A Berlin Republic

Writings on Germany

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by Jurgen Habermas,

Translated by Steven Rendall,

Introduction by Peter Uwe Hohendahl

University of Nebraska Press

Due/Published November 1997, 160 pages, paper

ISBN 0803273061

This is a collection of Habermas's recent writings on the new, united Germany. Looking both towards the past and the future, he addresses the consequences of German history, the challenges and perils of the post-Wall era, and Germany's place in today's Europe. As an analyst of contemporary German political and intellectual life, he criticized recent efforts by historians and political commentators to 'normalize' and, in part, to understate the horrors of modern German history. He insists that 1945--not 1989--remains the crucial turning point in German history, since in was then that Weat Germany repudiated certain aspects of its cultural and political past and turned toward Western democratic ideals. Similarly Habermas deplores the renewal of nationalist sentiment in Germany and throughout Europe and argues for heightened emphasis on trans-European and global democritic intstitutions.