Harking Back to the ‘Golden Age’ of National Economies: German Memory Narratives in Times of Economic Internationalization

While golden age narratives have been frequently studied by scholars of collective memory and nationalism, this has mostly focused on state power and cultural achievement, while the economic realm has usually been considered merely as a generic background factor. This chapter explores the political salience of economic golden age narratives. Using the case study of post-1945 Germany, it elaborates on several such narratives that emerged against the backdrop of accelerated economic Europeanization and globalization since the 1990s, as well as on their associated diagnoses of how a golden age had been lost, and on the political consequences of the debates triggered by such narratives. The last part of the chapter briefly compares these German patterns to the British case, which, while highlighting crucial differences in terms of chronology and themes, also points to the wider significance of economic golden age narratives.