Similarly, Neues Forum and other opposition groups such as Demokratischer Aufbruch were undermined by the ‘post-Wall’ divergence between political activists and the general mass of GDR citizens. Just when the opposition’s dream of realising a democratic and reformed socialist GDR seemed finally within reach – as commentator Timothy Garton Ash wrote, putting the ‘D for Democratic’ into the GDR – the whole idea was stillborn. The round-table talks were set for 7 December, but over the previous four weeks 130,000 more people emigrated to the FRG. In the Leipzig Monday demonstrations the slogan ‘Deutschland einig Vaterland’ (‘Germany the united fatherland’) was heard for the first time as early as 13 November; a week later ‘Wir sind das Volk’ had transmuted into ‘Wir sind ein Volk’ (‘We are one people’). In contrast to Hungary and Poland, it was the GDR’s opening to the West and the prospect of unification that made the crucial difference. Hungarians and Poles had to imagine an alternative future for themselves at home; East Germans could look to the reality of an existing alternative on their own doorstep: a prosperous, functioning West German state, run by compatriots. And they did. As Garton Ash also observed, it was at once a chance and a tragedy for East Germany that ‘the boundaries of social self-determination and national self-determination were not the same’.[60]
Significantly, Germany’s national story had wider repercussions. When we talk today about the fall of the Wall, what comes into our minds is the image of the Brandenburg Gate and people dancing on the Wall. But in fact the Gate was in no man’s land; it was not a crossing point and, after the extraordinary night of 9 November, it would remain closed for another six weeks. Not until 22 December was the Wall opened at the Gate. This is a reminder that the media was at once a catalyst, a shaper and a multiplier of events. Even in one day, the headlines shifted from ‘The GDR Opens its Borders to the Federal Republic’ (10 November) to ‘Wall and Barbed Wire Do Not Divide Anymore’ (11 November). A local moment full of contingency was quickly transformed into an event of universal significance. As an experience of liberty through the overcoming of physical separation, the end of the Wall had a meaning and resonance which spread fast and far beyond Berlin.
In the process, the focus of the story rapidly shifted away from the politicians (especially Schabowski and his botched press conference) making history through blunders and happenstance to a narrative of ordinary people bringing about revolutionary change. And then, even more abstractly, as GDR politicians and Western journalists who drove events that night were edited out of the story, ‘the fall of the Wall’ became a magical and highly symbolic moment in history. The dancers on the Wall at the Brandenburg Gate became the ultimate symbol of freedom for 1989 – rather like the way, at the other end of the spectrum, the man in front of the tank near Tiananmen Square became the year’s ultimate symbol of repression.[61]
*
The fall of the Wall had certainly not been Kohl’s moment. And he was struggling to catch up for the next three weeks. But then he would seize the initiative with a vengeance.
Most of November was spent responding to the demands of others, rather than working out his own agenda. On the 9th, that momentous night for Germany, he had not even been in the country. When he finally escaped from Poland and got to Berlin next day, he had been shouted down by the crowds. Soon he had to rush back again to Warsaw to wrap up the interrupted visit. But the Poles were harder to placate – because it was no longer just a matter of burying the past but alleviating fears about the future. After the three culture-focused days of reconciliation – at Auschwitz and in Silesia – the trip was rounded off by a carefully calibrated finale. Kohl announced an aid package amounting to $2.2 billion – the largest by far from any Western government (Bush had offered $100 million when he was in Poland in early July). And the chancellor wrote off $400 million in West German loans since the 1970s. With these measures he wanted to forestall any fresh talk about a peace treaty for the Second World War, which would raise the unhappy issues of reparations and the Oder–Neisse border with Poland. So in the press conference, when finally asked about the elephant in the room – ‘reunification’ – the chancellor replied ‘We do not speak about reunification but about self-determination.’[62]
Moment of penitence: Kohl at Auschwitz
Kohl was clearly careful how he spoke publicly about unity, preferring to argue his case around the strict legal principles of the East Germans’ right to self-determination and the provision in the FRG’s Basic Law that unity should be attained through the exercise of the Germans’ free will. Kohl, of course, assumed that when East Germans had the opportunity to choose, they would opt for unification. He had made this point in his state-of-the-nation address on 8 November, before the Wall was breached, and reiterated it at greater length, again in the Bundestag, on 16 November.
‘Our compatriots in the GDR must be able to decide for themselves which way they want to go in the future,’ the chancellor declared. ‘Of course we will respect every decision that is being made by the people of the GDR in free self-determination.’ On the question of economic assistance, he added that this would be useless ‘unless there is an irreversible reform of the economic system, an end to a bureaucratic planned economy and the introduction of a market economy’. In other words, self-determination was in principle entirely free but was also susceptible to a little bribery.
In his speech Kohl made a deliberate nod towards Bonn’s Western allies and their suppressed concerns about a resurgence of German nationalism. ‘We are and remain a part of the Western system of values,’ he insisted, adding that it would be a ‘fatal error’ to slow the process of European integration.[63]
His cryptic statement about ‘Europe’ was, however, insufficient to allay all fears. This became evident when Kohl travelled to Paris for a special dinner of European Community heads of government on 18 November. Mitterrand, then holding the rotating position of president of the EC, had invited his colleagues to the Elysée Palace at very short notice – keen to ensure that the EC 12 would be an active partner for the reforming states of Central and Eastern Europe but without allowing the Community to be deflected from the already ongoing processes of deeper economic and political integration. In particular, the French president worried that, after the drama in Berlin, plans for economic and monetary union (EMU) might no longer take centre stage at the upcoming EC Council meeting in Strasbourg on 8–9 December. He believed that those plans were all the more urgent precisely because of the great transformation sweeping across the Soviet bloc. And he wanted the EC to make this position public well before the Bush–Gorbachev summit talks in Malta on 2–3 December.[64]
Mitterrand therefore had a clear agenda when speaking for ‘Europe’. But, as the leader of France, he was acutely nervous about where Germany was now going. He and Kohl had not met since that epoch-making night of 9 November and he wanted to use the gathering in Paris to talk face-to-face with his German counterpart. They did so, according to Kohl’s memoirs, in a short tête-à-tête before the dinner. Mitterrand avoided mentioning the issue of reunification but Kohl – conscious of what was in the air – raised it himself. ‘I talk to you as a German and as chancellor,’ he said, and then solemnly pledged his active commitment to building Europe. More reflectively, he added: ‘I see two causes for the developments in the East: that the alliance [i.e. NATO] stayed firm thanks to the dual-track decision[65] and the fact that the European Community has evolved in such dynamic fashion.’ Thus, succinctly, he underlined Bonn’s intertwined loyalty to the Western alliance and the European project.[66]
Having put his own cards on the table, Kohl joined Mitterrand for dinner with the other EC leaders. The meal, in one of the opulent salons of the Elysée, went smoothly. Not even a word was ‘whispered’ about unification, Kohl would later recall. Instead Mitterrand went on about the need to support the democratisation processes in the East at large. He argued for constant prudence and against anything that might destabilise Gorbachev. Yet the German question was clearly hanging there, unspoken.
Finally Margaret