NEWS ANALYSIS : Nationalism Put Aside as Two Very Different Germanys Come Together

Far more than the expressed promises of peace and cooperation, the mood of this week’s celebration of German unity gave outsiders reason for comfort as they nervously began watching the early days of a new and powerful nation.

From Tuesday midnight’s throng at the Reichstag to the holiday crowds strolling Unter den Linden in the next day’s autumn sunlight, to parliamentary President Rita Suessmuth’s informal “good morning” salutation that broke the initial solemnity of Thursday’s historic Reichstag sitting, there were few signs of the hubris that has so often clouded Germany’s past.

Millions of celebrating Germans were not aggressive; they were happy.

“I’ve seen more (national) flags at a (German national) football game than I saw Tuesday night,” a seasoned Western diplomat said.

Another senior Western ambassador added, “There was a lot to drink, but the mood stayed very sober.”

There were some ugly incidents.

About 200 people were reported injured Tuesday night during clashes between police and leftist street gangs in the Alexanderplatz, the central square of the eastern part of the city. And there were some confrontations in other German cities.

But these actions were overshadowed by a sense of celebration more akin to New Year’s Eve than a nationalistic triumph.

“It’s a good start for Germany,” summed up one of Berlin’s two mayors, Walter Momper.

As the celebrations faded and Parliament returned Friday to its more mundane surroundings of a renovated waterworks in Bonn, the main challenge to German leadership was seen to be consolidating this new beginning in the face of the daunting job of putting together the two very different Germanys.

“It’s the beginning of a very complex task that no one has done before,” noted Heinrich Vogel, from the government-run Institute for East European and International Studies in Cologne. “It adds a new dimension to what we are about. It can’t be taken lightly, but it’s manageable.”

Among the immediate challenges facing the leadership:

- Holding its nerve as the tattered, former state-planned economy in the eastern part of the country continues to sink.

Unemployment figures released Thursday showed a 23% jump to 445,000 in the number of jobless in the former East German territory. Economists believe the figure could easily reach 1 million by the end of the year.

Public morale in the east has dipped since the heady early days of July’s currency union, but considerable optimism still remains there. Yet, if this hope fades into disillusion, extremist causes could become a greater lure.

Political analysts see the quick resolution of a wave of unity-related property claims as instrumental in getting investment flowing into the eastern part of the country.

The deadline for such claims is Oct. 13. They could involve as many as 1 million owners of property confiscated from original Western owners by East German Communist authorities and redistributed or retained by the state. Processing them could be messy.

- Dealing almost immediately with heightened expectations of neighboring countries for assistance. Coming at a time when much of the Germany’s own energies are directed inward, this situation is a source of potential friction, some believe.

Both the Soviet Union and Poland, for example, anticipate such help from Germany as they try to restructure their own crumbling economies. Other East European countries also look to Germany to help them through the most painful, initial stages of economic change.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl has already promised $10 billion to Moscow to help pay the cost of withdrawing Soviet forces from former East German territory and granted $4.5 billion in credits and other support to Poland. But it remains uncertain what else he can do in the short term.

Much of the full weight and influence of the new Germany will be blunted by the serious economic and social difficulties that unity brings, for the merger of the two Germanys is not so much a unification as a West German takeover of a region on the verge of economic collapse.

The initial cost estimates of unity have risen steadily as the extent of East Germany’s industrial collapse has come to light. Economists currently believe it could take up to $60 billion per year.

“Our neighbors--including the Americans and the Russians--think we are already the biggest, strongest and can do anything,” commented former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. “But it will take 10 years to fully absorb East Germany.”

A far more subtle, yet demanding task will be unifying the East and West German peoples, who, having developed apart for four decades, often seem to have an enormous distance between them.

Earlier in the week, Momper spoke of the difficulties at a news conference attended mainly by foreign journalists.

“It will take quite a long time to be a state with one people who really understand each other,” he said. “The people in (East Germany) have less initiative than we have. Everything was done by the bureaucracy, the party or the government.”

While East Germans will have to become more aggressive if they are to survive what they have come to call “the elbow society,” it is also likely some of those elements that the East Germans might have to offer the union will be either eroded or simply swept away altogether.

The unusually close personal bonds formed among family and friends in a society where loose talk meant jail, plus the careful consumption habits in a society of shortages, already show signs of loosening.

For example, a rise in the level of trash in East Berlin during the three months since the two Germanys joined their economic and monetary systems is so great that modest-sized East German garbage cans are no longer big enough.

Momper also spoke of the pervasive impact of the East German secret police, known as the Stasi, which has left a legacy of mistrust and suspicion among both populations as they unite.

“It will take 10, 20, 30, 40 years to overcome these different social attitudes and social behaviors,” Momper said.

Nurturing the understanding required to bridge this gap could be one of the most difficult of all Germany’s political challenges.

As Kohl noted in his address to the first all-German sitting of Parliament since World War II: “In this decisive moment of our history, more than ever we have to be capable of solidarity.”