Wie denn auch?!
“The post-war period is finally history. […] The era of the Federal Republic has ended not with its dissolution, but through a progressive hollowing out of long-established norms that once formed the core of its memory politics. […] The nation’s pluralistic culture is being subordinated to a Staatsräson which is increasingly at odds with its post-fascist consensus and opening massive rifts in German society.”
SO GOES THE THESIS underlying Der grosse Kanton: Rise & Fall of the Federal Republic of Germany, a symposium held in Zürich on the 5th and 6th of December this year. Organized by Anselm Franke, Philip Ursprung, and Emily Dische-Becker (a member of the Diasporist’s advisory board), as well as Medico International, the symposium brought together more than thirty scholars, writers, and intellectuals representing a wide variety of disciplines, to offer an assessment of the state of affairs in Germany.
Since its conclusion, as the speakers might have foretold, the symposium has become the subject of a media frenzy. Many of the reports seemed to object to the conference’s concept altogether, without seriously confronting the analyses offered: willfully misconstruing speakers’ comments to paint a picture of a gathering of like-minded pro-Palestine activists, for example, who parroted left-wing conspiracies without meaningful dissent. These same papers suggested the symposium’s claims of the narrowing of free speech and the threats of cancellation in Germany were overblown, despite a long and well-documented record.
In the coming weeks, the Diasporist will be publishing a selection of contributions shared at the conference. Some of these texts were delivered in response to the specific prompts of panels — taking stock of the state of the media’s insistent disavowal of reality, the unease emanating from Germany’s remembrance culture, the guardrails applied to academic discourse, and more — while others offered broader diagnoses of the Federal Republic’s past and future. We will also be releasing excerpted transcriptions of discussions that followed panelists’ contributions as well as new pieces building upon ideas laid out at the symposium. Although many of the contributors agree on the contours of the crisis, their frameworks, approaches, proposals, and explanations vary. By publishing these texts in English and German, the Diasporist aims to allow a greater audience to engage with the speakers’ words directly, unmediated by external commentary.
For international readers, these interventions can be read as a case study: the Federal Republic of Germany — its history, demographics, culture, and psyche — is of course unique. But as an exemplar of liberalism, of Western democracy, and the largest economy in the EU, its fate has implications far beyond its borders.
“Wie denn auch?!” wrote one commentator in ZEIT about the conference, in reference to Germany’s actions after October 7. How, given the country’s history, could it have been otherwise? The question, perhaps inadvertently, illustrates the exact abdication of responsibility, lack of political imagination, and discursive limitations the speakers intended to challenge. “Germany finds itself in a political, economic, and intellectual crisis that is stubbornly of its very own making and a crystallizing feature of the decline of the post-war liberal world order,” wrote Emily Dische-Becker, in a memo to the participants. “We are here to refuse the lack of imaginable alternatives that accompany this crisis.”
As always, the Diasporist welcomes responses from our readers, written in good faith. Please submit your letters to [email protected].
The series is supported in part by the Master’s program in Cultural Critique of the Zurich University of Arts (ZHdK).
