13 - Identity Politics and European Integration: The Case of Germany

Summary

“We do not want a German Europe, but a European Germany.” This famous quote by the novelist Thomas Mann from the interwar period has remained the mantra of the German political elites ever since the catastrophe of World War II. To be a “good German” means nowadays to be a “good European” and to wholeheartedly support European integration. To be a “good European German” also means to have finally overcome the country's militarist and nationalist past and to have learned the right lessons from history.

The political elites of the Federal Republic of Germany have thoroughly Europeanized the German national identity since the 1950s. This Europeanization of German collective identity explains to a large degree why all German governments since Konrad Adenauer was chancellor have embraced European integration—from the Treaty of Rome in 1957 to the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997. Since the late 1950s, there has been an elite consensus in support of European integration based on a federalist model—the “United States of Europe.” This federalist consensus has remained quite stable despite drastic changes in Germany's power status in Europe and the world. It is strongly linked to the Europeanized national identity, and it accounts for continued German support for European integration, even though the end of the Cold War and German unification should have challenged that elite consensus. After all, Germany was now free to choose its foreign policy orientation for the first time since 1945. Instead, the country opted for continuity.