Culture, politics and the European intelligentsia

Abstract

A distinctive German culture no longer exists, it has become merged into Western culture. De-Nazification foundered and the old elites and the émigrés re-emerged and came together. The November revolution in the GDR was not one of either the workers or of a cultural elite but one of the grassroots, the ordinary people; however the GDR lacked any cultural modernity. When a country loses a war, cultural policy has to serve the need for revenge. France and Germany have competed on which was more revolutionary in the past and who had the greater potential for future revolutions. The current dilemma, however, over the enlargement of Europe rests more on harsh economic problems of how to reconcile the desires of the have-nots with the desire of the haves to have more, and who feel threatened by the have-nots.