Post Wall, Post Square. Kristina Spohr
confirmed in the Helsinki Final Act. ‘Any attempt to raise this or the issue of German reunification would risk undermining Mr Gorbachev’s position,’ she warned, and would ‘open the Pandora’s box of border claims right through Central Europe’. Kohl was visibly taken aback at her outburst, which upset the whole mood of the dinner. Struggling to respond, he cited a 1970 NATO summit declaration, in which the allies had expressed their continued support on the issue of German unity. Thatcher retorted that this endorsement happened at a time when nobody seriously believed that reunification would ever take place. But Kohl dug in. Be that as may, he said coldly, NATO agreed on this declaration and the decision still stood. Even Thatcher would not be able to stop the German people in their tracks: they now held their fate in their own hands. Sitting back, his ample girth filling the chair, he looked the British prime minister in the eye. Angrily, she stamped her feet several times and shouted: ‘That’s the way you see it, you see it!’[67]
To Kohl it was quite clear that the Iron Lady was determined to uphold the status quo. For her, borders were immutable; even their peaceful change was simply not on the agenda. This also applied to the inner German frontier, which he – like most Germans – did not consider as an international border, never mind the Oder–Neisse frontier with Poland.
Although shaken by Thatcher’s diatribe, Kohl was conscious that her rooted antipathy to the European project meant that she was an outsider in the EC’s decision-making. And she could not play the American card because Kohl was already certain that Bush supported the principle of German unification. What worried Kohl much more was that Mitterrand just sat there quietly, seeming to approve of Thatcher’s words. Had he egged her on? Was this an Anglo-French axis in the making? The chancellor began to wonder whether the French leader was playing a double game.[68]
Only two weeks earlier, Mitterrand had told Kohl in Bonn that he did not fear German reunification. On the other hand, at the end the French president entered the caveat that he would have to consider what in practice worked best in the interests of France and of Europe. There was, in other words, an ambiguity in the French position: Mitterrand thought plenty of time should be allowed for German unification (‘la nécessaire durée du processus’), while, simultaneously, the process of creating an ever-closer European union should be speeded up. This double dynamic of largo and accelerando was evidently something that mattered to the Frenchman. And it made the chancellor just a little bit uneasy. But he placed his trust in their history of partnership and cooperation going back to 1982.[69]
Kohl was beginning to realise that the EC, or certainly one of its leading members, was going to demand something in return for going along with his talk about a united Germany. Piecing together their discussions in Bonn and then Paris, he recognised that it was essential to convince Mitterrand of the FRG’s continued commitment to completing European monetary and political union – and not just as a fellow traveller but as a fellow shaper using the power of the Franco-German tandem. This mattered even more because Kohl had no illusions about the coolness felt towards German unification by many Europeans, not least the Italians and the Dutch.
The chancellor decided to confront the issue head-on in Strasbourg on 22 November at a special meeting of the European Parliament, convened to discuss recent events in Eastern Europe. In his address, he issued a clarion call that the division of both Europe and Germany be ended. Not only London, Rome, Dublin and Paris belonged to Europe, he declared, but also Warsaw and Budapest, Prague and Sofia. And, of course, Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden. German unity could only be achieved within this larger, pan-European process of unification: ‘In a free and united Europe, a free and united Germany.’ ‘Deutschlandpolitik’ and ‘Europapolitik’ were, Kohl said, ‘two sides of the same coin’.[70]
Kohl had made a point of asking Mitterrand to attend his speech. When the president did so, it was taken as a clear endorsement of what the chancellor was saying. For Kohl, Strasbourg proved a great success. At the end the European Parliament passed an almost unanimous resolution (only two MEPs out of 518 voting against) saying that East Germans had the right to ‘to be part of a united Germany and a united Europe’.[71]
The German chancellor had spoken to Europe and gained its approval. And with Bush not particularly fazed about the matter, leaving the initiative to Kohl, there was hope that at a later point even Thatcher might be brought into line with the help of the Americans, if not the French and the EC. None of this, however, could obscure the fact that at home pressure was mounting on Kohl to spell out clearly and openly how he intended to achieve German unification – because so far the chancellor had been distinctly circumspect about the specifics. And he was being buffeted from all sides.
Among the many voices who demanded that the chancellor come out strongly for unification was Rudolf Augstein, editor of Der Spiegel. In his magazine on 20 November he wrote a column entitled ‘Sagen, was ist’ (‘To say what’s what’). Augstein could barely conceal his impatience. Rather than hiding behind talk about European unity, he argued, the Kohl government should face up to the truly popular desire for German unity. The question that should be addressed was not if, but how, unification could be made to happen.[72]
Similarly outspoken for unity was Alfred Herrhausen, head of Deutsche Bank, an advocate of European economic integration and also an adviser to the chancellor. In an interview he pointed out the reality that as soon as foreign investment was allowed in the GDR, the West German economy would very quickly swallow up that of the East. Referring to an idea currently being floated about possible GDR membership in the EC, Herrhausen said that, as a banker, he thought it desirable in the short term but, speaking as a German citizen, he would definitely not want to forgo the historic opportunity for unity. That, for him, seemed to supersede everything else.[73]
Yet Kohl was also under pressure from those who did not believe in unification.
Günter Grass, the leftist author and public intellectual, came out strongly against the idea of ‘a conglomeration of power’ in the heart of Europe, calling instead for ‘a confederation of two states that have to redefine themselves’. In other words, he wanted a ‘settlement’ between West and East. The past was dead, he insisted. ‘There is no point in looking back to the German Reich, be it within the borders of 1945 or 1937; that’s all gone. We have to define ourselves anew.’[74]
Oskar Lafontaine of the SPD, Kohl’s direct rival for the chancellorship, also took a diametrically opposite position from the chancellor. Amid the turmoil before the fall of the Wall, he had warned of the ‘spectre of a strong fourth German Reich’ that was ‘scaring our Western and no less our Eastern neighbours’.[75] And on 8 November, after Kohl lauded unity through self-determination, Lafontaine blasted the goal of a unified nation state as ‘wrong and anachronistic’.[76] Once the borders were open Lafontaine denigrated the heady, almost delirious, atmosphere as ‘national drunkenness’ and, hard-nosed, asked whether it was right that all East German citizens who came west should simply get access to the FRG’s social security benefits. Mindful of the impending Federal elections, he was trying to play on the anxieties of West Germans – who, according to Gallup polls, were prepared to help East Germany financially but without tax rises for themselves.[77]
Particularly striking was the denunciation of unification from Egon Bahr, who in the 1960s had designed Neue Ostpolitik based on the idea that ‘change through rapprochement’ would pave the way to unity. Before 9 November he had said that people should stop ‘dreaming or nattering on about unity’.[78] And he had rejected the priority given to the ‘lie’ of unification – spluttering that it was ‘poisoning’ the atmosphere and causing ‘political pollution’. Afterwards he took a cautious line, keener on a slower approach to unification and hiding behind Lafontaine.[79]
Within the SPD, only Willy Brandt, Bahr’s old patron, spoke out for unity. It would be inconceivable, he declared, to ‘batten down the hatches in the West’.[80] German unity was now only a question of time and it should not come only after Europe’s unity had already been achieved. In this way Brandt distanced himself from the Lafontaine–Bahr line in his own party but, more generally, those on the left who privileged a pan-European framework, or Gorbachev’s ‘Common European Home’, within which Germany could unite.[81] He also set himself apart from Genscher’s