The Berlin Wall lives

...Tag der Einheit-"Unity Day" or ask if the Germans' dour attitude about reunification is just anI "Day of Oneness"-has none of the warm, fuzzy, other manifestation of Teutonic Weltschmerz, a temperamenpatriotic spirit of France's Bastille Day or our Fourth of July...

...A reIt is hard to tell how significant these numbers are...

...our well-being as consumers, too little attentive to our dig- To an optimistic, forward-looking, pragmatic American, nity as citizens...

...Why don't Germans stress the substantial progress that has been made toWilson Carey McWilliams, a regular contributor, is the author of ward reconciling and uniting two Germanies that had opBeyond the Politics of Disappointment...

...Commonweal 12 September 22, 2000...

...As protesttoward healing after the euphoria felt on November 9,1989- ers yelled, "Never Again Germany" and "German Unitythe day the Berlin Wall fell...

...dominated by money...

...Eastern wages are 30 percent lower...

...Peter ious that patriotic displays in celebration of reunification may Steinacker, the president of the Lutheran church in the state of be misinterpreted as right-wing muscle-flexing, even Nazi Hessen, agreed: "Ten years after the fall of the Wall, there nationalism...

...Whatever the reason, the "wall surprising that the birthdays of the new Germany have been in their heads" remains nearly insurmountable...

...ful...

...ly fueled by Western German transfer payments...

...Not surprisingly, Easterners have resented likely to watch "Survivor": the show was, in many ways, a the Westerners' alleged superiority as the big Deutschmark measure of our political discontents...

...German reunification meant two states, Last October 3, for example, even leading German clerwith utterly opposing economic and political systems, one of gy-usually reluctant to address political issues-spoke out 65 million citizens and another of 16 million, voluntarily and on the problem...

...It and minitanks...

...Johannes Rau, the preKohl and most Eastern Germans didn't want to focus on the mier of Rhineland-Falls in Western Germany, followed, strainformidable barriers to putting the nation back together...

...overturning cars and fighting with more than two thousand This pervasive sense of disappointment and conflict must be police...

...The former East Germany, with a growth THE BERLIN WALL LIVES rate approaching 10 percent per year during the last five years, Today, it's a mental construct is the fastest-growing region of the industrialized world...

...dependence and question the new political arrangement...

...So, deto 3 percent that the extreme right polls in Germany...

...He acknowledged the northern city of Bremen, official host to the 1994 festivities...

...One hundred eighty were arrested...

...Easterners, for their part, hate their Germans said they would rather live in separate Germanies...

...On almost every Tag der Einheit, police and security forces After forty-five years of hostility, and in an age of multiculhave been called in to handle left- or right-wing riots...

...WesternRightly, more and more Americans are convinced that ers are indignant that Easterners expect handouts and are not our politics, a matter of masses and media, is increasingly more grateful for the bailout from communism...

...Germans were willing to turn back the reunification clock: Wessis have resented mightily that they are still subsidizing 13 percent of Western Germans and 11 percent of Eastern the East via higher taxes...

...At the was solidified across a cold war lasting more than four same time, skinheads and neo-Nazis defaced the largest Jew- decades...

...The 1999 protests paled himself from Kohl's implicit commitment to bail out Eastern compared to those of five years earlier...

...It was built during a demonstrators in Berlin, marching under the banner of "Stop mutually antagonistic occupation era (1945-49) in which the German Power Madness," faced police armed with fire hoses United States and the USSR dominated German affairs...

...A decade after the Wall has fallen, the so-called falonier of working families-are too much concerned with Mauer im Kopf-"the wall in their heads"-remains...

...And reunited Germany is clearly the strongest nation in the European Union, as signified by the EU's decision to locate its f history be a guide, the tenth anniversary of Ger- central bank in Frankfurt...

...I was in Germany that day, watching the official cerplaced in context...

...Chancel- ism and war crimes of the Nazis...

...On the eve of the Germany indefinitely...

...Right-wing French and Italian parties regularly 36 percent support a market economy and only one-third capture up to 20 percent of the national vote (as opposed to 2 consider democracy to be the best form of government...

...Our public life is becoming more oli- These tensions make October 3 seem more like "Dis-Unity garchic in fact, despite its democratic form, losing its old Day," and most Germans agree that "internal unity" has not enchantments...

...ing to be heard above the protesting crowd: "The visible walls, But reunification, an unprecedented experiment in social between us have fallen, but doubts and prejudices have made and political reclamation, was bound to fall short of the exalted some invisible divides wider...

...By contrast, "Big Brother," so much less popular, leaves the crucial decisions to the mass, call-in audience...

...All the chancellor's men and women will not be able ish cemetery in Berlin-which, with more than 115,000 graves, to put the nation back together again in a mere decade...

...daddy whose fat wallet has modernized their region...

...Indeed, the refusal to celebrate the achievements isn't much remaining of our great vision of a quick and per- of post-reunification Germany can seem a kind of final punfect reunification...

...At least 100 gravestones were broken it was Pollyannaish ever to imagine otherwise, especially or overturned...

...tal heaviness of heart that characterizes much of German life...

...France cent poll showed that, whereas 77 percent of Easterners beand Italy, for instance, seem far more politically divided than lieved in the benefits of a market economy in 1990, today only Germany...

...Patience, empathy, and "The wall in their heads"-the psychological division bemutual acceptance have also been lacking, as the violence of tween so-called Ossis (Eastern Germans) and Wessis (Westsome protesters readily attests...

...In the best democratic fashion, too, the choice of the ultimate winner was made by losers, the individually weak-as defined by the game-collectively controlling the strong...

...Schroeder jolted listeners by an- fourth anniversary of German unification, riots left eight ponouncing that he was cutting federal subsidies to the East- licemen injured during a night of looting and firebombing in which have totaled $540 billion since 1990...

...ishment-without any statute of limitations-for the jingoEven the politicians didn't prettify the situation...

...that the nation is divided and that Western German wealth As many as three hundred young people roamed the city, can't buy harmonious unity...

...Truth be turalism-when hundreds of thousands of immigrants have told, Germans from both the East and West remain pro- poured into their country since reunification-why do Gerfoundly ambivalent about their reunited nation...

...nomic disparities...

...This explains both the protests against, and the somber The danger of a permanent, evil asymmetry between East tone of, Unity Day activities...

...its participants fall short of self-government, and its politics is too much like what we have...

...Germans, it was widely felt, shared Nothing to Celebrate," President Roman Herzog took the a common family bond...

...American Elections posing democratic-capitalist and Communist systems...

...Ger- spite good intentions on the part of so many people and an mans, however, take little consolation from the political trou- overall lessening of tensions, Dis-Unity Day will prevail for the bles of their neighbors...

...instance, one seldom hears Germans-unless they are politicians-note the important fact that today Eastern Germany is the most prosperous region of what was formerly the East European Communist bloc with a standard of living seven John Rodden times that of its former Communist neighbors, such as Hungary and Bulgaria...

...11 overcome...

...Clearly, the legacy of war guilt remains powerwhat was on many minds: "We've missed so many chances...

...Amid the feel-good climate of 1989-90, podium to deliver his keynote speech...

...Only Germany has a Nazi past to foreseeable future...

...And our leaders-even Al Gore, that gon- advanced far...

...Consequently, all expressions of violence or extremist politics are treated with the utmost seriousness...

...It is significant, after all, that young Americans-the least likely to vote-were most ing) the smaller one...

...Whatever the outcome, that is not likely to the negative verdicts about the progress of reunification seem be changed by the election of 2000...

...Easterners were outraged...

...Survivor," in fact, revealed a good deal about our civic life...

...mostly unhappy ones...

...John Rodden is the author of Repainting the Little Red SchoolThe Unity Day crimes of 1999, for example, were high- house: A History of Eastern German Education, 1945-95 (Oxford lighted and interpreted in the worst possible light by the Ger- University Press...

...Despite the phenomenal economic growth Others saw the vandalism as proof of how a virulent anti- rate in the East, Germans are well aware that it has been largeSemitism endures in Germany...

...Bishop Commonweal I I September 22, 2000 Franz Kamphaus of the Catholic diocese of Limburg voiced man press...

...For 1980-98 (Chatham House...

...The poll suggested that that of the West...

...The official Unity Day festivities, sponsored mutually agreeing to become one nation, with the larger state aid- jointly by Berlin and the Western city of Wiesbaden, opened ing and modernizing (or, as some would soon protest, devour- in Wiesbaden with an ecumenical religious service...

...Andreas Nachama, the president of the Cen- while the psychological wall continues to be fortified by ecotral Council of German Jews, spoke of "irreparable damage...

...And is also Europe's biggest...

...Except in moments, it wasn't about the physical difficulties of survival: the show was preeminently about the politics of survival, and it claimed us, I think, because viewers could watch people engaged in the practice of self-government, maneuvering and speaking in a community where individual citizens visibly mattered, each show culminating in a vote...

...O at once both unduly pessimistic and rather naive...

...mans expect that 80 million people can become a close-knit Given the task the Germans set for themselves in 1989, it is not family virtually overnight...

...Last year, left-wing Unity Day ern Germans)-did not rise overnight...

...Germans Unity Day 1999 ended with the release of a poll from Al- note that the 14 percent Eastern unemployment rate is twice lensbach, the Gallup of Germany...

...German ideal of national solidarity...

...man reunification on October 3 promises to be a "Internal unity" is a lofty goal, and Americans might well raucous affair...

...lor Gerhard Schroeder of the Social Democrats (SPD), who Although it is undeniable that Germany's Unity Day events ended Helmut Kohl's and the Christian Democrats' sixteen- have been haunted by violence, it is still possible to make the year reign in October 1998, shocked the nation by distancing argument that things have improved...

...Germans remain extremely anxand West, between haves and have-nots, is not small...

...Bitter cold-war divisions seemed headed emonies on TV from the Eastern city of Weimar...