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German Democracy in the 1950's*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Otto Kirchheimer
Otto Kirchheimer
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

How stable, how deep, or how genuine is German democracy? The only answers we can provide at present are almost embarrassingly simple; but if instead of trying to arrive at answers we go into the further questions that the questions above raise, the picture becomes more complex—and more interesting.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , January 1961 , pp. 254 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1961

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References

1 See the official report of the Army Commissioner, Drucksache 1796, April 8, 1960, Deutscher Bundestag, 3. Wahlperiode.

2 Schmidchen, Gerhardt, Die Befragte Nation, Freiburg, 1959Google Scholar, Table 7.

3 Ibid., Table 44.

4 The working of the system has recently been described in an interview by its main architect, Stein, Gustav, manager of the Federation of German Industry (Der Spiegel, November 4, 1959, pp. 22–31).Google Scholar The implications of a government bill, introduced to implement, at least in form, Art. 21 of the Basic Law, requiring party funds to be made public, have been thoroughly and penetratingly discussed by Eschenburg, Theodor, in “Das Geld der Parteien,” Der Monat, May 1960, p. 31.Google Scholar

5 Some data on absence of religious differences in mobility patterns may be found in Janowitz, Morris, “Social Stratification and Social Mobility in West Germany,” American Journal of Sociology, LXIV, No. 1 (July 1958), pp. 6, 15–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Ample material on this question, both official and critical, may be found in the series of interesting speeches edited by Flechtheim, O., Bund und Länder, Berlin, 1959.Google Scholar

7 The basis and practice of denominational quotas are discussed in Ellwein, Thomas, Klerikalismus in der deutschen Politik, Munich, 1955.Google Scholar In a particular instance the courts may annul some extreme consequence of the denominational quota system as it affects public institutions. Cf. the decision of the Constitutional Court of January 29, 1960 (Quristenzeitung, 1960, p. 407), granting a student unaffiliated with either the Protestant or the Catholic Church access to the facilities offered by the teachers' colleges in her home state that were organized on a strict denominational basis; but most of the denominational quota arrangements, especially in the field of public office, operate in spheres safely outside court control.

8 Altmann's, RüdigerDas Erbe Adenauers (Stuttgart, 1960, pp. 114–15)Google Scholar, imaginative in its critical sections, but full of platitudes in regard to recommendations for Germany's future policies, contains some interesting hints on how the CDU, emphasizing purely practical and tactical issues, has always managed to keep in the good graces of the Catholic Church, and how the SPD's attempts to find an ideological meeting ground never got to first base.

9 Official German sources estimate the number of agents from East Germany and the Soviet bloc working in West Germany and West Berlin at 16,000 within any given year, with 80 per cent of them in the service of the East German regime. The annual quota of losses, including both defectors and those apprehended by the authorities, is between 2,400 and 2,600. If one adds to their number the clandestine agents of other states, one arrives at figures which certainly are higher than those for the bona fide West German political personnel. In magnitude alone this is a new phenomenon inevitably contributing its share—as a sheer matter of protection—to the all-pervasive official character of German politics of our day. The figures are taken from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 29, 1960, p. 2.

10 Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts, VIII (1958), p. 51.

11 Ibid., III (1954), p. 58; VI (1957). p. 132.

12 World Politics, VI, No. 3 (April 1954), p. 311.

13 There is a substantial body of administrative court decisions and learned comment discussing which elements of the examination process “are not accessible to legal evaluation.” See, e.g., the decision of the Verwaltungsgerichtshof Bebenhausen, reprinted in Juristenzeitung (1959), p. 67.

14 Frohner, Rudolf, “Die Deutschen und der Rechtsstaat,” Die neue Gesellschaft, No. 6, 1959.Google Scholar

15 For a more pessimistic view, see Arndt, Adolf, Das nichterfüllte Grundgesetz, Tübingen, 1960.Google Scholar

16 One of Germany's younger political critics and poets (Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “landessprache,” Frankfurt, 1960) has fixed the slogan's place in the contemporary German universe as follows:

hier geht es aufwaerts,

hier ist es gut sein,

wo es rückwaerts aufwärts geht,

hier schiesst der leitende herr den leitenden

herrn mit dem gesangbuch ab,

hier führt der leichtbeschädigte mit dem

schwerbeschädigten krieg,

hier heisst es unerbittlich nett zueinander

sein

17 A balanced picture of the various elements in the consolidation process may be found in Richert, Ernst, “Zur Frage der Konsolidierung des Regimes in der DDR,” Neue Gesellschaft, VII (May-June 1960), pp. 216–22.Google Scholar

18 The fact itself is not in dispute; cf. Markmann, Heinz, “Die Kaufkraft in der Sovjetzone,” in WWI Mitteilungen, XII (1959), pp. 60–68.Google Scholar

19 According to official West German statistics, the number of refugees from the DDR decreased from a high of 331,390 in 1953 (the year of the revolt) to 143,917 in 1959; but the figures for the first eight months of 1960 again increased to 120,514 as against 98,094 for the same period in 1959, with 20,285 in May 1960, at the height of the collectivization campaign, as against 9,803 in February before its start. The official DDR figures for migration to the DDR from the Federal Republic were 63,076 in 1959 and 26,136 for the first six months of 1960. In spite of the noticeable impact of the collectivization campaign, the ratio of 1:3 to 1:4 for West-East migrations is smaller than the one which obtained at the beginning or the middle of the 1950's. The figure, though, is swelled by the vast contingent of returnees to the DDR—about two-thirds of the total—who had originally gone West and for one reason or another preferred to go back. Genuine migration from the Federal Republic to the DDR remains at a low level.

20 This point is specially emphasized in Eschenburg, Theodore, Die deutsche Frage die Verfassungsprobleme der Wiedervereinigung, Munich, 1959, p. 23Google Scholar, a thorough and dispassionate analysis of both domestic and inter-German problems pertaining to the various reunification proposals.

21 This opinion seems to be shared by Grosser, A., La Démocratie de Bonn, 1949–1957 (Paris, 1958, p. 263)Google Scholar, the most informative of recent outside interpretations of the Federal Republic (which has the added advantage of a superb bibliography). The recent “deviation” of Karl Jaspers, clearly announcing that “Liberty has a higher priority than Reunification,” while upholding the quest for re-establishment of political freedom in the DDR, writes reunification off as both an impossible and an illegitimate attempt to restore the Bismarck Empire. In addition to its moral courage, the formula may have some foreign policy advantage by diminishing both the need and the possibility for USSR pressure on Western Germany. Yet it may be an altogether unrealistic means of arresting the Sovietization of the DDR, even if it were to include a mutually acceptable modus vivendi in regard to West Berlin. “Reconversion” of the DDR to the Finnish model may simply be incompatible with the bloc commitments of the USSR.

22 The full impact of the communications revolution in Germany is still to come; the existing regional broadcasting organizations are semi-independent, public, non-profit organizations that handle programing as a delicate balancing act of the various cultural, political, and religious interests. The need for new television channels is seized upon by both the federal government and those in pursuit of hitherto virtually untapped sources of private profit to introduce—the Constitutional Court permitting—a heavier dose of commercialism along with more stringent centralized political controls.

23 Two of the more trenchant criticisms of present attitudes are worth being retained: Ridder, Helmuth, “Die veruntreute Freiheit,” Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, V, No. 3 (1960), pp. 223–27Google Scholar; and Gablentz, O. H. von der, Die Versäumte Reform, Cologne and Opladen, 1960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Even the “paper” aspect has changed; somehow the unions—in spite of some 1956 legislative effort—have never been able to catch up with the effects of concentration and changes in the legal structure of enterprises. Carried through in regard to many enterprises in the steel and coal industry, these transformations had the intended side-effect of postponing codetermination still further. Many an enterprise, if continuing to retain some of its former aspects, did so by sufferance rather than by acknowledged legal title.

25 Even that indefatigable propagandist of the so-called “free market economy,” Minister of Economics Erhardt, admits now—at least for electoral purposes—the psychological and organizational shortcomings of the present setup. In what are probably intentionally vague terms, he calls for “a qualitative reorientation which on the basis of a concrete image creates a new order of priorities and new yardsticks for a balanced society.” From his speech at the Karlsruhe 1960 CDU Party convention, as reprinted in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 4, 1960, p. 11.