“Anyone who replies to the signals of desolidarization with an appeal to the ‘self-confident nation’ or by calling for a return to the ‘normality’ of the reestablished national state, is using the devil to drive out Satan. For these unsolved global problems reveal precisely the limits of the nation-state. From the somber drumroll of national history emerge war memorials with limited vision. Only as a critical authority does history serve as a teacher. At best it tells us how we ought not to do it. It is from experiences of a negative kind that we learn. That is why 1989 will remain a fortunate date only so long as we respect 1945 as the genuinely instructive one.”