Opening Toward the East

Germany's historical Drang nach Osten-- push toward the East --has more often than not involved expansion and conquest at its neighbors' expense. Now West Germany is looking eastward again -- but this time with a great difference. The only expansion it seeks is economic; the only conquest it wants is over the understandable fear and hostility that still persist among the Eastern European nations that have suffered so much at Germany's hands. Last week West German Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger rose in the Bundestag and, speaking to the East as much as to the deputies, said: "We view the reshaping of our relations with the East as the supreme challenge of our generation."

Calling that task West Germany's "grand design," Kiesinger asked the East to forgive Germany for the past and to accept its approach, "despite all existing differences in opinion, as what it is and wants to be: a wide policy of peace and understanding whose objective is the happy future of all Europe.

Our policy is directed against nobody, including Russia. It should not be judged by the standards of conventional diplomacy, which all too easily suspects the motive of troublemaking. That is not our intention."

Bypassing Ulbricht. Kiesinger's words represent quite a switch in Bonn policy, which up to now has barred normal diplomatic relations with the East-bloc countries until they first consent to German reunification. That pol icy, of course, got nowhere. Kiesinger and his coalition government realize that reunification is a long way off as matters now stand, particularly in the face of the intransigence of East Germany's old Stalinist, Walter Ulbricht. By making new moves to win the confidence of the East, they are bypassing East Germany and hoping that the Eastern bloc, once reassured that Germany's aggressive instincts have died, will eventually consent to reunification.

German tourists and businessmen, of course, are ahead of the diplomats in discovering how to get along with the East. West Germany is second only to the Soviet Union in trading with East ern Europe, second to none in sending tourists. Mercedes and Opels with West German license plates line the streets in front of the best hotels in Bucharest and Prague. In summer German tour ists bask under Bulgaria's sun at low-priced Black Sea resorts; in winter they fly down the ski trails of Rumania's Carpathian mountains or the Tatra Mountains of Czechoslovakia.

Soviet Approval. Now the action is moving to the diplomatic front. Last week a top-level German foreign-office team returned from Bucharest, bringing hope that Rumania would become the first Soviet-bloc nation to establish diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic when Foreign Minister Corneliu Manescu goes to Bonn next month. Bulgaria and Hungary are expected to follow Rumania's lead within the next few months. A team of German negotiators was also in Prague last week, but German-Czech relations are still beclouded by legal snarls arising out of the infamous 1938 Munich agreement under which Hitler seized the Sudetenland. The Czechs and West Germans, however, are expected to solve their differences and exchange ambassadors by midyear. The Poles are less pliable. They insist that West Germany must recognize the Oder-Neisse line as Germany's eastern border before any diplomatic ties can be established. The West Germans refuse to make any binding commitment on borders until a peace conference is finally held.

While Bonn looks to the East, the East Germans remain unreceptive to its call for closer all-German cooperation. Though there are isolated instances of contact--such as last week's success by the Lutheran Synod in West Berlin in maintaining unity with its churches in East Germany--Bonn realizes that little or no progress can be made toward reunification as long as Ulbricht bosses the Pankow regime. But Ulbricht is 73. His successor is likely to be less unbending, especially in the light of the surprisingly favorable Soviet reception to the West German initiatives. After years of castigating West Germany as a land of unregenerate Nazis, Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev last week publicly welcomed Bonn's moves toward the East--in itself an important contribution toward relaxing tensions in Europe.

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