Abstract/Summary

This chapter focuses on the parameters that triggered changes in West German postwar political oratory, such as the increasing mediatization and fragmentation of Germany’s party landscape as well as voting behavior. Based on existing research, I argue that after the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany there are two main caesuras (breaks or significant changes) in Germany’s public and political discourse. The first caesura can be seen as the result of increasing democratization and political participation in the late 1960s. The second caesura from the 1990s onwards can be understood to having resulted from increasing politicization and the normative underpinning of a range of issues that are difficult to tackle by national governments. These developments and their effects on political rhetoric will be exhibited through analyses of speeches given by leaders of new parliamentary parties that newly entered the German parliament.