(2 of 4)
Most East Germans will respond to "What are you?" with "German" -- despite the regime's persistent attempt to deny history, stifle the concept of Germany and replace it with a vague notion of "Socialist nationhood." The effort went to ludicrous lengths: because the national anthem contains the words German fatherland, only the melody is played; the anthem is no longer sung. Not surprisingly, one of the demands of the opposition calls for an anthem with words.
Since the late '60s, West Germany has used the formula of one nation-two states to describe a society divided by differing political and social systems, but built on common history, culture, language and family bonds. Though Bonn recognizes G.D.R. passports, it says there is only one German citizenship to which the people of both states are entitled. And since the relationship between Bonn and East Berlin cannot be compared with that between Bonn and, say, Paris, the West Germans insisted long ago, over G.D.R. objections, that their respective diplomatic missions were "representations," not embassies. A West German diplomat who served in East Berlin recalls hearing East Germans defying their government's line by pleading, "We don't want you to treat us like foreigners."
Today, the G.D.R. has abandoned the claim to separate nationhood. "I am a German Communist. I live in a state that is German, and I am of German nationality," says Max Schmidt, a party theorist and director of the Institute for International Politics and Economics in East Berlin. "To say that the G.D.R. is a nation was a theoretical mistake. We are not two states like any other two states. There is an ethnic component, and that is a perspective we must respect."
As long as the two-states concept it survives, it has negative implications for reunification -- or perhaps better, unification -- since hardly anyone inside or outside the two Germanys wants to re-create the centralized polity that existed between 1871 and 1945. The East Germans maintain that, as Central Committee member Otto Reinhold puts it, their state provides a necessary "antifascist" and "socialist" alternative. *
They are now bolstering their contention with a new, subtle argument that directly plays to the concerns and fears of Germany's neighbors, East and West. "In the past," says Schmidt, "it was Germany that destroyed European stability. Since 1949 the two-state system has been essential to such stability, and it is therefore in a justified security interest of others to leave that equilibrium. There is fear, spoken or unspoken, not so much of the Germans per se than of a reunified Germany that would become an economic giant with ambitions and would thus upset the balance. Look at the French, look at the Poles, look even at the U.S., and see how they are reacting." Not to mention the Soviets.
East Germany is taking the argument a step further by staking its future not only on internal renewal but also on a special relationship with West Germany that is embedded in the wider European scheme. In other words, once military forces begin to be reduced and the blocs shrink, East Germany should be considered a "Middle European" country, conceivably with special economic ties to states like West Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia. "If we don't take part in the constructive development of Europe," says Reinhold, "then events will roll over us."