German Unification Expectations and Outcomes

by Caldwell, Peter C.; Shandley, Robert R.

• ISBN13: 9780230120754
• ISBN10: 023012075X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-09-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

It is easy in retrospect to ascribe inevitability to Germany's unification in 1990. But in fact, such events are the product of decisions made when the outcomes of a process are not yet clear. A dramatic opening in international relations, an ongoing upheaval in East German politics that put the old state's existence into question, and an economic collapse in East Germany forced policy-makers to seek not only a way out of the crisis but also new, stable structures at all levels. This volume examines these intertwining strands, taking into account both short-term interests and the long-term consequences.

Author Biography

Peter C. Caldwell is a professor of History at Rice University. His publications have focused on German political thought from 1848 to the present, including Dictatorship, State Planning, and Social Theory in the German Democratic Republic (2003), Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional Law: The Theory and Practice of Weimar Constitutional ism (1997), and Love, Death, and Revolution in Central Europe (2009), on Ludwig Feuerbach and political radicalism in Germany. Robert R. Shandley is a professor of Film Studies and German at Texas AM University. Along with German cinema and the German language, his work also extends to the European fairy tale, problems of representation and the Holocaust, and postwar US history. He is the author of Runaway Romances: Hollywood's Postwar Tour of Europe (2009) Rubble Films: German Cinema in the Shadow of the Third Reich (2001), and editor of Unwilling Germans: The Goldhagen Debate (1998).

Table of Contents

German Unification, Western Order, and the Post-Cold War Restructuring of the International System--G. John Ikenberry * Between Euroland and Abendland?: Opportunities and Challenges for German Foreign Policy Since Unification--Mary H. Hampton * Rethinking Reunification: German Monetary Union and European Integration--Jonathan R. Zatlin * The Quest for Freedom and Stability: Political Choices and the Economic Transformation of East Germany 1989-1991--Wolfgang Seibel * A Splendid Failure: Reflections on Two Decades of East German Economic Reconstruction--Irwin Collier * Political Institutions and Unification--Ulrich K. Preuß * German Unification and the Federal Constitutional Court: A Retrospective View After Twenty Years--Peter E. Quint * The End of Dictatorship and Its Aftermath: Personal Reflections of the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Agency of the German Democratic Republic--Marianne Birthler