POLITICS : Germany Faces Capital Case: Bonn or Berlin?

The cream of Germany’s political elite will gather Tuesday in Bonn to agree on the ground rules for a debate likely to shape much of the nation’s long-term future.

The debate will determine whether the recently reunited Germany is ruled from Berlin, an eastward-looking Prussian metropolis on the cusp of Europe’s old East-West divide; or from Bonn, a sleepy, westward-looking university town on the edge of the Rhine that has hosted four decades of German democracy.

Unusual in a parliamentary system, there will be no attempt to enforce party discipline. All 662 members of the Bundestag, the lower house of Parliament, are free to vote their conscience.

At Tuesday’s meeting--to be attended by Chancellor Helmut Kohl, President Richard von Weizsaecker, the presidents of both houses of Parliament and the heads of the three largest parliamentary political parties--officials are expected to agree on details such as the timing and length of the debate and whether the smaller, upper house, known as the Bundesrat, will have a say in the decision.

While the vote is expected toward the end of June, lobbying by both cities has been going on for months. In recent weeks, politicians have started to concentrate on the issue, which is as emotional as it is important.

The 239 Bundestag members from the opposition Social Democrats debated the question among themselves this week but took no vote. Kohl’s Christian Democrats are expected to do the same next week.

At one level, the public debate is shaped by political questions--whether Berlin is too Prussian or too far east, whether Bonn amounts to a retreat from reality and responsibility, or whether the nation can afford the billions of dollars inherent in such a move.

But many believe the lawmakers themselves will decide based more on personal considerations and narrower regional political interests than on any larger vision of Germany’s role in Europe. For example, legislators residing in Bonn or representing constituencies in western Germany are said to reject Berlin mainly because they don’t want to move their families there. Because the five new eastern states have only a quarter of the total Bundestag representatives, these personal considerations tend to work against a move to Berlin.

Germany’s age-old regionalism has also played a role. Bavarian lawmakers, for example, suspicious of Berlin’s Prussian roots and its large size, see Bonn as a more benign center of power.

Von Weizsaecker, a former mayor of West Berlin, touched off a minor political controversy recently by exceeding the mandate of his mainly ceremonial post and, in a private memorandum to party leaders that was quickly leaked to the press, arguing strenuously for Berlin. He said the process of integrating eastern and western parts of Germany and Europe would be the key challenge for decades and that Berlin stood at the center of this development.

A presidential aide said the memo was an attempt to lift the debate above parochial interests and place it into historical context.

Although deeply divided over the issue itself, most lawmakers agree on one point: the outcome is too close to call.