Chapter 4 - Contesting the Spatial Foundations of Democracy

Summary

The chapter examines heated debates about Heimat, federalism, and regional identity in the German Southwest during referendum campaigns over the construction of new federal states in the region. While this history has often been glossed over as the pre-history of Baden-Württemberg, the chapter shows how it was saturated with debates about the spatial foundations of democracy. Opposing groups of regionalists who had different cognitive maps of region advanced similar ideas about “democracy” and “openness to the world” as regional values. Abandoning narratives of their region as a bulwark of the nation, many on both sides competed over whose regional vision would offer a better “bridge” to France and Switzerland. Many federalist regionalists in the Southwest further argued that Heimat feeling should bolster decentred ideas of nation. As in the case of Cologne and the Hanseatic cities, the case of the Southwest again demonstrates how early post-war denizens used regional identities to forge early identifications with democracy and European unification. At the same time, the referenda simultaneously demonstrated the same serious shortcomings in democratic mentalities and practice.