy and the importance of wartime legacies to explain the German growth miracle after 1945 and the sharply contrasting experiences of East and West Germany.

ability to draw clear connections between the past and the present was one of A. J. P. Taylor's greatest strengths as a historian, lending his work a continuing significance. This is true despite the fact that, in his writings, Taylor was often contemptuous of attempts to draw 'lessons' from history. cIn my opinion,' he declares in one of his famous Ford lectures, 'we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behavior. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction.'1 This professed reluctance to draw direct lessons from history sprang largely, he explains, from his conviction that 'most things in history happen by accident.'2 He may have actually believed this, and much of his writing does betray an amused detachment about the foibles of past statesmen. But Taylor was too much of an activist consistently to adopt such an agnostic historicism. For the man who remained politically engaged throughout his career, who appeared on many public platforms and on television, and who wrote historical articles in the press, there was no easy distinction between the historian and the public intellectual, between analyst and advocate. This general observation is especially true when dealing with Taylor's writings on the Germans. Kathleen Burk is correct to consider the German question the central factor in Taylor's view of history.3 One could go further and say that the German question was the link between Taylor's view of the past and his concerns about the present and the future. It is no coincidence, for example, that his most important works on the German question in European history were written in the fifteen years after the Second World War, when that question was particularly acute in contemporary politics. Indeed, all his treatments of Germany are suffused with the concerns of the time. Although his historical works dealt primarily with the crucial decades between 1848 and the First World War, he never forgot the contemporary implications of the German question for the post-1945 world.

In this compelling narrative of antisemitism in German thought, Paul proposes a fresh view of the topic. Beginning with an examination of the attitudes of Martin Luther, he challenges distinctions between theologically derived (medieval) and secular, racial (modern) antisemitism, arguing that there is an unbroken chain of antisemitic feeling between the two periods. Rose persuasively demonstrates that for almost all [German revolutionary thinkers of the right and left], the German Question was ensnarled in the Jewish Question, and that a deep kinship between left and right was expressed in the loaded opposition between Deutschtum and Judentum.--Robert Alter, New Republic The suggestion of the title of Paul Rose's imposing book that Kant, the patron saint of liberal humanitarianism, was in fact the initiator of an important, and perhaps the crucial, strand in German antisemitism may come as something of a shock. But for this and for a number of other, more comprehensive, propositions, Paul Lawrence has assembled a powerful, if rather single-minded case.--Anthony Quinton, New York Review of Books An intensely interesting, learned, and combative book.--Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Times Literary Supplement

Washington and Bonn both believed until the late 1950s that the German question could be resolved only by the German people exercising their right to self-determination through free elections and that only then would conditions for European détente exist. During the 1960s, however, the views of the two governments increasingly diverged. The fact that the Federal Republic of Germany was acting to some extent as a “gatekeeper” obstructed American work for détente because the German insistence on the primacy of reunification ran counter to Washington's demand for at least temporary recognition of the status quo in Europe.

The ‘German Question’ has been a central problem of international relations in Europe since long before the end of the Second World War. Historically, the idea of German national unity was never universally accepted; it always posed problems. Arguments about the precise meaning of ‘Germany’ did not begin in 1945. For over three hundred years there has been no period when Germany has not to some degree formed an essential part of the European system of states, either through formal alliances or through the more indirect exertion of power. The German Question emerged as a wider European issue with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which gave an international legal framework to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, a fragmented grouping of territories large and small, under varied sovereignty or foreign influence. A neutralized central Europe, without a focus of political power, remained a first principle for the preservation of peace until the beginning of the nineteenth century. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, after the collapse of Napoleon’s policy of European hegemony, the Great Powers again agreed on a rearrangement of German states in a new, looser grouping, the German Confederation, which they would guarantee.KeywordsForeign PolicyFederal RepublicGerman StateGerman PeoplePeace MovementThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

For many decades after the end of World War II, the unresolved German question was a significant factor in the foreign policy of Germany, especially in relation to the USSR and the countries of the socialist camp. The article analyzes the positions of the Federal Chancellor regarding the East German regime and reunification initiatives based on neutral status. Foreign policy planning in the German question of Adenauer is viewed through the prism of relations with the USSR and Western allies. The German Chancellor’s own policy and his proposals for reunification are investigated. As a result, on the basis of the analysis, an assessment is made of Adenauer's policy on the German question, its significance for the subsequent reunification of 1990.

The German question and Europe Vienna 1815 - the quest for stability economic progress and political failure German unity - first attempt 1870-1871 the German question in war and peace the nemesis of dictatorship Germany in the Cold War the German question 1989-1990 - a dream come true.

The German Question and Other German Questions

<Online Only>This chapter examines how post-war Europe was reconstituted through a new regional geopolitics of inter-state relations, an acknowledgement of the interdependence of internal and external domains of state action, and a change in the abstract meaning of sovereignty. Materially, inter-state relations in Europe were reconstituted through the response to the ‘German question’, extraneous factors of Cold War superpower rivalry, and the project of European integration. This was supported by constitutional developments. Domestically, these developments involved commitments to internationalism and Europeanism and the turn to counter-majoritarian institutions, disconnecting state sovereignty from popular sovereignty. Regionally, they involved the constitutionalization of the European Economic Community (EEC), cementing a functionalist ideology and depoliticization through juridical and technical avenues.</Online Only>

(1992). 1955: The Austrian state treaty and the German question. Diplomacy & Statecraft: Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 494-522.

Understanding and, after the unification of Germany in 1990, rethinking the process of evolution of the German Question, in particular its main components, is an important scholarly task. The origins of the modern power of Germany, its desire to establish itself as a world power, were formed in 1945–1990 with the active participation of the United States and Great Britain. Therefore, the assessment of the development of the German Question by researchers from these countries is important for its understanding. The study of the problem contributes to a comprehensive analysis of the post-war international policy of Great Britain and the United States as well as their modern relations with the FRG. Special attention to the German Question in the publications of the United Kingdom and the United States was shown at the stages of its qualitative transformation: the creation of the FRG, its rearmament, the implementation of a new Eastern policy, as well as the unification of Germany. Each of these events required a prompt response from the academic and expert community and the development of a balanced model of foreign policy response. Anglo-American historiography of the German question has not previously been the object of a special study by Russian historians. The purpose of this article is to analyze the main aspects of the German problem study in the works of British and American researchers. The article identifies four key aspects of the German question, around which the study of the problem in Great Britain and the United States was concentrated. The historiographic core consists of the works devoted to the issues of denazification, West Germany rearmament, Ostpolitik, as well as the unification of Germany and its consequences. Each aspect study was of particular importance and relevance for determining the further foreign policy strategy of the Western countries in Europe, mainly in relation to the FRG and USSR. Changes in approaches to evaluation of the aspects during the post-war period are analyzed. Particular attention is paid to identifying and studying stable geopolitical models that accompanied the perception of the German question by academic and expert communities of Great Britain and the United States: the concepts of “Finlandization” and “Mitteleuropa”, as well as the “Rapallo complex”.

the extensive literature on the development of Austria's policy towards the German Question following the conservative restoration in Vienna in late 1 848, historians have always stressed that the advent of Prince Felix Schwarzenberg as minister-president of a new and vigorous government in Vienna represented a watershed, the beginning of an ill-fated Austrian offensive in Germany that would ultimately lead to the defeat of 1866. This view was congenial to writers on both the Austrian and the Prussian sides of the 'struggle for supremacy'. It gave the defenders of Bismarck a plausible case of self-defence for his aggressive policies towards Austria; and it provided Austrian historians with their own Realpolitiker, a statesman with sufficient stature as a realist that he could be compared with Bismarck.1 An English historian

In September 1987, after more than a six-year delay, East German leader Erich Honecker made a long-awaited visit to the Federal Republic. The visit — the first ever by a head of state of the GDR — was an historic event. Despite the fact that the FRG does not officially recognize the GDR as a foreign country, Honecker was accorded the honors of a visiting head of state. Thus the visit represented an important step — at least symbolically — in the GDR’s quest for international recognition. At the same time, it symbolized the growing rapprochement between the two German states in recent years and prompted speculation in both East and West about a ‘new German Question’.KeywordsForeign PolicyFederal RepublicGerman StateEuropean SecurityPeace MovementThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.