Germans and Reunification

BERLIN, November 6--Side by side on the bulletin board of the new, modern post office in Augsburg, West Germany, are two notices. One is a brightly-colored poster showing scenes from East and West Germany under the bold legend: "Germany Indivisible." The other is an unobtrusive little card which announces that Soviet Zone authorities will not accept postal matter bearing the Federal Republic's "refugee stamp."

Across the room Augsburg's citizens, many of whom still have relatives and friends in East Germany, stream up to the stamp windows. And with a realism born of ten years' experience, they purchase not the refugee stamp--which pictures men and women fleeing west from the Iron Curtain--but the standard one portraying the cherubic face of Federal President Theodore Heuss.

This contrast, between impassioned declarations that Germany is indivisible and the day to day acknowledgment that it is already divided, is the most striking paradox in Germany today.

During the past year official and quasi-official groups in West Germany have intensified their talk about reunification with the Soviet sector. Spearheading this drive is the Bonn government's official Ministry for All German Affairs, which, in addition to co-ordinating the activities of other groups, carries on a fairly extensive propaganda campaign itself. Perhaps the next most active organization is the one responsible for the Augsburg poster and many similar ones all over Germany: "Germany Indivisible--the People's Movement for Reunification." Formed last year by some of the country's leading political figures, the group stepped up its activity this summer with a series of large outdoor rallies.

This increased pressure for reunification has greatly worried many Western observers. Some alarmists, particularly elements of the British press, have warned that this talk, taken with the recent establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, foretells a deal with Moscow for a neutralized, reunified Germany completely divorced from the West. Although Chancellor Adenauer clearly will not make such a deal, these commentators fear that the so-called "growing demand for reunification" will push a less popular and powerful successor into doing so.

And there are elements of the Socialist Party and of the Protestant Church that would be willing to buy a united Germany from Moscow. But in general the western worries are unfounded because they are based on a false interpretation of the "demand for reunification." Reunification is the prime political issue in Germany today, but it is not a popular one. The unity movement is not a swelling of public opinion, but a political device to convince the Western powers of the great German demand for reunification and at the same time to stoke up that very pressure among the Germans themselves. Calling a group "The People's Movement for Reunification" cannot hide the fact that there is no such movement in Germany today.

The recent spate of official reunification talk developed because the bulk of the West German population is beginning to lose interest in the issue. This is not to say that there is any opposition to reunification in West Germany. Everybody is "for" it, just as everybody is "for" democracy. But the real question is just how much one is willing to give up for a united Germany. While in the early post-war years the Germans did not have much to sacrifice, now they have a great deal they would have to give up for reunification, and there seems little willingness to make the trade.

A foreigner, led to believe that the Germans "live, eat and sleep reunification," is somewhat surprised to see that the average West German today is living a hyperactive life of his own, eating generous helpings of Wurst and Sauerkraut, and sleeping very well. The "German economic miracle" has been somewhat over-emphasized, but as one walks down Dusseldorf's Konigstrasse or Munich's Kaufingerstrasse it is obvious that the German is again living very well. And it is not difficult to understand that after five years of war and ten of rebuilding, he is very loath to give up his present prosperity.

Fear of the economic consequences of reunification is one of the main reasons for apathy on the issue. Most commentators agree that reunification with the impoverished East Zone would badly strain West Germany's economy, particularly by adding tremendous new demands on the already over-burdened relief program. The West German standard of living would almost certainly suffer at first, though it might later benefit from the added markets in the East.

But a high standard of living is not the only thing West Germany would have to sacrifice. The Russians have made clear that they will not agree to a reunified Germany unless the Communists retain control of the East Zone through rigged elections and unless the East Zone's economic and social structure is preserved in a reunited Germany. Although many Germans would be willing to deal for reunification on the basis of neutralization, few will accept a plan that would put a Trojan Horse of Communism in a unified Germany.

Apathy toward reunification is also attributable to some of the regional jealousies and suspicions that originally hindered for so long the development of a German nation. There is still a lingering distrust in the Catholic South for the Protestant East, and no little hatred for the Prussians who, as one Stuttgart man said, "got us into this whole thing in the first place." But beyond any such specific suspicions, there is a lack of a real national feeling in Germany today. As the mayor of a small German city said after a visit to America, "Americans think of Germans as a nationalistic people, but I'd give anything to see just half of the decent, patriotic feeling in Germany that I saw in America."

The one great exception to the apathy on reunification is, naturally enough, Berlin. Encircled by the hostile Soviet Zone for ten years, at times blockaded and constantly at the Russians' mercy, Berliners are committed to this one goal with a unique urgency. And the Berliners are well aware that their view differs from the feeling of the West Germans. One Berlin student puts it this way: "Every time I go to the West I'm more and more surprised how little those people really care about reunification. They've sailed through the storm into fine weather and they just don't want to rock the boat."

This fear of rocking the boat is the dominant mood in West Germany today. For those afraid of a deal between Bonn and Moscow it is a reassuring mood, but for Germans who worry about the future of their nation it is an ominous mood. Many of them fear that Germany is already irreparably divided.