Springtime for Honecker
Tim Garton Ash
Berlin Last month Mr Honecker, the East German Party leader, rediscovered Germany. Since he came to power a decade ago, the word Germany' has disappeared from his dictionary. The aspiration to German unity Was expunged from the constitution in 1974. The words of the national anthem, which Celebrates 'Deutschland, Einig Vaterland', are no longer sung. Just a few months ago, Coinage with the inscription 'German' ceased to be legal tender. Ideological Pharisees discovered that there were basicallYly two kinds of nation: 'socialist' ones and 'bourgeois' ones. East Germany, being a 'socialist' nation, had more in common with, say, Outer Mongolia, than With that arch-bourgeois nation, West Germany. The GDR (German Democratic Republic) and the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany) were therefore two nationstates like any other. When a bewildered East German asked an authoritative party commentator, 'Who di ii I?' he received this Talmudic reply: You are a citizen of the GDR, your nationality is German, your nation — social ist.' Is that clear? To most East Germans, however, that was as clear as mud. They continued to regard themselves as Germans, and proud of it. They talked far more about the nation than their cousins in the West. The 'two nations' theory was ridiculed.
It is to this domestic audience that Mr Honecker's resurrection of Germany was primarily addressed. That is clear from the context: a keynote speech to party delegates in preparation for the party congress this spring, which in turn will lay down the line for the next five years. His remarks were greeted with thunderous applause, which was probably more an expression of relief than of hope. Party workers were relieved that at least one patent absurdity can be dropped from the party catechism. They cannot seriously hope for that unification of the two German states which, Mr Honecker declared, the GDR would favourably consider when West Germany's workers set about the 'socialist transformation' of their country, the Federal Republic of (he said it) Germany. It scarcely needs saving that this is not a likely prospect. West German workers are a great deal happier with their system than East German workers are with theirs. It is just possible that the highest East German party functionaries, who live an existence more isolated from the common people than the mandarins of medieval China, do not realise this. To some extent they may be victims of their own propaganda, which in recent years has depicted West Germany sinking into a slough of economic despond, with galloping inflation, massive indebtedness, soaring unemployment, and so on. If the Western working class is being stripped of its 'illusions' about the capitalist system then, to adapt the words of the hit song from the film, The Producers, it's springtime for Honecker and Germanee.'
But the party workers have no such illusions. they know that the GDR, like all East European regimes, has a massive legitimacy problem. To secure the loyalty, or at least the acquiescence, of their populations such regimes have three basic weapons at their disposal: indoctrination, bribery, and repression. The battle for hearts and minds has clearly not been won with the stale product peddled as MarxistLeninism in the Soviet bloc. In the early Seventies, Mr Honecker had considerable success in buying off his citizens with imported jeans and Volkswagen cars (the latter day equivalents of panem et circertses), and with the prospect of a steadily, if slowly, rising standard of living. The energy crisis has hit East Germany very hard. The productivity of its own labour force leaves much to be &sired. The secret police, by contrast, seem to be working better than ever. But I think it was Talleyrand who observed that you can do everything with bayonets, except sit on them.
This is where 'Germany' comes in. In the last few years German history has become fashionable in West Germany, for the first time since 1945. After a wave of books about Hitler there is now an even larger Prussia-wave'. What is fashionable in West Germany today is fashionable in East Germany tomorrow, particularly among the younger generation. This fashion is easily communicated via West German television, which is seen by 80 per cent of East Germans. At the same time, the GDR has been making its own more measured revision of German history: reinstating figures like Scharnhorst, Luther, and even Frederick the Great in the pantheon of good ('progressive') Germans. Now party workers may hope to play the national card: that is, to use national pride to ginger up the flagging elan of youth. They have seen the past, and it might even work. Certainly there is a deep reserve of national feeling, althugh it is questionable if the party can effectively exploit it: a reservoir of national pride, and of national prejudice.
This prejudice is most rabid against the Poles. It is quite common to hear young East German workers in a corner pub talking about the 'Scheisspolacken', which translates roughly as the `Shit-Polaks'. Their Polish jokes remind one uncannily of the Jewish jokes which were told hereabouts a few decades back. The fact that Poles could travel freely into East Germany on shopping raids, and did so in large numbers until the border was closed last autumn, exacerbated the latent resentment. Of course the feelings are mutual. Poles react neurotically to the faintest murmur of German nationalism. When the statue of Frederick the Great was re-erected in its former position on Unter den Linden a Polish official excitedly remarked, 'You see, he's pointing eastward, towards Poland.' Old Fritz's invasion of Silesia is vividly recalled. Now, although Mr Honecker and his colleagues are clearly desperately worried about developments in Poland, his speech cannot seriously be read as a threat to General Jaruzelski. It can, and will, be read as a licence to capitalise on national prejudice.
On the day after it fulsomely reported the resurrection of Germany, Neues Deutschland, the East Germany daily, carried a banner headline: 'The national people's army of the GDR is the only German army worthy of the name'. The whole front page was devoted to the celebrations of the army's 25th anniversary. Another headline declared 'Members of the national people's army will give lives without hesitation to annihilate the enemy.' 'The enemy' was not specified. This might be felt slightly to reduce the credibility of the GDR's righteous indignation at NATO's increased defence spending in general, and Mr Reagan in particular. But since on the whole West German leftists neither read Neues Deutschland nor travel in the GDR, they could just be tempted by Mr Honecker's siren call to step up their criticism of Mr Schmidt and the United States, thereby further straining both the Social Democratic Party and the Western alliance. Whether that was a major motive behind Mr Honecker's remarks, as some American analysts assert, is doubtful; nonetheless, there is a district groundswell of anti-American sentiment in West Germany.
Talking to West Germans about America can be uncomfortably like talking to East Germans about Poland. This probably does not add up to much politically, but it is a reminder of how far we have come from the golden visions of supernational confederation which were popular in Europe, East and West, in the wake of the Second World War. If anyone questions the existence of national character, he should come to central Europe.
Nations will be nations. But it does not necessarily follow that they must be nationstates. There is every reason why the two German states should continue to be, in the favoured West German formula, 'two states of one nation'. On that, Mr Brezhnev and President Reagan surely agree.
Previous page
