Ute Frevert: Constitutional Feelings.

75 years after its adoption, the Basic Law is more popular than ever before. But how do these feelings arise, and what binding power do they exert? A journalist, raised in Saxony-Anhalt, recalls the defiance with which he confronted the GDR constitution of 1968. In the same year, tens of thousands protested west of the Elbe against the introduction of a state of emergency constitution, which they saw as an attack on the good spirit of the Basic Law. In 1990, the reunified country disappointed many of its citizens when no discussions or votes were held on a unified German constitution. Three decades later, celebrities as well as students are posting their "love declarations" to the Basic Law online. Constitutions evoke feelings, not just since 1949 and not only in Germany. The nature of these feelings determines their binding power. But how do constitutional feelings arise? What hopes and expectations, what experiences and threats shape them? Who possesses them, and who misses them? In this book, Ute Frevert begins with the revolutionary imperial constitution of 1848/49 and the passion that democrats and liberals invested in it. She examines the claim of a contemporary constitutional lawyer that the constitution of 1871 was dear to the "popular sentiment," and describes the efforts of the Weimar Republic to awaken the pride of the population in the "freest constitution in the world." She also analyzes the changing constitutional feelings after 1949: the transformation from indifference to acceptance and love in the West, and the lingering effects of plebiscitary approval in the East. The event is held in cooperation with the Reinhold Maier Foundation and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom. Ute Frevert, born in 1954, is a historian, emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, and president of the Max Weber Foundation. She has been a professor at Yale University as well as at the universities of Bielefeld, Constance, and Berlin. Frevert is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina and received the Leibniz Prize from the DFG in 1998. Her recent works include "Emotion Politics: Frederick II as Master of Hearts?" (2012), "Fleeting Feelings" (2013), and "Writing the History of Emotions: Concepts and Practices, Economies and Politics" (2024).