HRC Seminar - The “All-Clear” Incarnate? Helmut Kohl’s Nationalism and the Quest for Normalcy
This paper is about the nationalism of Helmut Kohl, the so-called Chancellor of Unity. Biography helps to understand the formation of personal nationalism, which relies on a particular repertoire of self-images that the nationalist can mobilise to represent his ideal notion of nation and himself. I analyse Kohl’s nationalism along four intertwined traditions in German nationalism (Catholicism, liberalism, romanticism, and historism), which he internalised during his early socialisation. These traditions combined shaped his representation of the “all-clear”: a de-radicalised German nationalism, beyond its anti-Western and post-national peculiarities.
Christian Wicke is a PhD candidate at the ANU Centre for European Studies. In 2010, he was a visitor of the University of Edinburgh and completed his research in Berlin. He previously studied at Maastricht University (BA European Studies), Bogazici University, Istanbul (Erasmus), and the University of Edinburgh (MSc Nationalism Studies).