State and nation: Germany since reunification

Mark Blacksell 

Mark Blacksell is Professor and Head of the Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Plymouth.

The reunification of Germany on October 3 1990 has undoubtedly signalled one of the most significant changes in the political geography of Europe in the second half of the 20th century. It transformed West Germany - the Federal Republic of Germany (FRO) - from a state in the front line of the Cold War confrontation, to one at the heart of a new Europe, where the political certainties of the post World War II division into East and West have been replaced by an uncoordinated multitude of national interests and conflicts. The German nation, for so long divided between two separate states, has been brought together as one, and outstanding territorial disputes with Poland and other East European states have been officially resolved.

The speed with which reunification actually occurred took everyone by surprise. In little more than a year, East Germany - the German Democratic Republic (GDR) - disintegrated and its territory was absorbed into the FRG with no serious opposition and amid widespread public rejoicing, both at home and abroad. That this was possible, owed much to the fact that such a reunification had always been a central political goal of the FRG itself, not least because the Preamble and Article 23 of the Basic Treaty, the state's Constitution, specifically provided for the five pre-war Lander which comprised the GDR - Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, Saxen, SaxenAnhalt, and Thurgingen - to join the FRG federation [1]. However, until 1989, though widely desired and much discussed in the course of the preceding four decades, reunification had apparently become a distant and ever dimmer prospect, despite a continuing ritual adherence to it on the part of all the major political parties in the FRG.

Some three years later, now that the euphoria has died down and the practical realities of forging a new Germany at the centre of a much-altered map of Europe are clearer, it seems timely to try and place the expanded FRG within the emerging wider political context. First of all, it is crucial to stress the obvious point that this is a new Germany, and the latest in a line of 'new Germanies' that have come and gone in the course of the 20th century (Figure 1). Since the Deutsche Reich, the Second Empire, was realised by Chancellor Bismark in 1871, there have been at least six different states called Germany, each with its own raison d'etre, population, society, economy, government, and international boundaries. They range from the triumph of Prussian will that extended the Norddeutsche Bund to include Bayern and other south German states in the Deutsche Reich (1871-1918); through the post world War I political and economic uncertainty of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933); the National Socialism of the Third Reich (19331945); the years of division, with the FRG representing the western rump of what had been Germany (1949- 1990) and the GDR purporting to be a new beginning in the Communist mould (19491990); right up to the reunified FRG (1990- ) which now represents all Germany, if not all Germans. Even this list is incomplete, in that it fails to take account of the important territorial additions during the Third Reich, and the administrations of the four Allied Occupying Powers - France, the USSR, the United Kingdom, and the United States - after World War II.

How should we view today's enlarged FRG, both in the context of these earlier Germanies, and in the wider context of the political map of Europe at the end of the 20th century? What follows is an attempt to answer this question in the light of the whole process of reunification.

Creating Germany

To understand the force of the drive for reunification in Germany, it is necessary to explain, briefly, how the modern state of Germany emerged and how the FRG relates to the other German states that have existed in the course of this century. An element of continuity has been an essential component of each successive manifestation of the German state and the most recent change has served to strengthen, rather than weaken, historic links.

After the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and with it the effective collapse of his European Empire, a long process of political amalgamation began, which was to lead eventually to the founding of the Deutsche Reich in 1871. From the beginning, it was recognized that what was being created was a German state with a pivotal position in central Europe, which could act as a focus for a more integrated European system of states (Jackel, 1990), but the nature of that state was fiercely disputed and the road to its creation beset with difficulty. The Deutsche Bund, established in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna, united 39 German princedoms and independent cities, but it rapidly disintegrated after 1849, after an ambitious attempt to create a unified administration came to nothing, when the Emperor of Prussia refused to become head of the unified state.

At issue was a conflict that has haunted Germany right through the 19th and 20th centuries in a number of different guises, Grossdeutschland versus Kleindeutschland. Grossdeutschland is a concept that envisages a single state, embracing all the major German-speaking political areas in central Europe, including Austria. Kleindeutschland, on the other hand, envisages Germany and Austria as two separate states (Winkler, 1990).

Throughout the 19th century, and even before, there had been much academic speculation about the physical extent of a German dominated Mitteleuropa, but once the Deutsche Reich became a reality the debate became much more focussed on the issue of the ultimate boundaries of a German nation state (Schultz, 1989). At the same time, a separate debate was also in train about what should be the nature and extent of Germany's imperial ambitions overseas. The distinction between the two is often very blurred, with the same people contributing to both. But the world and national views they generated were important, because they provided a basis, and often a justification, for specific territorial ambitions.

The Prussian-dominated Norddeutsche Bund, founded in 1867, was clearly in the mould of Kleindeutschland, even though Austria as such did not exist at that stage, and this was still the case when the Deutsche Reich came into existence four years later. Bismark's achievement was to incorporate Bayern and a number of other entities, mainly in the Catholic south, into a single, Prussiandominated, state. It was symptomatic of the extent of that domination that the large Prussian landowners in the Protestant east of the country enjoyed a virtual veto in government, a privilege that only finally disappeared afterWorldWar II.

Defeat in World War I and the subsequent collapse of the Deutsche Reich, saw the effective end of most of the imperial dreams, but the severity of the settlement agreed at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 served to sharpen Germany's territorial ambitions within Europe. Much of what had been Preussen was included in Poland, Lithuania and the USSR; the Sudetenland became part of Czechoslovakia; while in the west the Rheinland was internationalised, and the Saar ceded to France. Taken together, these losses provoked a strong sense of grievance, which certainly contributed to the collapse of the Weimar Republic. They also rekindled enthusiasm for Grossdeutschland and fuelled the rabid nationalism and the expansionist goals of the Third Reich.

The extent of the land-grab undertaken during the Third Reich is astounding (Figure 2). The Saar was re-incorporated as the result of a plebiscite in 1935, the Rhineland re-militarized in 1936,Austria annexed through the medium of the Anschluss in 1938, the Sudetenland annexed in 1938, the area around Memel on the Baltic coast annexed in 1939, and a protectorate established in the rest of what is now the Czech Republic in 1939. The subsequent war saw German troops occupying the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, much of France, Denmark, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the USSR to a line running roughly from Leningrad to Rostov, Yugoslavia and Greece; all by the end of 1942. Whether it was ever envisaged, if World War II had been won, that all these territories would form a single German super- state is unclear. It is certain, however, that whatever Germany emerged would to all intents and purposes have more than fulfilled the Grossdeutschland concept.

German inter-state relations after World War II

The creation, in 1949, of the two German states, the FRG and the GDR, out of the bulk of the Allied-occupied territory of the Third Reich marked a decisive break with the past. For the first time since the early years of the 19th century, Prussian dominance of the political process was neutralized, and a two- Germany political solution, excluding Austria, was a reality. Nevertheless, the FRG and the GDR incorporated radically different conceptions of themselves, each other, the future of Germany, and relationships with third party states.

The FRG is a federation, with a Constitution laying down a strict division of political power between the national government and the Lander. From the outset, it clearly aimed to represent all Germany, with specific provision in the Constitution (Article 231) for further Lander to join the original nine, as and when the opportunity arose. After lengthy deliberation, the Constitutional Court also clarified the relationship between the FRG and Germany as previously constituted. In a judgement on 31st. July 1973, it ruled unequivocally that the state was, in legal terms, a continuation of what had gone before and that it, therefore, included all Germany (von Munch, 1992).The FRG never recognized the GDR as a state, arguing that it was not legitimized by free and democratic elections and, until the early 1970s, not recognized by the vast majority of third party states. It followed that the FRG also always considered its dealings with the GDR to be an internal matter, not constrained by foreign policy considerations. In practice, the FRO's stance amounted to a long-term goal of unification on its own terms.

The GDR was a centralized, Communist totalitarian state, which based its legitimacy on a complete break with the past. The fact that there had once been a single German state was of no relevance to the political situation after 1945; the existence of two separate, and radically different, states was quite in order, indeed it coincided better with the conclusions of the Potsdam Agreement in 1944, when the allies agreed the outline of a post-World War II settlement in Europe. As a result, the GDR always recognized the formal legitimacy of the FRG, even though it found its government and society deeply flawed, and was only ever prepared to consider reunification on the basis of there being two Germanies. It also viewed the provisions in the FRG Constitution providing for eventual reunification as unacceptable intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state.

Despite the explicit policy of reunification, the issue was always extremely fraught in the FRG, with different factions attaching varying degrees of importance to its realisation. The strongest political pressure came from the 2.3 million displaced Germans living in the FRG, who had been forced to leave their homes in the east, many of whom still had family and friends living there. In this regard it should be stressed that reunification by no means only referred to the GDR; it encompassed all the territories of the former Third Reich lying outside the FRG and the ultimate hope was that, at some unspecified point in the future, they would all be brought together in a single state; the FRG. Unquestionably, such a hope was fostered by the Constitution of the FRG (Article 116), which gave an unrestricted right of citizenship to anyone living within the boundaries of Germany as of December 31 1937, or the child of anyone living within Germany at that date. Article 116 also allowed anyone forced to leave Germany during the Third Reich (January 30 1933 - May 8 1945) for political, racial or religious reasons the same right of citizenship.

In contrast to this, the policy of reunification was in practice pursued by the Government with a combination of superficial public enthusiasm and considerable practical caution. The first Chancellor of the FRG, Konrad Adenauer, was primarily concerned to secure the position of the new state firmly within a politically united Western Europe and he eschewed any policy likely to jeopardize its membership of the fledgling European Community, though this did not prevent him campaigning vigorously in elections with the promise of eventual reunification (Korka, 1990).

The exception to this cautious approach by the Government was in relations with the GDR. In the course of the mid-1950s, the Foreign Minister, Walther Halstein, developed the so-called Halstein Doctrine, which re-affirmed that relations with the GDR were a matter of FRG domestic policy and went on to proclaim that any state officially recognising the GDR would not be recognized by the FRG. Between 1957 and 1971, only 16 of the states recognized by the FRG, all of them in the developing world, established diplomatic relations with the GDR (Blacksell, 1982).The reaction of the FRG was to break off, or suspend, relations and to end, or freeze, all aid programmes. More important, was the total success with which the FRG persuaded its NATO and OECD partners not to recognize the GDR in the first place. It was a triumph of Western solidarity, which kept the issue of German reunification on the international political agenda without requiring any immediate action. The only major breach in the Halstein Doctrine was when the FRG established diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1958. The inconsistency was acknowledged at the time, but it was argued that the interests of the German service personnel held prisoner in the USSR since World War II overrode the dictates of the GDR policy.

However, after 1969, when the socialist SPD replaced the conservative CDU as the senior partner in the ruling coalition, FRG policy towards the GDR underwent a decisive change. The new Chancellor, Willi Brandt, gradually introduced what became known broadly as the Ostpolitik, a policy of dCtente with the GDR and the other Communist states in Eastern Europe. The policy never involved formal recognition of the GDR by the FRG, but it did seek to deepen and extend bilateral relations between the two, and diplomatic relations were established with other states in Eastern Europe, notably Poland and Czechoslovakia, even though there were still serious outstanding territorial border disputes with both countries.

The Ostpolitik broke the mould of FRG policy towards the GDR and Eastern Europe generally, heralding a gradual acceptance of the political status quo. Twenty years later it was being claimed that: "... the modern discussion about a unified Germany is to be seen against the background of Ostpolitik." (Ossenbrugge, 1989: 391) and, although this was undoubtedly true insofar as it ushered in an era of new realism in the FRG, the practical results are harder to quantify. The GDR remained a very separate and closed society, insisting on its own sovereignty and still allowing access to citizens of the FRG only on a very restricted basis (Blacksell and Brown, 1983). Indeed, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the Cold War enjoyed a brief renaissance, it would not be an exaggeration to claim that the Ostpolitik became somewhat discredited, because of its lack of concrete results.

Reunification

Throughout the 1980s the momentum for change in the USSR and Eastern Europe mounted steadily, with the super-power summit meetings between the USA and the USSR acting as a backdrop to what can now be seen as the crumbling of totalitarian control in one state after another. Whereas in 1961, the completion of the Berlin Wall was an undeniable symbol of state power, dictating where people could, and could not, move, by 1985 it was increasingly an irrelevance. Germans in their thousands streamed into the FRG from the GDR and from elsewhere in Eastern Europe and the USSR, no longer physically prevented by border controls from voting with their feet. In 1989 and 1990 more than half a million GDR citizens fled to the FRG, their number swelled further by 300,000 from other parts of the fast-disintegrating Communist bloc.

Viewed in this context, the removal from power of the GDR leader Erich Honecker on October 18 1989 and the symbolic tearing down of the Berlin Wall on the November 9 1989 can be seen as an integral part of the logic of change. Nevertheless, the dramatic way in which the Wall was breached, in the form of a popular revolution, and the terminal impact it had on the government of the GDR took nearly everyone by surprise.

On October 3 1990, less than a year after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, reunification of the two Germanies was a fact. The tide of events during the first ten months of 1990 had been breathtaking. Free elections were held throughout the GDR on March 18 and resulted in a decisive majority for non-Communist parties in favour of unification with the FRG, and preparations began immediately. However, further progress was complicated by the residual involvement of the four World War II Allied Powers in the government of Germany and the absence of a comprehensive peace treaty.

Anticipating this, Foreign Ministers of the United Kingdom, France, the USA and the USSR, together with the Foreign Ministers of the FRG and the GDR, met in the Canadian capital, Ottawa, on February 13 to agree a framework for reunification. The first issue to be settled was the boundaries of the new state. The Third Reich had occupied 114,549 km2 to the east of the GDR which was now in Poland and there had never been any settlement of the outstanding territorial issues. On June 21 the Bundestag in the FRG and the Volkskammer in the GDR both simultaneously agreed to renounce any claim to lands east of the rivers Oder and Neisse. This paved the way for a comprehensive treaty with Poland. On July 17 the two Germanies and Poland reached an agreement in principle, to be guaranteed by the four World War II Allies. The new country was to comprise the FRG and the GDR, together with Berlin, any reference which could be construed as implying that the Polish-German border was provisional was to be removed from the laws of the new state; and the united Germany was to sign a formal treaty confirming the Oder-Neisse line and abandoning all territorial claims. The treaty itself was signed on November 14, once the reunified country was a reality.

The second issue was membership of military alliances. At the time the FRG belonged to NATO and the GDR to the Warsaw Pact and it seemed that this would be a major problem in reaching international agreement. In the event, the USSR withdrew its objection to the new state being in NATO on June 16.This was in return for a phased withdrawal of its troops, a reduction in the size of the new German military force, a promise that no NATO troops would be stationed in what was the GDR until 1995, and a substantial financial contribution from Germany to the USSR in the form of trade credits and defraying the cost of Soviet troops so long as they remained in Germany. Subsequently, the question of membership of military alliances became almost academic when, in 1992, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved as a consequence of the break-up of the USSR.

The third issue was the need to conclude a treaty formally bringing to an end the state of war between the World War II Allies and Germany. This was achieved by the Treaty on Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, now universally referred to as the Two plus Four Treaty, in which the Allies relinquished all their rights as occupying powers and allowed Germany to be established as a fully independent state.

Finally, the reunified FRG concluded three partnership treaties with the USSR (November 9 1990), Poland June 17 1991), and Bulgaria (October 9 1991), pledging mutual friendship and co-operation.

Internally, the preparations for reunification were equally complex, but three key pieces of legislation formed the basis of the new state. An agreement on economic union was concluded on May 18 and crucially provided for the currency reform, whereby the 0st Mark would be exchangeable on a one to one basis with the Deutsch Mark. The legal basis for the all Germany elections which took place on December 2 was provided by an agreement on elections concluded on August 3. Finally, reunification itself was dealt with in an agreement concluded on August 31. This reconstituted the five pre-World War II Lander, abolished by the GDR in 1952, and re-established Berlin as the capital of the united Germany (Figure 3). The agreement also, inter alia, created the Treuhandanstalt, the organization that is handling the sale of the state-owned economic infrastructure of the GDR into the private sector, another key feature of the transformation engendered by reunification.

The state of Germany

During 1990, when the frantic preparations were being made for a united Germany, there was some debate as to whether the process should be referred to as 'reunification', or 'unification', the distinction being that the former embodied an explicit historical continuity, while the latter signalled a new beginning. In this article 'reunification' has been used quite intentionally, because the new Germany is clearly an extension of the FRG as originally constituted, and FRG itself claims to be an evolution from the Deutsche Reich of 1871. Such an outcome was certainly not always a foregone conclusion, but the complete collapse of the Communist Party and its hegemony in the USSR and its satellite states (including the GDR) in Eastern Europe, ensured that reunification occurred on the FGR's terms.

In retrospect, the timing of reunification can be seen to have been crucial. Success depended entirely on agreement being reached in that period of little more than a year between the opening of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR. The whole reunification process hung upon the willingness of the post-World War II Allies to end formally the state of war with a peace treaty and, thereby, allow a fully independent German state to emerge. Once the USSR had collapsed, such a treaty would have been difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Trying to forge agreement on such a sensitive international issue amongst the multiplicity of rival states that have replaced the USSR would, almost certainly, have been beyond the powers of the other Allied statesmen and the whole reunification project would have foundered, or have been concluded without the full participation of all the parties concerned.

The FRG that has emerged from reunification is markedly different from the state that went before. Although it only covers roughly two thirds the area of the Deutsche Reich, it is unequivocally the one and only German state, and clearly the locus of the German nation within the framework of the Kleindeutschland concept. It is unencumbered by the restrictions imposed by the fall-out from World War II, something to which it is having some difficulty in adjusting, as can be seen in the fierce internal debate over FRG involvement in UN military activities outside the NATO area. The new state has also explicitly relinquished further territorial ambitions, both with respect to lands which were part of earlier German states in the 20th century, as well as elsewhere. The Constitution has been modified to reflect this and, as a result, the FRG is a very different political entity from what went before.

Nevertheless, Germany once more occupies a key position in central Europe and this brings with it new responsibilities, as well as raising the spectre of old neuroses (Schmidt, 1993). The FRG shares land borders with nine other independent European states Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, and Switzerland - more than any other European state. Geographically it occupies a key strategic position, but because it is also the most populous state in Europe (79.7 million), as well as the most powerful economically, the FRG has unparalleled scope to influence the course of events in Europe as a whole. It is worth remembering that, alone among European states, the FRG today combines the experiences of the Cold War division of the continent into a single, unified state.

For the moment, the main issue is whether the FRG can reform its internal political structures sufficiently quickly to measure up to its new international status and, on that, the answer is so far equivocal. At the point of reunification in 1990 expectations of reform were high, probably unreasonably so, but progress on restructuring in a number of key areas has been disappointingly slow. The bold move to change the Constitution and make Berlin the capital has been followed by indecision and delaying tactics over implementation (Laux, 1991; Smith, 1992). The way in which the five new Bundeslander were constituted, harking slavishly back to the pre-World War II pattern and ignoring the weight of academic evidence about a more rational economic and political structure, was disappointing (Rutz, 1991). The underestimation of the economic problems that would be faced, both within the former GDR and the former FRG, as a result of speedy reunification have brought serious charges of political irresponsibility (Schmidt, 1993). Finally, the issue of German nationality and citizenship still haunts the FRG. On the one hand, its readiness to accept and care for, not only those claiming to be Germans, but refugees of all persuasions, has been a model that most other European states have conspicuously failed to emulate. On the other, its open-door policy has posed serious political problems, which at times seem to threaten the stability of the state. Renouncing territorial claims is one thing, but staunching the flow of those wishing to settle in the FRG will be quite another. The large numbers of non-German economic migrants, who have so far been refused dual German and their native nationality, have created a very visible and disenfranchised minority in the FRG, which is in danger of acting as a focus for economic discontent amongst the wider population.

Despite having to face these serious challenges, the reunified FRG shows no sign of succumbing to an early demise. The political map of central Europe has been decisively redrawn without recourse to armed conflict, a success that, sadly, cannot be claimed for other parts of the continent struggling to emerge from their Communist past.

The sixth manifestation of Germany in the course of the 20th century appears to offer a better prospect for long-term political stability in Europe than any of its predecessors. The geographical boundaries of the modern state have been agreed as never before, and the idea that all the German-speaking areas in central Europe should be united in a single state

Grossdeutschland seems to have been permanently banished from the national agenda. The emotive and destabilising debate about the merits of Grossdeutschland and Kleindeutschland has been resolved by creating a Germany which, internally, has a strong democratic constitution and, externally, is bound closely to the European Union and accepts, by treaty, the legitimacy of the states that surround it.

References:

Blacksell, M. (1982), Reunification and the political geography of the Federal Republic of Germany. Ceography 67, 310-319.

Blacksell, M. and Brown, M. (1983) Ten years of Ostpolitik. Geography 68, 260-262.

Jackel, E. (1990), Furcht vor eigenen Starke? Die Zeit 45 - 2, 10.

Korka,J. (1990), Nur keinen neuen Sonderweg. Die Zeit 43 - 19, 11.

Laux, H.D. (1991), Berlin oder Bonn? Geographischer Aspekte eine Parlamentsentscheidung. Geographischer Rundschau 43 (12), 740-743.

Ossenbrugge,J. (1989),Territorial ideologies inWest Germany 1945-1985: Between geopolitics and regionalist attitudes. Political Geography Quarterly 8 (4), 387-399.

Rutz, W. (1991), Die Wiedererrichtung der ostlichen Bundeslander. Kritische Bemerkungen zu ihrem Zuschnitt. Raumforschung und Raumordnung 49 (15), 279-286.

Schmidt, H. (1993), Handeluidr Deutschland. Berlin: Rowohlt

Schultz, H-D. (1989), Fantasies of Mitte: Mittellage and Mitteleuropa in German geographical discussion in the 19th and 20th centuries. Political Geography Quarterly 8 (4), 315-339.

Smith, F.M. (1992), Changing significance of space. Politics, population and German reunification. Discussion Paper 92/4, Applied Population Research Unit, University of Glasgow.

Von Munch, 1. (1992), Die Vertrdge zur Einheit Deutschlands Munchen: C.H.Beck.

Winkler, H.A. (1 990), Mit Skepsis zur Einigung. Die Zeit 40 - 28, 8-9.

Notes:

1 The Basic Treaty (Grundgesetz) was altered, with effect from 21st December 1992 and a new Article 23 was inserted on European Union. This was, first, because reunification had removed the necessity for the Basic Treaty to make provisionfor further Lander to join the federation; and, second, to take account of the provisions on European unity in the Treaty on European Union (the Maastricht Treaty). (return)