The Multiple Meanings of Human Rights in Germany: an Introduction

Abstract

This special section probes the contested history of human rights in Germany by tracing several historical case studies ranging from migrant advocacy for housing accessibility to human rights diplomacy towards the Global South, and from elite and grassroots views on human rights to the unresolved legacies of the colonial era. While all articles focus on postwar debates, Germany's contested history of human rights politics in fact date to the nineteenth century. Contemporary struggles over human rights, as unprecedentedly divisive and vitriolic as they may seem, fit within a longer story of human rights contestations in modern Germany.