Another country : German intellectuals, unification and national identity / Jan-Werner Müller.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Nation, State and Intellectuals in West Germany since 1945: The Public Uses of History -- 2. Gunter Grass and his Critics: The Metaphysics of Auschwitz -- 3. Jurgen Habermas and the Debate on the Constitution: 'DM Nationalism' versus Verfassungspatriotismus -- 4. Melancholy, Utopia and Reconciliation: Left-wing and Liberal Responses to Unification -- 5. Martin Walser: German Sentiments and Opinions about Germany -- 6. Karl Heinz Bohrer: Recovering Romanticism and Aestheticizing the State -- 7. From National Identity to National Interest: An Anatomy of Germany's New Right -- 8. Preparing for the Political or Privatizing Memory: German Intellectuals confront the 'Berlin Republic'.

"Muller explains why many intellectuals reacted so defensively to unification and why unification plunged the Left in particular into a major crisis that has yet to be overcome. He analyzes the responses of Gunter Grass, Jurgen Habermas and others of the so-called 'sceptical generation', who broke with the tradition of the illiberal interwar intellectuals and reinvented themselves as a 'democratic elite' who sought to transform political culture after the War - and tried to do so again after 1989.

He discusses the German idea of 'constitutional patriotism' as well as the anti-nationalism of the 'generation of 1968', and provides the first full-scale analysis of Germany's 'New Right'. Written clearly and elegantly, this book assesses the acrimonious debates about the future of the nation-state and public memory in Germany and offers more general reflections on the role intellectuals can play in post-totalitarian societies."--BOOK JACKET.