Partition, die Wende, and German unification

Applied Gmgrqhy, Vol. 17, No. 4. pp. 251-265.1997 0 1997 Elxvier Sama Ltd Printed in Great Britmn. All rights reserved 0143-6228197 $17.00 + 0.00

PII: SO143-6228(97)00020-9

Partition, die Wende, and German unification Mark Blacksell Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 SAA, UK

This paper provides a geographical context and overview of the critical steps leading to German unification on 3 October 1990. It examines the extent to which the whole process was typical of the sequence of events in other states that have been partitioned and have subsequently reunited, with particular reference to the so-called Wende in East Germany. This was a spontaneous, popular movement for internal reform which, spurred on in late 1989 by the impending collapse of the East German government and its protector, the Soviet Union, became a rallying point for German unification. 0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Keywords: Germany, partition, unification, die We&e

On 3 October 1990 the two German states--the Federal Republic (West Germany) and the Democratic Republic (East Germany)-merged to form a unified new Germany at the heart of Europe, different in terms of geographical area from any previous German state (Breitfeld et al., 1992) (Figure 1). In one sense there is little more to be said; what happened is clear and superficially unproblematic, but in practice the change was not only a mould-breaking event in the history of twentieth-century Europe, but also yet another twist in the tortuous moves to create a stable, modern and nationally and internationally acceptable German identity, a search stretching back to the middle of the nineteenth century (Blacksell, 1994). The practical problems to be overcome in achieving unification were, and remain, daunting. Although the populations of the two countries were both German, sharing elements of a common culture and historical tradition, the 40-year separation after 1949 was remarkably complete. The political conditions of the Cold War enforced the mutual isolation of the two states from each other, and this was further reinforced by their totally different social and economic systems. In the east, the centralized and dictatorial regime with its socialist command economy insisted on the absolute pre-eminence of the state and the Communist Party in determining how people lived their lives, whereas in the west the liberal and democratic social market economy emphasized individual rights and the individual as the cornerstone of society. Whatever the intrinsic rights and wrongs of the two systems, East Germany, along with all the other communist states in Eastern Europe, was on the verge of total collapse in 1989. Its industrial economy, in particular, was no longer functioning properly, producing expensive goods of poor quality for which there was no market and in conditions which, in many cases, were clearly causing long-term 257

Partition, die Wende, and German unification: M. Blacksell

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Figure 1 Germany 1939 (top); West and East Germany 1949-90 (middle); Germany since 3 October 1990 (bottom)

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damage to the environment through uncontrolled pollution (Bryson, 1992). As a result, unification had to be as much about remedial action to bring economic and industrial standards in the east up to something approaching those in the west, as about the merging of two deeply divergent societies into a single coherent whole. Relatively little has been written by geographers about the partition and reunification of states, a notable exception being a paper by Waterman (1987), which drew heavily on even earlier work in political science (Henderson et al., 1974). Waterman argued that partition should not be seen simply in an historical context, with the emphasis on the uniqueness of each individual case, but rather as part of a wider process, emphasizing the inherent instability of states and incorporating a sequence of stages, including secession, self-determination, separation and irredentism, leading inexorably towards ultimate reunification. This paper considers three aspects of the process of German unification: first, die Wende, the process of change that saw the collapse of the communist regime in East Germany and its replacement by the capitalist western democracy of an enlarged Federal Republic; secondly, the essential political and legislative steps necessary to make unification a practical reality; and thirdly, the historical attitude within the former West Germany towards the whole question of unification, or reunification as it was more widely known. Finally, against this background there is a brief discussion of the extent to which the internal drive towards unification was as inexorable as Waterman predicted, and whether the chosen route was the only option available to the politicians in both Germanies as they faced the political challenges of 1989. As with the rest of the papers in this collection, the emphasis is on the internal dynamics that encouraged the process of political change, rather than on the wider, external geopolitical pressures driving unification.

Die Wende The most important point to make about die Wende (the turning-point) is that initially it was a spontaneous popular movement for social and economic change that did not set out either to destroy East Germany, or to further moves towards German unification. The first obvious sign of what was to come was a peaceful demonstration in Leipzig on 15 January 1989 for freedom of speech, a free press and the right to associate, at which 80 people were arrested. It was a visible manifestation of a growing dissatisfaction with the repressive nature of the East German state, which had been channelled largely through the Lutheran church in Leipzig, a focus for dissident views since the late 1970s. While such unrest was symptomatic of a growing sense of political weakness in the government, it was uncharacteristic of East Germans, amongst whom the only previous serious outbreak of resistance had been the brutally contained uprising of 1953. The contrast with their close neighbours in Poland and the then Czechoslovakia was marked. Indeed, in contrast, East Germany possessed relatively cohesive elites . . . coopted, subordinated, politically fragmented, easily exiled or allowed to leave for West Germany-an identical language community, with automatic rights of citizenshippotential counter elites never developed serious political momentum in East Germany, which could have placed the power and legitimacy of the ruling communist party in question. (Fulbrook, 1991: 319) Although the containment of social discontent was partially explained by the existence of the West German safety-valve, another potent factor was the relative absence of serious material want. The uprising in 1953 had demonstrated the potential dangers of public discontent and, especially under the leadership of Erich Honecker after 1972, considerable efforts were made to improve the quality of housing, social services and overall 259

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standards of living, even if they hardly measured up to the levels on offer in West Germany. The demonstrations in January 1989 brought about little obvious immediate change; indeed, the East German government tried to ignore the imminent signs of collapse in the Soviet Union and other of its communist neighbours and proceeded to prepare for its40th anniversary celebrations in early October. However, the serene facade began to crack during the early summer and then progressively crumbled as the year progressed. There were accusations of vote-rigging in the local elections in May and, during the summer, thousands of East Germans took advantage of the opening of the border between Hungary and Austria to flee their homeland. In September demonstrations resumed in Leipzig and those organizing them became more formally organized, with the founding of opposition groups, such as Democracy Now and the New Forum. The government attempted to quell the unrest, but it simply spread and gathered in intensity On 5 October, the day before the official birthday celebrations, the mass demonstrations spread to Magdeburg and Dresden and the government provided special trains to transport East Germans taking refuge in Prague and Warsaw to West Germany. Through all the growing turmoil it is crucial to remember that the goal of the protesters was internal reform, not German unification (Lewis, 1995). Throughout October the demonstrations intensified, spreading throughout East Germany, and becoming focused on the issue of free elections. The momentum continued into November, with 1 million people demonstrating in Berlin on 4 November, and several hundred thousand two days later in Leipzig. All the while the haemorrhage of refugees to the West continued, rapidly gathering pace; over 40,000 had left for West Germany via Czechoslovakia by the beginning of November. On 7 November the East German government resigned and two days later the Berlin Wall was opened, allowing East and West Germans to mingle freely for the first time in more than 40 years. The new East German government moved quickly to recognize New Forum and the other political parties that had grown out of the demonstrations. At this point, spurred by the direct contacts, first with West Berlin and then with West Germany itself, a new, popular cry for reunification began rapidly to gather pace. Sensing an historic opportunity to capitalize on the political disarray in East Germany, and also to further the much vaunted, though previously improbable goal of German unification, the West German government, with Chancellor Helmut Kohl very much to the fore, began openly to seize the initiative. On 28 November he proposed a ten-point plan, which would pave the way for reunification. He envisaged the two Germanies gradually coming together as part of a confederation, but he made no reference to the issue of permanent borders, causing widespread alarm in both German states, and internationally, about the nature of his intentions. The die was cast, however, and popular opinion in East Germany swung decisively behind reunification, rather than its original goal of democratic reform, a change encapsulated in the subtle change in their street slogan from ‘ Wir sind das Volk’ (We are the people), to ‘ Wir sind ein Volk’ (We are one people). From now on the whole process changed radically; rather than being about reform, it was now about how to bring about reunification as quickly and expeditiously as possible. The East German regime became a caretaker government overseeing the absorbtion of East Germany into a unified German state and the whole concept of die Wende, in its original sense of a national turning-point, was submerged in a much grander and larger vision. It was also one that was much more problematic for the East Germans: rather than struggling to control their own destiny, they were now faced with the challenge of how to retain their own identity in the face of imminent takeover. For them the smooth progression to a unified nationhood envisaged by Waterman (1987) was increasingly to become an illusion. 260

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(Re)unification Exactly what would be the geography of a unified German state was a matter of the utmost importance for its future. Theoretically, reunz&ution could have meant recreating a German political entity in one of the forms that had existed in the early years of the twentieth century. Although improbable, the scope for such a possibility had specifically been left open in the Grundvertrug (Basic Law), the quasi-constitution of the Federal Republic, and no comprehensive peace treaty had ever been signed at the end of the second world war officially revising the boundaries of Germany. Realistically what was on offer, however, was the unification of East and West Germany to form a completely new political entity, but this solution required that a comprehensive peace treaty be signed and that the new Germany give up all claims to territories beyond its new boundaries. Work on the peace treaty between East and West Germany and the four post-secondworld-war occupying powers-France, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the USA-began in February 1990 under enormous pressure to make rapid progress. It was not simply that a framework for a united Germany was needed urgently, but also that it was becoming increasingly apparent that the Soviet Union was unlikely to survive for long in its current form. Once it had fragmented, negotiating an agreed solution would have become virtually impossible, since there would have been no obvious, or acceptable, political entity in the East to represent the interests of the former Soviet Union. The main question was the boundary between Germany and Poland, an issue that had been left dangerously vague and open by Helmut Kohl when he first announced his plan for German unification in November 1989. To avoid any ambiguity, on 21 June 1990 the Federal Parliament in West Germany and the People’s Chamber simultaneously agreed to renounce any claims to the lands east of the rivers Oder and NeiBe, the boundary between East Germany and Poland. On 17 July the two Germanies and Poland formally accepted the existing boundary as permanent and agreed that it should be underwritten by the four second-world-war allies. This then paved the way for the Treaty on the Final Settlement on Germany (Vertrag iiber die abschfieJende Regelung in bezug auf Deutschland), which was signed on 12 September (von Miinch, 1992). The treaty defined the newly unified Germany unequivocally as incorporating the territories of both East and West Germany together with the whole of Berlin. The agreement also required Germany and Poland to sign a treaty as soon as possible after unification confirming the defacto boundary between them as dejure; and it further required Germany to renounce ail other territorial claims. The final stage came after unification itself had taken place, with the signing of the GermanPolish Treaty (Deutsch-polnischer Grenzvertrug) on 14 November. This gave the legal seal of both countries to the Oder-NeiBe frontier.

Three critical steps Self-evidently, unification of the two German states was not a simple process. Under any circumstances, dismantling the whole political, administrative and economic paraphernalia of East Germany would have been an excessively complex challenge, requiring the utmost cooperation from both governments. Given the heightened expectations of the two German populations with respect to the rapid conclusion of the negotiations, it demanded an even greater degree of political skill and determination. There will be no attempt made here to try and elaborate all the many different aspects of the arrangements put in place by the two governments in the course of 1990; rather attention is focused specifically on the three key treaties, without which unification simply could not have proceeded. The first of these to be concluded was the Staatsvertrag (State 261

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Treaty), which was signed on 18 May and came into force on 30 June. This created a currency, economic and social union between East and West Germany, paving the way for uniform institutions and procedures across the whole of the unified country. Probably the most important aspect of this agreement related to the relative values of the East German currency, the Ostmark, and the West German currency, the D-Mark. In purely economic terms, the Ostmark had a fraction of the value of its West German counterpart, but formally to admit this, and to have enshrined the difference in a treaty, would have been extremely damaging politically. The East German population would have seen their savings and other monetary assets rendered worthless at a stroke and their own status as second- class citizens within the new state confirmed. Faced with this dilemma, the West German government took a strong lead from Chancellor Kohl and agreed, in the face of determined opposition from the Federal Reserve Bank, that from 1 July the D-Mark would be the sole currency across both Germanies, and that the conversion rate between it and the Ostmark for wages, salaries, grants, pensions, rents and leases, and other similar payments, would be one for one. As far as all other transactions were concerned, the conversion rate was one D-Mark for two Ostmark. In the short term this decision meant that East German citizens were able to use their own resources to buy into the West German financial system, even though the economic realities would obviously not be disguised for long. The decision did, however, provide a political breathing space, sustaining popular support for unification and for the politicians, especially Chancellor Kohl and his party, the CDU, who had done so much to champion the cause. It is certainly arguable that the whole process would have crumbled, or at the very least have been accompanied by serious public discontent in East Germany, had the one-for-one conversion agreement not been in place. The second treaty was the Wahlvertrag (Election Treaty), which was signed on 3 August and came into force on 3 September. It provided for the federal system of elections in West Germany to be extended to the whole of the new Germany. The five new Liinder (provinces)-Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, Sachsen, Thuringen-and Berlin were to become the basic elements of the electoral system in the East and, once all-German elections had taken place under the new order, then the Volkskammer (the East German parliament) was to be disbanded. The Wahlvertrag underlines the extent of the administrative upheaval that those living in East Germany had to contend with in the face of unification. Not only did they have to familiarize themselves with the social and economic regimes of the West, they also had to adjust to a completely new administrative map, one to which none of their formal or informal institutions conformed (Figure 2). An interesting consequence of this for the electoral process was the way in which it inhibited the emergence of effective local political parties. None of the popular movements that had been so effective only a year previously in driving forward die Wende were able to translate their influence into a secure political base within the new administrative structure. At the first local and all-German federal elections on the 14 October and 2 December 1990 respectively, it was the three major traditional West German political parties-the CDU, the SPD and the FDP-that completely dominated. Indeed the only significant political party that has so far emerged in the eastern Liinder of the unified Germany is the PDS, the reformed Communist Party (Jeffrey, 1995). The third, and undoubtedly most important treaty is the Einigungsvertrag (Unification Treaty), which was signed on 31 August and came into force on 29 September, recasting the two German states as a single entity from 3 October 1990. The treaty confirmed the creation of the new Ltinder and the status of Berlin as the Federal capital, and extended a revised Federal Grundgesetz (Basic Law) to the whole of the unified Germany. The most important revision to the Grundgesetz was a new Article 23, which committed Germany 262

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The new German Bundesliinder

J

Figure 2 The new Geman Bezirke they replaced

Bundesliinder established after unification and the East German

to being part of a united Europe within the EU, in place of an open-ended provision allowing additional tinder to join the federation. The significance of the new Article was twofold. On the one hand, it tied the united Germany firmly, and unequivocally, into Western Europe; on the other, it removed any lingering doubts about the permanence of the geographic area of the German state. This had never previously been the case in West Germany, where the very existence of the old Article 23 in the Grundgesetz, specifically allowing for future additions to the federation, had underlined the provisional nature of the post-second-world-war political settlement in Central Europe. The Einigungsvertrug (Unification Treaty) also took over the arrangements previously put in place by the East German government for privatizing, and integrating into a capitalist economy, the vast state-owned and run economic facilities (Schoenbaum and Pond, 1996). The mechanism for undertaking this huge task was the Treuhandunstalt (Trust Agency). The controversial work of this body goes far beyond the scope of this paper, but its existence was an essential element in enabling the unification process to proceed at all.

Wiedervereinigung as seen from West Germany Although the unification of Germany in 1990 took place in less than a year from being mooted to actually being fact, the possibility of Wiedervereinigung (reunification) had been on the political agenda in West Germany ever since the Federal Republic was founded in 1949. Indeed, it is claimed that the term ‘constitution’ was rejected in favour of the Grundgesetz because the latter did not have the same aura of permanence surrounding it (Fulbrook, 1991). In the early 195Os, the fledgling years of the two German states, there were a number of apparent opportunities to reunite them, most notably in 1952 following an approach by 263

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Stalin to the Western Allies. All were rebuffed, not least within West Germany, as part of the Cold War posturing which at that time was at its height. At that time, the main thrust of foreign policy was to ensure that the Federal Republic was fully accepted into Western Europe via the process of economic integration that was just beginning to gather pace. Renegotiating the political status of a united Germany at that juncture would have been an unwelcome and destabilizing distraction. This is not to imply, however, that reunification was not an issue, but it was only open for discussion on the Federal Republic’s own terms and, therefore, had more to do with securing the internal political situation than with renegotiating the fundamental position of Germany in Europe (Blacksell, 1982). As time progressed the practical prospects for reunification became ever more remote. The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 restricted even further the already very limited possibilities of contact between citizens in the two German states and it gradually came to be accepted that any rapprochement would be on the basis of mutual acceptance, rather than wholesale capitulation to one or other ideology. The touchstone of this change was the Ostpolitik, which developed gradually after 1969, when the CDU was finally voted out of government for the first time since West Germany came into existence in 1949. The culmination of the Ostpolitik was the Grundvertrag (Basic Treaty), signed by both East and West Germany, which began to open the way for more normal relations between two de facto independent German states, although in neither case did this extend to formal political recognition. The promised relaxation in relations between the two Germanies envisaged in the Ostpolitik, by Willi Brandt on behalf of the Federal Republic and Erich Honecker on behalf of the Democratic Republic, was slow to materialize in practice and quite quickly became bogged down in the tensions of the renewed, more general, Cold War politics. Nevertheless, both men in their very different ways were deeply committed to the policy. Brandt’s capacity to influence events slipped away with his own political demise at home, but Honecker, while consolidating his ruthlessly dictatorial position in East Germany, still hankered after acceptance in the West. Recognition was slow to come, but eventually he was invited on a quasi-state visit to West Germany in 1987. Ironically, his host was the CDU Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, who shared none of his basic enthusiasm for mutual coexistence, but who appeared to be being drawn into it by force of circumstances. In November 1989, little more than two years later, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with it the government of East Germany, rendered the whole basis of the Ostpolitik an irrelevance. Unification of the two Germanies, rather than any Wiedervereinigung of the German empires of the first half of the twentieth century, was proceeding apace and almost entirely on terms dictated by West Germany. It will be interesting in the future to see how the contributions of both Brandt and Honecker to German unification are judged. Both were committed to a path that ultimately proved to be a dead end, but between them they dominated German-German relations for more than two crucial decades.

Conclusion The extent to which the unification of Germany holds any general lessons for understanding the raison d’6tre of states and the long-term efficacy of partition as a politically acceptable solution is difficult to judge. At first sight, the Waterman sequence (bitter conflict -territorial division-gradual reconciliation -reunification) has a certain resonance in describing what happened in Germany in the second half of the twentieth century, but in other respects it only flatters to deceive. While it is true that there is once again a single German state, this owes almost everything to the vacuum caused by the political and economic collapse of East Germany. While both states remained politically and economically viable, as they did over four decades, there was little sign that they were likely to grow 264

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together. Indeed, if the two decades of Ostpolitik are anything to go by, then the evidence would indicate that gradual rapprochement does not necessarily lead to political reunification, but rather to mutual acceptance and greater independence. An interesting perspective on the significance of German unification is provided by the German sociologist and historian, Jiirgen Habermas, who in 1995 was invited to lecture in South Korea about the parallels between the situation in the Korean peninsula and that in Germany, and the lessons that might be learned. He concluded that it could be very misleading for Koreans to read too much into the German experience, not least because there were no real signs of the fragility that had beset East Germany and that was ultimately the key to the unification. However, he also went on to warn sharply against the model of unification adopted in the German case, based as it is on the concept of an enlarged Federal Republic, following the then Article 23 of the Grundgesetz. Far better, Habermas argued, would have been to accept that what was required was the phased growing together of two different cultures, each with something to offer, a route that would (in theory) have been possible under Article 146. His reservations stem from a belief that the justification for unification rested too heavily on the importance of a shared heritage in the past and too little on the value of sharing two different cultural experiences: . . . the forces which took charge of directing the unification script in 1990 trusted too much in a common pre-political stock, hence in something like natural harmony among the member nations, and paid too little attention to the need for political clarification on the part of citizens of different backgrounds. (Habermas, 1996: 11). While Habermas’s warning may be timely, it does beg the question as to whether trying to develop a mutual trust and understanding would ever produce the kind of radical political change that is implied by unification. The evidence from Germany is clearly that it would not, but it is also clear that the political opportunism of Chancellor Kohl and the Federal Republic, through overriding and almost totally subjugating the social and economic infrastructure developed in East Germany, will eventually exact a price in terms of social unrest. This was widely predicted when the negotiations about unification were actually taking place in 1990 and the challenge now will be to ensure that the new German society is sufficiently flexible to contain it (Schmidt, 1993).

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Blacksell, M. (1994) State and nation: Germany since unification. Europa l(l), 1I-22. Breitfeld, K. et al. (1992) Das vereinte Deutschland Eine kleine Geographie. Institut fiir Linderkunde, Leipzig. Bryson, P. J. (1992) The economics of German unification: a review of the literature. Journalof Comparative Economics 16, 118-149. Fulbrook, M. (1991) The Fontana History of Germany 1918-1990: The DividedNation. Fontana, London. Habermas, J. (1996) National unification and popular sovereignty. New Left Review 219,3-21. Henderson, G., Lebow, R. N. and Stoessinger, J. G. (1974) Divided Nations in a Divided World. David McKay, New York. Jeffrey, C. (1995) The changing framework of German politics since unification. In The New Germany. Social, Political and Cultural Challenges of Unification, ed. D. Lewis and J. R. I? McKenzie, pp. IOI126. University of Exeter Press, Exeter. Lewis, D. (1995)The GDR, Wende and legacy. In The New Germany: Social, Political and Cultural Challenges of Unification, ed. D. Lewis and J. R. P. McKenzie, pp. 52-73. University of Exeter Press, Exeter. Schmidt, H. (1993)Handeln fir Deutschland. Rowohlt, Berlin. Schoenbaum, D. and Pond, E. (1996) The German Question and Other German Questions. Macmillan, London. von Munch, I. (1992) Die Vertrage zur Einheit Deutschlands. C. H. Beck, Miinchen. Waterman, S. (1987) Partitioned states. Political Geography Quarterly 6(2), 151-170. 265