Proliferating Angst

Abstract

This chapter examines proliferating fears in the wake of the student movement and during the 1970s. This period saw the establishment of an expressive emotional culture within West German culture at large. The proliferation of fears was therefore not simply a reaction to the onset of the economic crisis in 1973 but rather resulted from broader sociocultural changes. The open and public expression of emotions increasingly appeared as an indication of a healthy and authentic personality, partly as a result of the considerable expansion of psychotherapy and the emergence of a “therapeutic society.” Fear also no longer appeared as a predominantly negative emotion but rather as a reflection of a “new subjectivity.” The new expressive emotional culture was practiced and enacted especially within a left-alternative milieu. But it eventually shaped mainstream society as well. The chapter also analyzes the emotionalization of public life with respect to the public reaction to the TV series Holocaust in 1979. This allowed large segments of German society for the first time to express publicly their empathy with the victims of Nazism. Finally, the chapter focuses on the escalation of political fears in response to the left-wing terrorism of the Red Army Faction. The dialectics of political fears reached its apex in the late 1970s.