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The Paradoxical Republic: West Germany 1957 - 1982 Print E-mail

PD Dr. Philipp Gassert

Philipp Gassert's project re-examines the history of the middle phase of the old Federal Republic of Germany from the last years of the Adenauer era to the end of the SPD-FDP coalition in 1982. This epoch was shaped by a central paradox: On the one hand, West Germany’s institutions became more settled. On the other hand social relations became more fluid. Against this backdrop, a Keynesian-reformist consensus spurred an expansion of the welfare state, governmental bureaucracies, and the Federal Republic's physical infrastructure. The "provisional state" envisioned by the Federal Republic's founders now became permanent. Moreover, West Germans had for all practical purposes come to accept the division of Germany into two rival states.

While West Germany’s institutional landscape received its permanent outlines, society was more than ever in flux. Old political and social milieus disappeared.
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Industry became less important event hough it kept its role as a creator of wealth through export. Parties, labor unions, churches continued to dominate the political decision making-process,yet they were less successful in serving as "social glue" binding people together. Whereas in West German politics (as in most other Western countries)faith in technocratic planning was at its height, the assumptions upon which planning rested quickly became obsolete. The democratization of West Germans,which was intimately tied to the breakthrough of consumer society, made all encompassing schemes less successful.

The various calls for reform that fed into the powerful extra-parliamentary opposition of the 1960s and early 1970s were increasingly supplanted by "reform from above." Whereas social movements had a visible impact, the overall tendency was to socialize and integrate these reform impulses. Thus, in West Germany the "critical culture" of the 1960s and1970s did not provoke a successful neo-conservative reaction (as was the casein Britain and the U.S.). Rather, it led to the etatization ("Verstaatlichung")of reform with a strong consensus orientation remaining intact. Taking the interconnectedness between the ossification of institutions, the etatization of reform, and the democratization of society as its focus, this book attempts to untangle Germany’s "special path" to postmodernity.