GERMAN REUNIFICATION, 1989–1990 term paper

The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) experienced a revolution in October and November, 1989. The government could not control or respond adequately to the massive protests in cities like Leipzig, Berlin, and Dresden. The most dramatic event of that period was the Fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. At that time, the citizens’ movements active in the German Revolution of 1989 still wanted to undertake reform within an independent East Germany. Some in the old Socialist Unity Party, renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) in December, also wanted an opportunity to reform the country. The majority of those who participated in demonstrations that fall in the cities were thinking about unification with the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). East Germans wondered why they should chance a new socialist experiment when the West German approach was already available.

Helmut Kohl, the chancellor of West Germany, saw the possibility of unifying East and West Germany and daringly took the lead. With little support from his west European colleagues, and with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev still a question mark, this was a brave move. Kohl did have support from President George Bush of the United States. He also believed that the continued flow of East Germans into West Germany would harm the West German economy. However, he underestimated the extent of East German economic problems.

The first free elections in East Germany, in March 1990, were for the Volkskammer (parliament). West German politicians campaigning for their East German counterparts made unification the main issue. The Christian Democrats strongly supported the idea of rapid unification. They won a stunning victory over the Social Democrats, who were skeptical about unification. The new government under Lothar de Maizière plunged into negotiations for the introduction of the deutsche mark into East Germany. Kohl contributed a crucial element to the unification process through a meeting with Gorbachev. Germany agreed to pay the Soviet Union a large sum and, in return, the Soviet Union agreed to unification and also to withdraw its troops from East Germany. Additional negotiations between the two Germanies led to full unification in October and free elections in Germany. The coalition of Christian Democrats and Free Democrats easily beat the Social Democrats. In the east, only a few delegates from the PDS and almost no one from the citizens’ movements were elected. Although some Germans complained that East Germany had been “annexed,” unification had been accomplished. The unification of Germany also led to full sovereignty. In addition to negotiations between East Germany and West Germany, there were the “2 + 4” talks involving the two Germanies and the four former allies from World War II, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and the United States. This resulted in a treaty formally ending the remaining rights held by the four powers in Germany.
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Investigate the various citizens’ movements (for example, Neues Forum, Democracy Awakening) in terms of what they hoped to accomplish and why they failed to convince many other East Germans to work for the same goals.
2. Helmut Kohl was the central figure in the unification of Germany. Report on his career before the events of 1989–1990. Use books by Timothy Garton Ash and Clay Clemens as starting points (see Suggested Sources).
3. For a group project, determine the views of the U.S., French, British, and Russian governments on German unification in 1989–1990 and organize a debate in which teams present each position.
4. Review the unification negotiations between the East Germans and the West Germans in 1990 and write a paper on whether East Germany was “annexed,” as some claimed at the time.
5. For decades after World War II, the Soviet Union remained fearful that Germany might unite and once again become a major military power. Why did the Soviet Union decide in 1990 to allow unification to take place, given those long-standing fears? 6. Trace changes in West German opinion about unification from one Bundestag (lower house of parliament) election to the next beginning in 1990.

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for “The Yalta Conference, 1945” (#36), “The Berlin Wall, 1961” (#59), and “The Breakup of the Soviet Union, 1991” (#91). Search under Neues Forum, Alliance ’90, Willy Brandt, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and Margaret Thatcher.

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Darnton, Robert. Berlin Journal, 1989–1990. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991. Darnton, an expert on eighteenth-century France, shows his reportorial skills to good advantage in Berlin Journal.

Gray, Richard T., and Sabine Wilke, eds. and trans. German Unification and Its Discontents: Documents from the Peaceful Revolution. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996. A most useful collection of documents.

Schneider, Peter. The German Comedy: Scenes of Life after the Wall.New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991. An ironic look at the post-Wall Germany by a longtime observer.

Uniting Germany: Documents and Debates, 1944–1993. Edited by Konrad H. Jarausch and Volker Gransow. Providence, R.I.: Berghann Books, 1994. Places the unification process in a broad context.

Secondary Sources

Clemens, Clay, and William E. Paterson, eds. The Kohl Chancellorship. Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 1998. Good essays on several aspects of Kohl’s political career.

Fulbrook, Mary. Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949–1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. An excellent history of the German Democratic Republic.

Garton Ash, Timothy. In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent. New York: Random House, 1994. A major book on the German Question. Establishes a useful context for the East German Revolution of 1989 and unification of Germany in 1990.

Jarausch, Konrad H. The Rush to German Unity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. An excellent introduction. Leiby, Richard A. The Unification of Germany, 1989–1990. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. A useful and dependable study of the topic.

Maier, Charles S. Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. The best single book on the topic.

McFalls, Lawrence. Communism’s Collapse, Democracy’s Demise? The Cultural Context and Consequences of the East German Revolution.New York: New York University Press, 1995. Provides extensive survey data indicating the East German mood before and after unification.

Philipsen, Dirk. We Were the People: Voices from East Germany’s Revolutionary Autumn of 1989. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993. A fascinating presentation of the views of political activists in the revolution. Philipsen accepts their perspective uncritically.

Zelikow, Philip, and Condoleezza Rice. Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997. An authoritative study of the diplomacy involved in the unification of Germany. The 1997 edition contains a useful new preface.

World Wide Web

“The Wall Comes Down.” http:www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/23. Based on CNN’s Cold War documentary series, this Web site contains many interesting and useful features.