State Symbols. The Quest for Legitimacy in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, 1949-1959
Year: 2003
Type: article
Abstract: The past decade has witnessed a trend in the historiography of postwar Germany toward examining the East and West as two halves of a whole, and treating the GDR and the FRG not as states that happen to lie next to each other, but rather as inextricably related entities that cannot be understood without reference to both.In this view, their history as separate states should not be seen as parallel lines, but rather as a double helix, folding over on itself, impossible to separate without distortion.Jeffrey Herf's book Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanies, is perhaps the best-known illustration of the trend, but other historians have been using the insight to great advantage.This approach is used by Margarete Myers Feinstein in her illuminating study of the adoption of national symbols as tools for state legitimation in the postwar Germanies.Examining both states together is particularly helpful, even necessary for Feinstein's theme, because the adoption of many potent symbols in both East and West Germany had much to do with placing themselves in contrast to their other half.The method, while a wise and welcome choice, is not without problems.Often, truly satisfying comparisons cannot be made because the data available simply is not comparable.In Feinstein's work, as in that of so many others, the East German material available to the author does not correspond with that collected for West Germany, as richly as the historian would like.The effort to place the two Germanies side by side, then, ultimately tends to portray the East as an insubstantial shadow compared to the robustly concrete West Germany that emerges.While unfortunate, this imbalance is not the author's fault, and Feinstein's meticulous research transcends the inherent limitations of the evidence.The subject Feinstein has chosen seems especially thought-provoking at present, when questions of nationalism, nation-building, patriotism and national identity hover in the air everywhere.This study, for example, invites reflections on the meaning of the U.S. flag, ubiquitous these days as a nonverbal statement, yet of exactly what, we cannot be sure.The study of any nation's symbols and how they reflect, successfully or otherwise,
Source: German Studies Review
DOI: 10.2307/1432812
Language: English
Topic: German History and Society
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W374041251