Post Wall, Post Square. Kristina Spohr
It was also decided then that Kohl would present his proposals for achieving German unity at the earliest suitable opportunity, which would be five days later, on 28 November, during the Bundestag’s scheduled debate on the budget. So a small team of eight, led by Teltschik, worked around the clock in utmost secrecy to prepare a draft of the speech. On the afternoon of Saturday 25th this was taken by car from Bonn to the chancellor, who was at his home in Oggersheim.[95]
So obsessed was Kohl about possible leaks, or even being talked out of the speech by his coalition partner or his NATO allies, that everybody in the know was sworn to total silence. For the rest of the weekend, he worked over the draft with a handful of trusted friends and his wife Hannelore, scribbling corrections and queries on the draft and periodically calling Teltschik on the phone. Then, on Sunday night, he asked Hannelore to type up an amended version on her portable typewriter.[96]
As he finalised the draft, several key concerns were in Kohl’s mind. In the run-up to the Federal elections, he was keen to position himself as a true German patriot and the chancellor of unity – ahead of the Liberal Genscher who had been promoting his own ‘Europa-Plan’ and who, on the Prague balcony, had stolen the show from Kohl once before. Nor did he want to be overshadowed by the SPD’s great figurehead, the Altkanzler Brandt, who had nearly eclipsed Kohl in Berlin on 10 November and was now presenting unification as the culmination of his own Ostpolitik. It was also for electoral reasons that the chancellor decided to omit any mention of the Oder–Neisse line, even though he personally accepted it as Germany’s eastern border. After all, to remove the final obstacle in the way of his Warsaw trip he had supported the 8 November Bundestag resolution assuring the inviolability of Poland’s post-war borders.[97] But Kohl was cautious not to rub things in further with the expellees. He could not be sure that these traditionally CDU voters might not be seduced by Schönhuber’s Republikaner propaganda for the restoration of Germany’s 1937 borders.
Another of Kohl’s concerns was the language regarding the various stages of German rapprochement and merger on the way to a unified state. Instead of picking up on the Modrow term ‘confederation’, Kohl preferred the phrase ‘confederative structures’ so that nobody in the CDU should have reason to accuse him of setting in stone a Zweistaatlichkeit of two sovereign German states, as was apparently envisaged by Lafontaine, Bahr and other SPD rivals. At the same time, his own, looser phrase was intended to placate the Soviets and East German officials as well as GDR opposition groups, all of whom feared an overt Anschluss on the lines of 1938: the socialist GDR swallowed up by the capitalist FRG. In the long run, of course, Kohl did aspire to a full Bundestaat or ‘federation’, in other words a unified state. But he did not have any clear idea yet what this new Deutschland might look like, though he was sure it should be a Bundestaat, not the Staatenbund or ‘confederation’ that East German political elites imagined. And so, Kohl thought, by talking of eventual ‘unity’ his speech could both reflect and amplify the public mood in East Germany – the still diffuse but increasingly vocal yearning for unity expressed in recent protest slogans such as ‘Deutschland, einig Vaterland’ and ‘Wir sind ein Volk’. Indeed, offering Einheit (‘unity’) as the ultimate destination in his speech, he could present ‘from above’ a vision for East Germans ‘below’ that would make them look west.
There were so many ‘what ifs’ to keep in mind. Kohl could barely grasp all the implications. At this stage, he envisaged that the whole intricate process of rapprochement, closer cooperation and eventual unification would take a decade at least. But he was clear about the basic point. That weekend in Oggersheim, he was psyching himself up for a surprise offensive – to put German unity unequivocally on the international agenda.[98]
The eagle arises: Kohl presents his 10 Points to the Bundestag in Bonn
On Tuesday 28 November at 10 a.m. Helmut Kohl addressed the Bundestag. Instead of droning on, as expected, about the budget, Kohl dropped his bombshell of a ‘ten-point programme for overcoming the division of Germany and Europe’.[99] Kohl first talked about ‘immediate measures’ to deal with the ‘tide of refugees’ and the ‘new scale of tourist traffic’. Second, he promised further cooperation with the GDR in economic, scientific, technological and cultural affairs, and also, third, greatly expanded financial assistance if the GDR ‘definitively’ and ‘irreversibly’ embarked on a fundamental transformation of its political and economic system. To this end, he demanded that the SED give up its monopoly on power and pass a new law for ‘free, equal and secret elections’. Because the East German people clearly wanted economic and political freedom, he said he was unwilling to ‘stabilise conditions that have become untenable’. This was not so much negotiation; more like an ultimatum.
At the core of the speech (points four to eight), the chancellor presented his road map to unity – namely to ‘develop confederative structures between both states in Germany … with the aim of creating a federation’. All this would be done in conformity with the principles of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, as part of a larger pan-European process: ‘The future architecture of Germany must fit in the future architecture of Europe.’ Kohl noted that his plan also accorded with Gorbachev’s idea of a Common European Home, as well as the Soviet leader’s concept of ‘freedom of choice’, in the sense of the ‘people’s right to self-determination’ as set out in the Final Act. In fact, Kohl reminded the Bundestag, he and Gorbachev had already expressed their agreement on these issues in their Joint Declaration of June 1989. But in the dramatically new circumstances of November the chancellor wanted to go further. He argued that the European Community should now reach out to the reform-oriented states of the Eastern bloc, including the GDR. ‘The EC must not end at the Elbe,’ he proclaimed. Opening up to the East would allow for ‘truly comprehensive European unification’. With this he neutralised and effectively absorbed Genscher’s ‘Europa-Plan’.
The central theme of Kohl’s speech was working towards a ‘condition of peace in Europe’ within which Germans could regain their unity. This, he made clear at the end, could not be separated from wider questions of international order. ‘Linking the German question to the development of Europe as a whole and to West–East relations’, he declared, ‘takes into account the interests of everyone involved’ and ‘paves the way for a peaceful and free development in Europe’. Speedy steps would be required towards disarmament and arms control. Here the West German chancellor was appealing directly to the superpowers and to his European allies.
What Kohl did not say is as revealing as what he did say. He omitted the Polish border, and he also made no reference to Germany’s membership of NATO, present or future, or to the Reserved Rights of the Allied powers on German soil. Even on his ultimate goal – German unity – Kohl was circumspect. ‘No one knows today what a reunified Germany will ultimately look like.’ But he kept affirming the German people’s ‘right’ to unity, and he stated emphatically: ‘That unity will come, however, when the people of Germany want it – of this, I am certain.’ The chancellor pointed expansively to the pattern of ‘growing together’ that was part of ‘the continuity of German history’. State organisation in Germany, he added ‘has almost always meant a confederation or a federation. We can certainly draw on these historical experiences.’ Kohl may have been looking back to the Bismarck era (the Norddeutscher Bund of 1867 and the Reich of 1871), but he was surely drawing on his own lifetime – the model of the post-war Federal Republic.[100]
The chancellor was relieved to have delivered the speech and exhilarated by its reception. In the lunch break he told aides that the reaction of MPs had been ‘almost ecstatic’. What about Genscher, Teltschik asked mischievously – aware that the foreign minister had been totally out of the loop. Kohl grinned. ‘Genscher came over to me and said: “Helmut, this was a great speech.”’[101]
For the first time Kohl’s plan started to clarify the relationship between the processes of German unification and European integration as being interwoven but separate. Neither should impede the other and they could take place at different speeds. German unification must be effected within the framework of the EC but the specific evolution and form of future inner German relations