The article describes the so-called 'Great Controversy' as an important dispute in West Germany after the Second World War. In this, Thomas Mann and the ‚Inner Emigrants' argued about appropriate behavior during the Third Reich, but above all about the question of whether one could still refer to a German identity after the end of National Socialism. This question is traced back on the one hand to Thomas Mann's Reflections of a nonpolitical man from 1918 and Martin Heidegger's politicization in the early 1930s, but also put against the background of the upheavals in West- and then all-German post-war history (1968–1989/90–2015) and the present. What has remained unsolved in the 'Great Controversy', is shown as still determining the current crisis/crises in Germany.