How Many Germanys? In What Sort of Europe? : Reunification Will Depend on Neighbors

Thinking about what the sudden changes in Eastern Europe might mean to the “German question” and the whole of Europe brings to mind the Peter Ustinov play “Photo Finish.” An old man, returning to life, meets his grandson and during a long conversation asks him about the family’s coal mines. “Oh, sorry, we have been nationalized,” he hears. The ancestor, struck by surprise and happiness, exclaims, “So we still are a nation!”

We know very little about the possible outcome of glasnost and perestroika, either in the Soviet Union or in the other member states of the Warsaw Pact. In fact, nowhere in history do we find a precedent for a deliberate and fundamental change from communism and a centralized, rotten economy to a pluralistic society and a successful market economy. There is a rather short path into communist dictatorship: Just apply a sufficient amount of revolutionary force. But the other way around, from bankrupt communism to fruitful freedom, from Marx to market, this is a path not taken before. We do know one thing for certain: Reform in Eastern Europe means the recovery of nationhood long subjugated to Soviet influence.

So, some of these changing states might be asking, “Are we still a nation?”

In Poland and Hungary, where reform is taking place at astonishing speed, and in Czechoslovakia, where reform lags, if you take communism away, you still have nations with deeply rooted traditions that have not been exterminated by Moscow’s predominance. Take communism away from East Germany, however, and not much is left. The German Democratic Republic does not have any raison d’etre aside from its ideology. The huge number of citizens leaving the German Democratic Republic by way of both Hungary and the more cumbersome, difficult legal emigration channels demonstrates clearly the lack of political cohesion.

We can concede that the G.D.R. is the single East European state whose economy is in a relatively effective shape, although on a low--and declining--level compared to the West. The East Germans even enjoyed an unintended glasnost over the decades, courtesy of West German TV and radio. Millions of visitors have crossed the German-German border in both directions, exchanging their experiences. But this modest openness in the end intensified the problem it was designed to solve.

As long as the East Germans seemed to be imprisoned forever, many of them were resigned to coping with what they had. But nowadays it costs them “only” four or five years of waiting and state harassment before they can leave their country behind, through legal channels. Instead of reconciling the remaining population with the regime, this opening to freedom by departure further delegitimizes the state authority.

Now Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, with his call for swift reform, has put the East German Communists under even more pressure from their own population. They are caught in a double bind: If they reject the concept of reform, they alienate themselves still more, not only from their own people but from the other East European states as well. If they giveway to political pluralism and a market economy, they eventually provoke the question: What’s the difference between the two German societies that could justify two separate states?

So it seems quite natural that West German politicians, mostly conservatives, speculate in public about new chances for German reunification stemming from the changes in Eastern Europe. I have my doubts about this. We have to learn from history that the division of Germany is not the consequence of communism but the result of Hitler’s war against Europe. And even if the communist ideology fades away, the reasons for the division of Germany will not disappear. Bismarck’s German Reich, founded in 1871, never fit into the European framework properly. Even today a united Germany would, economically and politically, overwhelm the other European countries. As in Bismarck’s days, they would have to try to set up a coalition, to which Germany would have to react by looking for counter-coalitions. It would be the old game once again.

The real German question is not the existence of two German states, but the vast differentials between them in terms of liberty and welfare. If there were a real chance to trade unity for freedom for the East Germans, we should have to consider the bargain.

But whether the question is resolved with one or two Germanys, no final solution is feasible without a new European confederation or treaty organization, that includes East and West Europe. There must be a framework in which it does not matter how strong either a divided or united Germany is, because the obligations and liaisons among all the European partners would counterbalance any disparity of size and weight. Call it, with or without a bow to Gorbachev, a common European house.

We have to complete this house, with the consensus of all prospective inhabitants before we can ask how many Germanys we need. Then, however, the question would not matter any more.

Capitalizing now on the convulsions of communism by speculating about German unity would be extremely counterproductive--not only for the reformers in Poland and potential reformers in East Germany, but for Bonn’s politics towards the West as well.