Since fifty years, the work of Carl Schmitt has been much debated among German intellectuals. The personal story of the man, committed in the national-socialist party between 1933 and 1936, has been long in the middle of the controversy. But Schmitt’s death and the unification have transformed it into a more scientific debate. Carl Schmitt is yet an historical « case » and the positions of his commentators can be classified with different criterions: political opinion, generation, personal relations, university and department, sociological and geographical origins. The debate about Schmitt is worth to be explored because some aspects of the German democratic political culture are at stake and give us some clues about the modern Federal Republic.