Abstract
Germany's peaceful unification 20 years ago can be rated as one of the lasting success stories of German and European history. Nevertheless, some feelings of frustration with unification and the ensuing process of transition in the East continue to exist among many East and West Germans. While West Germans often feel like the paymasters of German unity, many East Germans feel their lifetime in the GDR is not respected and argue that even Communist East Germany would have had a few positive contributions to make to a united Germany. While these frustrations are slowly receding in their significance for day-to-day public affairs, the centre of gravity of German politics has shifted leftward domestically and especially in foreign policy.
Keywords
Sometimes our commemoration of important events says as much about the present we live in as it does about the past we remember. Germany's remembrance of what we call the Wende (turnabout) is no exception: its 20-year anniversary has been an occasion not only to recall what happened, but also to debate (again) united Germany's development in the past two decades. As much as the peaceful unification of Europe's biggest nation and former troublemaker can be rated an overall success, some shortcomings remain in the construction of innere Einheit, a subjective feeling of unity which still eludes large groups among the East and West German populations. The very fact that many Ossis (East Germans) and Wessis (West Germans) still classify themselves and each other in these categories and have very distinct collective identities, as well as differing narratives, is proof that not everything went smoothly and successfully.
A good example of how unhappiness with the current situation plays into this year's remembrance of 1989 is the fact that the spring 2009 campaign between the two main candidates for Federal President was briefly but intensely overshadowed by the repetition of a debate Germany has seen several times in the last 20 years. It was about the character of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as an Unrechtsstaat (a state built on the perversion of the rule of law). This time, the Prime Minister of an East German Land let it be known in an interview that Communist East Germany had not entirely been an Unrechtsstaat—a statement which quickly became the subject of wider debate and elicited comments from the two main contenders for President: Gesine Schwan of the Social Democratic Party joined those who would at least relativise the term and thus sided with the East German Prime Minister; while centre-right Horst Köhler spoke for many West as well as some East Germans when he reaffirmed his conviction that in the end, the GDR was built on an unjust foundation. Quite obviously, the very character of German Communism is one of a number of still-controversial questions in Germany today. Before looking at them in more detail, however, here is a short recapitulation of 1989 and its aftermath.
What happened in 1989
The somewhat euphemistic term Wende 1 usually describes the seminal events of the summer and autumn of 1989 that led to the end of Communist Party rule in the GDR in the spring of 1990 and ultimately to German unification in October 1990. This entailed, at the very beginning, the growing public dissatisfaction with state, society and economy in the GDR, and the equally growing irritation among the party leadership. The events in neighbouring Poland, where the Communist Party had admitted (and badly lost) partially free elections on 4 June, played an important role in encouraging the first protesters in the GDR. The next milestone was Hungary's opening of the Iron Curtain later that month, causing a wave of thousands of GDR refugees fleeing across this border to Austria or simply seeking asylum in the West German embassies in Prague and Warsaw. Their negotiated transfer to West Germany through GDR territory in early October led to the first anti-Communist mass demonstrations in East Germany since 1953, with the police trying—in vain—to violently suppress them. A few days later, Gorbachev visited East Berlin for the GDR's 40th anniversary, urged the Communist leadership to emulate his glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) approach—and was coldly rebuffed by a First Secretary Erich Honecker completely out of touch with reality. The decisive showdown between Communism and freedom, and thus the political tipping point of 1989, happened in Leipzig on 9 October, when police, the Stasi and even paramilitary units prepared for a massive crackdown against more than 70,000 peaceful demonstrators but decided not to use force, in the end, because the bloodshed would have been unimaginable and because the politbureau in Berlin was waffling. After that, the authority of the East German Communist Party waned rapidly. On 9 November, the border to West Germany was opened for free travel by a renewed party leadership that, in all probability, was incapable of grasping at the time that this would mean the end of the GDR. The Wall had come down, and the late-summer protest slogan ‘We are the people’—directed against the totalitarian rule of a party which still claimed to act in the people's name—quickly changed to ‘We are one people’, alluding to the partition of Germany and demanding unification in one state. Democratic elections with parties already partly resembling their West German counterparts followed on 18 March 1990, and on 3 October 1990 the GDR—of its own free will expressed by a freely elected parliament—joined West Germany. The Second World War allies returned full sovereignty to Germany 45 years after the end of the war.
Many former dissidents complain that this euphemism is deliberate, both by Ossis, who saw their initially high hopes of fast economic growth disappointed and therefore tend to belittle the whole event, and by Wessis, who hesitate to acknowledge the courage and determination of the East German demonstrators in the autumn of 1989. These former dissidents would much prefer to use the term ‘revolution’.
The aftermath of unification
In the end, German unification was a huge success story. Its heroes were both the East German protesters, who peacefully brought down Communism, and the West German government under Helmut Kohl, which acted carefully but with determination, as well as international political leaders in the East and West who let all this happen despite some historically founded misgivings. Those times amount to a magic moment of history. But in the years to follow, the general euphoria slowly gave way to an increasing frustration and even weariness on both sides. Many West Germans felt like the eternal paymaster, met with contempt instead of gratitude in the East. State-sponsored transfers from West to East reached sums of up to 150 billion Deutschemarks (75 billion euro) per year during the 1990s, and for a long time there was a special, personalised tax to finance part of the transfers. Many East Germans, on the other hand, complained not only about having seen their world collapse, having to adapt to a very different system in a short time and having a noticeably lower living standard than Westerners, but also and above all about the ‘devaluation’ of their life experiences. Depending on the age group in question, East Germans more or less intensively wondered whether their years or decades in the GDR were acknowledged by the other Germans as equally valid. All of this has combined to shape an East German mindset that often blends elements of nostalgia for the GDR with an overwhelming sense of frustration about what has come to be seen as a takeover by the West, along with a defiant resentment against ‘overbearing Westerners’ in the present, united Germany.
In fact, in the five Eastern Länder in 2009, unemployment is twice as high as in the West, with productivity at 80% and GDP per capita at 70% of the level in the 11 West German Länder. East Germany, especially in the northeast, faces severe depopulation through ageing and intra-German migration. Even 20 years after the fall of the Wall, 63% of all East Germans do not feel properly integrated in Germany as a whole, while 42% even feel themselves to be ‘second-class Germans’. 2 Admittedly, both the economic indicators and the opinion polls looked even worse in the 1990s. It is also true that there is a clear growth in East German confidence in the German government's efforts to work towards the benefit of both parts of the country. Equally, the trivialisation of GDR totalitarianism seems to have decreased somewhat among East Germans. But a lingering feeling of malaise remains and probably will do so for decades to come.
In any case, the East German events in the autumn of 1989 were crucial to what happened elsewhere in Europe: the end of Communism, the collapse of the Soviet empire, the re-emergence of Central and Eastern Europe as market-oriented democracies eager to join the Euroatlantic institutions. That is why it is worth the effort to take another look at the way Germans today remember the end of the GDR and the process of unification that followed.
Having said all this, the narrative of many East Germans holds a number of features that set it apart from that of most Westerners—and, more importantly, from that of most of the former Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe as well. East Germany's unique feature is, above all, that as a state it seemed to be truly taken over, as its government and Parliament were retired, its military and police structures dissolved and its administrative and legal foundations razed. All these were replaced by the structures of what had been until 1989 another sovereign state, the Federal Republic of Germany. Secret police archives were opened to an extent unknown in any other former Communist country—and West Germany took its ‘fiercely moral and professional approach to dealing with a difficult past’ ([1], 340) and applied it to the country that had just ‘joined the Federation’, as official terminology went. And yet, some parallels to parts of other post-Communist societies remain, especially in a certain disappointment with democratic capitalism in some segments of society. What are the four central elements of what might be called the East German mindset? 3 And what would be a rational answer to them?
Defined here as a set of convictions held by varying portions of East German society, but in any case politically very influential and instrumental to the electoral success of the Linke (Left Party) in the East.
‘Not everything was bad’
First, there is the vague feeling, and sometimes the defiant conviction, that ‘not everything was bad about the GDR'—that daily life under German Communism cannot be fairly represented in black and white (as was done, for example, in the Oscar-winning 2006 movie by Florian Henkel von Donnersmarck, Das Leben der Anderen). Many Ossis feel that in demonising the GDR, West Germans as well as a small number of anti-Communist Easterners also show disrespect for the lives of the great majority of East Germans who were not ardent supporters of socialism—who were neither working as Stasi informers nor living in some kind of permanent resistance against the system. This is an understandable feeling, especially given the fact that East Germans remembering the GDR were 20 years younger in 1989, which helps put life under Communism in a positive light. And of course, no totalitarian system precludes moments of private happiness and feelings of satisfaction, even a kind of inner freedom of the mind, that East Germans often praise about their time before 1989. But none of this changes the fact that under totalitarian Communism, the violation of basic human rights was systemic and intended, in sharp contrast to Western democracies (which do not guarantee the permanent happiness of their citizens, of course), where there are valid and constitutionally assured mechanisms to safeguard those rights. The statement that ‘not everything was bad’ is not wrong from a subjective point of view (and how could it be, since we are talking about subjective feelings?), but it misses the point as to the character of the system.
The real winners of the Wende
Second, there is a widespread notion (even among Wessis, to be fair) that the ascent to power of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1984 was somehow a product of reform-minded forces within the Soviet Union, and that not only in the German context but also globally, the West is wrong to declare itself the winner of the Cold War and by implication the people in the East the losers. Gorbachev was central to the end of the GDR, and not only because Helmut Kohl managed to convince him in early 1990 that German unification was inevitable. ‘Gorbi’ had also, by autumn 1989, become an iconic figure for many Easterners because of his declared strategies of glasnost and perestroika—in contrast to the surreal conservatism of Erich Honecker, who for a time in the second half of 1989 even went so far as to prohibit the sale of some Soviet political literature for fear of its subversive effect. Seen from this perspective, the entire West and especially the Wessis (most of whom have never risked their life or liberty for a cause) 4 ought to be grateful to Gorbachev and the peoples of the Warsaw Pact countries for having peacefully abolished Communist dictatorship and thus ending the Cold War, recognising them as its moral, if not real, winners. This narrative, however, completely neglects the root causes of the rapid decline of the Soviet Union and the other Warsaw Pact countries in the 1980s: they were economically bankrupt and technologically they lagged decades behind the West. Their economic weakness was to a significant extent the direct and intended result of a strategy by US President Reagan and British Prime Minister Thatcher to use a renewed arms race and show of political resolve, together with support for the opposition movements in the East (like Poland's Solidarność), in an effort to weaken the Communist regimes. Likewise, the seminal Hungarian decision to open the Iron Curtain came as a result of financial pressure by the West German government under Helmut Kohl. In other words, it was political will and economic efficiency in the West, as well as the budding freedom movements in the East, that first brought Gorbachev to power and then brought the system down (which he still tried to save, but was not ready to use violence outside the Soviet Union to do so). There was and is therefore nothing wrong with a sense of joint victory over Communism on the part of the West and, indeed, the majority of people in most former Communist countries, especially Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states. If these can feel themselves winners together with the West, why should a sizeable number of East Germans cultivate a separate and indeed exclusive winners' identity, or maintain that declaring the Soviet Union the loser would be unfair and dangerous? 5 Defiance vis-à-vis Wessis and the US is a poor reason.
In this respect, and contrary to what many in Germany and elsewhere believe, the peaceful and successful demonstrations of 9 October in Leipzig were arguably more important in bringing down Communism in the GDR than the fall of the Wall on 9 November. This is often emphasised by East Germans who also favour the ‘missed chance’ argument (see below). See Jankowski [2].
In fact, Russians are the only group beside many East Germans who have this problem with declaring the West the winner of the Cold War. Many Russians, as anti-Communist as they may be, demonstrate a frightening degree of identification with the Soviet Union on this issue. As among East Germans, the winner/loser debate helped create a regrettable retrospective identification with some aspects of the GDR.
The missed chance of building a democratic GDR
Third, there is a recurrent belief that in the Wende, the East had no chance to develop its own kind of (possibly socialist) democracy because unification came much too fast (or maybe should not have occurred at all). In this perspective, the East was steamrolled by the West. Moreover, the latter should not be surprised that there is so much resentment given that every single structural element of statehood, from the Constitution to the judiciary, administration, police and also academia, was simply transferred from West to East Germany. How precisely such a separate, second German democracy should have looked and functioned is rarely explained. Much of this rhetoric consciously or subconsciously recalls the Cold War idea of a ‘third way’ between capitalism and socialism, between East and West—a notion that appealed to many intellectuals on both sides of the Wall for decades (but conspicuously absent from Polish or Baltic discourse, for example). In the end, it always failed to materialise. But what is much more important is the fact that this scenario was utterly unworkable in the alarming situation the GDR was in after November 1989. A large number of East Germans had lost trust not only in the now-defunct Communist Party, but also in the state as such. The economy was in free fall. Several thousand citizens per day were leaving for the West. A simple extrapolation suggests that by mid-1990, public order would have been very difficult to maintain. The sad truth is that if power in the GDR had been retained by a group of reform Communists or taken over by dissidents without any experience in administration or politics, there would have been a risk of people either running away or rioting. The neighbouring ex-Communist countries were radically different from this in that there was no West Poland or West Hungary to go to. Financially, a reformed GDR would have been completely dependent on West Germany, and Soviet troops might yet have been used to quell anarchy. It was only the clear prospect of rapid unification after the election of 18 March 1990, and specifically the extension of the political, legal and economic system of the Federal Republic to the East, that brought the number of resettlers down, helped to restore calm and instil a sense of optimism in the GDR in the last months of its existence. Certainly many Wessis, especially those who chose to go East as professors, judges or administrators after 3 October, could often have been more sensitive to the fragile mindset of their fellow Germans, who had to adapt at the speed of light to new circumstances after having lived relatively calm lives before then. Smarter personnel development policies might have improved career chances for Easterners, as opposed to ‘imported’ Wessis, in academia and administration. But on the strategic level, there was no alternative to the way things were handled. Germany's unification was, by default, an asymmetrical process in which 17 million joined 65 million, relatively poor people joined relatively rich ones, and the GDR was in shambles, politically and economically as well as morally [3]. Any attempt to uphold it beyond the end of 1990 would have ended in disaster.
West German inertia
Fourth, what is particularly resented among many East Germans is what happened in West Germany after unification: nothing. In other words, there is an underlying assumption that if the East had to adapt so massively and painfully to a political and economic system that was in many ways alien, then the West should not have believed it could go on with business as usual, or even—in the eyes of some Easterners—actively use the collapse of the GDR as a welcome confirmation that the West was perfect and nothing needed to change. In part, this notion overlaps with points one and three above: that the GDR had aspects that were not only not bad, but from which the West Germans also could have learned a good deal. And that if an independent GDR was no option, then at least East and West Germany should have redesigned the Federal Republic jointly and on an equal footing. When asked what precisely were those elements worth adopting, East Germans offer answers ranging from universally accessible kindergartens to a renegotiation of the Constitution from scratch, possibly including social guarantees such as the right to employment or to housing. In any case, the suggestions invariably go beyond the adoption of the Eastern symbols for pedestrian traffic lights in the western parts of Berlin 6 —the only example of an East–West transfer of officialdom after unification.
This Ampelmännchen is often used as a wry reminder that nothing of importance was transferred westward.
These arguments have a point, as for example with the problem of day care accessibility. But here, West Germany lagged behind in comparison to its western neighbours as well, like France or the Netherlands. And the kindergarten system of the GDR, with its preschool indoctrination, was not an example for the West to follow. Surely an extension of day care accessibility in West Germany as such would have helped to modernise an important part of the education system which, for political reasons, had long been deliberately neglected by a West German conservatism focused on a very backward interpretation of ‘family values’. As to the Constitution, there were simply very good economic, political and societal reasons not to give it a socialist renovation.
In another aspect, however, the East German critique of West German inertia was absolutely correct. The entire process of unification and its aftermath in the 1990s absorbed political energy that could have been used to reform and modernise West Germany along with the East, making them both fit for the globalisation that was just then beginning to reshape the world economy, and in which other Western countries were already actively and profitably engaged. Crucial time was lost between 1990 and 2000. But the content of the reforms and innovation processes needed here would have differed substantially, if not diametrically, from what most East German critics have in mind when they complain about the arrogant complacency of the West. In fact, part of these reforms would have resembled what the Schröder government did after 2000 in its ‘Agenda 2010’ welfare reforms, which were particularly unpopular in the East.
One last aspect of this critique was a brief moment of Eastern reassurance, even Schadenfreude (gloating), in late 2008 and early 2009, when global depression loomed and capitalism itself, or at least its neoliberal Thatcher/Reagan variant, seemed to be in an existential crisis. Conventional wisdom among some Easterners had it that now the West would collapse much like the GDR had 20 years earlier—and who would now be utterly unprepared and helpless, and who would be weathered and experienced in the face of the collapse, ready to lend a helping hand? Alas, the West did not collapse, neither globally nor locally, and today, despite all the necessary reforms in the financial markets and the need for a strong state, looking back to the 20th century will not help anyone a great deal. And the new defenders of a ‘market economy without adjectives’ (as opposed to the Social Market Economy) are to be found in places like Shanghai and Mumbai.
A success story all the same
This short list of (a mostly Eastern) critique of the process of unification, and the possible responses to it, is of necessity as arbitrary as it is incomplete. The depth of East German, West German and all-German soul-searching, positioning and re-positioning and constant challenging of alleged truths goes much beyond the scope of this article. In fact, it is the intensity of the process that makes it so German. Seen from a different angle, it is maybe not entirely bad news that the nation, or at least part of it in both East and West, is still so busy with 1989 and the years that followed. The GDR has merely joined the Third Reich in having become an inexhaustible source of occasions to come to terms with our own past. There are worse ways to deal with the dark periods of the twentieth century.
Last but not least, after having dealt in some detail with the political problems of unification, it is imperative to claim its overall success. First and foremost, this concerns Germany's European and international position: Germany did not get intoxicated with its own national success. There was no march into a ‘Fourth Reich’, as feared by some neighbours. Germany did not go astray in a German Sonderweg, away from the West—except maybe for a short moment during the Iraq crisis of 2003, and even then it was in the (admittedly bad) company of France and Russia. And in this way, our country managed to avoid what Chancellor Kohl already saw as the greatest danger to a united Germany in the middle of Europe: an estrangement between Germany and a coalition of its neighbours. That does not mean that all challenges to German foreign policy are resolved—quite the contrary: misgivings about NATO and German military missions overseas are strong, especially in the East, and some German anti-Western feelings have increased thanks to unification and long before George W. Bush became President. But compared to what could have happened, these effects are manageable.
Even internally, German unity has come a long way in these 20 years. Although the ‘blossoming landscapes’ promised by Chancellor Kohl in the fading GDR before unification have not (or not quickly enough) materialised in the eyes of many, there has been palpable progress in improving living standards in the East, especially when compared to the former Communist neighbours to the south and east of the former GDR. As to emotions, younger people on both sides may still occasionally think in terms of Ossis and Wessis, but this distinction has lost a lot of the frustration and bitterness it has for their parents. As this article has shown, some East Germans may have many subjective reasons to resent the way the unification process was managed. But there are good counter-arguments which, one hopes, are acceptable to all Germans. Some prejudice may linger in the future, too, but in those geographical areas where East and West German residents truly mix, that is, in the centre as well as the farther outskirts of Berlin, such problems are rather the exception. And finally there is Angela Merkel, an East German who was elected Chancellor 16 years after the fall of the Wall and has just been re-elected for a second term. Not everything can have been bad about Germany's unification process. On the contrary, the fall of the Berlin Wall was the pivotal event in ending Communism in Europe. In the end, it will not be the sometimes painful adaptation process of the last 20 years for which Germany's unification will be remembered in world history. It will be the autumn 1989 victory of freedom over fear and oppression.