Awards

• Winner of Winner of the Norris & Carol Hundley Award from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.

Overview

German Angst analyses the relationship between fear and democracy in postwar West Germany. While fear and anxiety have historically been associated with authoritarian regimes, Frank Biess demonstrates the ambivalent role of these emotions in a democratizing society: in West Germany, fear and anxiety both undermined democracy and stabilized it. By taking seriously postwar Germans' uncertainties about the future, this study challenges dominant linear and teleological narratives of postwar West German 'success', highlighting the prospective function of memories of war, National Socialism, and the Holocaust. Postwar Germans projected fears and anxieties that they derived from memories of a catastrophic past into the future.Based on case studies from the 1940s to the present, German Angst provides a new interpretive synthesis of the Federal Republic. It tells the history of the Federal Republic as a series of cyclical crises in which specific fears and anxieties emerged, served a variety of political functions, and then again abated. Drawing on recent interdisciplinary insights generated by the field of emotion studies, Biess's study transcends the dichotomy of 'reason' and 'emotion'. Fear and anxiety were not exclusively irrational and dysfunctional, but served important roles in postwar democracy. These emotions sensitized postwar Germans to the dangers of an authoritarian transformation, and they also served as emotional engines of new social movements, including the environmental and peace movements. German Angst also provides an original analysis of the emotional basis of right-wing populism in Germany today, and it explores the possibilities of a democratic politics of emotion.

Full Product Details

9780192867872

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Reviews

Winner of the 2021 Norris and Carol Hundley Award of the Pacifc Coast Branch of the American Historical Association A historical book that hits the nerve of our present. . .Biess casts new light on the history of the Federal Republic. . .and gives back to the Federal Republic its emotional drama. * Alexander Camman, Die Zeit * A fresh view of the history of the Federal Republic. . .and a critical corrective to the existing historiography. * Eckart Conze, University of Marburg * Republik der Angst offers a compelling alternative narrative of West German democratization as a project that succeeded not because its participants were rational liberal subjects, but because they were in touch with their subjective fears. While chronic fear certainly had the potential to cause paralysis, fear also functioned as a warning system for the risks of modernization. * Lauren Stokes, German History * Biess has written an excellent book, which is a welcome addition to the historiography of postwar Germany. * Lak, Martijn, Historische Zeitschrift * German Angst is ambitious in its scope and its methodology. In the first half, it does what good history should do-it challenges us to reapproach familiar narratives from a different perspective. And in the second half, it offers a stimulating interpretation of the new social movements and our contemporary moment. . .In any case, there can be no doubt that Frank Biess returns contingency and previously sidelined irrational forces to the historical narrative as well as offering us a narrative of democracy's fragility befitting the current moment. * Karrin Hanshew, Journal of Social History *

Winner of the 2021 Norris and Carol Hundley Award of the Pacifc Coast Branch of the American Historical Association A historical book that hits the nerve of our present. . .Biess casts new light on the history of the Federal Republic. . .and gives back to the Federal Republic its emotional drama. * Alexander Camman, Die Zeit * A fresh view of the history of the Federal Republic. . .and a critical corrective to the existing historiography. * Eckart Conze, University of Marburg * Republik der Angst offers a compelling alternative narrative of West German democratization as a project that succeeded not because its participants were rational liberal subjects, but because they were in touch with their subjective fears. While chronic fear certainly had the potential to cause paralysis, fear also functioned as a warning system for the risks of modernization. * Lauren Stokes, German History * Biess has written an excellent book, which is a welcome addition to the historiography of postwar Germany. * Lak, Martijn, Historische Zeitschrift * German Angst is ambitious in its scope and its methodology. In the first half, it does what good history should do-it challenges us to reapproach familiar narratives from a different perspective. And in the second half, it offers a stimulating interpretation of the new social movements and our contemporary moment. . .In any case, there can be no doubt that Frank Biess returns contingency and previously sidelined “irrational” forces to the historical narrative as well as offering us a narrative of democracy's fragility befitting the current moment. * Karrin Hanshew, Journal of Social History * It is the kind of book with which historians can teach, offering students a bold, new interpretive framework for understanding postwar German history and the potency of political emotions. * Christian Bailey, Journal of Modern History * It is the kind of book with which historians can teach, offering students a bold, new interpretive framework for understanding postwar German history and the potency of political emotions. * Christian Bailey, Journal of Modern History *

"Winner of the 2021 Norris and Carol Hundley Award of the Pacifc Coast Branch of the American Historical Association A historical book that hits the nerve of our present. . .Biess casts new light on the history of the Federal Republic. . .and gives back to the Federal Republic its emotional drama. * Alexander Camman, Die Zeit * A fresh view of the history of the Federal Republic. . .and a critical corrective to the existing historiography. * Eckart Conze, University of Marburg * Republik der Angst offers a compelling alternative narrative of West German democratization as a project that succeeded not because its participants were rational liberal subjects, but because they were in touch with their subjective fears. While chronic fear certainly had the potential to cause paralysis, fear also functioned as a warning system for the risks of modernization. * Lauren Stokes, German History * Biess has written an excellent book, which is a welcome addition to the historiography of postwar Germany. * Lak, Martijn, Historische Zeitschrift * German Angst is ambitious in its scope and its methodology. In the first half, it does what good history should do-it challenges us to reapproach familiar narratives from a different perspective. And in the second half, it offers a stimulating interpretation of the new social movements and our contemporary moment. . .In any case, there can be no doubt that Frank Biess returns contingency and previously sidelined <""irrational>"" forces to the historical narrative as well as offering us a narrative of democracy's fragility befitting the current moment. * Karrin Hanshew, Journal of Social History *"

Author Information

Frank Biess is Professor of History at the University of California-San Diego. He started his academic career at the Universities of Marburg and Tübingen in Germany. He earned two M.A. degrees at Washington University in St. Louis, and he received his PhD from Brown University in 2000. He has published extensively on the history of 20th-century Germany, with a focus on the post-1945 period. In 2021, he published Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany with Princeton University Press. He is currently working on a set of projects relating to the global history of the interwar Weimar Republic.

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