The Dawning of a New European Nation : Germany: Celebrations continue as leaders invoke ‘historic responsibility’ for the Holocaust and assure the world of their peaceful intentions.

Germans awoke to unity today after 45 years of Cold War division, shook off the hangover of a lifetime and got ready to keep on celebrating.

To the chimes of Berlin’s Liberty Bell and the whiz of fireworks, East Germany merged with West Germany at midnight Tuesday to create Europe’s most populous and wealthy nation.

The country was less than 12 hours old before Chancellor Helmut Kohl and President Richard von Weizsaecker marked the historic occasion by issuing statements assuring the world that they will work for peace and never forget their responsibility for the Nazi Holocaust.

Kohl’s message was sent to all governments of the world today, a spokesman in Bonn said. Von Weizsaecker, addressing a formal unification ceremony in Berlin, spoke of the “historic responsibility” stemming from the Holocaust.

The statements were meant to calm world fears about the new Germany with 78 million people in the center of Europe. Despite repeated German denials, many Europeans fear that the new country will supplant the Soviet Union as a superpower and dominate the continent.

“Our country, with its regained national unity, will work for peace in the world and promote European unity,” Kohl’s message said.

“At the same time, we stand by our moral and legal responsibilities that arise from German history,” Kohl added. That was a reference to the Nazi past and the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of 6 million Jews.

At a formal state ceremony in the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, Von Weizsaecker said: “The Nazi terror and the war it caused inflicted untold serious injustice and suffering on almost all of Europe and on us. We continuously recall the victims.

“No one among us will forget that there never would have been a separation without the war started by Germany under Hitler,” he told several hundred guests.

This morning, as a bright, crisp morning dawned over reunited Berlin, an army of orange-vested street cleaners replaced green-uniformed German police in the city center to sweep away the debris after the night’s partying.