In 1946 Alexander Abusch, the leftist writer and recently returned emigre, identified the small minority of Germans who had actively opposed Hitler as a "beacon in the German darkness" whose light must be kept burning to show the way to a democratic future for postwar Germany.' But it soon became apparent that this beacon did not provide a clear and steady point of orientation for most Germans in the post-Nazi era. Indeed, attempts to steer by it yielded almost as much confusion and discord as comfort or inspiration. The following article explores some of the efforts to use the resistance legacy as a moral guide and as a source of historical legitimacy for the new political experiments in Germany. Though it focuses primarily on the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), it draws also on developments in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) for purposes of comparison. Alexander Abusch notwithstanding, when it came to establishing a West German state in 1949, the German framers of that new political order did not find -indeed they did not look for-a major source of inspiration in the wartime resistance movement. It is true that three of the state constitutions those of Hesse, Bremen, and West Berlincontained provisions for "resistance" against unconstitutionally exercised governmental authority, but until 1968 the federal constitution, the Grundgesetz, did not. A proposition for such a resistance clause was advanced in the constitutional debates but was rejected on the grounds that it would introduce a plebiscitary element into the governmental system-something that the Weimar experience prompted the framers to avoid at all costs. Moreover, opponents of a resistance clause pointed out that it made no sense to enshrine such a "right" in the constitution, since by definition it could apply only in situations where the constitution had broken down. Widerstand in the true