12th September, 1990
Representatives
of the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France signed the Treaty
on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany in Moscow on the 12th
September, 1990. At the suggestion of West German Foreign Minister
Hans-Dietrich Genscher the two German Governments were treated as participants,
an upgraded status from junior, defeated nations. Instead because of their
active involvement, this quadripartite agreement is also known as the “two plus
four” treaty. In simple terms, it granted full sovereignty to a unified German
state.
However
as the victors, these four-power authorities had treated Germany as a
defeated nation at the conclusion to the Second World War. Having straddled the
continent of Europe, the country was chopped up into smaller bits. The former
eastern territories of Silesia, East Brandenburg, Farther Pomerania and East
Prussia were absorbed into Poland and the Soviet Union, and due to the forced
movement of refugees, a smaller, more ethnically homogenous homeland was to be
expected. This demographic change solved a historic sovereignty dispute caused
by German town dwellers “uncomfortably” sharing a common living space with
Slavic neighbours. The possibility of future governments laying claim to
foreign territories populated by ethnic Germans, one of the causes of the
Second World War was eliminated. But the human cost was the expulsion of seven
million ethnic Germans from the lands that they had been living in for over 900
years. Since East Prussia was a distinct culture with its own dialect, this
action, designed to assist the Soviet annexation of Eastern Poland, was
tantamount to genocide.
And yet
as events were to transpire, the territorial realignment would be even more
significant because there would be two Germanies, not one. And not just one volk
either, but two, Easterners and Westerns, or “Ossis” and “Wessis”. This
partition was not the planned result of agreement at the Potsdam Conference,
but the result of friction caused by the Cold War. The division of Germany into
two independent states was forced by Josef Stalin.
In 1945
Allied-occupied Germany was divided by the River Elbe with special arrangements
for the city-state of Berlin. A Western state known as the Federal Republic of
Germany or Bundesrepublic Deutschland was formed from the eleven states
in the “trizone”, the American, British and French occupation zones. These were
Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Bremen, North Rhine-Westphalia,
Hesse, Bavaria, Württemberg, Württemberg-Hohenzollern, Baden and
Rheinland-Pfalz. A “small re-unification” was even said to have taken place
when the Saar Protectorate joined the Bundesrepublic as Saarland in 1957. The
remaining five states in the Soviet occupied zone became the German Democratic
Republic or Deutsche Demokratische Republik with an eastern boundary
along the Oder-Neisse Line. These were Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,
Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The two Germanies would operate different
political systems and would to some extent be considered the client states of
the superpowers.
During
the forty-five years between the two agreements in Potsdam and Moscow, the
former allies was sworn enemies. And although Germany recovered, it was still a
proxy battleground in the East-West struggle, potentially the battlefield where
a Third World War would be fought. This became increasingly likely with the
construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. John F. Kennedy made an unambiguous
commitment to the city by declaring “ich bin ein berliner”. But twenty-five
years later, President Reagan said “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall” and only
now at the end of the Cold War could the situation finally move forward. With
the relinquishing of occupation rights the way was now clear for German
re-unification. Celebrations for Deutsche Einheit would occur every 3rd
October a date marked as German Unity Day.
Although
the division of Germany was the result of actions initiated by political
leaders, re-unification was very much the result of the popular movement in the
East that acted as a driver for political development. Ethnolinguistic
nationalism is of course to be expected as the norm, and yet the aspiration for
“one Germany” had cultural, patriotic and nationalistic aspects. There was no
desire for expansionism or a resurgence of German militarism. And it was the
revolution of 1989 that actually brought the turning point, even if at
the time civil rights activists rejected that label because it originated from
East German Secretary General Egon Krentz.
Although
individual events often took political leaders by surprise, It would be safe to
say that the broad developments in Eastern Europe were correctly anticipated by
President Bush and his team of advisors. But they were something of a shock to
Gorbachev whose expectation was that the East German state would evolve over
time outside of Soviet orbit. Even British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
told Gorbachev “We do not want a unified Germany” instead advocating a
democratic East German state. Although she privately feared this would
undermine Gorbachev, her position was clear from her declaration “We defeated
the Germans twice! And now they’re back!”. She later admitted this was an
“unambiguous failure” And from Paris, President Francois Mitterrand declared
“France by no means wants German reunification, although it realises that in
the end, it is inevitable”. Perhaps the truth was that by 1990, Western
Governments were more concerned by developments in the Soviet Union and the
Middle East.
But the
truth was that the DDR was an artificial creation, weighed down by Soviet-style
bureaucracy with no popular support. In hindsight, we might easily speculate
that Western democracies should have been expected to have a better reading of
popular sentiment, but nevertheless it is generally recognized that Bush and
his team skilfully guided the political leaders through a relatively graceful
period of uncertainty and tension. It is easy to forget the spectre of foreign
opposition that was feared at the time. Chancellor Kohl recognized this
contribution in his remark “George Bush was for me the most important ally on
the road to German unity”. Kohl later recounted how he took Gorbachev into the
garden of the Chancellor's bungalow overlooking the Rhine and how he told him
that, like the river, German unity was unstoppable.
It was
the iconic dismantling of the Wall, and the Westward movement of citizens was
the catalyst for what would become the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe.
Although in fact the crisis was triggered by the opening of a hole in the Iron
Curtain, caused by the removal of Hungary’s border fence.
Ironically,
Germany was a crucible of communism, being the home of Karl Marx, Frederich
Engels, Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht. And it was the Imperial German Government
that supported the Bolsheviks by sending Lenin in an unmarked train from
Switzerland. But ultimately Germans had not chosen to walk down the Communist
path, it was imposed by the Soviet force of arms. In this context, we might
perhaps consider East German a failed government, rather than a failed state.
Certainly, for the one hundred and twenty years from German Unification under
Bismarck the nation had yo-yo’ed between systems of almost every complexion.
If the
rejection of totalitarianism was significant then the desire for stability in a
“final status” political system was also evident. And perhaps re-unification
was a misnomer being at least in a narrowly defined constitutional sense, more
a takeover than a merger. The eastern states were simply incorporated into a
successor state that maintained the same legal personality as the
Bundesrepublic. The Federal Republic’s basic law was amended to absorb the five
eastern states, and the new country was essentially an expanded West Germany.
But in a larger sense, it was a merger because Ossis had driven events by
forcing the border. And of course the choice of Berlin as the Bundeshaupstadt,
instead of the continuation of Bonn as the capital was significant. Also the
rise of the Ossi politician, Chancellor Angela Merkel are perhaps to be taken
as indications of centrifugal balance being restored. Also hugely significant was the abolition of
the Deutschmark in favour of the Euro currency, currently the only major step
forward in the creation of a “Common European Home” imagined by Mikhail
Gorbachev in 1990.
Because
of the huge rebuilding costs of infrastructure and pension inheritance, it has
been suggested that re-unification set back the organic development of the
Federal Republic by twenty years. But of course Germans never chose to live in
two states, and they seized the earliest opportunity to re-unify. Although
fascinating to speculate, it is hard to imagine a post-Communist East German
state inside the Eurozone. Because when the “two-plus-four” agreement was being
signed in Moscow, East Germany was on the verge of near-total collapse.
Although the DDR was relatively well off by
Warsaw Pact standards, the Ossis were fully aware of their deprivation
because of the broadcasting of West German TV Channels into the East.
Of
course later integration problems caused by “inner re-unification” soon raised
question marks over the wisdom of a unified state. There are even some who wish
the Berlin Wall was rebuilt, bigger than before. Perhaps the process of re-unification
will only be considered to be finished when Ossis enjoy the same standard of
living as Wessis and regional differences have finally disappeared. Or maybe it
will be just a matter of time through generational change.
Regardless,
destiny will not be shaped purely by the concern for European security. Today
Germany is the economically dominant power in Europe. Of course we do not yet
have a Common European Home. But instead, for these many reasons, the long road
to German Nationhood has been tortuous process, often beset by ethnic violence
and tragedy, but now finally guided by democratic processes even if after all
we have not witnessed “the end of history” that was predicted back in 1989.
