Central Europe debate
The Central European debate dealt with the question of whether the future of the Federal Republic could lie in NATO or whether a path to neutrality would be feasible. The dispute ended with the German reunification in 1989.
history
The central European debate had intellectual roots in such controversial sources and authors as the Morgenthau Plan , Vansittartism , the Stalin Notes , the Rapacki Plan and Otto von Habsburg .
As early as the late 1970s, a relatively pronounced culture of remembrance had developed around the legacy of the Habsburg monarchy , especially in Friuli . The imperial monarchy was since Friedrich Naumann's work of the same model as the political construct Central Europe .
The Czech writer Milan Kundera published his essay Un Occident kidnappé in the French magazine Le débat in 1983 , which was quickly translated into English and German and was published in Germany under the title Die Tragödie Zentraluropas . With his contribution, the discussion, which had been simmering for a long time in several countries and in very different political intellectual groups, found a popular - and also known in the "West" - carrier. However, the discussion must have been under way in 1982, for example György Konrád's anti- politics. Central European Meditations was completed that year before it was first published in German in 1985.
The publication “The Middle East” by the Slavist Karl Schlögel from 1986 took up the existing debate and made Schlögel one of its best-known sponsors. He argued that the outcome of World War II and the Cold War had split Europe in half. This division wrongly determines the political thinking of the Federal Republic. It is therefore necessary to think in new categories and look for alternatives to the threat that Germany faces from its one-sided ties to America. The now almost forgotten legacy of the two German monarchies of Prussia and Austria , whose gaze was directed primarily to the east ( East Central Europe ), is an interesting alternative to the western link .
Content
The main topics of the debate were: peace movement , stationing medium-range missiles in Europe, glasnost and perestroika , neutrality, European integration, German special route, German reunification , increased awareness of Central European writers in the Federal Republic, such as Václav Havel and Milan Kundera , György Konrád , Zdeněk Mlynář and Miklós Molnár .
Individual evidence
- ^ Raimondo Strassoldo: Limits and Systems. Sociological thoughts on Central Europe , in: Hanns Albert Steger, Renate Morell: a ghost goes around ...: Central Europe , T. Eberhard, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-926777-00-1
- ^ Philipp Ther: Milan Kundera and the Renaissance of Central Europe. In: European History Thematic Portal , 2007, accessed on September 17, 2012
- ↑ Hans-Peter Burmeister, Frank Boldt and György Mészáros (eds.): Central Europe - Dream or Trauma? Reflections on the self-image of a region , Bremen 1988.
literature
- Alexander Gallus: The neutralists. Advocate of a united Germany between East and West 1945–1990. Contributions to the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties, Volume 127 . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 2001, ISBN 3-7700-5233-1 .
- Albrecht Behmel : The Central European Debate in the Federal Republic of Germany: Between Peace Movement, Cultural Identity and the German Question . Ibidem-Verlag, Hannover 2011, ISBN 978-3-8382-0201-3 .