Kohl Booed While Marking German Unity

A troubled Germany on Saturday marked the second anniversary of its reunification facing deepening social divisions, growing voter impatience and an alarming rise of the radical right.

On a day supposedly set aside for celebration, the nation’s political leaders, including Chancellor Helmut Kohl, were booed and faced verbal taunts from the fringes of a large crowd as they walked under heavy security through the medieval city of Schwerin to an official commemoration ceremony there.

Although police denied reports that Kohl was punched by a protester as he made his way through the thick crowd, television footage of the incident showed the chancellor was momentarily knocked off balance by what appeared to be a blow from someone in the mass of people surrounding him.

More than 2,000 riot police were on hand in the eastern city, about 150 miles north of Berlin, but there was no major violence.

Law enforcement officials reported more than 100 arrests after a group of protesters attacked a police station with rocks and bottles.

Elsewhere in Germany, several hundred self-styled neo-Nazis marched through the streets of Dresden shouting, “Foreigners out!” while thousands of leftists staged far larger counter-protests against racism in Nuremberg, Frankfurt and Berlin. A wave of attacks on foreigners and Jewish memorials in recent weeks has shocked and angered the majority of Germans and unsettled those watching events from abroad mindful of the nation’s horrific past.

In marked contrast to the heady self-congratulation that dominated the celebration of unity two years ago, the German political leaders in speech after speech Saturday tried to steady a national mood that has begun to turn sullen.

Despite the influx of more than $225 billion from the west over the past two years, economic recovery in the east has so far failed to take hold.

The real unemployment rate is estimated at more than double the official 14% rate.

The bitter disappointment of easterners and the anger of those in the west at the need to pay such money to rebuild the region have combined to drive the country’s two halves further apart over the past two years.

Just how far apart east and west Germans feel was underscored Saturday when an eastern protester in Schwerin shouted at Labor Minister Norbert Bluem, a westerner, “Go back home!”

In their speeches Saturday, the country’s leaders repeatedly urged national reconciliation and an end to the attacks on foreigners.

“Aggression toward foreigners and anti-Semitism bring disgrace to our country,” Kohl said in a nationally televised address.

In a speech also telecast nationally, German President Richard von Weizsaecker gave his fellow citizens what amounted to a 40-minute lecture on the need for patience in the quest for economic recovery and mutual tolerance in dealing with the country’s foreign population.

“Attacks on foreigners and their homes are intolerable,” he said. “Whoever claims (to be) undertaking such violence in the interests of Germany misuses the name of our country.”

Von Weizsaecker also told Germans that it is everyone’s duty to actively oppose such attacks.

“We can’t just call the police and leave everything to the authorities,” he said. “We ourselves, each and every one of us, are called upon to protect the right of human dignity in our democracy.”

Mainstream Germans may reject the violence against foreigners, but opinion polls chart a growing resentment toward the influx of asylum seekers, who this year are expected to reach half a million.

With extreme right-wing parties the only political voice calling for a halt to immigration, the appeal of these parties has risen sharply recently.

The newsmagazine Der Spiegel notes in its issue scheduled for publication Monday that between last March and August, the percentage of German voters prepared to consider voting for an extreme right-wing party rose from 12% to 19%.

Some in the east--where the attacks have been more widespread and more severe--blame an out-of-touch political leadership, settled in the sleepy Rhine town of Bonn, for failing to react more quickly to the souring public mood.

Jens Reich, a key figure in the East German 1989 revolution, recently likened the government in Bonn to the Titanic--moving at full speed but through total fog.

As politicians marked the unity anniversary, attacks against minorities and foreigners continued Saturday.