The notion of civic strength plays a role on various levels. Which type of civic strength for example holds together the golden stars on the blue european flag, which are arranged in a perfect circle as steadily as numbers on the face of a clock? In her book Der europäische Traum (2018, 2020), Aleida Assmann asked herself this question and answered it with four lessons, the european states have drawn from history: the peace project, the democratization project, a self-critical culture of memory and the updated human rights. These lessons, which were drawn by examining the european history after 1945, serve as point of orientation towards the future. They are the standard, with which the european states in their economical fights for distribution and in processes of dedemocratization have to be measured.
While one can find whole libraries about human rights, there is hardly anything to be found about human duties. In her book Menschenrechte und Menschenpflichten (2018) she reconstructs an ancient and hitherto disregarded piece of world cultural heritage. This history of civic strength is based upon the rules of peaceful togetherness and respect towards the other; it is thousands of years old spread over all cultures and religions of the world. Its guiding principle is the golden rule: 'Do as you would be done by'. These principles, often referred to under the name of "wisdom" already since antiquity, are an ABC of civic strength and an important everyday addition to the human rights.
Her current book project Die Wiedererfindung der Nation. Warum wir sie fürchten, warum wir sie brauchen is about the reappropriation of the term "nation", which is almost vanished from academic discourse because cosmopolitically oriented critics of modernization and globalization such as Ulrich Beck considered it obsolete and the term 'methodical nationalism' became a swearword. On the level of the nation, however, we can currently find the most acrimonious fights for civic strength. There are deep trenches and rupture lines not only from economical inequality and increasing migration, but also from politics of identity, new nationalism and racist practices. In the process, the history of the nation is challenged as well, as the current overthrow of colonial monuments shows.