German Angst

This chapter analyzes contemporary fears in the post-unification Berlin Republic since 1990. It first historicizes the slogan of a “German angst” that is often used to diagnose a German collective pathology. Instead, the chapter argues that the concept emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as part of a conservative critique of the West German environmental and peace movements. The chapter then analyzes the emergence of deterritorialized fears that were no longer primarily bound to a national context. These deterritorialized fears manifested themselves above all in the discussion of unified Germany’s place in the world, especially with respect to the question of German participation in military interventions. Similar fears emerged with respect to the increasing presence of the world in Germany—that is, with respect to immigrants and refugees. The chapter then seeks to locate the current mobilization of such fears by right-wing populist parties in the longer history of fear in postwar Germany. Right-wing populism is part of, and draws on, an expressive emotional culture, but it turns these fears against an ethnic or religious “other,” and at times also against the democratic state itself. The chapter concludes with a reflection on what a democratic politics of emotion might look like.