Dividing and Uniting Germany

Bill Niven, J. K. A. Thomaneck

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134671960
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

A concise introduction to the process which led to the division of Germany in 1949, and its unification in 1990, this book also explores the economic, social and cultural divisions between and east and west, which still exist in post-unification Germany.

Dividing and Uniting Germany covers all important aspects of the subject including:

• the role of the allies in the post-war division of the country
• the integration of West and East Germany into their respective blocs
• the problems of integrating east and west after 1990
• Germany's Nazi and socialist past.

1
The state of the nation

A Divided United Germany

On 3 October 1990, West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany, or FRG) and East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, or GDR) were united, and thus the year 2000 marks the tenth anniversary of unification. Nationwide celebrations are already being planned. Yet 10 years after unification the new Germany is still socially, economically and politically a deeply divided country. Politicians of all colours in Germany have acknowledged this issue, but have come up with different interpretations. At the far-left of the political spectrum, the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism, successor-party to the GDR’s Socialist Unity Party or SED) has vehemently blamed west German arrogance and dominance. At the other end of the political spectrum, the right-wing CDU (Christian Democratic Party) has sought to explain the rift by pointing to the ruinous economic and moral legacy of socialism.

The symptoms of this east–west divide are manifold. Demographically, there is a clear demarcation between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Länder. The latter are affected by a continuous loss of population. In 1998 alone, 160,000 people left the eastern part. With the exception of Saxony, the east has the lowest population density in Germany. It has the sharpest division between town and country; it is the most rural part and has the highest percentage of people working in agriculture. With the exception of the western part of Berlin, the eastern Länder boast the lowest numbers of foreigners, i.e. guest workers, asylum seekers, and other minor categories of immigrants. Social strata structures in east and west are markedly different. Individual property ownership is unevenly distributed between the old and the new Länder. More east Germans are employed in low-paid jobs, and there is an east–west divide in respect of unemployment. The eastern unemployment figure tends to be between 7 per cent and 9 per cent higher. According to a government report of 1998, 22 per cent of children in east Germany live in poverty, as opposed to 12 per cent in the west. There is a clear difference between east and west in respect of expenditure on leisure activities, with people in the east spending 20 per cent less; this reflects the lower income levels there. With the exception of Bremen and the Saarland, the eastern Länder are also the least popular parts of Germany for holidays. Altogether, Germany displays the economic characteristics of the Italian mezzogiorno on an east–west axis. The gross domestic product is lower in all eastern Länder.

Other areas of societal life display the same divisions. Crime figures, for instance, are much higher in the east, as are road deaths. Participation in clubs, sport and leisure organizations is lower in the east, as are church membership and political party membership. Even football is affected. Eastern German football clubs are struggling, and to date the eastern Länder have only one representative in the German Premier League, namely Hansa Rostock.

Competing Constructions

What is the source of this east–west split? On one level, the dichotomy can be seen as an expression of historically divergent cultural identities. The precondition for this divergent development was the division of Germany into four occupation zones in 1945, and subsequently into two states in 1949. The main factor in this development was the socialist system in the east, and the capitalist system in the west. Even a life lived in opposition to socialism in the east, or in dissatisfaction with capitalism in the west, produced citizens who would not automatically have felt at home in the other system. The fact that the two Germanys were at the fault-line of the global east–west divide, and yet strongly linked historically, culturally, emotionally and not least personally through family ties, resulted in a mixture of mutual attraction and mutual distrust whose complex and ambivalent psychological repercussions did not end with the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

This historical dichotomy has been overlaid and arguably enhanced by developments since 1989/1990. First, the process of unification itself was essentially unequal, the West Germans having more say than the East Germans, who, it can fairly be stated, acceded to the Federal system in almost every aspect. Second, the post-unification period witnessed the actual or perceived declassification of east Germans either as a result of mass unemployment and economic disenfranchisement, or as a result of moral condemnation for their past. According to historian Peter Bender, unification is a misnomer because it can per definitionem only be between equals. What has happened since 1989, Bender argues, has been a process of incorporation and of economic, social, and psychological expropriation on the basis of political power politics. The unification process ignored the personal and social history of the people in the east, which was unable to contribute to the new Germany (Bender 1998b). Third, there is the problem of the ‘loser–winner’ schism. 1990 seemed to signify the triumph of western liberalism over socialism. This sense of being the ‘winners of history’ is reflected in the arrogant behaviour of many west Germans or Wessis. Equally, the diffidence and self-doubt of many east Germans or Ossis are not the ideal psychological prerequisites for handling the west Germans.

Divergence between east and west has been a matter of intense political analysis. Thus it has been argued that the unification of Germany took place at the end of modernity, and that post-1990 Germany reflects the multi-faceted nature of the post-modern age, with divergence and plurality mapping particularly on the east–west axis. Assessing the east German consciousness, west German journalist Michael Rutschky argues that it is only now, 10 years after the rejection of the GDR by its citizens, that a ‘real-existing’ separate consciousness has evolved (Rutschky 1995). It is not to be defined as a continuing or belated negative GDR patriotism, nor as an outcome of feelings of inferiority as second-class citizens in the German economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder). Rather it is to be defined on the basis of free choice. Whereas in the GDR people had no option, they can now freely and deliberately choose an eastern German consciousness in opposition to the western German hegemony of capitalist prosperity. Rutschky describes eastern Germany as a firmed-up, (self-)conscious province inside Germany. It has only now had the opportunity to come into existence because nobody is forced to live there. Staying there is therefore voluntary. Germany is being enriched by another form of regionalism.

Against this it must be said that what the new Germany is witnessing is a qualitatively new type of regionalism inside one country. Whereas traditionally region and regionalism are defined on the basis of geographical, functional, social, cultural, linguistic and historical criteria, where regions might have administrative (sometimes only partial) autonomy, and where that might also generate regional patriotism, the situation in the new Germany is very different. Regions such as Bavaria, Schleswig-Holstein, or Baden are defined along such traditional lines. The new Länder individually can perhaps also be defined in terms of traditional criteria, with the exception of Western Pomerania, now an adjunct to Mecklenburg, and Berlin, now separated from Brandenburg, historically its traditional hinterland. But, by and large, the new east German regionalism cuts across such lines. Uniquely, this regionalism has grown out of a rejected ideological construct imposed during the Cold War between the two power blocs after 1945. And it is inseparably bound up with the fact of an economic divide between east and west, eastern regionalism connoting, often, a partly de-industrialized, semi-agriculturalized backwater rather than anything else.

In contrast to Rutschky’s theory of a freely chosen alternative identity, other critics have suggested that east German consciousness is marked, indeed scarred, by nostalgia for the GDR (Ostalgie) or indeed ‘eastern stubbornness’ (Osttrotz). Rather than freely forming a new identity, east Germans have seized on to a reconstructed image of the GDR in answer to an increasing sense of frustration and disorientation. The image is a distortion because it conveniently excises all that was bad about the GDR and results in an idealization. This identity formation through imagined reconstruction of the past is also deeply ironic, given that the GDR population never identified with their state as much as they do now that it has gone. It is also self-deceiving, not least because the GDR is imagined from a position of relative capitalist prosperity: ‘we’ve got the deutschmark, you can come back now, Erich’, runs one slogan (in reference to former GDR leader Erich Honecker). But is it all negative?

The essential conundrum is whether or not constructions of east German identity are regarded purely as defensive reactions to insecurities in the present, and therefore as a kind of cushion to fall back on, or whether they are seen as legitimate expressions of an alternative political and social culture. Clearly, reconstructions of the past which result in passive and self-deluding retrospection are not positive. However, selective reappropriations of certain arguably positive aspects of socialist society – job security, low rents, right to a home

need not be coupled with a total transfiguration of past realities. Moreover, it is not just the GDR some east Germans look back on with longing, but also the time of the 1989 revolution (Wende), when they took to the streets to fight for greater freedom, and when certain forms of basis democracy evolved which resulted in a brief period of political influence. Two key features of east German consciousness, then, could be a heightened sense of social justice and of political rights. Rather than projecting these back into a lost past, many east Germans project them into a vision of a better future, so that the emphasis is forward-looking rather than backward-looking.

Support for the PDS in the new Länder is to an extent based on this active commitment to these key features. The Christian Democrats tend to dismiss voting for the PDS as a form of protest, equating support for the party thereby with support for the right-wing extremist DVU (German People’s Union). While there may be those who vote for the PDS purely because they cannot stand the sight of capitalist west Germans, just as there are those who vote for the DVU because they cannot stand the sight of Turks, this is about as far as any legitimate comparison extends. Clearly, Turks are not to blame for present economic ills; rampant capitalism certainly is to blame for some of them. Moreover, while racism is based on discrimination and exclusion, support for the PDS is the expression of a desire to be re-included, given that unemployment and deindustrialization have led to social and political marginalization. The established west German parties, notably the CDU and CSU (Christian Social Union), may be right to suspect some PDS politicians of not having the soundest of democratic credentials, but one might equally suspect the CDU and CSU of not having the soundest motive – namely irritation at the PDS power base in the east – for pointing this out. Nor can the questionable credibility of the PDS detract from the legitimacy of its call for greater east German participation.

Wolfgang Thierse (SPD, or Social Democratic Party), an east German and current President of the Bundestag, has repeatedly pointed out that east Germans, because of their self-assertion during the Wende, are the truly revolutionary Germans. Taking this further, one might contend that west Germans had democracy imposed upon them after 1945, whereas the east Germans had to fight for it in 1989/1990. While what the west Germans have learnt to respect after decades of living with it and using it is parliamentary democracy, the east Germans spontaneously and voluntarily chose a form of direct democracy. In a curious inversion of Marxist theory and practice, the socialist revolution came with the collapse of socialism, and the anti-fascist self-liberation myth came true only with the demise of the system which propagated this myth.

Arguably, then, the revolutionary east Germans – i.e. not including those socialist functionaries and stalwarts whose repressive influence had rightly to be curtailed after 1990 – imported a fresh and vigorous basis-democratic consciousness into united Germany which, combined with the sense of solidarity that was built up in the face of actually existing socialism, together too with an appreciation of some of the possible virtues of GDR socialism and with a vestigial utopianism, shaped a distinct identity. It is this identity which asserts itself in the face of a capitalism whose impact, despite a limited degree of state control, subsidies and social protection, has indeed been somewhat ruthless and self-regulating. Arguably, too, only west German acceptance of this identity, indeed only a preparedness on the part of west Germans to rethink their own identity, hitherto very much based on material wealth and economic power, will help to create an overarching sense of national togetherness.

The Phantom of Nationalism

While the Germans have been grappling with internal problems of unification, the outside world has watched closely for signs of renascent German nationalism. The results of the regional elections in Saxony-Anhalt in April 1998 seemed to confirm worst fears of upheaval in Germany’s party-political landscape: the right-wing extremist German People’s Union, which had not contested an election in Saxony-Anhalt before, secured 12.9 per cent of the votes at its first attempt. The DVU’s success was based entirely on its 3 million DM propaganda campaign, which had utilized some 20,000 posters and over a million targeted letters to young voters. Its slogans included ‘German money for German tasks’ and ‘Out with foreign criminals’, signalling the party’s clear right-wing extremist stance in a region with the highest unemployment in Germany. Its success was an embarrassment to the established parties, and the subject of much concern in the media. Even the Bild Zeitung (roughly comparable with The Sun in the UK), renowned for its strong stance to the right of the political spectrum, stated: ‘Black Sunday for the ruling coalition in Bonn. Black Sunday for all democrats’. In reference to the DVU leader Gerhard Frey, another headline ran: ‘The fat man who would be Führer’.

Had Margaret Thatcher been right after all? Foreign critics of unification had expressed the fear that the Germans, released after 40 years from the grip of the respective Cold War blocs, would soon be on the rampage again, if more in the political and economic than in the military realm. Such opinions were often predicated on a more than prejudicial and self-interestedly essentialist projection of the Germans as aggressive and expansionist – witness the ridiculous complaints by a number of countries with dubious (or no) democratic credentials that Germany’s post-unification foreign policy was being driven by a renewed Hitlerism. Serbia’s press and politicians, from 1991 onwards, have consistently presented Germany as planning a ‘Fourth Empire’ from the Baltic to the Adriatic in league with Croatia and Slovenia. When, in March 1992 in reaction to Turkey’s onslaught against the Kurds, Germany imposed a weapons embargo, the Turkish President Özal compared Foreign Minister Genscher to Hitler. Similar questionable instrumentalizations of the German past have come from Iran and China.

But there have also been understandable anxieties abroad, such as those of the Poles and the Czechs, who feared that a strong united Germany under the influence of the CDU might question the existing eastern borders with Poland and the Czech Republic, or at least lay some sort of claim to Silesia and the Sudetenland. Fears of a renascent violent nationalism were fuelled by attacks in Germany on foreigners, the most notorious being in Rostock in August 1992, and Mölln in November 1992, when three Turks died (bringing the total to seventeen deaths from racist attacks in 1992 alone). Such acts of murder are unforgiveable; nevertheless, it must be said that aggressive nationalist elements in German society do not command much support and certainly do not pose a significant threat to national or international stability. The fears of Poland and the Czech Republic have been allayed by the German pledge to respect the borders, by ‘Friendly Neighbour’ Treaties in 1991 and 1992, and by Germany’s championship of the entry of east European countries into NATO and the EU. Racist attacks have largely remained sporadic and have prompted massive nationwide protest and candle-lit marches for tolerance. In the April 1999 regional elections in Hesse, the CDU was helped to power by a campaign of fomenting resentment against foreigners; but such populism has not been able to hold up Germany’s new laws on citizenship, ushered in by the new SPD–Greens coalition government, which for the first time give immigrants’ children born in Germany a right to a German passport: this first shift from ius sanguinis to ius soli represents an important step towards a multicultural concept of what it means to be ‘German’.

Political Trends

In the event, the success of the DVU in Saxony-Anhalt turned out to be a flash in the pan; in subsequent 1998 regional elections in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Bavaria, the party failed to make any impact. It played no role in the national elections of September 1998. The point is that nationalistic excess has not been united Germany’s problem. There have been calls for a new German pride, a less humble attitude to the past and a culture of more self-assertiveness, but this has never, except in a few cases, degenerated into simple chauvinism. Nor can these calls really catch the public imagination. As long as east and west Germans are struggling to come to terms with one another, Germany’s big difficulty will not be nationalism, but achieving a coherent sense of nationhood.

A broader view of political developments over recent years underlines this interpretation. The most significant aspect of the 1998 Saxony-Anhalt elections, judged in the medium to long term, was not the success of the far right, but the fact that the SPD (which gained 35.9 per cent of the vote) formed a minority government dependent on the support and ‘tolerance’ of the PDS (19.6 per cent). The PDS – after years of being stigmatized by traditional west German parties as a largely unreformed offshoot of the SED – was gaining access to the corridors of power. This trend was reinforced by the regional elections in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania in September 1998. Here, as in Saxony-Anhalt, the Greens and the FDP (Free Democratic Party) failed to gain enough votes to get into the regional parliament. The outcome also confirmed the declining fortunes of the CDU (24 seats, 6 less than in 1994), and strengthened the position of the SPD (27 seats, 4 more than 1994) and PDS (20 seats, 2 more than 1994) in the new Mecklenburg-West Pomerania ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Maps
• 1 The state of the nation
• 2 The division of Germany
• 3 The two German states: realities and images
• 4 The intervening years: long-term factors in change
• 5 The events of 1989/1990
• 6 Unification?
• 7 Coming to terms with the past
• 8 Germany into the new millennium
• Bibliography
• Index