If this last chapter constitutes a climax, it might well be seen as a feeble one in form if not in theoretical pretension. It does, however, attempt to underpin the conclusion that was flagged at the end of the introduction. It was suggested there that we would end up with a contradiction, in that when we—how appropriately—got to the end of the essay, teleology would be treated in a less problematic and suspicious fashion than in the rest of the book. This would come about because claims would be made for contemporary Germany that would distinguish it from all the Germanies of the past. Something more should be said with regard to this contradiction at the outset.

The contradiction reflects two apparent discrepancies, one general, the other specific. Both will be seen as fundamental to the observations of all the preceding pages in that they lie directly at odds with them. And both follow from the claim that the Germany that came into being in 1989/90 was not only a “new” Germany but also one radically and uniquely different from its predecessors.

The first and general discrepancy that follows from the claim that the Germany de facto born in 1989 and baptized in 1990 was new in a special sense, is simply that it doesn't pay due respect to the axiom that the past is never dead. True, it does not, even superficially, contradict it absolutely. After all, radical change and revolution (whether violent or, as in 1989, peaceful) are just as much historically dependent phenomena as those developments that come about gradually. Yet I want to go further than this and argue that 1989 either answered or simply tossed aside the traditional package of questions that had previously shaped the argument as to Germany's identity, and that this step was so radical that the Germany we now talk about has a fundamentally new relationship to the past.