The German Green Party has introduced a potent idea in the run-up to this year’s federal elections: abolish German citizenship and replace it with a European option. Usually, I’m quite skeptical of ideas that emerge from the Green Party’s headquarters. They are known to keep their distance from anything that looks ‘too German’ to satisfy their self-perception as the conscience of the ecologically-minded Left. During the rougher years of the party’s adolescence, it was considered acceptable to demand “a beating up of the German wherever you encounter him.” But the idea of European citizenship can be examined independently of its ‘green’ context and of the party’s complicated relationship with German history.
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