Sean A. Forner. German Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democratic Renewal

Scholars have long portrayed Germany’s reconstruction after World War II as a tale of ambivalent democratization. The American occupation, so the story goes, successfully imposed parliaments and elections, but miserably failed to inspire respect for core democratic tenets, such as pluralism, formal equality, and engaged citizenry. Countless Germans continued to adhere to Nazi statism and racism, unmoved by the prominence of former Nazis in public institutions; only in the 1960s did a new generation call for a serious and reflective commitment to democracy. This narrative remained especially powerful among historians of ideas, who paid little attention to postwar democratic thinkers and theories. If postwar Germany was but a shell of a “true” democratic society, what value could possibly be found in studying its intellectual foundations? Sean A. Forner’s German Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democratic Renewal: Culture and Politics after 1945 joins a growing body of scholarship that offers a refreshing challenge to this story. It grippingly surveys a galaxy of scholars and journalists who spent the occupation years (1945–1949) crafting intellectual support for a new democratic society. According to Forner, this period witnessed a blast of intellectual energy, as diverse thinkers furiously theorized and discussed democratic politics. These “engaged democrats,” as he calls them, organized conferences, founded magazines, and initiated a variety of political campaigns (for example, in effort to shape the electoral process in local state constitutions). Forner mourns that this wave of activity rapidly declined with the onset of the Cold War, as the Communist regime in the East and the conservative republic of the West marginalized these thinkers. But, he insists, these democratic thinkers left an ideological legacy that would inspire democratic Germans for decades.

Communism · Democracy · Nazism · Political culture · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies