Habermas, the philosopher who shaped Germany’s post-war conscience, dies at 96

BERLIN, Germany – Juergen Habermas, best-known for his theory of political consensus-building, shaped the discourse of post-war Germany more than any other popular intellectual.

He died on Saturday, aged 96, in Starnberg, Germany, the publisher Suhrkamp said.

Over the course of seven decades, his public interventions — from searing critiques of fascist thought in the 1950s to more recent warnings against resurgent militarism and nationalism in Germany — steered the country at critical junctions.

Not only his longevity, but also the renewed relevance of his ideas are remarkable in a country where post-war pacifism is waning and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has become the second-strongest party in parliament.

Public educator

Born on June 18, 1929 to a bourgeois family in Dusseldorf, Juergen Habermas underwent two surgeries after birth and in early childhood for a cleft palate. A resulting speech impediment is often cited as having influenced his work on communication.

He was raised in a staunchly Protestant household. His father, an economist, joined the Nazi party in 1933 but was no more than a “passive sympathizer,” Habermas said. He himself joined the Hitler Youth, as did the vast majority of German boys. At 15, as the war was drawing to a close, he managed to avoid being drafted into the Wehrmacht by hiding from military police.

While at the University of Bonn, Habermas gravitated towards fellow student Ute Wesselhoeft. They shared a passion for modern art, cinema and literature. The couple married in 1955. She died last year. Their children Tilmann and Judith survive them. Their third child, Rebekka, a modern historian, died in 2023.

Habermas first rose to prominence as a journalist and academic in the 1950s, influenced by the Frankfurt School and Marxist thinkers like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer.

In his habilitation thesis, Habermas outlined the development of the public sphere from the bourgeois salons of 18th century Europe to its 20th century transformation into a public arena governed by mass media.

The message resonated with post-war West Germans, who were learning to discuss politics freely after liberation from Nazi dictatorship and against the backdrop of a conservative government that also had little tolerance for dissent.

Philipp Felsch, who penned the biography “The Philosopher,” said Habermas became a sort of “public educator” of post-war Germans, equal parts hopeful and sceptical about their ability to sustain a liberal democracy.

German guilt

Habermas launched a debate about the Holocaust in 1986, after historians like Ernst Nolte had argued that Nazi crimes were not unique and could be understood in the broader historical context of war and violence in Europe.

Defending the uniqueness of Third Reich atrocities, Habermas believed that “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” or coming to terms with the past, had to be central to the country’s identity.

“It was extremely important that Germany took a clear position on the question of guilt,” said former foreign minister Joschka Fischer. “I was only able to understand the full implications of [Habermas’s contribution] later on.”

The famed German remembrance culture that emerged from the debate is under fire again today, with the far-right AfD playing down Nazi crimes and saying the Holocaust is used as a cudgel against it.

Ukraine crisis

The prospect of reunification in 1989 brought Habermas back into the public sphere, with his scepticism of a recreated German nation state drawing the ire of many Germans.

Habermas later became a fervent advocate of European integration as an insurance policy against resurgent German nationalism. After the turn of the century he sought — and ultimately failed — to promote a European constitution.

In a widely debated development, Habermas increasingly turned to religion as an important, potentially benevolent force in modern society. Once a firm proponent of secularization, he ultimately favoured the co-existence of the profane and the holy. “Religion,” he argued, “is still indispensable in ordinary life for normalizing intercourse with the extraordinary”. Asked about his own beliefs, he said: “I am, religiously-speaking, rather unmusical.”

Habermas’s most recent and contentious public intervention came in 2022 when he backed then-chancellor Olaf Scholz’s cautious approach to providing military aid to Kyiv.

Shortly afterwards, Habermas called for negotiations with Moscow, prompting Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s then ambassador to Germany, to call him a “disgrace for German philosophy” that would make fellow thinkers Kant and Hegel “turn over in their graves.”

Habermas later clarified his position: although he experienced the attack on Ukraine as “a fateful violation” of Europe’s post-WW2 inhibition concerning “the archaic violence of war”, he worried that this conflict with a nuclear power “did not trigger any anguished reflection, but instead immediately prompted a highly emotionalized war mentality.”

Legacy in peril

During his last visit to see Habermas in the autumn of 2023 at his house in Bavaria, biographer Felsch encountered a “very gloomy” man who saw his political and philosophical legacy under threat.

Habermas expressed fears that the war in Ukraine would result in Europe “gambling away the last remnants of its geopolitical credibility” and that militarism was gaining ground again in Germany, Felsch told public broadcaster rbb.

“What fascinated me during the visit was this encounter with a still very lucid thinker in whom I saw the embodiment of the country I grew up in, but that no longer existed,” said Felsch. – Rappler.com