 Thank you for the kind words, and thank you for the invitation to this formidable institute. It's a pleasure and a privilege to speak to you. I've called my short talk in search of a German national identity. And I would like to begin with some agreement being struck in Garmisch-Partenkirchen about eight years ago. In early May 2006, in the lovely mountain resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the Bavarian Alps, ministers and senators of the 16 federal states in Germany finally decided what was needed to become a German. After months of intensive parliamentary debates and fierce public arguing, the German lender recommended that immigrants demanding a German passport should, in future, have to pass a language exam, attend an integration course, providing them with information about the German basic law, the Grundgesetz, and about German beliefs, and to attend a citizenship ceremony at the end. The agreement was hailed as a success for German consensus politics, among others by the then minister of interior Wolfgang Schäuble. In truth, what Schäuble and his lender colleagues regarded as a major breakthrough for German integration policy was, in fact, nothing more than the latest chapter in an extended debate about how the country can finally integrate its immigrant population as a Spiegel depicted it. Of course, the question who belongs and who doesn't and how to integrate immigrants into the nation state is not only a German issue. Following 9-11 in the United States, then terrorist attacks in Madrid and in London in 2004 and 2005, the murder of Islam critical film director Theo van Roog in Amsterdam and riots in the Paris banlieues have provoked political and public debates in most of these countries and a flood of new immigration laws and regulations requiring inter alia from newcomers to complete examination and give assurances about their loyalty to their chosen nation. But nowhere has the argument about nationhood and the leading culture, so-called light culture, been more fiercely debated than in Germany. Hovering around the question, can we really require people to learn and accept what it means to be German? It has, however, been widely forgotten that this debate, who is a German or what it means to be German, is in fact much older. It has accompanied the developing of the modern German nation state right from the beginning and even before. Friedrich Nietzsche, the radical German philosopher and writer, ridiculed this speculative, traditional, ready in the 1880s in his famous aphorism. It is characteristic of the Germans that the question, what is German, won't die out. Ladies and gentlemen, I have divided my observations in two parts. First, I would like to say something about the historical background of the quest for German identity after all I'm an historian. Then discuss this issue in its present day context. But let me first define what I mean by national identity. Nations, as you know, are no fixed anthropological entities expressed by language, descent, and culture, or high birth rates, or high rates of baptism as suggested in today's Irish Times. I sure you have read the article. Ethnicities and ethnic clusters can be, these categories are merely what I would call role materials. Ethnicities and ethnic clusters can be at the core of nations, but not necessarily so, as the case of Belgium with three and the Swiss Confederation with four main linguistic and cultural regions demonstrate. Nations are rather the result of political, collective, or concerted actions of social communications and what I would call a sense of belonging. Or as a famous French philosopher, historian, and writer Ernest Renan, phrased in his so one lecture of 1882, a nation is a daily plebiscite. So now to the historical perspective. In contrast to France and Germany, and in contrast to France and Britain, Germany, like Italy, was a latecomer to modern statehood. Germany became a nation state only in 1871. And this Germany was not a centralized state, but a territory of 27 kingdoms, Grand Duchies, Duchies, Principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial region. The complicated process of unifying the nation was accompanied, as you all know, by several wars, notably the Franco-German War of 1870-71, with its final act, the proclamation of the German Empire and the Prussian King William I as Kaiser in the Miroholes of Versailles. It was, like in Italy, unification from above and not from below, notwithstanding the fact that the German national bourgeois classes had fought for it ever since the failed liberal bourgeois revolution of 1848. The first German empire created and shaped by the Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck certainly comprised some democratic features, for instance, universal suffrage, just for men, and the development of political parties. And it was founded on a remarkable rule of law. But the system and what is more its politics were also marked by serious flaws and obvious shortcomings. A significant disparity between the Prussian and the German electoral system, the Prussian Reiklassenwahlrecht, and the political alienation of social democrats and Roman Catholics, who at different times and in church circumstances were regarded by the ruling classes as enemy of the empire, the Reichsfeinde. Other potential foes of the Reich within the Reich included ethnic minorities, like the more than 3 million Poles in the east, almost 150,000 Danes in the north, and the French-speaking population of Alsace-Lorraine and next in 1871 in the west. In order to control and integrate these and other ethnicities, the Prussian-German state followed a strict policy of linguistic and cultural Germanization that occasionally led to public riots and disturbances. The situation got even worse with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Polish and Missourian migrant workers at the industrial centers and coal mines of the Ruhr Valley, the so-called Ruhr Polen, forming their own social and cultural networks, churches, clubs, and associations. Of the approximately half a million, about 150,000 continue to stay on and become assimilated even after Poland became independent in 1919, despite the economic appeals of the 1920s. Today, only the names of famous soccer players in the Ruhr remind Germans of this cultural and social heritage. The soccer club Schalke-Nulfier, by the way, was for many years coined as a Polakian club, Polish or Polak club. Internal labor migration, as well as immigration from Tzarist Russia, among them tens of thousands of East European Jews around the turn of the century, was accompanied by continuing political and public debates about Germany and German them, and what it needed to belong to the German Volksgemeinschaft. The term Volksgemeinschaft for community is much older than the Nazi term, by the way. I come back to this. The nationality law of the German Empire and States of 1913, based on the principle of USanguinis, established for the first time a German nationality, replacing the until then citizenship of the component 27 states. In reality, however, Germans continued to be Prussians, Bavarians, Saxons, Westphalians, or Swabians, respectively. If there was a national identity around the turn of the century, it was a firm belief that the German Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm presented the best of all worlds, a fast growing population thanks to social and medical improvements, an even faster growing economy, particularly the new electrical and chemical industries, and the well-organized and capable army and navy, even if the German fleet couldn't match the British naval dominance. Most Germans, therefore, not only shared their emperor's conviction that the nation never had it's a good, to quote Harold McMillan, but also the Kaiser's repeated demand for an empire in which the sun will not go down. After the Lost War and the ensuing political revolution, Germany's first parliamentary democracy, the Weimar Republic, was successfully established. But the Republic failed in the end, not because of the heavy burden of the Treaty of Versailles or her economic and institutional problems, but because Weimar proved to be a democracy without mobilizing enough Democrats. The Democratic Weimar Republic, with her ruling coalitions of social Democrats, liberals, and the Catholic Center Party, was neither able to command the unwavering loyalty of her citizens nor develop an identity of her own. German national identity during the 1920s was essentially divided along social classes and down the lines of political parties. Where most Germans, however, agreed was a widespread consensus and conviction that Germany did not cause the Great War alone and that Versailles had been a shameful piece. The beneficiaries of this beliefs were the Nazis, who after 1933 successfully established their mystical unity of a German-Folksgemeinschaft. They were supposed to overcome the distinction of social and political classes. But it was a token, community and a largely destructive identity based on a fascist and racist ideology, excluding and persecuting all adversaries of the regime, in particular Jews, homosexuals, mental patients, and other so-called unwanted social groups and minorities. Nevertheless, the majority of Germans during the 1930s, impressed by the political, economic, and military achievements of the Third Reich, did support and identify with the regime and its furor, not because they were ideological committed, but because they felt that after the previous lost war, what Germany and the Germans were for once entitled to march on the winning road of history. It was a difficult and painful process to acknowledge after the war that their demonstrated affinity and their eagerness to support the regime had been a colossal mistake, a self-deception, and for some of them, a criminal deed. The Second World War, with its hectorcoms of lives, cut off biographies and enormous sales of destruction, represented a watershed in establishing a binding German national identity. Given the bends and distortions of German history in the 20th century, and in particular, the crimes and atrocities of the Third Reich, it was not surprising that most Germans in the West initially declined to accept a national identity that went beyond the formal citizenship. If there was some kind of national identity feeling among West Germans, it was throughout the 1950s and 60s a curious mixture of smugness about the economic achievement, as Deutsche Wirtschaftswunder, the defiance against an allegedly accusation of collective guilt about the Nazi past, and an air of openly exposed arrogance against the GDR, den Brüdern und Schwestern, the Brasen sister in the East. The East Germans, on the other hand, tried to come to terms with the politically decreed socialist identity. They tried to distance itself from all what was seen negative in German history and present day politics, deriving its particular pride and satisfaction from the triumphs of their sportsmen and sportswomen. According to the official GDR interpretation, there were even two German nations existing side by side, not just two German states, and consequently, two German national identities had to exist. The erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the GDR propaganda, as you know, baptized it an anti-fascist protective wall, and the military reinforcement of the inner German borders, intensified the existing divide between the two German nations, the two German states. Continuous efforts by West German politicians to maintain an all German national identity and gesamtdeutsches Bewusstsein became largely obsolete. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the apparent absence of a national identity, particularly prominent among West German students and intellectuals of the 1968 movement. And at the core of this perception was the idea written and argued by a number of prominent national and international historians that Germany and the Germans, in contrast to other Western nations, had historically followed a special path to modernity, and in Sonderweg, at German Sonderweg. This unique German path in defiance of Western political ideas and convictions had in the end led to the Third Reich and to Auschwitz. The concept of a German Sonderweg was subsequently modified, reviewed, but also heavily criticized. After all, you could say that every nation has taken its own way or special path to modernity. The famous German philosopher Jürgen Habermas later suggested a possible alternative to this negativa nationalismus. During the 1980s, Habermas presented his concept of verfassungspatrotismus, constitutional patriotism. The term, by the way, is not Habermas, but goes back to the political scientist, Dolp Sternberger. Constitution patriotism whereby people should orientate to the norms and the values of a liberal democratic constitution rather than to a national inherited culture. Habermas' concept was applauded, particularly by many German intellectuals, but also met with strong criticism for being far too abstract and too specifically German. Allow me to come to the second part of this, of my observation. German national identity today, in contrast to the first German democracy, the Weimar Republic, the system of parliamentary democracy was and is generally accepted, from the left to the right of the political spectrum. This was not only the result of the total defeat and catastrophic ending of the Third Reich in 1945 that did not permit a second step in the back legend or the failure of the GDR socialist experiment that was terminated with the peaceful revolution of 1989. I don't like the term vendor, U-turn or change. I would rather call it a peaceful revolution. Responsible for the acceptance and approval of democracy in Germany is the historical and personal experience of more than 65 years of parliamentary practice that ensures for most Germans economic prosperity, social security, and political freedom, first only in the West, so-called Bond Republic, and for the past 25 years in a unified Germany. Of course, there were and even are today, particularly among the older generations, marked differences and occasionally irritation of the mentalities between the citizen of the old and the new federal states in Bundesländern. The blatant lack of symmetry or krasse Asymetrie, as my colleague Peter Brandt has called it, that accompanied and shaped the process of German unification in 1990, looked at any rate insulting to those who disregarding their personal safety had made the November Revolution possible. The majority of West Germans, therefore, tended to regard unification as a mere by-treat, joining of the club, so to speak, by the five new states, as outlined in Article 23 of the Basic Law. But a project of such historical dimension and consequences should have been decided, this is my opinion, by an old German sovereign constitutional assembly as provided by Article 146 of the Basic Law. The balance sheet after 25 years since unification offers a mixed result. The glass is either half full or half empty, depending on the viewpoint. The process of the two Germanies growing together was not a fabulous story of success, Chancellor Kohl's flourishing landscapes, but neither was it a never-ending saga of failure as some contemporaries predicted at the time. According to a recent study by the Independent Berlin Institute for Population and Development, presented in July 2015, the overall aim, that is the harmonization of living conditions, has undoubtedly advanced, especially in education, environment, and ecology, but there are still noticeable differences between the new and the old lender. East Germans earn less, approximately, only three quarters of the average income in the West, though pensions are about the same height. And productivity and economic performance are considerably lower, largely this is due to the small businesses that have replaced senatoriously unproductive GDR industries. But lower are also house prices and rented accommodation. Besides, there are substantial disparities in the demographic development. Between 1991 and 2013, more than 2 million people migrated from the East to the West. And there are still considerably difference regarding wealth, assets, and inheritance. The study of the Berlin Institute predicts that Germany will have to live with these inequalities between East and West for good. One should add that similar disparities do exist also in the old Bundesländer, the old federal states, for instance between the North and the South, or let's say between the Ruhr Valley and the Neckar region around Stuttgart. The often described differences in mentalities between East and West Germans do exist, but they are of no or little, only little significance. The so-called German Glücksatlas, the Atlas of Happiness, which on an annual basis takes records of individual feelings, income, employment, job satisfaction, family situation. The 2015 Atlas was only published last week. The Atlas states that there is hardly any difference now between the old and the new Bundesländer. This is the lowest gap ever recorded. On a scale of 10, West German figured 7.05 and East German 6.9. When asked about their personal feelings of happiness. By the way, the European ranking, which is also accumulated, based on 30,000 data collected by the EU, sees the Germans on the rank 9, closely followed by the Austrians and the Irish, with an equal score, the Austrians and the Irish, by the way. The happiest nations on the European list of 30 countries for 2014 were the Danes, the Swedes, and the Dutch, the most unhappy ones, the Portuguese, the Greeks, and the Bulgarians. And the results belie the old saying that money can't buy happiness. So what does it all mean for German identity? All political and social indications point to the direction that it has become difficult to maintain a unique German identity as previous generation did. The modern nation state, not just in Europe, has been relativized due to the increasing processes of Europeanization and globalization going far beyond the economic impacts and requirements. This is not to say that nations are going to disappear, but their role as communities of political and collective action and social communication has undergone considerably changes and will do so in future. In Germany, the old question of identity is currently being discussed in a much broader context. People are afraid to ask who is a German, said Josef Janning, co-director of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin last week. Therefore, it has become a debate about identity without the label of German. Janning was obviously referring to populist groups like Pegida in Dresden, a grassroots anti-Islam movement, or the Alternative for Germany, a likewise populist party. Those were already on the decline, although they appear to have undergone a miraculous revival since the refugee crisis began last summer. But the card of a threatened identity, and it's not longer a German identity, but a European or an Abendlendische identity, the card of a threatened identity is not just played by populist movements with an unshamed borrowing of right-wing and folkish labels and stereotypes. Popular signals are also coming from the National Conservative CSU and even from inside Chancellor Merkel's own party. Using the controversial term light culture, a guiding culture, the general secretary of the CSU recently declared that it was essential for, I quote, all asylum seekers to accept our Judeo-Christian system of values on the basis of our constitution, end of quote. This, I think, is a bit much. Of course, the belief that the constitution is, Germany's basic law should be the foundation for all people living in the country is widely shared, not just on all sides of the Bundestag. In October, the German tabloid built even printed a special edition Arabic containing the basic law, which was then distributed in many refugee shelters. But a Judeo-Christian system of values separating Europe from the Muslim world is an historical absurdity or simply an invention of modernity as the French philosopher Jacques Derrida has put it. Given the European history of religious oppression and persecution of Jewish life, it is difficult to see how a make-believe symbiosis could guide Europe's and Germany's behavior towards Muslim refugees. Or does this merely articulate a wishful dream of many Germans still traumatized by the Holocaust? And this brings me to my last point. The Holocaust as part of German identity. In its address to the Bundestag, at the occasion of the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, this 27th of January, the federal president, Joachim Gauke, asked how the memory of the Holocaust, the murder of 6 million German and European Jews, has in the past and will in future affect the quest for German identity. Let me quote his answer. And while the Holocaust will not necessarily be among the central components of German identity for everyone in our country, it will still hold true that there is no German identity without Auschwitz. Remembering the Holocaust remains a matter for every citizen of Germany. It is part and parcel of our country's history, more binding than elsewhere. End of quote. The majority of Germans today, at least those who are politically awake and conscious about the past, will truly agree with their president's interpretation and commitment. Joachim Gauke's statement is clearly not about a collective historical guilt. It is about collective responsibilities for a genocidal crime against humanity that will remain, at least for my generation, historically unique. But what about those who are coming to Germany as immigrants, be the refugees, asylum seekers, or labor migrants? Can Germany expect that they share this historical responsibility? It must not happen again, even if they do not or do not yet identify as Germans? It is a difficult question, but it needs an honest answer. And I think we must expect that the newcomers shoulder this responsibility. If the immigrants want to live, if the immigrants want to share the living standards and advantages of Germany, and if they call this country their home, they also become responsible for what path this country will take to quote Joachim Gauke. Ladies and gentlemen, I did not talk about the problems that Europe and Germany are presently facing while accepting thousands of refugees every day. And I do not want to suggest easy answers to a very complicated and multi-part question. I'm more concerned with the consequence of the so-called welcome culture, the Will Kobenskultur, of accepting refugees and what this could mean for an assumed national identity. Generally, I'm convinced that Germany can do it, as Chancellor Merkel promised with her usual Anglo-American pragmatism, rephrasing Obama's Yes We Can. But it needs partners, and it needs a fair and just mechanism of distributing the asylum seekers across Europe and not just the EU. The big challenge will, of course, be the integration of millions of asylum seekers once a claim has been officially recognized. But I am optimistic. After all, mass movements of people lie at the heart of Europe, whether voluntary or involuntary. Such as Germany has acknowledged and integrated millions of so-called guest workers and their families, some of them now in the third generation. Despite strong objections from some segments of the host society in the past, the acceptance of the current refugees will succeed. What Germany certainly doesn't need are ghetto-like parallel societies that would introduce and reinforce social separation and ethnic or cultural isolation. Parallel societies are, in any case, not compatible with the democratic and welfare orientated nation and society based on the rule of law that chooses and endorses the inclusion and integration of immigrants. On the other hand, democracy and democratic societies also need the recognition of common rules and shared values, for instance, the principles of human rights. And these societies require minimum of cultural and social homogeneity in order to identify the demos, the respective people, capable of acting responsibly and legitimately. Thank you for your attention.