Niels Beckenbach. Wege zur Bürgergesellschaft: Gewalt und Zivilisation in Deutschland Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2005. 310 S. EUR 34.00, paper, ISBN 978-3-428-11977-6. Reviewed by Michael L. Hughes Published on H-German (June, 2007) Niels Beckenbach's volume offers eight eye‐ century Germany) seek to illuminate Gewalt in witness accounts of Germany's brutal twentieth twentieth-century Gemany. Following Hans-Ulrich century from, among others, a public intellectual, Wehler, he sees the period 1914-45 as a second a senior police officer, and a terrorist's daughter. Thirty Years' War, an extended period of violence, His criteria for choosing these particular witness‐ both international and domestic, that plagued es remain unclear, but Gewalt, with all its multi‐ Germany. He sees the foundations of that violence ple meanings and ambiguity, is the nominal con‐ partly in reactions against modernity and its rep‐ necting thread among the contributions. The orig‐ resentatives, such as Jews, intellectuals, and capi‐ inal meaning of Gewalt was power in the sense of talists. He also roots it not in an alliance of big in‐ the legitimate authority of the monarch and later dustry and the fascist Right but in "disturbances of the state. That meaning is cited, in passing to identity, a collective deficit in self-worth, as ("Alle (Staats)Gewalt geht vom Volke aus!"), in well as in latent perceptions of the Enemy" (p. 30). both Beckenbach's introduction and in the mem‐ The Nazi Ungeist resulted primarily from "'fester‐ oir by Hermann Kreutzer (SPD), whom both the ing' resentments" (p. 30) and a potential for hate. Third Reich and the DDR persecuted. Beckenbach His discussion of postwar reactions to Nazi rule also uses the term to refer to the separation of emphasizes psychological terms such as repres‐ powers in a constitutional state. Elsewhere in the sion, projection, and self-exculpation. His analysis book, though, including in the title, Gewalt is used of Gewalt and of twentieth-century German histo‐ in its more common contemporary meaning of ry is frmly anti-materialist, identifying the key compulsion, (physical) force, or, indeed, violence, causal forces as an inability to come to terms with with a strong connotation of illegitimacy. rationalism and psychological reactions to stress- Beckenbach's own contributions (an "Editori‐ inducing realities. al," an introduction, a history of the origins of the Beckenbach suggests a Whig interpretation of Red Army Faction, and a chronicle of twentieth- recent German history, as a triumph of "a republi‐ H-Net Reviews can culture with guaranteed citizen rights, institu‐ even began to imagine that God looked like Joseph tionalized separation of powers, and a critical Stalin. She mentions that the home's staff resorted public" (p. 17). He sees Gewalt and the potential to corporal punishment, but for her Gewalt was for Gewalt as characteristic of the postwar period primarily the psychological abuse inherent in au‐ in both East and West Germany. Only the anti-au‐ thoritarian browbeating of defenseless children. thoritarian movements of the 1960s and 1970s in She goes on to discuss her brother's repeated West Germany and the Revolution of 1989 in East clashes with state power, culminating in his incar‐ Germany overcame the lingering potential for ceration in a mental institution and eventual sui‐ Gewalt and introduced a stable, peaceful future. cide. Ralph Giordano emphasizes how Gewalt de‐ Ehrhart Neubert, a theologian, focuses more humanizes both perpetrator and victim. Trapped on Gewaltlosigkeit, non-violence, than on Gewalt. in Berlin, the partly-Jewish Giordano only sur‐ Although he does discuss the conflicts between vived World War II by going into hiding, with a state power and the Lutheran church in East Ger‐ neighbor's assistance, in February 1945. He re‐ many over the decades, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s solved that he would not let the Gestapo take his practice of non-violence inspired him. He discuss‐ mother alive. When it looked as though the es the East German Lutheran church's commit‐ Gestapo had discovered their hiding place, he re‐ ment to non-violence and emphasizes the impor‐ leased the safety on his pistol and aimed at his tance of non-violence for the development not mother's head. Fortunately it was not the Gestapo, only of the church's interactions with the state but but he felt dehumanized at almost having shot his also of the Revolution of 1989. own mother. He and his brother agreed that if Beckenbach interviewed Bettina Röhl, daugh‐ they survived the war they would shoot four peo‐ ter of terrorist Ulrike Meinhof. Meinhof planned ple who had persecuted them. In the event, they to send her young twin daughters to be brought could not bring themselves to shoot anyone. Gior‐ up in an orphanage in a Palestinian refugee camp. dano believed that he needed to be re-humanized Instead, after their "liberation" (Röhl's word, p. after his experience of Nazism and its Gewalt. 228) from Red Army Faction control, they were That included embracing the humane principle educated at a predominantly upper-class school that one does not exercise Gewalt against the de‐ in Hamburg. Röhl never uses the term Gewalt to fenseless, even a mortal enemy. describe her mother's plans for her, but she clear‐ Freya Klier focuses on the non-physical ly sees it as brutal and irresponsible treatment of Gewalt a dictatorship can impose. Her father, hav‐ defenseless children. Her almost vehement insis‐ ing struck an off-duty policeman who had injured tence that her childhood was happy and normal her mother, was imprisoned in the GDR for a year leaves the impression that it was not--that she has for attacking state power. The regime sent the struggled to come to terms with her parents' treat‐ three-year-old Freya and her slightly older broth‐ ment of her and with the "68ers" who glorify her er to a Stasi children's home, allowing them to see mother. She also found and arranged the 2001 their mother only on weekends. She describes the publication of photographs of then-Foreign Minis‐ home's brutal regimen, as preschoolers were ter Joschka Fischer, as a young radical, beating a marched everywhere, subjected to twice-daily helpless policeman during a 1973 demonstration. role calls, and ordered to stand daily facing the That publication sparked a discussion of the legiti‐ wall while thinking about what they would do to macy of Gewalt in pursuit of political ends, al‐ make good their parent's crimes against the peo‐ though she does not explore that discussion here. ple. Her "brainwashing" was so complete that she She then goes on to characterize as Gewalt the ha‐ 2 H-Net Reviews rassment and persecution she experienced from and a democratic republic, whose triumph he cel‐ "68ers" as a consequence of her simply doing her ebrates, are questions of political citizenship, not journalistic job. only of those allowed to participate in political life Beckenbach's closing essay seeks to elucidate but the terms of that participation. He alludes to the origins of the Red Army Faction. He recog‐ the concerns that led 1960s West German demon‐ nizes the fairly widespread sense on the Left that strators to move from marching and speaking to the Federal Republic of Germany constituted a more active forms of protest, such as to throwing closed system that effectively blocked paths to eggs, tomatoes, and (in some cases) stones, or change, including the near-monopolies of the Axel holding sit-ins, to make their voices heard in a Springer press and the Grand Coalition. He also conservative social environment. He also notes cites the availability in every book store of glorifi‐ the terrorists' assertion that their resort to physi‐ cations of various rhetorics of revolution. He does cal violence was necessary because they lived in a suggest a connection between the Wortgewalt of fascistic society that only revolution could over‐ the student movement and the Tatgewalt of the throw and replace. However, he chooses not to budding terrorist movement, beginning with de‐ explore the vibrant debates that developed over partment-store arsons. However, he believes that these issues in 1960s and 1970s West Germany, only "psychosocial dispositions" (p. 248) can ex‐ crucial milestones on the path to civil society. plain the terrorists' abandonment of discourse Individual contributions to this text offer in‐ and enlightenment for armed Gewalt. He asserts a sight into the complex and powerful role of fundamental continuity among Nazism, East Ger‐ Gewalt in twentieth-century Germany. They are man Communism, and the Red Army Faction, deeply personal and often vividly evocative. They with the latter an anachronistic return of the do not, however, offer a coherent view of "Gewalt "'restless German'" (p. 260). und Zivilisation in Deutschland," and the book While the authors of these texts are united in raises more questions than it answers. deploring the physical violence that was so much a part of twentieth-century German history, they are also sensitive to other forms of Gewalt. Al‐ though Giordano escaped direct physical violence, he felt "de-humanized" by the fear of violence that dominated his life under the Nazis. Klier's life was pervaded by her apparently successful and her brother's unsuccessful attempts to come to terms with the psychological violence they suffered at the hands of the East German regime. Neubert's commitment to non-violence seems, to a signifi‐ cant degree, a reaction against the Gewalt that the East German regime exercised against believing Christians and other dissidents. The political com‐ mitments of Röhl's parents and their supporters seem to have done violence to her childhood.