Germany And Now There Is One

By Bruce W. Nelan

In their rush toward unification over the past 11 months, East and West Germany struck down the barriers between them like so many tenpins. The most unforgettable and heart-quickening breakthrough was the first, the fall of the Berlin Wall last Nov. 9. Then came free elections in the East on March 18, economic union on July 1, and the Sept. 12 agreement of the four World War II Allies to end their remaining occupation rights in Berlin.

Any of those could be taken as the date on which unification became inevitable. But the date that will be celebrated in the future Germany comes this week, Oct. 3, when the Freedom Bell in West Berlin's Schoneberg city hall tolls and the flag of the Federal Republic of Germany is raised in front of the 96-year-old Reichstag building. At that moment, the German Democratic Republic, a relic of Stalin's postwar empire, ceases to exist.

The new Germany, a nation of 77.4 million people, faces an era of formidable reconstruction. It will take years of effort to repair the damage caused by division and, in the East, by four decades of communism. It will mean putting the East's downtrodden economy into working order and soothing worries on both sides of the old Iron Curtain: those of West Germans about paying for unity's immense costs and those of former Easterners about being second-class citizens in the united country.

Germans will face demands from their allies and neighbors that they prove themselves democratic and peace loving while fulfilling the international obligations that come with the status of a major power -- obligations that include a continuing push for European integration and, in the short run at least, a major contribution to the multilateral buildup in the Persian Gulf. Germany does not seek the "leading role in Europe," Chancellor Helmut Kohl vowed last week, but its people will "live up to our responsibility in Europe and the world."

To many people who were West Germans until this week, the main responsibility seems to lie in paying bills. East Germany is bankrupt. Most of its 8,000 decrepit enterprises are on the verge of failure, and unemployment is heading toward 2 million out of a work force of 8.9 million. Since economic and monetary union in July, the East's economy has been running mainly on subsidies from Bonn.

"The East," predicts Claus Schnabel of the German Economic Institute in Cologne, "will eventually become as technically advanced as the West and in some cases even more so, since it will be getting the very latest in equipment." But no one knows how long that will take or how much it will cost. Building or upgrading plant and equipment, constructing roads, establishing communications networks and cleaning up industrial pollution are expected to cost more than $455 billion. This year alone, East is costing West more than $60 billion. In the long run, says Finance Minister Theo Waigel, "no one can put a figure on what is coming at us." Estimates run as high as $775 billion over ten years. Retail sales and tax revenues from the East will put some money back into federal coffers, of course, but nothing close to the outlays.

Where will all that money come from? The government intends to tap private investments, sell "unity bonds" and let the federal budget deficit grow (current annual shortfall: $44.5 billion) -- a scheme that is supposed to produce $64 billion annually for the next five years. With national elections scheduled for Dec. 2, the government is trying to avoid talking about potential tax increases, but Kohl concedes that "we will do what is required."

Nor can unification's cost be measured in deutsche marks alone. The politico-economic divide between East and West is paralleled by a psychological separation known as "die Mauer im Kopf," or the wall in the mind, a split that may not be overcome for a generation or more. West German politicians always talked as if the two Germanys were essentially one. But they were not: after a grinding period of intensive rebuilding, the West thrived, while the East lived under 57 years of uninterrupted totalitarian dictatorship, first under the Nazis, then under the communists.

East Germans increasingly complain about the all-pervasive influence of the Federal Republic. "Some elements of our constitution, like women's rights and social guarantees, could have been adopted in the new Germany," argues Angela Breitner, an East Berlin librarian. "But nothing from here is considered any good." There are complaints about prices too, high by old East German standards, though such items as clothing and household goods are cheaper than they used to be.

Griping in the West focuses on Eastern attitudes toward social benefits and work habits. Says Bavarian businessman Anton Enders, just back from Dresden: "There are a lot of false assumptions about those people. Just because they're German doesn't mean they are going to start working, not after 40 years. They expect to have it handed to them on a platter."

This cold war of perceptions -- Westerners as hard-boiled exploiters, Easterners as spoiled children of a socialist system that guaranteed lifetime employment and cradle-to-grave welfare benefits -- could last for years, even decades. The relationship will normalize, says novelist Monika Maron, who left the East for the West in 1988, only "when the G.D.R. is not considered a place, but rather a time, a very bad time."

Legally, the Federal Republic has been sovereign since 1955, but in terms of policy independence, unification marks a significant change. The postwar division of Europe is gone; the burdens it imposed on the two Germanys have been lifted. But full freedom to choose can be unnerving, and the idea of independent action is almost taboo.

Most Germans of late have been so preoccupied with the problems of unification that they have not paid much attention to foreign affairs. "We are just starting to think about our role in a future evolving Europe," says Karsten Voigt, a Social Democratic member of the Bundestag and foreign affairs spokesman for the parliamentary party. Yet the world, thanks mainly to the crisis in the gulf, is banging on the door. Voigt and many of his countrymen are struck by the irony. "The states that are urging the Germans to participate in the gulf," he says, "are the same ones that said a few weeks ago Germany should not become a new military power."

The voters will need to be convinced. A recent poll by the Allensbach Institute, the country's leading opinion-research organization, indicated that only 32% of West Germans were in favor of rewriting the constitution so that troops could be sent to crisis areas like the gulf.

As it is, the process of unification has increased German involvement abroad. Beyond funding the withdrawal and the resettlement in the U.S.S.R. of Soviet troops now based in East Germany, a new friendship and cooperation treaty gives Germany the closest ties of any Western country with Moscow.

Integration of the former East Germany automatically introduces a special set of relationships with Eastern neighbors. "The cultural and economic links brought by the G.D.R. require Germany to develop a policy for Eastern Europe," says law professor Rupert Scholz, a former West German Defense Minister. That need is being accelerated by apprehension about instability and political fragility in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. "I am very much concerned at the shaky situation there," says Horst Teltschik, Kohl's top foreign policy adviser. "There is no stabilized democracy. They are in bad economic shape, and different ethnic groups are fighting again. What will we do when there are civil wars breaking out?"

If there is one area of real, deeply felt consensus among German political parties and voters, it is on a foreign policy that is resolutely moderate and unadventurous. "With our greater weight we will not seek more power," insists Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, "but we will act in awareness of the added responsibility it imposes on us." No sooner had he signed the friendship treaty with Moscow, for example, than he was balancing it with a call for "a transatlantic declaration between the European Community and the North American democracies."

Two recent steps highlight the course Genscher is charting. First, to reassure the Soviets and the world that it truly disdains the use of force, Bonn agreed to reduce the combined German armed forces from 590,000 to 370,000 over the next four years. Second, at the U.N. last week, Genscher set out his hopes for the 35-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. He predicted that the CSCE would soon create new institutions, including "regular meetings of heads of state and government, a center for conflict prevention and a secretariat." Together, he said, they would provide the multilateral foundation "for a lasting peaceful order throughout Europe."

One of Bonn's partners in the E.C. and NATO, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is the head of Britain's bothered-about-Germany group, which includes politicians like former Trade Minister Nicholas Ridley and a tabloid- fed, anti-German segment of the public. "Their specific fears are hard to pin down," says Adrian Hyde-Price, a specialist on Germany at Southampton University. "It's not about Germans pulling on their jackboots and marching into Poland. It's fear about a tendency toward neutralism, and that with its enormous economic power, Germany will assert itself and be less willing to defer to its neighbors."

Outside Britain there is still some worry about German ambitions. Poland and Czechoslovakia are anxious; France, the Netherlands and others are uneasy. The more realistic concern is that Bonn's agenda may be so filled with intra- German and East European issues that Germany will lose some of its eagerness for economic and political integration in the E.C. Jacques Delors, the Community's chief executive, is challenging Germany to prove that it is still determined to go forward. "Are the Germans truly interested in economic and monetary union?" he asked last week. "We need clear, unambiguous political commitments." The time has come, he said, to "fix the dates."

Though the Germans go to great lengths to reaffirm the strength and durability of the Bonn-Paris axis, France is fretting about the possibility of a Europe dominated by Germany. "What worries the French," says Gerald Long, former managing director of Reuters, "is the success of their own policy of locking Germany firmly into the European Community." It is not admitted publicly in Paris, but French officials shudder at the numbers: unified Germany's gross national product is $1.1 trillion, France's $762 billion. Almost 70% -- or $62 billion -- of the Federal Republic's trade surplus of $90 billion is with members of the E.C., an imbalance that is likely to increase.

Until this year, it was the Soviet Union that most opposed German unification; now Moscow sees Germany as an economic life raft. Actually, says Vladimir Shenayev, deputy director of the Soviet Institute of Europe, "we understood that solving this question was in our interest long before we made it public." According to Shenayev, Moscow wanted to get out from under the cost of maintaining its army in East Germany but had to figure a way to get the Western allies to withdraw as well.

Unlike Moscow's policy, Washington's never wavered. From Nov. 9, 1989, Kohl's strongest ally in the drive for unity was George Bush. Kohl last week expressed "deep gratitude" for the President's support and added, "I want to single out in particular the contribution made by the U.S." One risk is + that Washington might press too hard for German repayment -- in the gulf, in NATO, at the U.N. But Germany will be preoccupied with German and European tasks for years to come, and putting forward new demands could create unnecessary tensions.

A great many West Germans of the postwar generation feel real regret at the passing of the Federal Republic in which they grew up -- a prosperous demistate, secure, moderate, perhaps even a bit dull. That sort of constructive nostalgia will color the new Germany and probably should be encouraged -- even by friendly countries like the U.S. and the European neighbors, all of whom hope for great deeds from the new power.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: NO CREDIT

CAPTION: ESTIMATED COST OF UNIFICATION OVER 10 YEARS

With reporting by Daniel Benjamin/Berlin and William Rademaekers/Bonn