Paul Hockenos. Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic: An Alternative History of Postwar Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. ix + 372 pp. Illustrations. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-518183-8.

Reviewed by David A. Meier (Department of Social Sciences, Dickinson State University)
Published on H-German (May, 2009)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher

Politics Made Personal

Despite his departure from the German political scene in 2006, Joschka Fischer remains an icon of German democracy and society. Fischer's rough beginnings, callous distrust of traditional symbols of authority, and virtually accidental early integration into the ranks of a disgruntled youth movement hardly suggested an obvious path into the ranks of West Germany's political elite. Fischer impressed the more public figures of the alternative political culture with his ability to debate more formally educated students at the University of Frankfurt am Main while sustaining his more working-class reputation. Educated in the streets and Kneipen of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Fischer emerged as a clear voice in Frankfurt's student crowd by 1978. 

Hockenos's interest in Fischer and his exploration into the rise of the Green Party dovetails with his own arrival in Freiburg on a study-abroad program in late 1983. The author's own nostalgic sense of those years, combined with incredible personal contacts, infuses a distinctly human quality into the narrative. As someone drawn into the ranks of the demonstrators, Hockenos is clearly aware of the passions driving the antiwar, ecological, alternative sociopolitical culture. Even if he does not explicitly identify with the particulars of those times, the reader is pulled to conclude that the author sympathizes with his subject in general, but especially with Fischer. For example, contrary to a more typical historical approach, revelations of Fischer's more brutal encounters with the police are not disclosed in this text until the narrative reaches the point when the event assumed its own political significance: after Fischer assumed the post of foreign minister. 

Hockenos opens his work with two converging stories: the challenges facing the Fischer family in Hungary as the Second World War drew to a conclusion, and the emerging conservative government under Konrad Adenauer. Hockenos interprets these elements in Fischer's future as molding his attitudes and personal resiliency. Yet, the narrative clearly places Fischer more within the mainstream of the emerging youth and protest culture rather than as one of its early standard-bearers. Hockenos defines Fischer's rise in political prominence largely as a fortuitous collision of this particular individual with events and existing figures to the left of mainstream Social Democracy. Without rehashing the details of Fischer's overall position, Hockenos presents Fischer as both on the Left and clearly quite pragmatic. However, in Hockenos's view, Fischer emerged with a clearer sense of his long-term career interests by the late 1980s, which may be defined as located within the Realo camp, but also motivated by an obvious willingness to compromise on various issues very close to the core beliefs of the Green movement. As evidenced in later newspaper accounts, Fischer's identification with his early sympathies had grown vague to the point that he was asked repeatedly in interviews whether he viewed himself as still residing on the political Left.

If the strengths of the work lie in its personal qualities, so do its weaknesses. Just as Condoleezza Rice felt that German politicians had "poisoned" German-American relations in 2002 (an incident mentioned on p. 309), Hockenos risks poisoning potential American readers of the work by extending his review of West Germany in the early 1980s into somewhat problematic depictions of the reactions of members of the traditional political and social elites to the political left of the period. For example, Hockenos delves into Fischer's links with the countercultural co-op movement or Wohngemeinschaften, some of whose partisans were squatters. Hockenos skirts the legal issue of ownership with a seemingly moral argument about the availability of cheap housing and romanticizes the alternative communal lifestyle; the more critical term Hausbesetzer (squatter) never appears in the text. For those living in more conservative circles in Frankfurt am Main or Berlin in the early 1980s, early Wohngemeinschaften often represented drug culture and criminal elements. What is truly remarkable is the transformation of these socially marginalized elements with a highly diverse political agenda into a more focused political movement. Contrary to the more violent inclinations of the movement in its infancy, Realos parted company with Fundis and Spontis once Greens were confronted with the failure of their initial tactics to realize any of their espoused objectives. Fischer played a central role in that process and rose in the ranks as previous political figures faded or fell from favor.

Hockenos's own interviews, conducted between 2004 and 2007 with many of the leading voices around Fischer, give this work an almost timeless quality. Given the lack of traditional primary or archival sources in the account, Hockenos's interviews represent the backbone of his contribution to understanding this perspective on postwar West German alternative political culture. The significance of this material for his account unfortunately allows his failure to identify clearly when and where the interviews were conducted to detract from their credibility. Moreover, it would help many readers if Hockenos provided short biographies of these individuals. Additionally, unless readers make regular use of the notes, it is not always clear when the quotations in the text reflect interviews or published materials. In fairness, however, Hockenos does use a wide variety of well-respected, contemporary sources to bolster his narrative.

Overall, Hockenos has blended a somewhat casual style with exceptional sources in personalizing the changing political culture in the Bonn and Berlin republics. Whatever the minor drawbacks of this work, it lives up to the author's intention to provide an alternative history in the fullest sense of the word.

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Citation: David A. Meier. Review of Hockenos, Paul, Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic: An Alternative History of Postwar Germany. H-German, H-Net Reviews. May, 2009.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24002

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