SECOND-CLASS GERMANS
Anne McElvoy on the economic divisions in a re-united Germany
CHANCELLOR Kohl who has taken to referring to most events these days as a 'Great day for all Germans' did not spare the unity of the nation rhetoric in a solemn broadcast last weekend promising that the union would leave no one worse off than before and many better off. He wisely neglected to stamp a sell-by date onto this pronouncement.
By Monday morning, the population was in the grip of an almighty hangover, sifting through unfamiliar goods on the newly stocked shelves, wincing at the enhanced price of groceries and feverishly counting their change at the checkouts. Already the first factories are reporting difficulties in meeting payments and many have put their workers onto half time to ward off immedi- ate collapse. Already the unions, emerged from 40 years of sham existence are press- ing wage claims which the government cannot allow if it is to hold the beast of inflation at bay.
These are inevitable consequences of the overnight transformation of a moribund economy into a competitive one and would probably have happened whether the wand was waved sooner or later. The economic risks are unavoidable. What is more wor- rying both for East Germany and Chancel- lor Kohl as he launches himself at the first joint German elections in December is the dangerously high level of expectation of the East German people.
For this the Chancellor himself must bear the brunt of the blame. He has effected a remarkable act of political pre- stidigitation by taking the demonstrators' demands of December and adducing from them the call for unity at an ever- accelerating gallop, currency and economic union without the safeguard of a transition- al period and joint German elections to replace West German ones in December which will ensure that the East Germans who were never allowed to vote properly in their 40-year history will have been to the ballot box three times in nine months to make up for it.
Added to the legacy of decades of envious deprivation is the nourishing hype of the West German media — now stan- dard fare in the East too — which todk collective leave of its senses at the stroke of midnight on Saturday. The television and newspaper reporting of currency union was little more than a paean to the deuts- chmark with self-satisfied commentaries recalling the Wirtshaftswunder interspersed with non sequiters born of over-enthusiasm and absurdities in abundance. We were informed by the ZDF evening news for instance that a beer which had cost two Ostmarks now cost four deutschmarks. 'Farewell to the nightmare of the planned economy,' concluded the commentator. One could have thought of more convinc- ing examples of state repression.
Television cameras barged into a hospit- al to film the first baby born into a hard currency world. 'How do you feel?' Just glad that it's there at last,' said the wan mother. She was of course talking about the deutschmark. Monetary union has been wound into a reckless celebration of the golden German future with the poor DDR-Biirgers reacting with the hysterical gaiety that comes of knowing that you are about to board a very fast roller coaster without a seat-belt. At midnight the revel- lers stormed the first bank to open, kicking each other to reach the counter first. In a nearby pub the landlord inspired by an unclear notion of the historical significance of the occasion was holding a singalong to old Wehrmachtlieder which would have earned him a prison sentence less than a year ago. Foreign workers, the locals agreed had no place in the new realm of the deutschmark and should be sent home before they diluted its distribution.
The Dionysian frenzy has already left the unemployed, the low-paid and the elderly feeling like the losers in a national lottery — the phrase 'second-class Ger- man' passes lips frequently with even the utterers fearing that they too might not 'make it'. The result will be a divided, rancorous population and very probably the heisser Herbst — long hot autumn — the politicians fear. The problem is that economic union is not, as the official version would have it, a major step on the road to unity but unity itself bar the shouting. The sovereignty, negotiating power and pride of the newly-forged democracy disappeared on Sunday as sure- ly and finally as the Ostmark.
This fiscal route to unification has failed to deal with the technical difficulties of welding two states divided more thorough- ly by forty years of diverging development than by concrete and barbed wire. Bonn and East Berlin are clearly relying on the wisdom of Bismarck who wrote in 1878 that he had no fears for the unity of Germany: 'The different parts will always manage to find their way back to one another somehow.' The 800,000 expropri- ated owners of land and property in the East and the unwilling objects of their attentions are less sanguine about the naturalness of the process. In what may prove to be the most divisive decision of the unity process, the two German govern- ments have decided to grant the right of reclaim to those expropriated by the East German state after its formation in 1949 but not to those unfortunate enough to have had their Land und Gut snapped up by the Soviets between 1945-49.
The ruling which was rushed out ahead of 1 July abounds in the Gummiparag- raphen which makes much of the body of German civil law useless to the aggrieved individual. Those who have supposedly had their rights restored will have their claims tested 'with regard to the postwar development in the GDR and the social and economic realities which have arisen in the GDR in the last 40 years'. This appears to mean that a landowner cannot dispos- sess an East German who has acquired the property in the meantime, but succeeds in guaranteeing rights to neither. Similarly those whose land now supports 'buildings for the common use' are exempt from claims — a sore disappointment for those who had hoped that the owner of a stretch of land in the heart of East Berlin would arrive promptly with a legion of bulldozers in tow to tear down the Stalinist foreign ministry and obtrusive television tower.
The decision against returning property expropriated under the Soviet occupation was based on the Bonn Government's desire to placate Moscow as the talks on future security arrangements for Germany enter their final rushed phase. It has dimmed the chances of a return to the East by such major land-owners as Eduard, Prince of Anhalt and Count Adolf Hein- reich von Arnim. In the meantime their ancestral rights have been relegated to a pawn in the debate on military alliance. Count von Arnim says that he finds it 'an absurd trick of history' that his family should be made to rely on Soviet largesse because of a conciliatory tactic by Bonn. In its haste to sell the unity deal today, West Germany is leaving loopholes which will lead to conflict tomorrow. Meanwhile less considerate owners have not shied from direct confrontation with the East Ger- mans now living in their property. Usually they tell the unnerved inhabitants that it is 'their father's home', seasoning financial interest with belated ancestral regard.
The two Germanys have reached a state of economic union by State treaty before anyone had time to cast a fleeting glance at its terms. I could not find one Volkskam- mer delegate who had read the document even in part. The United Germany will find that despite the rhetoric it will con- tinue to be divided by uneven prosperity, diverging experience and the vestigial identity of each of the two souls which dwelt in one breast for four decades. In the Chancellor's unity of the nation speeches there are few words devoted to the myriad injustices which will follow the merger. The devil of the process is lurking in the small print. It will be read at leisure by Germans East and West in the years to come.
Anne McElvoy is the Times correspondent in East Berlin.
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