German Unity Highlights Divisions : Europe: Setting date for moving capital to Berlin from Bonn puts focus on rift between easterners and westerners.

It has been two years since the German Parliament voted to move the capital from Bonn to Berlin, but Germans are only now being compelled to confront the changing face of their country.

With its decision this week to complete the mammoth move by the year 2000, the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl ended months of official foot-dragging on the politically sensitive question and provided a stern reminder to a largely disenchanted citizenry that there is no turning back the clock on Germany unity.

“We have the obligation to keep our pledge of the past 40 years, namely that Berlin would be the capital of a reunited Germany,” government spokesman Dieter Vogel said. “The Cabinet made a firm decision.”

The cities of Bonn and Berlin have the most at stake in the move, haggling publicly over its practicality and assuring its disputed price tag dominates the national debate.

The completed move could have come as early as 1998 or, if Bonn had prevailed, not until well into the next century--if ever.

Relieved Berlin officials welcomed the announcement, but complained seven years is still too long to wait.

Bonn, meanwhile, has raised such a fuss over losing its biggest employer that federal officials have agreed not to relocate several ministries as well as the Bundesrat, the relatively unimportant upper house of Parliament.

But the determination to officially abandon the tranquil university town for the bustling metropolis nearly 400 miles away has come to symbolize more than the dueling self-interests of two municipalities.

The move to Berlin represents an eastward tilt in Germany’s political landscape and world view, and signals an end to the westerners’ ability--if not their desire--to keep the formidable problems of eastern Germany at arm’s length.

The new capital restores the country’s historic seat of power, just an hour’s drive from the Polish border and in the heart of central Europe--and the former Communist East Germany. Once the move is complete, easterners say, it will be difficult for western Germans--who make up four-fifths of the population--to ignore them.

As such, the decision strikes at the heart of a troubling social and psychological rift between Ossies and Wessies, who have made little progress in understanding one another in the three years of living in the same country.

With its leafy streets, Rhine River views and simple pace, Bonn is prized by many westerners as a metaphor for the comfort and prosperity of pre-unification days.

In terms of geography too, the town has provided a generation of westerners with their world orientation. Bonn is just two hours from Brussels, which is the center of Western European integration and the transatlantic military alliance, the pillars of Germany’s post-war foreign policy.

“A large part of the population doesn’t have much interest in the east,” said Frank Priess of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a political think tank in suburban Bonn. “Younger (western) Germans know France, England and Holland, where the borders have been totally open, but many have never in their life been to Leipzig, let alone further in the east.”

But for easterners, the “federal village,” as Bonn is derisively known, is too isolated and provincial to rule a united Germany. They complain that it is hopelessly out-of-touch with the hardships of unification, which have struck the already economically depressed eastern states hardest.

Supporters of the move to Berlin say it will bring government closer to home for easterners, attract investment and jobs and serve as a telling symbol of Germany’s transformation from a victim of the Cold War to a beneficiary of its demise.

“Bonn can no longer serve as the symbol of Germany,” said Manfred Guellner of the Forsa Institute, a public opinion polling firm. “The old . . . Germany exists no longer.”

The move to Berlin could also mark a significant milestone in the country’s struggle for a renewed national identity, a volatile issue both within and outside Germany.

Some fear that returning authority to the seat of Prussian militarism and Nazi aggression could signal a dangerous resurgence in German nationalism. But others say it more likely signifies a healthy sense of self-confidence--and perhaps newfound willingness to take on greater world responsibilities.