ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author looks at developments in the external environment as an important source of attitudinal change among West Germans with respect to questions of postwar national identity. She deals with a sketch of subtle significant changes in the European landscape which first alleviated and later revitalized nationalist tendencies among many post-industrial states. The author discusses key variables tied to identity-formation, based on theorems borrowed from the field of social psychology. She attempts to transcend the conceptual limitations of her own discipline, political science, by developing a concentric model of identity. The author describes three distinctive sets of post-war-FRG cohorts, labeled the “Economic Miracle Generation,” the “Long March Generation,” and the “Turn-Around Generation,” respectively. Enter the era of the New Unencumberedness and the renewed search for national identity in the post-postwar environment. The European economies became more interdependent, citizens grew more savvy as to the spill-over character of many post-industrial problems, disturbingly symbolized by the accident at Chernobyl.
