The profound and icy mistrust which the German arouses whenever he gets any power into his hands is the aftermath of that vast horrible fear with which, for long centuries, Europe dreaded the wrath of the Teutonic blond beast.
-- FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The 16 million citizens of East Germany will be $70 billion richer this week, at least on paper. Even before the day of reckoning this past Sunday, crowds had been standing patiently in line to complete the paper work for converting their ostmark savings into deutsche marks at a rate of 1 to 1 for up to 6,000 marks, and 2 to 1 for anything beyond that. On Sunday itself, cash was being handed out at some 10,000 bank branches, police stations and temporary disbursing points. The vast shift in wealth is part of the price of German unification.
As of that day of economic union between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic, an entire society will be transformed. After nearly a half-century of communism, East Germans are now living under West German rules on corporate and union activities, welfare and insurance. Although there is still no agreement on important details of the political and military future, the economic merger reflects a historic moment that until recently few people imagined they would ever live to see: the peaceful rejoining of Germany. Before long, the united country will take West Germany's official name, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the G.D.R. will formally be abolished.
The merger process is not proving to be easy -- and no one expected it to be. The most nettlesome outstanding issue is the military future of Central Europe, with Moscow balking at the West's insistence that a united Germany remain a full member of NATO. The West has offered substantial inducements: no NATO troops in East Germany, the continuance of Soviet forces there for a time at German expense, plus substantial German aid to the Soviet economy.
On the domestic side, questions remain on how to raise the East to the West's level of prosperity and how to smooth the joining of different economic and social systems. There are arguments about where the new capital should be: in the imperial -- and Nazi -- capital of Berlin or in democratic but provincial Bonn.
Whatever the obstacles, the conservative governments of Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Bonn and Prime Minister Lothar de Maziere in East Berlin are pressing full speed ahead. Kohl in particular is determined, as he puts it, "not to miss the unification train, which may not come another time." With a large majority in both Germanys supporting merger -- even though there are some reservations as to speed and cost -- the Chancellor is planning to hold all- German elections in early December.
All the economic problems can be negotiated among the Germans themselves, but among their neighbors, unification has aroused quite different concerns. Will a united Germany mean the rebirth of dreaded words like Lebensraum and Drang nach Osten? In short, will a united Germany turn nationalistic, threaten its neighbors and try to dominate Europe? "Today the Germans want to think of the future," says Fritz Stern, Seth Low professor of history at Columbia University, "but their neighbors are thinking of the past."