Disobedient Democrats: Specters of Resistance in the West German Debate about Emergency Laws

In January 1960, the West German government introduced to Parliament a series of constitutional amendments that would authorize the expansion of executive power and curtailment of individual rights in cases of a declared emergency. The so-called "emergency laws [Notstandsgesetze]" became a flashpoint of political debate during the ensuing eight years. Opposition to the proposed amendments drew together the unions, student groups, pacifist organizations, and church associations that would form the West German New Left. At stake in the debate about emergency laws was the identity of West Germany as a post-Nazi state and society, in particular the question of legitimate resistance against political authority. For conservatives, resistance was permissible only against an Unrechtsstaat (unlawful state)—such as the National Socialist state, or Communist East Germany—while the Rechtsstaat (rule-of-law state) of postwar West Germany demanded citizens' obedience, including during states of emergency. Yet members of the nascent New Left invoked the legacy of resistance against Nazism precisely to legitimate their opposition to emergency laws, which, they claimed, would subvert the rule of law and open the path toward dictatorship. Focusing on a network of Protestant pastors and lay intellectuals who came of age in the Nazi-era Confessing Church, this paper argues that opposition to emergency laws engendered a new understanding of the relationship between resistance and democracy. For Protestant opponents of emergency laws, disobedience in defense of the rule of law constituted a hallmark of democratic citizenship. Their view gained increasing prominence after the West German Parliament passed a constitutional right of resistance alongside the emergency laws in May 1968. The campaign against emergency laws therefore challenged the narrow conception of legitimate resistance dominant in postwar memory culture, while reconciling broad segments of the New Left to working toward the renewal rather than overthrow of West German constitutional democracy.