German Politics and Society

Oddly enough, the Frankfurt School’s relationship to Columbia University

has been somewhat neglected by its many historians. It is not

hard to understand why the Horkheimer circle would have desired

to settle at Columbia, but it is peculiar that the Frankfurt School

would have received an invitation from Columbia. After all, why

would Columbia University’s conservative president, Nicholas Murray

Butler, and its sociology department extend an invitation to a

group of predominantly German-speaking social philosophers with

strong links to the Marxian left?

As the current debates about the headscarf in Germany and France

demonstrate, “Islamic” veils and headscarves garner attention for

minority women in Europe to an unparalleled degree.2 For centuries,

Islamic veils and headscarves have served as powerful symbols in

Orientalist discourse, functioning as markers of the Oriental woman’s

supposed eroticism as well as convenient tropes for philosophers.3

Recent kidnappers’ demands in Iraq that France lift its headscarf ban

demonstrate the complex appropriations of Muslim women for fundamentalist

discourses as well.

Although governing coalitions in Germany often win reelection,

many observers were surprised by the victory of the red-green coalition

in 2002. Earlier that year, the polls had shown strong support

for a potential coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)

and the Christian Social Union (CSU), together with the Free Democratic

Party (FDP). In the summer of 2002, however, the SPD and

the Greens began to gain ground; and finally, the red-green coalition

won the majority of seats in the election to the German parliament,

the Bundestag, on 22 September 2002.

Cultural diversity has been one the most pressing challenges to present-

day Germany. Issues of diversity and, its corollary from the perspective

of the recipient society, the practice of toleration—as opposed

to the personal attitude of tolerance—are being paradigmatically

debated around the fate of Muslims. Although not new, Muslims

presence and public claims, such as the claim for legal recognition of

Islam and religious instruction in public schools, have undoubtedly

raised the issue of diversity anew. Some recent events, such as the

“Ludin case,” a German teacher of Afghan descent who fought the

federal state of Baden-Wurttemberg to wear a hijab in class, is a telling

example (see Beverly Weber’s article examining the case in this issue

of German Politics and Society). Similarly to the debate raging over

headscarves in France, this case seems to point to the “Muslim” as an

important figure of the stranger, understood as symbol of group

mediation, of the group’s inner and outer boundaries.1 But, unlike the

headscarf affair in France, where pupils are at the center stage of the

debate, the case of teachers in Germany bears witness to a different

type of stranger as outlined by Simmel in terms of spatial and symbolic

position within the group. Indeed, he/she is a stranger “from

within.”2 As such, Muslim growing and enduring presence in Germany

showcases practical problems encountered with the “management

of diversity” within some state institutions. Looking at the assessment of these dilemmas not only points to conflicting normative

models of social organization, but also puts in the hot seat those

who, to paraphrase Dubet, carry out le travail sur autrui (“work on the

other”), professionals activities, which aim at explicitly transforming

the “stranger.”

Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, eds., The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Jan-Werner Müller, ed., Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002)

Kenneth Dyson and Klaus Goetz, eds., Germany, Europe, and the Politics of Constraint (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)

Review by Craig Parsons

Todd Kontje, German Orientalisms (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004)

Review by Katrin Sieg

Paul Betts, The Authority of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004)

Review by Kathleen James-Chakraborty

Nick Thomas, Protest Movements in 1960s West Germany: A Social History of Dissent and Democracy (Oxford: Berg, 2003)

Review by Jeremy Varon

Jeannette Z. Madarász, Conflict and Compromise in East Germany, 1871-1989: A Precarious Stability (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003)

Review by Peter C. Caldwell