WERNER BOHLEBER

The Presence of the Past—Xenophobia and

Rightwing Extremism in the Federal Republic
of Germany: Psychoanalytic Reflections
1. The Presence of the Past

Since 1991 we have been experiencing a wave of violence

in the Federal Republic of Germany, motivated by ultraright
ideas and directed against foreigners and asylum seekers, who
are insulted, physically attacked, and murdered, their homes
and houses set on fire. These are not isolated, single acts. They
flourish in a climate that has been brought about by the
extreme right. Serious economic and social problems arising
from German unification, the failure to find a political solu-
tion to the question of asylum seekers, concessions made to
xenophobic sentiments, as well as the refusal to produce
legislation on immigration have led to an increase of an
already present hostility to strangers. In the recent elections in
Germany fear of being swamped by foreigners was the main
motive of those voting for parties of the right. The influence of
economic uncertainty, unemployment, and impoverishment
on voting behaviour is generally overestimated. Rather, a
xenophobic mentality is always a strong sounding board for
right-wing parties and provides for young people especially a
consensual focus for a shift to the right. Hatred of strangers is
also the unifying motive for most violence among youth.
Eighty percent of them belong neither to extreme right-wing
organizations or the skinheads. Violence has its origins within
the mainstream of society. Anti-Semitism has also flared up
again. It has all the characteristics of a defense mechanism
against guilt. Ultra-right youths who defile Jewish cemeteries
and attempt to destroy monuments and memorial places are
trying to erase the memory of Nazi crimes. They want to
remove this blemish from Germany.
American Imago,Vol.52,No. 3,329-544. O 1995 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

329
330 The Presence of the Past

Apart from these right-extremist attempts to enforce a

reinterpretation of history, there is also a social and political
dispute in progress, nourished by the wish many people have
to make a clean break with the past and rekindle a positive
patriotism. Instead of acknowledging historical truth, accept-
ing guilt, and converting it into political responsibility, many
politicians are trying to offer positive national values to people.
Unity, which is still missing after reunification of the two
German states, is to be brought about by means of a new,
historically less contradictory national identity. The most re-
cent example of this is the inauguration of the Central
Memorial in Berlin. Chancellor Kohl insisted on an enlarged
replica of Kathe Kollwitz's sculpture, "Mother with her dead
son." The artist had created this piece of work in the nineteen-
thirties, while mourning for her son, who had been killed in
the First World War. On the pedestal, on which the sculpture
now stands, the following inscription was engraved: "To the
victims of war and despotism." This supports that concept of
"victim" which covers up differences and names those who
were killed in one breath with those who killed them. However,
the "schism in our memory" (Kosselleck) cannot be allowed to
cover up the contradiction between SS-perpetrators and the
people they murdered. After a long political and social dis-
pute, a sign was finally put up on the outer wall of the
memorial, naming the various groups of victims.
The loudly proclaimed wish for a clean break with the past
shows, on the other hand, how strongly guilt feelings are still at
work underneath the surface. Memories must fade and many
would prefer to forget the Holocaust completely, instead of
recognizing the criminal past and converting it into political
and social responsibility. These tendencies also become appar-
ent in the way immigrating strangers are treated and in the
animosity they encounter.
The "batde of remembrance" (Mitscherlich) is also the
field of psychoanalysis. In a painful process of remembering,
Germany psychoanalysts had to confess to their own involve-
ment in the Nazi regime. The silence had to be broken,
idealizations had to be taken back and the truth recognized,
before we were able to deal with the Nazi inheritance that is
 Werner Bohleber 331

still transgenerationally effective in psychoanalytic treatments.

The power of guilt feelings and the desire to cleanse often kill
the recognition of truth, and they are still impairing the ability
of the generations to talk openly and soberly with one another.
Speechlessness, shame, guilt, and pursuing accusations hinder
communications on both sides. In the meantime, members of
the second generation have to a large extent worked through
their political and family histories. Accepting guilt and con-
verting it into political and social responsibility also means not
withdrawing into one's therapy room but using the methods
and the means of psychoanalysis to take up a position on the
problems of our time, on irrational social phenomena and on
the structures underlying prejudice.
In the ongoing political discussion on right-extremism
among young people, the social liberalization and educational
reform after 1968 is blamed, in particular by the conservative
side, for the development of an "unrestrained violent youth." A
repression-free upbringing by parents and teachers as well as
"conflict pedagogics" are slandered as being without principles
and furthering aggressions. Return to the classical secondary
virtues of duty, cleanliness, and order are demanded. All of this
is also an attack on the image of man held by psychoanalysis
and the pedagogic ideals deduced from it, namely self-respon-
sibility, the ability to deal with conflicts and inner freedom. In
such a climate the renewed attack on Alexander and Margarete
Mitscherlich's book, The Inability to Mourn, did not come as a
surprise, since it had helped to break open the petrifaction of
German post-war society, by means of its diagnosis of contem-
porary history. With cynicism the attempt was made (Henscheid
in the F.A.Z. of 12.6.1993) to ridicule the necessity for mourn-
ing and the establishment of empathy, as well as put an end to
an attitude of remembering and thinking over Nazi times as
such. All this happened in a time when right-extremism and
xenophobic violence were flaring up again, posing the ques-
tion of how far missing empathy for refugees and the victims of
persecution, as well as the inability to tolerate strangers, is a
continuing expression of this inability to mourn. Psychoana-
lytical research into transgenerational identification shows that
this inability did not simply dissolve into fresh air, when the
332 The Presence of the Past

generation originally portrayed stood down. Xenophobia, anti-

Semitism, and nationalism are complex, multifariously deter-
mined phenomena, that can only be explained within the
framework of interdisciplinary cooperation. Although these
phenomena are socially determined and get their dynamics
mainly from social processes, a psychoanalytical description is
needed to understand the attraction which they have for the
individual and the extraordinary strong affects that are con-
nected to them. Anti-Semitism and xenophobia are a "social
disease" that has deep-seated roots in the unconscious. Al-
though important psychoanalytic studies have already been
done on anti-Semitism, not enough research on these phe-
nomena has been undertaken as yet. In particular, the psycho-
logical connection between xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and
modern nationalism has not yet been studied sufficiendy.
However, the present situation in Germany makes the analysis
of such relationships essential, so that the reasons for this
widespread xenophobic mentality can be found. In my lecture
I will try to point out some of the most important ones.

2. The Return of the Repressed in Current Xenophobia

German hostility and the excesses against foreigners and

asylum seekers cannot be explained away in terms of "normal"
modern social development, which supposedly prompts hostil-
ity towards strangers in other European countries as well as in
Germany. The Nazi past which has been denied and passed
over in silence, but which will not go away, constandy generates
a deep-seated memory blockage. This block is especially evi-
dent in the refusal of many Germans to empathize with the
fate of asylum seekers and refugees. Foreign commentators
have rightly identified a failure of moral education (D. Ben-
jamin 1993). Many Germans are losing the feeling that vio-
lence is unjust in itself and that every life—whether German or
foreign—has equal value and must be equally protected. In the
aftermath of the violent attacks, no word of sympathy for the
victims who had been attacked and injured was to be heard
from many political figures. Instead, they demanded a change
in the law on asylum and safeguards against abuse. Whether by
 Werner Bohleber 333

neglect or intent, xenophobic prejudices were stirred up and

the seeds of violence sown. Asylum seekers and refugees were
de-personalized and made into abstractions. Behind the "bo-
gus asylum seeker" it is not hard to discern the Nazi category
"Schmarotzer" ("parasite"). Work with patients has made psy-
choanalysts very familiar with the longevity and transmission of
Nazi introjections over several generations. They manifest
themselves in an inability and unwillingness to identify with
the weak, the sick, and the persecuted. Empathizing with the
fate of refugees and taking the threat to them of political
persecution, war, and terror seriously would mean an inward
confrontation with one's own history. Memory of the crimes of
the Nazis, the persecution and annihilation of Jews, Gypsies,
and other unpopular groups brings empathy for the situation
of asylum seekers and keeps it alive. It is an act of reparation.
Blocking off this memory produces hard-heartedness and lack
of sympathy, and results in many Germans fixating on a
paranoid-schizoid view of the world in which the victims are
made into the miscreants. They become a threat, against which
one tries to erect a "fortress of prosperity." Beland (1993) has
pointed out that the return of the repressed in current
xenophobia has strengthened the denial of what has hap-
pened in part of the population and has removed feelings of
guilt violendy. One's own hatefulness is located in the stranger
and one tries to destroy it there.

3. Xenophobia, Rivalry and Sibling Hatred

Xenophobia does not stem primarily from unpleasant

experiences with strangers. Hatred of strangers refers back to
the hater. Psychoanalytical research into the infant's fear of
strangers has shown that it is the quality of the maternal
relationship which determines whether a reaction of fear will
occur or whether the child is going to react with curiosity.
There is a reciprocal relationship between basic trust and the
fear of strangers. An unstable inner equilibrium and an
uncertain self-identity will result in an intensive fear of stran-
gers. It is one's own problem that leads to a defense reaction.
Since the stranger is different, unknown, and undefined,
334 The Presence of the Past

he forms a sort of container, into which familiar patterns and

characteristics are projected, turning him into an object of our
own world. In his study on "The Uncanny," Sigmund Freud
(1919) describes how the "secredy familiar" can change into
the uncanny. Out of the realm of the "uncanny familiar" Freud
extracts a variety of ideas the civilized person has already
overcome, repressed infantile complexes and primitive convic-
tions he has long laid aside. While repression has made them
strange and uncanny, meeting with the real stranger threatens
to destabilize this defense and dissolve our own solid bound-
aries. Thus the stranger represents an onslaught onto our
inner equilibrium. We distrust him, because he has left his
ancestral order, his home country. He reminds us of the
foreign territory within our own souls. Instead of bearing with
this destabilization, we tend to make the stranger responsible
for it. By changing him unconsciously into a border crosser, a
dangerous representative of the chaotic and the archaically
wild, we project all that onto him which we don't like about
ourselves. In his outward appearance we find an external
representation for those drives which we have never quite
succecded in taming in ourselves. In this way wc ease the
burden on our souls and change an inner conflict into an
outer one. For this reason strangers are accused of being lazy
and dirty, greedy and parasitic, living at the costs of others
cheating, being seductive and sexually violent. If we succeed in
banning the derivatives of these wishes out of our own inner
world and localizing the uncanny in the figure of the stranger,
we can persecute and control it in him and are free from it
ourselves. The result is a feeling of narcissistic integrity and
inner well-being, which, however, has a high price. The true
perception of reality, our fellow men, and our own inner world
is lost. A changed perception of reality develops, and it can no
longer be corrected by experience. It creates a false reality,
justifying rejection, hatred and aggression against strangers.
Thus fear of strangers changes into animosity towards stran-
gers.
So far I have abstracted from the fact that our personal
meeting with a stranger is embedded in social interaction and
group processes. What is strange and what is ethnic are socially
 Werner Bohleber 335

defined concepts and are exposed to complex social dynamics.

In the social and political sphere, projection is an effective and
quickly utilized individual and collective defense mechanism. I
want to demonstrate this by picking out one particular kind of
prejudice, a stereotype which is currently often put forward in
Germany, portraying the stranger as a rival. Thus, two-thirds of
a representative sample accused all foreigners of abusing the
social welfare system of the Federal Republic (Spiegel, 20.1.1992).
The refugees, it was held, get jobs and money, live at our
expense, and exploit us. In a group discussion with young
people the following arguments about foreigners and asylum
seekers were especially evident: "They do no work and they get
everything"; "they take homes from the Germans and the
Germans have to move out because of the asylum seekers"; "if
they have the vote here and can make decisions, the Germans
will soon have no say in their own country" (Leiprecht 1990,
268). Where perception is guided by prejudice, strangers are
seen as roaming the country like proud and well cared kings.
Our own oral wishes, greed, and exploitative impulses are
projected onto the strangers, who are looked after by the state
like adopted and apparendy favored children. Right-extremist
youths are like hordes of brothers making demands on mater-
nal authorities, which are not caring for them properly. Thus
the stranger is made into a sibling rival. At the individual level
the desire to get rid of siblings always forms a powerful uncon-
scious source which feeds hatred for foreigners. Foreigners as
unknown and strange creatures arouse deep-seated, primitive,
unresolved hostilities, which were originally directed against
younger siblings or against anyone else who was suspected of
wanting to infiltrate spheres regarded as the exclusive domain
which was theirs by right (Arlow 1992). In dreams and in the
symbolism of the primary process siblings are sometimes
represented as small, greedy animals. Thus it is no surprise
that in the debate on asylum-seekers and in the media the
collective symbols used for strangers and refugees include rats,
ants, and cockroaches, who are trying to invade the house in
masses. Cultural history shows that the outsider has always
been envisaged in a wide variety of cultures as a primitive
savage and cannibal. In my view, a proper understanding of
336 The Presence of the Past

xenophobia is only possible if we invoke this archaic level of

psychic functioning. In ethnic conflicts the image of a power-
ful primary object is activated in unconscious group fantasies,
providing security and sustenance but also devouring and
expelling. Oral envy and fantasies of oral-sadistic destruction
are also present, as is the wish to devour the stranger or to
expel him from the body, i.e. to rob him of his own identity
and assimilate him (E. Simmel 1945; 1946; Taguieff 1991).
This is reflected in language, e.g. when reference is made to a
"Franzosenfresser" or "Judenfresser" (a devourer of French-
men or Jews).
The present social and political arguments about the large
number of asylum seekers are bound up with the problems of
internal German unification. Instead of a feeling of mutual
solidarity the awareness of an opposition of East- and West-
German interests is beginning to predominate. A "fraternal"
struggle for economic distribution between East- and West
Germans is increasingly determining social reality. An illusory
overestimation of economic power bound up with a "D-Mark-
Nationalism" (Habermas) has given way to disappointment
and anger in the East and to fear of losing the level of
prosperity which has been attained in the West. The most
recent surveys show that the alienation between East- and West
Germans is growing rather than diminishing. Rivalry and
mutual dislike towards one another cannot be voiced openly;
rather, the social tensions strengthen the perception of for-
eigners from the point of view of oral provision, and make
them scapegoats for the conflicts over distributing benefits and
burdens and for narcissistic insults. Notwithstanding all the
huge economic and social problems of unification, the first
and major concern of Germans in 1992 was the sharply
increased annual total of asylum seekers. Represented as
exploitative assailants of prosperity in the country, they are
becoming objects of a displaced hatred, which actually applies
to the Germans themselves. Sympathy for their fate as refugees
is thus rendered impossible.
 Werner Bohleber 337

4. Xenophobia and Homogeneity

Modern definitions envisage nationalism as a comprehen-

sive cultural system (Kaschuba 1993). From this point of view
the nation appears as an imagined community, comparable
with religious communities (B. Anderson 1983; Balibar and
Wallerstein 1988; K. Deutsch 1966). These modern theories of
nationalism offer psychoanalysis important points of refer-
ence. Collective identity is a phantasm, which does not mani-
fest itself as such, but is regarded as solid fact. This rests on the
transfer of concrete individual experiences of the individual
person a5 subject to the realm of collective ideas (Bohleber
1992). Societies are held together by a complex network of
indirect relationships among their members. But they only
attain unity as a nation when their members form an idea of it
analogous with the individual person (Hoffmann 1993). Such
processes have been described in more detail within psycho-
analytic research on groups. The fantasy of the group as a
unitary entity or whole or as a mother's body is quite familiar
to psychoanalysts (Anzieu 1975; Bion 1962; Turquet 1977).
The body as a metaphor for the state is universal in European
culture. Bodily metaphors and bodily processes are used to
symbolize political-national arguments and thus to anchor
them deep in the imagination. Ethnic conflicts in particular
bring this bodily metaphor system into play, and thus actualize
in the individual person a fundamental level of identity which
gives the conflicts a striking dynamic quality, quite unlike for
example the case of economic conflicts of interest among
various social groups. The foreigner triggers a threatening
anxiety of "subversion" of identity and mongrelization, and
brings mechanisms for safeguarding identity into the picture.
Apart from bodily fantasies, family metaphors in particu-
lar play a major role in symbolizing affiliations. In origin the
nation is a social grouping. If the affiliation is defined ethni-
cally, it takes on the character of a natural bond. The way the
nation is conceptualized is thus linked in an elemental way to
the world of relationships of the primary family. In this way the
father- or motherland achieves its power over the imagination
and emotions. One's homeland is, from the psycho-analytic
338 The Presence of the Past

point of view, the motherland of the individual and is imbued

in collective fantasies with maternal attributes or ones of
virginal innocence. In love of the fatherland and in fusion with
the nation, as in fantasies of dying for the fatherland, the
illusion of a pre-oedipal union with the mother is rediscovered
(see also Chasseguet-Smirgel 1990). The fatherland at this
level is always the motherland. The illusion of this omnipotent
narcissistic dual union lies at the heart of the attraction which
the phantasm of the nation can exert on the individual. It
provides the "radiant emotional energy" (Elias 1989) of the
concept of the nation. In the narcissistic dual union the
unavoidable ambivalence is suspended and a regressive pre-
ambivalent relationship to the object arises again. This mecha-
nism makes it possible for us to understand the attributes of
ideality that are ascribed to the nation: the purity of love of the
nation and the nation as the highest good.
All modern societies try to anchor the fantasy of the
nation in the imagination of the individual. But in Germany in
the nineteenth-century political ideological circumstances pre-
vailed which gave this phantasm especial salience. In the case
of France, the nation was constituted as a universal political
association of its citizens. It was different in Germany. The
definition of the nation as an ethnic and cultural community
of common descent is based on romantic biological ideas. The
imaginary unit of a German cultural nation could arise be-
cause there was no territorially-based German state to provide
a basis. Berlin (1990) speaks of an "Ideology of Organicism" in
Germany. In it, the life form of a society is compared with a
biological organism. Values, goals and purposes receive their
legitimation only from their organic ties with the nation. The
individual is bound in a unique way to the indissoluble and
unanalyzable organic whole. The nation becomes an object of
mystery and as a metaphysical being the source of the creative
power of its members. It determines the depth of their
feelings, their individuality and their real and emotional
solidarity with other members of the nation (Mosse 1964).
Notions of this kind give rise at the level of fantasy to a longing
for organic unity and union or fusion with the primary object.
One belongs not only to oneself, but is part of a great whole.
 Werner Bohleber 339

This way of defining the nation creates the collective fantasy of

a unified society growing from a single root.
German citizenship law and participation in the national
community is organized until this day on the basis of this
organic conceptualization following the so-called ius sanguinis.
A German citizen is someone of German blood. Thus the
social association of the nation in the nineteenth century was
defined ethnically and by descent. "The purer a people, the
better; the more mixed, the more they are like a modey gang"
(Friedrich Ludwig Jahn 1813, quoted by Kaschuba 1993). It
has been the "volkisch community" which has become such a
highly charged fantasy object in Germany since the nineteenth
century—this in a country which, as a classic transit land, had
an ethnically-mixed population. National Socialism sharpened
the ius sanguinis by an additional racist ethnification. The Nazi
ideology of a Volksgemeinschaft (Community of the 'Volk') was
aimed at the formation of a homogeneous, socially adjusted,
and hierarchically ordered society. Good specimens were to
blossom through (suitable) education, while the "foreign
bodies in the community" would be "eradicated." The experi-
ence with National Socialism shows that such notions of
homogeneity and purity can have a powerful attraction for the
majority of the population, and have not been overcome up to
the present time. This phantasm of a pure homogeneous
community, anchored in the collective depths of German
society, forms a sounding board for the present treatment of
numerous immigrants from abroad and asylum seekers and for
a re-emerging anti-Semitism. In 1992, forty percent agreed
with the statement that "we should keep the German Volk
pure" (Spiegel survey of 20.1.1992).

5. Right-extremist Mentality and

Right Wing Radicalism of Youths

A primitive hunger for community and a longing for

fusion with the collective wholeness of the nation characterizes
the conceptual world of the extreme right It is a unifying
narcissistic identification which makes everyone identical parts
340 The Presence of the Past

of the whole through participating in the maternal object of

the nation. In conceptualizing the nation, the wish to fit things
together and overcome disunity and isolation are dominant.
The individual essentially becomes an inalienable part of the
idealized object "Germany." At the core of national identifica-
tion there is therefore an illusionary feeling of omnipotence
and elation. Processes of splitting are at work here: the nation
becomes the object of a wish for narcissistic fusion, strangers
and foreigners have the destructive and threatening portions
of the self projected on to them and are pursued with a hate
which has become detached from its initial object. Domination
by this world of ideas also explains why conflicts of interest and
social antagonisms must be denied: they split the whole and
reveal internal fissures which cannot be plastered over. It is a
strategy of standardization or homogenization, which is bru-
tally carried out and will tolerate nothing "other," nothing
deviant The fear of being merged with foreigners is the main
anxiety of all racist xenophobes. Merging is experienced as a
threat to personal identity because it threatens to dissolve the
defensive mechanism of splitting off. Fear of mixing manifests
itself as fear of violent dispersal or shattering of the unitary
whole and triggers a huge reaction of aggression and persecu-
tion. A sense of belonging to the ideal object and an urge to
violent persecution have a mutually-reinforcing relationship.
Massive intolerance of ambivalence as well as psychological
problems and social conflicts are behind this. Everything that
disturbs and looks different must be got rid of, violently
assaulted, and destroyed. A "psychic totalitarianism" (Adorno)
is at work here. The more reality, in disturbing one's notion of
an ideal state of self, has to be set aside, the greater the
pathology and aggression with which this narcissism expresses
itself. The disturbing characteristics of an object are seen as
impurities that impair an absolute state of purity. If everything
ought to be white, and one feels one is part of this whole, what
is colored will be disturbing. It will unbalance the state of
narcissistic self-assurance and the feeling of homogeneity. In
this way the mere presence of people who look different
disturbs the outer and inner idyl and is met by blind hatred.
What is different has to be exterminated, either by a denial of
 Werner Bohleber 341

perception or by a removal of the other person. Unity turns

into a fetish and a totalitarian claim.
Notions of purity, illusions of fusion and violence are an
explosive political mixture which entails radicalization and
does not end with the removal of strangers. Everything which
deviates from the norm or is of a different nature becomes an
object of hatred and destruction. Besides foreigners and
asylum seekers, handicapped people and the homeless are
increasingly victims of attacks by youths of the radical right. In
order to be maintained, fantasies of homogeneity constandy
need deviant others who are to be made the object of hate and
persecution.
Violent right-extremist youths have suddenly and impera-
tively confronted our research into adolescence in Germany
with the problem of the so-called third generation. While we
have been occupied up to now with trying to understand how
the Nazi heritage was passed on to and became effective in the
next generation, we now have a third generation on our hands
posing the question of continuity in relation to the Nazi
regime in a new way.
In a late adolescent patient with strong nationalistic and
xenophobic ideas, I was able to observe someone who was
constantly in search of national symbolic objects (Bohleber
1992). He almost devoured them in order to identify himself
with their glory and their strength. His individual self, feeling
weak and isolated, was thereby enormously extended and
narcissistically inflated. He was still dependent on his mother.
Tremendous fear of object loss prevented his taking any steps
towards inner separation, performing acts of rivalry suited to
his age or going through an adolescent individuation process.
His father was so weak that he could not identify with him. The
patient experienced his father's weakness as a shame for the
whole family and felt that he had to iron it out in the name of
the mother. In his heroic fantasies he returned to the world of
his grandfather, who fought as a soldier in the Second World
War. The strength and greatness of Germany must prove itself
once again. He watched many war films, and in his daydreams
he altered the batdes of the Second World War and fantasized
them into German victories.
342 The Presence of the Past

A nineteen-year-old, ultra-right-minded Skinhead talks

continually about order and normality without noticing how
he is contradicting himself, being, on the other hand, ex-
tremely aggressive, violent and, delinquent. After the divorce
of his parents he attacked his father and beat him up badly. He
wishes he had a proper profession, a normal family and
normal children. He longs to be back in Nazi times, because it
was a workers' state whereas now everybody has to look after
himself. In the interview he says literally: "In Nazi times this
business with my father would certainly not have happened.
There one was led on the right road as a child already and told
what to do" (taz 5.12.1992). These wishful images of a nine-
teen-year-old are set pieces of a Nazi ideology, used in the
conflict with the parent generation without any exact historical
knowledge. The fantasy of a whole world with total care and
the wish for subjection under an idealized authority are
projected back onto Nazi times. In the first example a dis-
turbed adolescent narcissism and more or less unconscious
instructions by the mother were the inner motivations for
these political wish dreams directed at the past.
I have chosen these two examples to point out the
breaches, where right-extremist political indoctrination be-
come possible. Even though it is originally that social protest
against the parent generation which is typical for this genera-
tion, there is nevertheless a danger that an ultra-right world
view and thus also grandfathers who have not basically changed
their philosophy of life since 1945 become the unsuspecting
authorities for a system opposed ideal. Whether right-wing
parties can succeed in winning a greater number of these
youths for themselves is politically and socially still an open
question.

6. Concluding Remarks

I have endeavored to show how the idea of an organic

ethnic homogeneous community is anchored in deep levels of
German society as a principle of political-national legitimation
and ascription of cultural identity. The "fundamental liberal-
 Werner Bohleber 343

ization" (Habermas) of German society post-1945 in the sense

of understanding of western democracy created another real-
ity, namely that of a civil society based on the notion of
citizenship and of cultural pluralism. The end of the barbarism
of Nazi racism did not mean the end of the fantasy of an
ethnically homogeneous community. In the face of collective
uncertainties, nationalism and xenophobia offer the opportu-
nity for a regressive and defensive safeguarding of identity. In
this way, the unification of Germany, the political upheavals in
Europe and the huge influx of foreigners gave rise to an
ethnically-based national self-consciousness, and with it to
xenophobia and anti-Semitism. This raises the danger that
many Germans are alienated from universalist ideas and revert
to the particularism of nationalistic and quasi-volkisch ideas.
Overcoming these constitutes the great challenge for German
society in the coming years.
Am Ebelfeld la
D-60488 Frankfurt
Germany

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