German Reunification

9 Key excerpts on "German Reunification"

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  Recasting Welfare Capitalism

  Economic Adjustment in Contemporary France and Germany

  • Mark Vail(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Temple University Press

    (Publisher)

  4 German Reunification and the Economic and Social Incorporation of Eastern Germany He who wants a new world must first buy the old. —D UTCH PROVERB L ess than a decade after the Socialist “U-turn” that marked the beginning of the end for French dirigisme, the reunification of the Federal Republic of Germany with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) utterly trans-formed the economic, social, and political life of the German people. The opening of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 set off a year-long process of negotiations among East and West German elites and the four post–World War II occupying powers (France, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union), culminating in the formal reunification of the two countries on 3 Octo-ber 1990. 1 On that November weekend, tens of thousands of East Germans poured into the streets of West Berlin to gaze upon the avatar of the prosper-ity of Western capitalism so long denied them and vilified by the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), the ruling communist party of the GDR, as an outpost of Western imperialism and a vestige of Nazism. As East Berliners drove their dilapidated Trabants through the streets of West Berlin, thousands of people began to dismantle the Berlin Wall in celebration. Long-divided fami-lies were reunited, and Germans in the East and the West exulted at the pros-pect of finally beginning to leave behind the legacies of 1945. Though there were a few skeptics about the costs of the union, enthusiasm generally prevailed when reunification was accomplished in less than eleven months’ time. Walter Momper, the mayor of West Berlin, aptly captured the spirit of the time: “At that moment I thought to myself how much suffering the Wall has caused, and that on this night the Germans were the happiest nation in the world.” 2

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  Britain, Germany and the Future of the European Union

  • C. Schweiger(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Internal and external changes after reunification The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989/1990, which had divided Europe for over than forty years, brought an end to the abnormal post-war situa- tion in which the German nation had to live in two separate states. The CDU/CSU-FDP coalition led by Chancellor Helmut Kohl and foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher had seized the momentum of history and managed to achieve the reunification of the two Germanys in a process of prudent multilateral diplomacy with the partners in East and West. The diplomatic process which led to German Reunification was a masterly application of the relations that had been established during the combination of Westbindung and Ostpolitik in the latter twenty years of the West German Federal Republic. Now it became clear that the bilateral rapprochement with the Soviet Union, which was based on the Moskauer Vertrag of 1970, would bear fruit. The negotiations with the reformist Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev were based on an atmosphere of mutual trust. They were made easier by the fact that Gorbachev had abandoned the Soviet for- eign policy principle of ‘legitimate’ intervention into the internal affairs of any of the Soviet Union’s satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe, as it had been set out in the Brezhnev doctrine. 18 Gorbachev aban- doned the doctrine and replaced it with the principle of freedom of choice, which he had announced during his famous speech at the United Nations in December 1988. 19 This new liberal orientation in Soviet for- eign policy did not actively encourage the changes that were to happen in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989/1990, but it provided a new basis for the relations between the Soviet Union and its former satellite states. For the question of German Reunification, which had seemed to be unachievable during the pre-Gorbachev era, the new orientation in Soviet foreign policy thinking was crucial.

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  The Idea of a United Europe

  Political, Economic and Cultural Integration since the Fall of the Berlin Wall

  • J. Shahin, M. Wintle, J. Shahin, M. Wintle(Authors)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  6 The Epicentre of Reunification: Berlin in Germany and Europe since the End of the Cold War* Ries Roowaan There was no single, precise moment at which the Cold War finished, for the end was a long process which was only finally concluded by the dissolution, in 1991, of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The point of no return in this flow of events, arguably, was the night of 9 November 1989, the evening the Berlin Wall came down. Communism and capitalism would always have been adversaries, but it is questionable whether they ever would have clashed so directly had it not been for Hitler's Germany. In 1941, the Third Reich forced the Soviet Union and the United States out of their isolation by attacking the former and declaring war on the latter, which turned them both into global players. It was therefore only logical tha: once Germany was defeated, she became the cradle of the Cold War. The Iron Curtain not only split the country but also the city of Berlin, until after almost thirty years of partition, the night of 9 November 1989 brought East and West Berliners together again. Berlin had been the bat- tleground of the Cold War, and now it was to be the focus of the post- Cold War world. Since 1990, East and West in Europe have striven for reunion, just as have the two Germanies; Berlin is undergoing this process on the local level. The present Federal Republic is, unlike the previous two Cold War German states, fully sovereign, and searching for its identity (Meier, 1994a; Meier, 1994b; Berger, 1995). From the beginning, political devel- opments were studied, from outside as well as inside Germany, with great interest and more than occasional mistrust. What kind of a country would and should Germany become? Would she try to domi- * I wish to thank Dr Uta Lehnert and Manfred Weber MA, both of Berlin, for their advice and help with finding source materials.

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  Intelligence, Defence and Diplomacy

  British Policy in the Post-War World

  • Richard J. Aldrich, Michael F. Hopkins(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  3 Reunification or Integration with the West? Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany in the early 1950s Klaus Larres

  DOI: 10.4324/9781315035925-3

  The period between the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the merging of East and West Germany on 3 October 1990 was marked by worries and the concern of many people that a unification of the two Germanies would destabilize Europe.1 It was alleged that a united Germany with a population of almost 80 million would soon become a new economic superpower and once again an arrogant political giant on the international scene.2 Only very few people believed that the four victorious powers of the Second World War were genuine and unequivocal supporters of the creation of a unified German state. However, developments in Eastern Europe in 1989–90 seemed to make German unification inevitable. Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union now had to stand by their many promises to the German people during the previous 45 years and convert these pledges into reality.

  In the 1950s, when the international scene was still very fluid and the modus vivendi of the Cold War not yet fully accepted, politicians in East and West also kept professing that they were seriously interested in overcoming the partition of Germany as soon as possible.3 Why, then, did it never materialize? After all, politicians and the military in the early 1950s genuinely believed that a permanent division of Germany would soon lead to turmoil and war. Based on the convictions as expressed at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, they thought that only a united Germany would guarantee a peaceful and economically healthy Europe. Otherwise it was assumed the German people would soon create so much trouble in order to obtain unity and prosperity that the stability of Europe and the world would be seriously endangered.4 This attitude began to change with the gradual Western realization that not only Chancellor Adenauer but above all the West German people, the huge majority of the German population, were not really very much interested in getting the country reunified. Despite the popularity of the unification issue in opinion polls and ‘the simmering discontent with the division of Germany’,5 the West Germans were apparently much more concerned with rebuilding their own careers and enjoying the fruits of the burgeoning economic miracle than with the fate of their brethren in the East. The High Commissioner in Bonn even claimed that the Germans were mainly interested in the ‘three Bs’ – belly, BMW and building society account.6

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  The Fourth Reich

  The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present

  • Gavriel D. Rosenfeld(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  19 German Reunification and Renewed Fears of the Reich: 1989–90 By the turn of the decade, however, the idea of the Fourth Reich suddenly returned to prominence. The revolutionary overthrow of the communist order in Eastern Europe in the years 1989–90 signaled the demise of the East German state and heralded the prospect of German Reunification. These dramatic events brought about a major shift in the 245 / Re-Germanizing the Fourth Reich discursive use of the Fourth Reich by linking the signifier once again to its traditional referent, Germany. Across the western world, critics responded to the possibility of German unity by warning that it might presage the arrival of a new Reich. In so doing, they sparked a fierce debate between those who feared a unified Germany and those who did not. The debate erupted around the time the Berlin Wall was breached in November of 1989 and raged for the better part of a year until the country’s eventual unification on October 3, 1990. In this initial period, politicians, journalists, and scholars vigorously debated whether a Fourth Reich would resemble the Third by behaving like an aggressive, Nazi-like state. The Critics The first fears were expressed in Great Britain. On October 31, 1989, Conor Cruise O’Brien published a controversial essay in The Times of London entitled “Beware, the Reich Is Reviving.” Convinced that the Soviet Union’s weakness made German reunifica- tion only a matter of time, O’Brien declared that “we are on the road to the Fourth Reich” and predicted that German nationalists would begin “cleansing the image of the Third Reich” by pursuing “the rehabilita- tion of National Socialism . . . and Adolf Hitler.” Before long, O’Brien feared, “nationalist intellectuals” would describe “the Holocaust . . . [as a] courageous . . . act,” “break . . . off relations with Israel,” and erect “a statue of Hitler in every German town.” His conclusion was as bleak as it was stark: “the Fourth Reich, if it comes, will .

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  Tourism and Political Change

  • Richard Butler, Wantanee Suntikul, Richard Butler, Wantanee Suntikul(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Goodfellow Publishers

    (Publisher)

  Part I Unification/ Reunification 3 German Reunification and Tourism in Berlin Wantanee Suntikul Introduction Perhaps more so than any other city, Berlin has been affected by most major global political events of the 20th century. The two World Wars, the Cold War, and the rise and fall of Communism were experienced with unusual immediacy in the city. Berlin’s development from the Second World War until German Reunification in 1990 was largely determined by Germany’s membership in two anomalous ‘families’ of politi-cal units symptomatic of the global political map of the time: quasi-states and Soviet satellite states. Since German Reunification, Berlin has experienced an unprecedented phase of growth, accompanied by an increase in popularity with tourists, both German and foreign. With more than 17 million overnight stays in 2008, Berlin has become one of Germany’s most-visited tourist destinations (http://www.visitberlin.de/reiseindustrie/ index.en.php? seite= ueberuns_btm). The focus of this chapter is to examine the relationship between political differences and change and tourism development in Berlin. This involves a comparison of patterns of tourism in the two halves of the city in the period preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall, especially the decade immediately preceding 1990, and noting how patterns have changed in each of the two halves in the two decades since reunification. Tourism development Both East Berlin and West Berlin were fragments of a previous whole, and both claimed to be the true heir of the pre-war metropolis of Berlin. West Berlin had lost its impor-tance as the economic, commercial and political centre of Germany (commerce moving to Hamburg, finance to Frankfurt and the government to Bonn) and found itself in need of a new definition. East Berlin retained the central function which greater Berlin had had in Hitler’s Reich, making a ‘rewriting’ of the symbolic significance of the city even more important (Merritt, 1986).

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  A History of Modern Germany

  1800 to the Present

  • Martin Kitchen(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  A decision still had to be reached as to the capital of the new Germany. Many argued that it should remain in Bonn, the capital of the first successful democracy in Germany, a town that looked to the West. Supporters of Bonn regarded Berlin as symbolic of Prussian militarism and of Great Power illusions. They could also point to the enormous expense of moving. Those who argued for Berlin, remembering the Blockade, the Wall, and November 9, 1989, insisted that it was here that the two German states should come together. Bonn was far too remote from the five new provinces. Germany’s wealth was in the West so that at least the East should enjoy the political and economic benefits of a capital city. After an intensely emotional debate in June 1991 Berlin got 338 votes to Bonn’s 320. The move from Bonn to Berlin was subject to numerous delays and was not made until 1999. The idea that some of the ministries could remain in Bonn soon proved unworkable. Fears that, with Berlin as its capital, the new Germany would turn its back on the European Community proved unfounded. The ghosts of the old Berlin had long since been exorcised.

  The reunification of Germany took place in a remarkably calm and level-headed atmosphere given the momentous consequences of the fall of the Wall and the collapse of communism. There was not a hint of the triumphalism of 1871, no new Treitschke to proclaim that this was the end result of an inevitable teleological process. The new Germany knew that it had to tread softly so as to make sure that fears of a renewed nationalism were assuaged. Euphoria over the demise of an unattractive dictatorship and the division between East and West was soon tempered by a realization that the cost of rebuilding the bankrupt economy of the “new provinces” would be horrendous and that overcoming the psychological barriers between Ossis and Wessis would present exceptional difficulties. Existing problems were exacerbated, new ones loomed large.

  The new Germany was no loose cannon on deck as some had feared. Chancellor Kohl announced that the European Union was “at the heart of united Germany’s foreign policy.” It was an integral part of the European Community and with the Treaty of Maastricht, which was negotiated in December 1991 and signed in the following February, Germany’s sovereign powers were further reduced. Monetary union meant that mighty Deutschmark would be replaced by the euro and the all-powerful Bundesbank by a European central bank. Europe was to have a common foreign and defense policy. Henceforth the frontiers between the member states of the European Community were open. Some concerns had been expressed that the choice of Berlin as a capital would lead to a centralization of power and that provincial rights would be weakened. In fact the provinces were given increased powers under the Maastricht Treaty, and Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Baden-Württemberg were now able to make direct representations to Brussels.

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  Germany since 1945

  • Pól Ó Dochartaigh(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  6 U NIFICATION , 1989–90 Introduction Until the late summer of 1989 there was little indication, from any quarter, of the radical, historic changes that were about to take place in Germany. The new US ambassador in Bonn, Vernon Walters, had claimed in the spring of 1989 that he would see Germany reunited during his period in office, but no one took him seriously. West Germans were not prepared for change, and East Germans could not see how they could possibly change their system. The fiercely anti-communist newspaper Bild , on 1 August 1989, signalled the extent to which even conservative and nationalist West Germans had come to terms with the continuing division of Germany by ceasing its practice of putting the letters ‘DDR’ in inverted commas. Those inverted commas, a blunt denial of the legitimacy of the GDR, disappeared four years after the death of Axel Springer himself. When change came inside the GDR it happened in the context of developments outside the country which pro-voked a range of responses from East Germans. Events in the Soviet Union and Hungary, in particular, created a new atmosphere in Eastern Europe, but it was the response of the citizens and leadership of the GDR that ultimately made political change possible. The most memorable date in all these events was the day on which the Berlin Wall was opened, 9 November 1989. Yet historians agree that the most significant event, which opened the way to the 178 radical reforms that ultimately led to German unification, was one month earlier, on 9 October 1989 in Leipzig. The result of that evening’s events was that East Germany experi-enced a peaceful revolution in which not a single life was lost in anger. Less than a year later the two German states were united to create a new Federal Republic, a single Germany in Europe for only the second time in its history.

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  A History of Modern Germany

  1800 to the Present

  • Martin Kitchen, Lauren Faulkner Rossi(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN THE REUNIFICATION OF GERMANY AND BEYOND CHAPTER CONTENTS The United States, The Soviet Union, and the German Question 361 The New Germany’s First Decade 363 9/11 and the Iraq War 372 Gerhard Schröder’s Second Term 375 Angela Merkel’s First Three Terms 376 The Refugee Crisis, the Re-emergence of the Far Right, and Merkel’s Final Term 379 Remembering and Forgetting in Reunified Germany 381 Problems and Perspectives 384 A History of Modern Germany: 1800 to the Present, Third Edition. Martin Kitchen and Lauren Faulkner Rossi. © 2024 Martin Kitchen and Lauren Faulkner Rossi. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. THE REUNIFICATION OF GERMANY AND BEYOND 361 The 52-year-old Helmut Kohl was the first chancellor from the post-war generation who enjoyed, as he later put it in a characteristic phrase, “the favor of a later birth.” He saw himself as the heir to Konrad Adenauer, in that he was a whole-hearted supporter of European integration and the Western alliance, as well as sharing his precursor’s awareness of the implicit dangers were Germany to harbor any great power pretensions. Like Adenauer he was a provincial, in his case from the Palatinate, for whose wines and stuffed pig’s bellies he had a great affection that was reflected in his gigantic frame. Unlike Adenauer he had no particular resentments against Prussia or Berlin. He focused all his attention on power at the expense of any ethical concerns, to the point of violating the constitution, his oath of office, sworn before Almighty God, and laws to which he had appended his signature. This was to lead to a disgraceful end to a distinguished and remarkable career. After a constitutionally somewhat dubious procedure, elections were called for March 6, 1983. Schmidt was no longer the SPD’s front runner. He had lost the confidence of the party caucus and his health was seriously impaired, in large part because of very heavy smoking.

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