German Angst - Fear and Democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany

While fear and anxiety have historically been associated with authoritarian regimes, Frank Biess demonstrates the ambivalent role of these emotions in the democratization of West Germany, where fears and anxieties about the country's catastrophic past and uncertain future both undermined democracy and stabilized the emerging Federal Republic.

List of contents

• Preface


• Introduction: Fear and Democracy


• 1: Postwar Angst


• 2: Moral Angst


• 3: Cold War Angst


• 4: Modern Angst


• 5: Democratic Angst


• 6: Revolutionary Angst


• 7: Proliferating Angst


• 8: Apocalyptic Angst


• 9: German Angst


• Conclusion


• Acknowledgements


• Primary Sources


• Bibliography

About the author

Frank Biess is Professor of History at the University of California-San Diego. He started his academic career at the Universities of Marburg and Tübingen in Germany. He earned two M.A. degrees at Washington University in St. Louis, and he received his PhD from Brown University in 2000. He has published extensively on the history of 20th-century Germany, with a focus on the post-1945 period. He is currently working on a set of projects relating to the global history of the interwar Weimar Republic.

Summary

While fear and anxiety have historically been associated with authoritarian regimes, Frank Biess demonstrates the ambivalent role of these emotions in the democratization of West Germany, where fears and anxieties about the country's catastrophic past and uncertain future both undermined democracy and stabilized the emerging Federal Republic.

Product details

• Authors: Frank Biess, Frank (Professor of History Biess, Biess Frank
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.08.2020
• EAN: 9780198714187
• ISBN: 978-0-19-871418-7
• No. of pages: 432
• Series: Emotions in History
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Contemporary history (1945 to 1989); HISTORY / Europe / Germany, Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000, European History, Germany, HISTORY / Modern / 21st Century, HISTORY / Social History, Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999, The Cold War, Cold wars and proxy conflicts