ABSTRACT
The centripetal forces of regionalism, multiculturalism, and linguistic diversity will continue to shape those centrifugal forces that continue to define Germany by land, language, and blood. One can step back and regard this moment-in which a quarter of a millennium has passed since Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, fifty years have gone by since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, and ten years have elapsed since German reunification. What can the new Germany look like as the center of the new Europe, a Europe without boundaries and border guards, with a common currency, with a new globalized culture? Or, which confronted the listeners in 1949 at the Goethe bicentennial in Aspen: Can Goethe's ideals of an international culture be the guideposts for Germany's sense of self for the next half-century? This book examines the relationship between existing political culture in today's Germany and the cultural ideals of a new Europe.
