"Muller explains why many intellectuals reacted so defensively to unification and why unification plunged the Left in particular into a major crisis that has yet to be overcome. He analyzes the responses of Gunter Grass, Jurgen Habermas and others of the so-called 'sceptical generation', who broke with the tradition of the illiberal interwar intellectuals and reinvented themselves as a 'democratic elite' who sought to transform political culture after the War - and tried to do so again after 1989. He discusses the German idea of 'constitutional patriotism' as well as the anti-nationalism of the 'generation of 1968', and provides the first full-scale analysis of Germany's 'New Right'. Written clearly and elegantly, this book assesses the acrimonious debates about the future of the nation-state and public memory in Germany and offers more general reflections on the role intellectuals can play in post-totalitarian societies."--BOOK JACKET.