Table Of ContentStudies in European Culture and History
edited by
Eric D. Weitz and Jack Zipes
University of Minnesota
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, the very meaning of
Europe has been opened up and is in the process of being redefined. European states and
societies are wrestling with the expansion of NATO and the European Union and with
new streams of immigration, while a renewed and reinvigorated cultural engagement has
emerged between East and West. But the fast-paced transformations of the last fifteen years
also have deeper historical roots. The reconfiguring of contemporary Europe is entwined
with the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century, two world wars and the Holocaust, and
with the processes of modernity that, since the eighteenth century, have shaped Europe and
its engagement with the rest of the world.
Studies in European Culture and History is dedicated to publishing books that explore
major issues in Europe’s past and present from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives.
The works in the series are interdisciplinary; they focus on culture and society and deal with
significant developments in Western and Eastern Europe from the eighteenth century to
the present within a social historical context. With its broad span of topics, geography, and
chronology, the series aims to publish the most interesting and innovative work on modern
Europe.
Published by Palgrave Macmillan:
Fascism and Neofascism: Critical Writings on the Radical Right in Europe
by Eric Weitz
Fictive Theories: Towards a Deconstructive and Utopian Political Imagination
by Susan McManus
German-Jewish Literature in the Wake of the Holocaust: Grete Weil, Ruth Klüger, and the
Politics of Address
by Pascale Bos
Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature: Toward a New Critical Grammar of
Migration
by Leslie Adelson
Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory: From Auschwitz to Hiroshima to
September 11
by Gene Ray
Transformations of the New Germany
edited by Ruth Starkman
Caught by Politics: Hitler Exiles and American Visual Culture
edited by Sabine Eckmann and Lutz Koepnick
Legacies of Modernism: Art and Politics in Northern Europe, 1890–1950
edited by Patrizia C. McBride, Richard W. McCormick, and Monika Zagar
Police Forces: A Cultural History of an Institution
edited by Klaus Mladek
Richard Wagner for the New Millennium: Essays in Music and Culture
edited by Matthew Bribitzer-Stull, Alex Lubet, and Gottfried Wagner
Representing Masculinity: Male Citizenship in Modern Western Culture
edited by Stefan Dudink, Anna Clark, and Karen Hagemann
Remembering the Occupation in French Film: National Identity in Postwar Europe
by Leah D. Hewitt
“Gypsies” in European Literature and Culture
edited by Valentina Glajar and Domnica Radulescu
Choreographing the Global in European Cinema and Theater
by Katrin Sieg
Converting a Nation: A Modern Inquisition and the Unification of Italy
by Ariella Lang
German Postwar Films: Life and Love in the Ruins
edited by Wilfried Wilms and William Rasch
Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East
edited by Robert L. Nelson
Cinema after Fascism: The Shattered Screen
by Siobhan S. Craig
Weimar Culture Revisited
edited by John Alexander Williams
Local History, Transnational Memory in the Romanian Holocaust
edited by Valentina Glajar and Jeanine Teodorescu
The German Wall: Fallout in Europe
edited by Marc Silberman
Freedom and Confinement in Modernity: Kafka’s Cages
edited by A. Kiarina Kordela and Dimitris Vardoulakis
German Unification: Expectations and Outcomes
edited by Peter C. Caldwell and Robert R. Shandley
German Unification
Expectations and Outcomes
Edited by
Peter C. Caldwell
and
Robert R. Shandley
GERMAN UNIFICATION
Copyright © Peter C. Caldwell and Robert R. Shandley, 2011.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-12075-4
All rights reserved.
First published in 2011 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-29884-6 ISBN 978-0-230-33795-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230337954
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
German unification : expectations and outcomes / edited by
Peter C. Caldwell and Robert R. Shandley.
p. cm.—(Studies in European culture and history)
1. Germany—History—Unification, 1990. 2. Germany—Politics and
government—1990– 3. Germany—Economic conditions—1990–
4. Germany—Social conditions—1990– I. Caldwell, Peter C.
II. Shandley, Robert R.
DD290.25.G469 2011
943.087(cid:2)8—dc23 2011026987
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: October 2011
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface vii
James A. Baker, III, 61st Secretary of State
Acknowledgments ix
Contributors xi
Introduction 1
Peter C. Caldwell
One German Unification, Western Order, and the Post–Cold
War Restructuring of the International System 15
G. John Ikenberry
Two Between Euroland and Abendland? Opportunities and
Challenges for German Foreign Policy since Unification 41
Mary N. Hampton
Three Rethinking Reunification: German Monetary
Union and European Integration 61
Jonathan R. Zatlin
Four The Quest for Freedom and Stability: Political
Choices and the Economic Transformation of
East Germany 1989–1991 99
Wolfgang Seibel
Five A Splendid Failure: Reflections on Two
Decades of East German Economic Reconstruction 121
Irwin L. Collier
Six Political Institutions and German Unification 137
Ulrich K. Preuss
Seven German Unification and the Federal Constitutional
Court: A Retrospective View after Twenty Years 153
Peter E. Quint
vi / contents
Epilogue The End of Dictatorship and Its Aftermath:
Personal Reflections of the Federal Commissioner
for the Records of the State Security Agency of the
German Democratic Republic 173
Marianne Birthler
Index 183
Preface
James A. Baker, III, 61st Secretary of State
On November 9, 1989, I was hosting a lunch in honor of Philippine presi-
dent Corazon Aquino when an aide handed me a note saying that the East
German government had announced that it was opening its borders to the
West. Like hundreds of millions of others around the world, I would later
watch East and West Berliners taking sledge hammers to a wall that had
divided their city since 1961.
It had been a tumultuous summer and fall across Central and Eastern
Europe. The Soviet Empire created in the wake of World War II was
clearly crumbling. East Germany itself had been the scene of ever larger
public demonstrations. Still, I was astonished by the speed and scope
of change that swept the former Soviet Bloc following the fall of the
Berlin Wall. Germany would be reunified within a year. The Warsaw
Pact would be formally disbanded in July 1991. The Soviet Union itself
would cease to exist in December of the same year. The Cold War that
had shaped German, European, and, indeed, world history for nearly
fifty years was over.
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the James A. Baker III
Institute for Public Policy and Rice University’s History Department
cohosted a conference to celebrate the anniversary. I participated on the
first day of the event, which featured policymakers who had been deeply
involved in the diplomacy surrounding German reunification. I was
joined by Hans-Dietrich Genscher, former foreign minister of the Federal
Republic of Germany; Roland Dumas, former foreign minister of France;
Markus Meckel, former foreign minister of the German Democratic
Republic; and Charles Powell, former private secretary to British prime
minister Margaret Thatcher. Eduard Shevardnadze, former foreign min-
ister of the Soviet Union, took part in our discussion by satellite from
Tbilisi, Georgia.
The second day of the conference shifted the focus in a more schol-
arly direction. Political scientists, economists, and historians discussed a
viii / preface
wide range of issues related to the complex interplay of international and
domestic forces that drove German reunification. Marianne Birthler, once
a leading East German human rights activist and now commissioner for
the archives of the East German secret police, played a key role in leading
the day’s discussion.
This volume represents the work of the first-rate scholars, German and
American alike, who participated in the conference. Chapters address the
diplomatic, political, and economic issues associated with reunification.
This book may not represent the last word on any of these topics; we may
be confident that they will be the subject of scholarly interest for decades
to come. But I do believe that this book makes an important contribution
to the study of one of the most significant events of the twentieth century.
I am proud that the Baker Institute is associated with it.
Let me conclude with a personal observation. There are many who
deserve credit for the peaceful reunification of Germany: the Soviet
Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev, who was wise enough to forgo the use of
force; West Germany’s Helmut Kohl, who was single minded in his
pursuit of reunification; and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the
United Kingdom, President Francois Mitterrand of France, and particu-
larly President George H. W. Bush of the United States, who put the full
power and prestige of America behind a process that would ease the path
to a single Germany firmly anchored in Europe and the West. I myself
take what I hope is pardonable pride in the modest part I played, as do the
other foreign ministers involved, including Eduard Shevardnadze of the
Soviet Union, Hans-Dietrich Genscher of West Germany, Douglas Hurd
of the United Kingdom, Roland Dumas of France, and Markus Meckel of
East Germany. But the true heroes of reunification were the people of East
Germany. They kept the faith during long years of oppression. And, when
a moment of historic opportunity arose, they were determined and brave
enough to seize it.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the James A. Baker, III Institute for Public
Policy at Rice University for its generous support for the conference on
October 21, 2009, where the first versions of the chapters in this volume
were presented.
