4 FRANK BÖSCH
Scholarship on Contemporary History
and the Two German States
Shortly after reunifi cation, a few scholars began calling for an integrated
German-German history. Christoph Kleßmann in particular pleaded for
an “asymmetrically intertwined parallel history” (asymmetrisch verfl och-
tene Parallelgeschichte) that explored the tensions between division and
entanglement, taking into account that the FRG was a stronger point of
reference for the GDR than the GDR was for the FRG. As Kleßmann put it,
“The Federal Republic could have easily existed without the GDR.”^12 He
also suggested that it was worth considering whether the development
of the Federal Republic was also shaped by the existence of the GDR,
especially given the major infl uence of anti-communism on many aspects
of society.^13 Even West German consumption, sports, or gender roles took
on a diff erent political signifi cance in a divided Germany. Kleßmann also
proposed six phases and points of reference for such a discussion, includ-
ing “the beginning of the block building,” “the internal dynamics of both
states,” and “the cross-system problems faced by advanced industrial
societies” since the 1970s.^14 Similarly, Konrad Jarausch has advocated a
“plural sequential perspective.”^15 Both Jarausch and Kleßmann cite the
1970s as a turning point. Others, including Thomas Lindenberger, have
proposed that border regions should be approached as spaces created by
political rule that foster a particular way of dealing with “others,” bear-
ing in mind that the process of demarcating boundaries also generates
links.^16
These approaches ensured much debate among German historians for
a long time. In recent years, however, proponents of diff erent schools of
thought and methodologies have come to embrace the possibilities and
the necessity of a cross-border perspective.^17 For the most part, these
arguments diff er from one another primarily in terms of how far they
believe a comparative, or even an entangled, perspective can go with-
out erasing the diff erences between the systems. Despite his general ap-
proval for this type of scholarship, Horst Möller has also cautioned that
“a careful selection of those topics that can actually be compared for par-
ticular phases and that were at least relatively independent of the system
is necessary.”^18
German-German perspectives have also become increasingly viable
in recent years due to the changing regional, diachronic, and thematic
trends within scholarship. Whereas Kleßmann and Jarausch were mostly
interested in specifi cally German developments in the decades after
World War II, it has now become more common to situate Germany
within a European perspective—and less as the legacy of National So-