Fall 2011 | Issue 21

2 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty-One | Fall 2011
THE BERLIN JOURNAL
THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
A magazine from the Hans Arnhold IN BERLIN
Center published by the American
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Academy in Berlin
Gary Smith
Number Twenty-One – Fall 2011
DEAN OF FELLOWS & PROGRAMS
PUBLISHER Gary Smith
Pamela Rosenberg
EDITOR Brittani Sonnenberg
CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE
IMAGE EDITOR
OFFICER
R. Jay Magill Jr.
Andrew J. White
ADVERTISING Berit Ebert,
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Copyright © 2011
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The American Academy in Berlin
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Cover: Rémy Markowitsch,
“American Option” from Bullish on
Bulbs, 2007, color print, acrylic,
aluminum; 165 x 120 cm; edition 3;
Courtesy Galerie EIGEN+ART
Leipzig/Berlin
HONORARY CHAIRMEN Thomas L. Farmer, Richard von Weizsäcker
CO-CHAIRMEN Karl M. von der Heyden, Henry A. Kissinger
VICE CHAIR Gahl Hodges Burt
PRESIDENT & CEO Norman Pearlstine
TREASURER Andrew J. White
SECRETARY John C. Kornblum
TRUSTEES Barbara Balaj, John P. Birkelund, Manfred Bischoff, Stephen B.
Burbank, Gahl Hodges Burt, Caroline Walker Bynum, Mathias Döpfner, Niall
Ferguson, Marina Kellen French, Michael E. Geyer, Hans-Michael Giesen,
Richard K. Goeltz, C. Boyden Gray, Vartan Gregorian, Andrew S. Gundlach,
Franz Haniel, Helga Haub, Karl M. von der Heyden, Stefan von Holtzbrinck,
Wolfgang Ischinger, Josef Joffe, Henry A. Kissinger, Michael Klein, John
C. Kornblum, Regine Leibinger, Lawrence Lessig, Wolfgang Malchow,
Nina von Maltzahn, Wolfgang Mayrhuber, Julie Mehretu, Christopher von
Oppenheim, Norman Pearlstine, Jeffery A. Rosen, David M. Rubenstein,
Volker Schlöndorff, Peter Y. Solmssen, Kurt Viermetz, Pauline Yu
HONORARY TRUSTEE Klaus Wowereit (ex officio)
TRUSTEES EMERITI Diethard Breipohl, Gerhard Casper, Fritz Stern
SENIOR COUNSELORS Richard Gaul, Franz Xaver Ohnesorg,
Bernhard von der Planitz, Karen Roth, Victoria Scheibler
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DIRECTOR’S NOTE
Traditions in Transition
The 2011 Henry A. Kissinger Prize, awarded to
former Chancellor Helmut Kohl on May 16, 2011,
prompted an evening that both reflected on a transatlantic
legacy of solidarity and pondered the unfolding present.
In his speech, Kohl referred to the pain of Germany’s postwar
period, while emphasizing the urgency of moving forward,
both then and now, calling for Germans to say “yes to their
own future,” while remaining resolute in building upon past
achievements.
This issue of the Berlin Journal embraces kindred impulses,
with themes that evoke history’s insistent claim on the present
and the challenge of acknowledging and adjudicating
such a powerful hold. Jochen Hellbeck describes how Russian
and German veterans’ competing recollections of the battle
of Stalingrad give us access to two divergent, living cultures
of memory. Susanna Moore and Susan McCabe conjure the
horror of Europe’s cracking façade of cosmopolitanism at the
outbreak of World War II, while Karen J. Alter and John Lipsky
examine two modern initiatives that grew out of the postwar
period: economic policy cooperation and the international judiciary.
The Berlin Journal’s first online article, “Digital Debate,”
presents Eric Schmidt’s vision for the new “age of the Internet.”
A series of responses follow, alternately endorsing, probing,
and contesting the Google executive chairman’s views.
As the surprising success of the underdog “Pirate Party”
in Berlin’s regional September elections also indicates, digital
democratic movements are presenting new challenges to
traditional institutions. Values, after all, are not transmitted
genetically; the emerging convictions of a new political generation
in Germany concerning Internet security and “liquid
democracy,” in which constituents can participate in politics
online, reveal new priorities and nascent political philosophies.
The tropes of transmission have gone digital, viral, and
global; it is crucial that we understand and articulate this challenge
to the norms of the past.
The financial crisis has shown how much has slipped
from governmental control in this global era, and how necessary
decisive and coordinated governmental action has
become: we are now at a watershed moment in which institutions
will either be amended or created anew. The future
is more elusive than ever, and our ability to move forward
with grace may very well lie in how well we can accept newly
penned historical narratives about ourselves, written by someone
else.
– Gary Smith