Page 88 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

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POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS

BETWEEN PROGRAMMATIC
INTENTION AND PRAGMATIC

IMPERATIVE

What has always made the state a hell on earth
has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven.
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(Friedrich Hölderlin, 1798)

After the collapse of the Third Reich and the war with its terrible
consequences, namely the disintegration of the state and the dire
economic situation, academics were not the only group aiming to find an
answer to the pressing political and economic needs. Established and
emerging political parties were also concerned about the situation and
developed concepts between programmatic progression and pragmatic
practicability. After twelve years of an antidemocratic Nazi despotism,
however, political associations and organisations were confronted with a
credibility gap in the general public. Furthermore, the collapse of the
centralised regime entailed a regionalisation of public political
identification. As Theodor Heuss (FDP), the first President of the Federal
Republic of Germany, was to put it: ‘world catastrophes, which
vehemently shake a nation, have at first the strange effect of decentralising
the emotions. [...] People attempt to escape to fields where the [...] great
political world is not felt so directly.’ Notwithstanding the fact that such a
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mood was at best a transient phenomenon, political parties initially had to
fight both a credibility gap and political disenchantment.