Midnight heralds the rebirth of Germany

By David Gow in Berlin

3 October 1990

Germany, an economic and political colossus in the heart of Europe, was reborn today on the stroke of midnight as a single country after more than 45 years of division.

More than a million people witnessed the historic end of two separate German states as the Federal Republic’s black, red and gold flag, complete with rampant eagle, was brought in by 20 young people from both parts of Berlin and raised on a special flagstaff in front of the Reichstag, dedicated To The German People.

The Liberty Bell pealed throughout Berlin and President Richard von Weizsäcker proclaimed: “In free self-determination we have completed the unity and freedom of Germany. We want to serve world peace in a united Europe.”

Fireworks soared over the nearby Brandenburg Gate, until recently split from the West by the now demolished Berlin Wall, and lit up the sky in cities across the new country of 77 million people.

In an earlier ceremony, tinged with some sadness, the postwar division of Europe finally came to an end as the East German flag, with its old communist insignia, was lowered for the last time and the state formed in 1949 passed into oblivion to the sound of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and rock music all along Unter Den Linden.

The Guardian, 3 October 1990.

Editorial: Together into the great unknown

3 October 1990

Many decades of multi-layered history rolled away at midnight when the bell pealed for a new Germany. It is almost three decades since the building of the Wall, four since the final breakdown of postwar Allied co-operation, five since the first air raids on the German capital and six since Hitler began his political Battle for Berlin. A multitude of walls are being demolished today between divided communities; but it is Berlin which, for the most obvious historical reasons, grips our imagination.

Germany would have been divided anyhow under the “temporary” wartime arrangements quickly made permanent by Cold War antagonism. It was not Berlin which solidified the division but the decision of the western powers to constitute West Germany as a separate state. But it was Berlin which saw the first uprising in the East; it was Berlin which proved the potential trigger for conflict in the next few years; and it was Berlin whose wall dramatised the human costs of Stalinist repression and with superpower enmity. It was also Berlin where the emotional power of the Wall’s final breach helped demolish more sober doubts about the wisdom of rushing ahead with reunification. And it is Berlin where the downside of this has since been most openly displayed in the simultaneous growth of consumerism and unemployment.

“We rejoice,” said President Bush as the Four Powers relinquished their final rights on Monday “with the German people that they are reunified once more.” Yet rejoicing has to be tempered by sober anticipation of likely problems ahead. The German question of the past four decades may be dead, but new ones could soon spring to life. If these difficulties are minimised either by the Germans or by their friends abroad, the resulting shock and disillusion if (perhaps when) things go wrong will only compound the damage.

First, the international playing field which now surrounds a reunited Germany is much less level than seemed likely only a few months ago. The Gulf crisis imposes an external diplomatic and financial demand upon the German government at exactly the wrong time. Meanwhile the process of political change in the Soviet Union which gave Germany its chance is fast approaching the point where it might unravel the Gorbachev regime and dangerously undermine expectations of stability to the East.

The internal strains of reunification are already evident as stress marks on the surface of official joy. Chancellor Kohl has argued strongly that, in spite of the huge costs of reunification, all the Germans, East and West, are faced with an extraordinary opportunity. The structural changes now under way, backed by new technology and a strong Deutschmark, are supposed to create a new German lift-off with jobs across all his new land. But it will require a combination of faith and sheer German determination to see this through. First the dislocation of the East’s economy, its loss of social benefits a grim counterpoint to the loss of jobs, has to be weathered. The most optimistic forecast is that it will get worse before it starts to get better in the mid-nineties. If there is a world recession, can even the strongest currency in Europe bear the load?

Nor can a few days of rejoicing entirely mask the strongly subterranean dislike felt by many West Germans for their comrades in the East. There are also signs of increasing racial hostility against the rising numbers of migrants not only fromEast Germany but from eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. East Germany’s traumatised political past still needs to be exorcised. With the Nazis added to the Stasi, this is a community which has endured 60 years of dictatorship.

Having encouraged and applauded Germany’s (probably over-hasty) rush to reunification, the western governments and their people should now avoid pressing for quick results or drawing too early dire conclusions. Old memories are too easily revived, and the drear descant which links Germany’s past to Germany’s future has not been entirely confined to Nicholas Ridley. The German leaders themselves are well aware that they must tread very carefully. The intention is to become a major power, but not a great one. Germany is highly dependent on exports, and poor in raw materials, it is said. This is an argument for inter-dependence and not for empire. In the same frame of mind, a united Germany may not necessarily go on pretending that Nato is indispensable. It could easily appear to be another aspect of the confrontational past which now seems inappropriate to the more diverse needs of a larger CSCE-style Europe. All this and much more lies ahead in a new decade which almost defies prediction. In truth the Germans are now striking out into a great unknown. But then, they are by no means alone.

Crowd in Berlin celebrating German reunification, 3 October 1990. Photograph: Owen Franken/Getty Images

Eyewitness: All-German parliamentary democracy dawns amid flowers and ivy, clapping and laughter

David Gow in Berlin

5 October 1993

On the dot of 10, more than 57 years after the Nazis burned it down as a pretext for seizing power, the Reichstag reopened as the house of German republicanism and democracy to the relaxed tones of its Speaker.

“Morning,” Rita Sussmuth, the Bundestag president, whispered into her mike as the 663 deputies, including 144 nervous newcomers from the no-longer East Germany, waited for yet another historic moment in the new Germany. “Ladies and gentlemen, the session is hereby opened.”

The ice of tension and anticipation broke in the ultra-modern, hi-tech chamber built within the reconstructed shell of what Emperor William II called the “imperial ape house” and “the summit of tastelessness”. Claps and laughter greeted the dawning of pan-German parliamentary democracy.

A mood of laid-back banter, broken only intermittently during the six-hour session, was set.

Flowers and ivy overhung the galleries where the German president, flanked by an old Reichstag deputy from the Weimar Republic and ambassadors, watched the deputies on their new leather seats: the Greens in regulation open neck shirts, the overwhelming male majority in dark suits.

Far to the left, in the front row, sat apart Gregor Gysi, the leader of the Party of Democratic Socialism, a representative of the old Socialist Unity Party (SED) regime that held dictatorial sway for 40 years and then collapsed like a pack of cards under the popular revolt.

The ice reformed as Dr Gysi, a Brecht-lookalike lawyer with a penchant for acid jokes, made history as he ambled to the rostrum the first ex-SED deputy to address the federal parliament.

The chamber had earlier paid silent homage to the victims of Nazism, including 100 murdered deputies, and of Stalinism.

Now Dr Gysi had the awesome task of accounting and atoning for the SED’s hateful past. No House of Commons tradition here of allowing a maiden speech to flow on uninterrupted and of all-party cheering at the end. His efforts to extol the anti-fascist credentials of hundreds of thousands of SED members after the war fell on deaf ears or brought angry interjections.

A nervous Dr Gysi, however, gave as good as he got, warning West German deputies not to use the terrible legacy of the SED as an excuse to paper over the yawning gaps in their own society and accusing all and sundry of bearing joint responsibility for the past.

He gave way to a young Social Democrat, asking insecurely: “Is he from our side?” “No,” said a deputy speaker, “he’s not, but just carry on.”

The SPD deputy caustically demanded to know why the PDS had not handed back its property and money to the people. Dr Gysi scratched his head and replied: “You know that 75 per cent has already been returned and it would have been far better if the SPD, with its close contacts with the SED, had posed this question before.”

The ice broke again. Chancellor Helmut Kohl shook with laughter. “The Chancellor’s got a new partner; a strange new grand coalition is born,” a West German colleague said as Dr Gysi at last made his mark.

Outside the chamber the other 143 new deputies tried desperately to hide their first-night butterflies. Buried in the public coffee queue, Lothar de Maizière, the former East German premier, and Gunther Krause, his righthand man, chatted to passersby about their feelings on a new political stage.

Both they and three other East Germans had earlier been sworn in as ministers without portfolio in a typically new German manner: dignified, serious, but so relaxed it would have made a member of the Queen of Parliaments stare open-mouthed.

Professor Sussmuth handed them bunches of flowers while a beaming Dr Kohl disclosed their individual place in the pecking order of his political affections by the relative strength of his handshake. Mr Krause, earmarked for higher things, got a warm embrace.

The Chancellor’s favourite son, Wolfgang Schäuble, the Interior Minister, who has been singled out to succeed him eventually as Christian Democrat leader, spoke privately of his joy to be alive that day.

‘I was only born in 1942 so I’m too young to have any personal memories of this building. But I find it extraordinary to be here; I’m so happy we succeeded in bringing about unity and celebrating it in a moderate way, you know, without any exaggerated display of feelings.’

Helmut Kohl at a rally for the East German state elections, 4 September 1990. Photograph: Mark-Olivier Multhaup/AFP/Getty Images

After unity, Germans face fight for inner reunification

By Anna Tomforde in Bonn

3 October 1990

When the unity party is over and world attention is turned away, the new Germany’s 79 million people will have to set about achieving ‘inner reunification’.

The polarisation of attitudes was exemplified on the eve of unification at the first joint meeting of West and East German historians, where East German historians were accused of giving “an entire generation a false picture of history”.

Although Marxism-Leninism has been scrapped from the curriculum of universities, and the teaching of Russian in schools has been replaced by English, the historians agreed that it was almost impossible to throw overboard at a stroke 40 years of teaching a Marxist interpretation of history.

The process of reorientation is likely to be even more difficult for East Germany’s state-appointed judges and prosecutors, who have had their blind subservience compared to that of the legal profession under the Nazis.

“The East German judiciary must undertake a thorough examination of its past if it wants to be credible in a democratic state,” the West German justice minister, Hans Engelhard, said.

The issue of keeping on communist teachers in schools is one that also needs to be tackled, and West German politicians have made it clear that they will not tolerate the continued existence of a “Communist Party network” in the education system.

Many East Germans believe that social reconciliation will be complete only if East Germans make an effort to come to terms with their past. They cite as an example the tearful final session of the Volkskammer, where four ministers and 65 MPs were exposed as informers of the former secret police, the Stasi.

East German industry, according to the parliamentary commission investigating Stasi infiltration, is still riddled with agents.

For the man in the street, the economic future and the maintenance of healthcare and other social provisions are likely to take precedence over soul-searching.

With unemployment threatening to reach two million this winter, and crime rates rising sharply, independent welfare organisations from East and West fear East Germany will become the poor house of the united nation.

They maintain that Bonn, despite the massive injection of funds for German unity, has totally neglected the maintenance of social services in the East. Neither the amounts for modernising hospitals nor the funds required to ensure the continued existence of factory creches were enough.

‘It will be women, children, old people, the handicapped and unemployed who will be the first to feel the gap between the welfare systems in East and West,’ one expert said.











