William Tyler
Reunification of Germany
William Tyler - Reunification of Germany
- Because it’s evening here or early evening, five o'clock. Good evening from here in the South Coast of Britain on a really nice sunny day. Now this is the final talk I’m giving on German history. So this is the conclusion of the course. Now, I’m not here next week as I’m on a family holiday, but the week after I shall be starting on Victorian Britain. And the best place to start is, of course, with the woman that gave her name to the age Queen Victoria. And as my Canadian friends of Jess reminded me, it’s Queen Victoria’s Day in Canada. I suppose it is here as well, but we don’t sort of think about it, but we’re talking about Queen Victorian a fortnight’s time. So here is the final talk on Germany. So it begins with reunification and the reunification story itself begins in East Germany, but it was kick-started by the appeal of West Germany, the appeal of course of freedom, but increasingly of consumerism as consumerism gripped the end of the 20th century in the capitalist West. But the East East were missing out and they were able to tune in, not perhaps legally, but they were able to tune into television. And it’s the television from the West, particularly the adverts that made the East Germans grasp the fact that their country was so far behind, despite the fact that communism had promised this earthly paradise for them, it had simply not happened. At the end of the reunification, although as I said, it began in East Germany, it was West Germany that came out on top in the reunification. It was incidentally a reunification that was never put to a referendum in either East nor West. It was just an acceptance, sometimes warm, sometimes lukewarm, sometimes cold reception of a reality. A reality that you can argue came from the streets rather than from politicians. It’s an interesting event is the reunification, which is in that other times we could spend looking at the whole process of that reunification and what it says about politics in general.
It was our most interesting moment and a most climatic moment in Europe. We were glued to our television sets throughout that period of the collapse of Eastern Europe. No politician raised their head above the parapet to attack reunification. While the French, as the French do rather were playing two horses at the same time, but in the end came to support the West Germans and reunification. The Americans never had any doubt and back reunification. Russia had, as we shall see as it were, withdrawn from the situation so didn’t have a view, but in Britain, Margaret Thatcher did take a view. Now, at the time it was thought she was being extremely negative. This is the River’s book on East Germany that I’ve used on numerous occasions. It simply called East Germany Charles Rivers editions. And in this they write, “Margaret Thatcher in an interview outside 10 Down Street warn that talk of German reunification was, ‘Much, much too fast.’ And the East Germany will be required to show its development as a democracy before that could be taken under serious consideration.” And she was attacked by other European leaders as she was attacked by the opposition here in Britain. And it fell awkwardly with the general mood in Britain, which was one of, thank goodness it’s all over. Yet I’d rather suspect that Mrs. Thatcher’s concerns, she wasn’t against it, remember she just wanted East Germany to be more democratic before it happen. Mrs. Thatcher’s concerns may still be relevant concerns in 2023.
You must judge up yourselves as we go through the talk, but sometimes politicians who rise above the immediate and have a look towards the future and consequences and frankly there are rather few and far between, but Mrs. Thatcher was one of those, whether you love her or loathe her, she was someone that looked ahead and in Germany’s case, I have to say I think she may yet, she may yet be proved right. We’ll come to that. So it it’s got support and it’s pushed through. It was an exceptional moment in European history, why? Because Germany is in continental Europe along with France, the most important continental country in Europe economically and politically. And it’s now pulled together again as one country and you can see why Mrs. Thatcher was concerned because twice in the 20th century a united Germany had taken not just Europe but the world to war. And Mrs. Thatcher was of the generation that was brought up with the, with the spectre of Nazi Germany. Now, of course, Nazi Germany had gone by 1989, but East Germany was still authoritarian and Marxist and if Nazi Germany was the, was that over Western Europe in the 1930s and then in the 1950s and 60s, 70s and 80s, it was Marxist East that was above us. I said it was all supported by the West with Mrs. Thatcher being the one voice that was, I’m not sure what the word is, politically doubtful. I nearly said intellectually doubtful, I think I mean politically doubtful. So let’s have look at some of those complications. This is James Hawes history of Germany and I wanted to read this up.
“The opinion polls all had Cole, Chancellor Cole of West Germany on course for defeat at the next West German general election.” But what if it wasn’t only a West German election, i.e. a United Germany election? “Many people argue that Chancellor Cole bought French agreement by promising without telling the German people to soon give up the beloved Deutschemark and commit themselves to the Euro.” We forget that the Germans in the, let’s say the West Germans in the 1980s were as committed to the Deutschemark as Britain remained committed to the pound throughout Britain’s membership of the EU. And it was France that was pushing the Euro. Der Spiegel in Germany in September, 2010. So long after reunification said, “By permitting Germany to expand Eastwards, Mitterrand, president Mitterrand of France helped Cole become the chancellor of unity.” That was the phrase being banded about by his party in Germany. “This in turn put Cole in a position to relieve Germany of its dearly held currency i.e the Deutschmark, one of the greatest crimes of the Mitterrand on presidency.” So there was a lot of politics between France and Germany going on at the same time. And Cole is playing internal politics as well. If East Germany can be brought into a reunification, then Cole who can present himself as the man who’s done it will gain votes in East Germany. What he’s hoping to balance the loss of votes that are anticipated in West Germany, whereas Mitterrand has got a major concession from this about to be reunited Germany in the fact that they will adopt the Euro and from that moment on, there’s no going back on the Euro and you could argue that Britain’s refusal to join the Euro was maybe, I think as we look back maybe the beginning of the Brexit move, it was a tangible thing. I read on Chancellor Cole paid the patriotic bonus for all it was worth promising another economic miracle that will turn the new state into his, “A blooming landscape.”
Even so, in the general election of December, 1990, Cole at best held on in West Germany slipping compared to 1987, which was had been anticipated but in East Germany his party got enormous vote. Cole swept to victory in all five of the lander of East Germany and was very easily able to lead the Coalition. So Cole got something out of it, Mitterrand got something out of it politically. So that’s some of the sort of background. Now I began by saying that the story began in East Germany. So I must now turn to East Germany and the background to that election in 1990, December, 1919, which was the first free election for a united Germany since the Weimar Republic. So I’m now returning and building back up to that beginning. So we’re going to East Germany because it’s East Germany as I said at the beginning where it all begins but has ever in the East German history of four decades, it’s always Russia behind the scenes that calls the shots or in this case fails to call the shots. When Chernenko died in Moscow in 1985, he was the last of the old guard. The Politburo in Moscow chose 54 year old Gorbachev seen as a young man and indeed he was compared to the elderly Andropov and Chernenko and Brezhnev before then who had been in charge of Russia. So Gorbachev comes in as a young man of 54, but Gorbachev turned out to be rather different than the Russian Politburo had expected. He turned out to be a moderate reformer in a communist state and a communist system that could not take moderate reform and still survive. It’s a very interesting question. If you were doing a postgraduate course, maybe this is the essay you’d have to write for me this week, can you ever have moderate reform in an authoritarian society?
I always give the example of a dam and Gorbachev took out some of the bricks of the dam and the water comes through and the pressure for more reform builds so that eventually as take a few grips out. Eventually all the bricks fall out, which is what happened in Marxist Russia, Gorbachev Russia. You remember from that time that two words stand out to underline Gorbachev’s reformist policies. There was the word, “Glasnost,” which meant openness, something that communist Russia had not had since the revolution of 1970 and Perestroika, which was restructuring, Gorbachev wanted to restructure the communist state. He did not wish to get rid of communism, he wanted to restructure it and he wanted more openness, he wanted moderate reform, but it wasn’t possible. In East Germany, the leader Erich Mielke took fright at all that was going on in Russia. He was not a Gorbachev, he was a Chernenko. He wanted, he actually believed in the policies of Lenin and Stalin and and Andropov Chernenko. He believed in the lot. He did not believe in reform. He had been in power since 1971 after Ulbricht whom we talked about last week after Ulbricht had been deposed by the East German Politburo. By 1985, his leadership was rather like the leadership of a Russian named Andropov Chernenko or in the word of one historian that Honecker’s leadership had now become in East Germany ossified. He couldn’t change. Now we know in our own lives with our families that older people sometimes find change difficult to accept. And if you’re in charge of something as Honecker was, then you think you can hold back time, you can hold back the change. But you see, you can’t, you can’t. I’ll read again from the Rivers book, which I’m using a bit this afternoon because it’s got rather, it’s rather good on this part of German history.
There was a big problem for the East German government throughout the 1980s, which was rising debt. In 1982 the debt reached nearly 12 billion East German Marx. There was a global crisis and the economic system of Marxist East Germany couldn’t cope. It meant there, East Germany was operating in a tense international environment as the world suffered and it was suffering worse and as it suffered, the cost of living rose. And this is against a background now of dissident activities, dissident thinking by ordinary East German citizens. “Hang on.” They say it then, “Okay, we accept there may be an international crisis with money, but we seem to be worse off than everybody and this must be because of the system that we’re in.” You can see what’s going to happen. There had always been resistance by ordinary East Germans to the Marxist system that had been imposed upon them by Russia between 1945 and 1949. You remember last week we talked about the uprising to 1953. This hasn’t gone away. Now it would’ve gone away, of course, if the promises made by all Britain and Honecker and others had their promises materialised that they were indeed living in a land of milk and honey, then it would’ve been fine. But this was the failure of the system. This was the failure of the Marxist economic system. It simply didn’t deliver for ordinary citizens what Western capitalism delivered. And keep remembering, we’re talking about this country being an, absolutely next to each other and in Berlin next to each other. It’s concerning to East Germans as they go through the 1980s. You could go, I’ve said here, you could go on my notes, you could go as far as the saying that by the mid 1980s East Germany was a rightful revolution.
Now it was kept in line as long as it was. You know why? Because of the secret police, the society and all their informers either paid or volunteer. This was a fearful society to live in. I’d never lived in that society that sort of society some of you may have lived in, the sort of society where you can’t raise your head above the parapet because if you do so, it will be knocked off. It isn’t easy to resist an authoritarian state. And remember that East Germany, they had the memory as well of what resistance meant in the Nazi state from 1933 to 45. So it’s difficult to rebel and resist, but there’s new generations coming forward, younger people coming forward who have not known the repression of the Nazi years but have known the repression of the Marxist years and are saying in effect, “Enough is enough.” As this dissent increases, people meeting pamphlets being produced, all the sorts of normal things that we hear of then the position of the Politburo and of the East German elite becomes more and more fragile. It had never reached down into the population in a way that we saw that Nazism had reached down into the population with large numbers being members of the party, often almost entirely through choice. Here if you were a member of the party, often it was to be able, if you were an academic, for example, which is field I know, if you remember the party, you were allowed to attend international conferences elsewhere and of course if you didn’t turn into attend international conferences, your academic standing and your understanding would sink. I had a friend, a Slovak friend who was a scientist academic and he refused to be a member of the party and the cost he paid what he’s not able until the 1990s in middle age to attend conferences in the West. But he felt so strongly against the Marxist system. Let’s go back a little bit and see what we can see about Gorbachev and the Russian Politburo.
And I wanted to read this. Gorbachev took a more relaxed approach than his predecessors to Soviet control of its central European and East European satellites than his predecessors are done. So he’s having a lighter touch and concentrating on his energies on reform in the Soviet Union in Russia. In 1988, he gave a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on December the seventh. And this was an extraordinary speech. He endorsed human rights, what? Yeah, he endorsed human rights. He announced he was a withdrawing. All Russian forces from Afghanistan were in, they’d been beaten, I know, but the worst was the problem of drugs coming from Afghanistan into Russia and the resistance of wives and mothers of the soldiers being killed. Think Ukraine today. Gorbachev then said about Central and Eastern Europe, Marxist Europe, the East, he said this, “By agreement with our Warsaw Treaty allies, we have decided to withdraw by 1991, 6 10th divisions from East Germany, in Hungary and to disband them. That’s how was it listened to in East Berlin by home-lander and the East German Politburo. They wouldn’t have been slow to realise what this meant. This meant if the dissidents in East Germany did put their heads above the parapet, there will be no help from Russia as there had been since the state emerged in 1949. In effect, Honecker and East German leadership were told, "You are on your own.” That’s quite frightening when you’ve been part of a system. I remember when I was principal of the city lit in London, we had been always since our foundation in 1919 part of the London education system all the way through. And then suddenly all of that was disbanded. We were privatised with a government grant but privatised. And suddenly on one Monday morning I went to work with the realisation. I couldn’t pick up the phone to a colleague and say, “What do we do about this?” Because there were no colleagues in post. I couldn’t ring up, in a London Education Authority and ask, “Could you send an electrician out? We have a problem.” I couldn’t do any of that. I was on my own. And it was, I remember thinking, “This is quite frighten.”
I’d never been in that situation before. I’d always worked in local authorities where there was backup, here there was no backup. And that is on a much, much grander scale. Of course, the position that Honecker and East German Politburo was put in. And then as you remember, all the Dominoes go down. 1989 in Poland, general Jaruzelski has to give into from the the dance shipyards and agree to free elections. In Hungary, it eased its border with Austria and Hungary was a place where many East Germans holiday and in the summer of 1989, 900 or more East Germans holiday in Hungary simply walked across the border to the West to Austria. More followed and Hungary gave up any pretence of looking at any papers at all. And 13,000 East Germans reached West Germany the promised land via Czechoslovakia. They went to first then Hungary, then Austria, and then West Germany. East Germany was its people. So Honecker wasn’t only isolated but he was losing his people. The Exodus from East Germany continued. 8,000 people sought because they could get the Czechoslovakia relatively easily. Well actually 8,000 East Germans piled into the West German embassy in Prague, in the gardens, on the roof, wherever. But inside East Germany, the dissidents were demanding reform, most notably in Leipzig. And the unrests centred on churches where large Catholic churches where large meetings were held, Leipzig being a case in point, but it’s spread to other cities like Dresden and Hull. All over East Germany, there were now people having the courage to go and hear speakers feeling safety in numbers. But of course Honecker reacted in exactly the way you’d expect him to react by a show of force. On the 3rd of October, 1989, he said, “You now need a visa to go to Czechoslovakia.” It’s not going to do any good is it? Four days later and the 7th of October, East Germany celebrated its 40th anniversary as a state and two of the celebrations went Gorbachev and Gorbachev urge Honecker to take the path of reform.
And I read, “He said to him, he who is too late is punished by life. You’re too late, you’re too late to this new born. You’re too late to this new politics. The old politics has gone, I’m telling you, Honecker was in bad health and so on and so forth. But the end was clearly coming.” Indeed, as I said, the celebration of the 40th anniversary of East German states held on the 7th of October. By the 18th of October, Honecker being removed from office by the East German Politburo. He simply wasn’t coping. 11 days after the celebrations, the new government under Egon Krenz. Do you remember Egon Krenz? I always think of him as a rather sad looking sheep of a man. He was quite tall, but he had one of those faces which immediately sort of depressing somehow he did lift the visa restrictions for Czechoslovakia. What did it mean? More East Germans flood across the border, Czechoslovakia onto Hungary, into Austria, onto West German. It gets worse on the 4th of, for the East German government, on the 4th of November 89, they estimated over a million East Germans took to the streets of East Berlin. And that really, look, whatever government you’ve got, you can’t shoot down or arrest a million people. It’s not physically possible. And so there’s a million people on the streets of East Berlin. So the government does or throws the last dice if you like. And the government has agreed, the Politburo that , agrees that people may apply for passports in order to go to West Germany, West Berlin. But mistake then happens, one of these great mistakes in history. But this is something really quite incredible and fantastic. “Gunter Schabowski was the official spokesperson at a press conference in East Germany that was televised throughout the country.
He was charged with delivering the new travel guidelines.” This is to say that you can apply for a passport in the future. “Charged with delivering the new travel guidelines in a hastily called press conference. He began his remarks by saying, ‘You see comrades, I was informed today that such an announcement had been distributed earlier today. You should actually have it already.’ But they hadn’t. He had not been briefed properly. He went on. Applications for travel abroad by private individuals can now be made without the previously existing requirements of demonstrating a need to travel or proving familial relationships. The travel authorizations will be issued within a short time. Grounds for denial will only be applied in particular and exceptional cases. The responsible departments of passport and registration control in the people’s police districts in East in GDI the East, are instructed to issue visas for permanent exit, permanent exit without delay and without presentation of the existing requirements for permanent exit.” Somebody asked from the audience one of the press, “When does this come into effect?” He answered, “That comes into effect, according to my information, immediately without delay.” He was then asked, “Does this also apply to West Berlin as well as West Germany?” “Permanent exit,” said, “Can take place while all border crossings from the East to the West and West Berlin respectively.” Wow, at that point, the East German government had lost entire control of the situation on the ground. “On that evening in 1989, Harald Jager, an East German border guard, watched the television canteen before arriving for guard duty on the Berlin wall.
Hearing the removal of travel restrictions will take place immediately. He says, ‘I remember almost choking on my bread roll.’ He arrived at six o'clock at the wall for his duty to find other sceptical guards and made multiple telephone calls to his superiors attempting to get clarification about what to do with the now gathering crowds. A million on the streets. At first, Jager superior simply ignored his question, telling them to send people without authorization home. After realising the seriousness of the situation, he was then instructed to let the most agitated members of the crowd pass through to West Berlin in hopes of appeasing them.” Think for a moment anyone of the sort of sports you go to with tens of thousands of people at sport and in Britain we would think of football, whatever you think of in America, baseball or whatever, just think of a large sport and then imagine you are at the turnstiles saying, “No, no one can get in. No, they’re closed. But then you take the most agitated in.” Well come on, that’s never going to work. I read on obviously the opposite effect was achieved and Jager had no further instructions from this superior fearing for the safety of the burgeoning crowd. which is exactly what happens at sports grounds when they don’t open gates and you have crushes and all the rest of it fearing for the safety of the burgeoning crowd. Jager delivered the order to open the border through East and West Berlin at 11:30 PM that Jager is most often credited with being the man who actually put down the wall.“ It’s over, it’s over 9th of November, 1989 and they rushed forward euphoric and there were people on the West equally euphoric and bare hands begin to pull the wall down. Literally pull it down, okay?
That’s the sort of place that normally this story ends. With all the hullabaloo, the selling of bits of the wall. Do you remember people were buying bits of a Berlin wall? It was an extraordinary moment. And if you happen to have friends who were German, I had colleagues at the city little were German, they were euphoric. They were euphoric. There’s no other word for it. But of course as in all these situations, euphoria gives way to reflection. When things quiet down, there’s more reflection on what has happened. "What have we actually done?” If I continue my sporting analogy, your team is promoted from the league, it’s in to the next league. You are for it ‘cause it’s only just managed to do it and it’s done it at long last and then realisation strikes, “Hang on a moment, this team of whatever sport it is won’t be able to compete in this higher league. How will it ever win a match? We’ve now got to import new players.” So euphoria carries you only so far when realism reasserts itself. And that meant in terms of German reunification, reflection by politicians both in the East and the West, and reflection by ordinary Germans, again either Eastern and Western. Remember Mrs. Thatcher again, it must go much, much more slowly, but it hasn’t because the politicians have lost control of the situation. Chancellor Cole ecstatic because he thinks now he can be reelected and the hero of the hour suddenly thinks, “Hang on a moment, will Russia really let East Germany go? Might they not even at this stage intervene and has attempt to keep two Germans even a more Democratic East than it is now. But will they try and keep two Germans going?” After all, Cole was well aware how the rest of the world saw Germany united and this Mrs. Thatcher’s concern, but also Russia’s concern that twice Russia had been invaded by Germany in the 20th century twice invaded would be really allow Germany to be reunited. And from Russia position reunited as a democratic Western state and Mrs. Thatcher’s concern, “What are we doing with the reunited Germany? Could we basically trust a reunited Germany?”
But the Americans stood by Chancellor Cole, the Americans saw this as a victory of the Cold War as a justification for American policy since 1945. And Bush was not going to do anything other than support Western reunification of Germany. And that’s the point. The East doesn’t really have a role to play. This isn’t two countries talking equally or even not equally, but at least talking slightly less equally about the next stage. This is not just the Americans, what has said the West victory over the East, which in one way it was, but this is West Germany’s victory over East Germany. And just remember all the history we’ve been doing over the weeks. Germany had only been united by Bismarck in 1871. Before that it was very fractured and after 1945 it was fractured and those fractures still exist between the lander. I may have mentioned before and I meant your apologies for mentioning again, my Prussian friend whose family came to the West from the East in 1945. My Prussian friend who lived in and worked in Bardeen Burke in the south, which is largely Catholic, and she was Protestant Christians Protestant. She once said to me, “I can’t abide these southern Germans. They don’t work hard enough.” And we might say that in Britain or in England about, you know, the north against the south, the south against the north. But it’s usually done with a smile and a joke. But it’s no smile in joke in Germany. These divisions are there. I guess only the British papers carried it outside Germany. But we had photographs at weekend of an ex royal king, well from the Royal Family of Bavaria walking his new wife through the streets of Munich and being with huge crowds as though it was still a monarchy, extraordinary scenes.
East Germany decided that it would, like other Eastern European countries introduced one, would abandon one party rule and hold free multi-party elections. The West German party stood in those elections in the East. Coast party, the Christian Democrats won and part of its platform, of course was reunification. Now reunification is unstoppable, unstoppable. And the CDU, Cole’s party knows it wouldn’t have won in West Germany, but with East Germany and now it’s won in East Germany. It’s clear reunification is the answer for the party. We’ve been having a sort of low key debate in Britain about party before country or country before party. Now the CDU were clearly putting party before country, but on the other hand we’re arguing, they were putting a new country before party. It’s complex. By the way, this government that was then formed in East Germany, it’s spokesperson in what? Is in effect a caretaker government 'cause the East German government elected wants reunification. This caretaker government, like all governments have a spokesperson for them. And the spokesperson for the East German government after the free elections was a 35 year old woman called Angela Merkel. East Germany, this temporary government passed a reunification treaty, which finally ended the division between East and West and a united Germany emerged for the first time since Hitler on the 3rd of October, 1990. And in December, 1990, as I said at the beginning, free elections were held all across Germany and Chancellor Cole won the leadership of a coalition as he had led a coalition before as chancellor of a United Germany, the chancellor of unity. “So William, you’ve stopped your story early, it’s quarter to six, that must be the end. You said that reunification itself wasn’t the end, but surely it’s the end when you’ve had the agreement , the official reunification October, 1919 followed by three elections across the whole of Germany in December 1919, surely actually end.” Well no it isn’t. Because things did fall into place, it’s true.
First of all, there’s an argument, “Should the government sit in Berlin or in Bonn?” There was some opposition in the West to it being Berlin. But if you think about it, there was no real alternative. And so the government met in Berlin. Then there was currency reform before the introduction of the Euro. One East German mark was given parody with one West German mark. In order to pay for that and all the other support that East Germany had to make, there was a 5% tax levy on West German taxpayers that did not go down well in the West. I’ve got a quotation from, I’ve only got two books, you wouldn’t think I could be stupid enough with two books. Start losing them, but I’ve got this one. This is Hawes history of Germany. Again, we’re talking about the cost to West Germany of reunification. And this is a quotation. This is the Federal Office of Political education in Germany writing in 2009. “In 1991 alone, 143 billion Deutschmark, that’s the West, had to be transferred to East Germany to secure income support businesses and improve infrastructure. By 1999, the total amounted to 1,634 trillion marks. And even taking backflows into account, it was 1.2 trillion marked net. The sums were so large at public debt in Germany more than double. This trend from the first years of German unification has not substantially altered to the present day 2009. But what is remarkable by the 2020s is that Germany has largely recovered economically and is moving forward. And although Cole promised this second German economic miracle, although it’s taken longer, it has actually in a sense occurred. Germany is now strong. The whole legal system of West Germany was imposed upon East Germany.
No, no Marxist legal system survived. Other Eastern European countries, elements of Eastern law did apply, but not here. The new unified Germany joins NATO. West Germany had already been a member of NATO and, of course, then East Germany, Unified Germany is a member of NATO and the unified German is a member of the European Union. So politically, the pieces sort of slotted together. But for ordinary Germans in the East, there were some consequences. In 1992, the Stasi records were opened to the public and people discovered who had betrayed them and their findings were grim as I said last week, family, school teachers, school children, all sorts of things. There were 6 million personal records on file, 6 million personal records on file, most of them paper records. Many East Germans lost their jobs because they were basically non jobs. In East Germany, every person had a job, whether it was a non-job or not, they had a job. Now full employment has gone and all their sporting facilities had gone and the things that were free had to be paid for. And the position of women had worsened. It’s not all wonderful. And the West Germans called this Ostalgia. Nostalgia for the Old East. Austin, East nostalgia. And that nostalgia still exists in 2023. But one of the things that happened was the resentment of immigrants. You remember that Germany had been owed a lot to Turkish immigrants and a Turkish workforce. In 1992, there were anti-immigrant riots in the Port of Rostock in East Germany and cause of this anti-immigrant being and because also I think for the nostalgia for the Old East, a new political party of the right was established called Alternative for Germany, which is normally shown as C-f-D, alternative for Germany.
And then, well, when you think about it, quite extraordinary thing happened. And that is to say in 2005, the East German government spokesman right at the end, Angela Merkel becomes Chancellor of the new Germany and East German in the highest positions. Now you have to bear in mind that one of the issues in the reunited Germany was it all the top jobs went to West Germans. There wasn’t a single or isn’t a single still East German general in the Army. And so the story goes on, and I’ll say something more about that, but Angela Merkel became chancellor. She was chancellor for 16 years from 2005 to 2021 and 10 years into office, that is 2015, her approval rating stood at an incredible 75%. That’s like Churchill’s during World War II, 75%. Well, Angela Merkel has now disappeared from the scene and her legacy has become much debated both in Germany and the wider world. And I think we will have to wait for a proper historical judgement to be made on her chancellorship as time passes. To have been in office for 16 years is one achiever. And to have been in East German in that office, which had significant effect that seems to me to have been important, let alone her leadership within the European Union at a time when the French were all over the place. But her popularity waned badly when she opened Germany to refugees. Now one of the big European issues in the 21st centuries refugees, we know this in Britain because the government of the day in Britain has made it a big, big issue of trust in their abilities to do things.
Other people take a very vastly different view than that of the present British government and more a view that would have something in common with Merkel. But I’m not going into the detail. I just want to say very clearly that a refugee problem isn’t simply a German problem and isn’t simply a British problem. And it isn’t actually simply a European problem, as I guess many people listening in the states are going to say, "It’s a problem for us as well.” And there doesn’t appear to be from the West an answer to the refugee problem at the moment. And I’m not talking now about taking Afghani refugees or Syrian refugees or Ukrainian refugees. I’m talking about those who are flooding into Europe from the Sahel in Africa and so on. So we’ve got big issues. Angela Merkel’s view was really quite an extra, or on my book, I’m giving up with myself today. I’m really getting very, very silly here. Angela Merkel took this view and I’m using Hawes’ book. “Some think Merkel calculated that by taking the lead on refugees from the Civil War in Syria, she could see still the more high ground on the issue. Whatever her motivation the effect was to unilaterally declare southeastern Europe, a transit camp for asylum seekers wanting to reach Germany, a country whose smiling leader famously offered them selfies.” It seems clear that Merkel seriously miscalculated how large the numbers would become or how much resistant she would be face she would face from other EU countries. Their Spiegel wrote in 2016, “When Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to the refugees trapped in Budapest last September, she was at the zenith of her power, but in Europe, her austerity demands had turned many countries against her. And here she was imposing her refugee principles, a curious mixture of Protestant Protestantism and German sensibility.
Oh yeah, always in Germany. You can put a knife in on religion between Protestants and Catholics. And she’s from the East and she’s a Protestant. "The price for her policies is not just the rise of a new right wing populous party in Germany and a German society that is more divided and disgruntled than it has been in years. She’s also created a Europe that is no longer united.” Brexit being a case in point and immigration being a major issue and Britain withdrawn from the EU. So judgement on her must be delayed. Now the AfD, the right wing party, the alternative for Germany was a relatively if you can be that, on the right of a centre right conservatism, but it began to move further right. Even towards a neo-Nazi party in Germany, the NPD. And in West Germany there was increasing worry in the rise of popular conservatism or sometimes described as national conservatism with of course the overtones of national socialism and even the neo fascists in the East were winning seats locally. And there was a joke going on in West Germany. Now, the West Germans referred to the East Germans sometimes as sax short for Saxons, and they regarded Saxony as the really Saxony represented to West Germans, the Holland of East Germany. So when they refer to Saxon or Saxony or Saxons, they’re actually referring to East Germany. And the joke that was going round in West Germany around this time went like this, “If Britain or Europe, if Europe can have a Brexit, Britain withdraw near you, why can’t Germany have a saxit? Let’s get rid of Saxon.”
I said before, this is division in Germany of the lander, north and south is an enormous one. And, okay, that’s a joke. And I said that in England we make jokes about Yorkman and they make jokes about Londoners and so on, but it’s deeper in Germany, it doesn’t mean the same as it means in England. And as I’ve said on previous occasions, the end story of Germany, we don’t know because history doesn’t end. And the shift to the far right, particularly with by the AfD, which presents a relatively, relatively democratic face is a danger, is a danger. But Germany faces a threat from the left as well, from the Die Linke party or as it’s very often referred to the left party. This is a quotation from Fisher’s book, “The West on the Brink.” And Fisher writes this, Fisher was a former German foreign secretary. So this is no academic or journalist sounding of the AfD alternative for Germany. “The AfD represents German right wing nationalists, brackets and worse brackets who want to return to the old man in the middle position and forge a closer relationship with Russia.” Now hang on a moment. This is a right wing party wanting a deal with Russia, but then Russia is authoritarian, right? Not authoritarian left today. So it does make sense. “Cooperation between the leading Christian Democrat party, a genuine centre right party and AfD would betray Adena’s legacy and be tantamount to the end of the old West German republic. Meanwhile, there is a similar danger from the other side, the left party, some of whose leading members effectively want the same thing as the AfD, links with Russia.” This is complicated. The world is today complicated. The old language that many of us grew up with no longer applies. We’ve got to learn new words, new language to describe the politics of today. And Fisher goes on to say, “Closer relations with Russia and or no integration with the West. One hopes that we Germans will be spared this tragic future, the future of Germany, Europe, and the West may depend upon it.”
But we don’t know. Now, I thought about a conclusion and the conclusion was written for me. I’m pleased to say by the Economist magazine of this week, published on the 13th of May, and I’m going to read some short extracts. “The man in a lilac jumper is blunt. Why he asked is Germany a vessel of the USA? In reply, Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor sketches a history of a Federal republic patiently adding that the danger it faces right now is not America, but Russia’s war on Ukraine. His conclusion, "We do not take orders, wins plight applause. It may seem odd that 33 years after the Cold War ended, Germany’s leaders should need to persuade a fellow citizen that their country Europe’s weightier by population and GDP is independent. A clue lies in where this exchange happened. In , a small city at the heart of the once vital Cole industry of the proud country of East Germany. Across the five Eastern new states that joined the Western 11 states. In 1990, all too many people still share.” This is last week’s or this week’s economist. “Still share the dark scepticism of the man in the lilac jumper. Despite decades of massive public investment, wrenching demographic change and growing prosperity, that 20% of Germans who live in the East still tend to think differently, act differently and vote differently. Polling by a German research group shows that in early May, earlier this month for the first time, the far right alternative for Deutschland AfD overtook both of German’s traditional centrist rivals to become the most popular party in the East, excluding Berlin. The East is markedly Olga more thinly populated and less diverse. East Germans remain underrepresented in elite professions. There are no East generals in the German army. They account for well below 5% of federal judges or CEOs of German’s top hundred companies.
A 2022 study suggests they hold a minority of leading positions even in the East. Yet as will end. Yet Germany’s two parts are in fact slowly converging. The income gap in particular shrinking helped by big investments. But as jolts such as the war in Ukraine exposed the underlying issues in German society may take yet another generation to close.” History never ends. But my final thought for this talk and this whole series on Germany is not to end with that quotation, but to end with this quotation from James Hawes. It’s very, very short and it’s what I want to leave you with because I can’t do better than this. “There’s no point studying the past unless it sheds some light on the present.” And I will say on the future, which brings me back to Mrs. Thatcher. I’ll leave it there. Thank you so much, all of you for following the course. Although I’m quite happy to talk to myself. My wife accuses me of that all the time. It’s much nicer to know that there are lots of people out there listening to my ravings. I’ll see you all in two weeks time, but I guess I’ve got some questions to answer.
Q&A and Comments:
Yes, Pauline, I said both those things.
Q: “It is not that the consumerism, but the fact that the Germans and East Germany lived under a totalitarian regime?”
A: I think both, to be honest, I think both those things.
Q: “Do you think that the French were worried about another war and couldn’t believe the unite Germany could be democratic?”
A: Yes, that’s what Mrs. Thatcher was clearly saying. She was fearful of that.
Shelly says, “ in Syria seems to show being a hardliner is better than slight reforms of staying in power?” Oh, well that would be a very good way. Shelly, at beginning the essay that I suggested, people might write about having a little reform, but a sad regime will fall in the end.
Q: Rose says, “When one assesses what transpired with Germany and World War II was Margaret that not correct to be reticent?”
A: Well, I think she was, but she didn’t get the zeitgeist of the moment. She didn’t get what people felt. But that’s what statesman does rather than a politician. I am not a huge admirer in Britain of Mrs. Thatcher, I have to say. But I do have enormous respect for her when she ditches the party political cloak and puts on the cloak of statesmanship, and I think in this case, yes, she was right to be reticent. Now, whether in the end, all of this is nonsense, and anyone talking about this in 50 years time wouldn’t begin to say what I’ve said. Well, maybe in 50 years time they’ll say, “Not am I’m saying she was right to say it, but they may be saying she was right.”
And, oh Rose, you’ve gone on. This is a long one. Rose says, “ , had a visit from us, president Reagan, and asked him to visit a military cemetery, Reagan Ronald reads, amongst those German soldiers buried, as it said, at least 50 were SS officers.” Oh, what are my thoughts on that? Diplomacy is diplomacy is my answer, Rose. You do what has to be done. It wouldn’t have been, the Americans wouldn’t have been ignorant of that, but sometimes in diplomacy you have to do things that you wouldn’t otherwise do. If I’ve got a diplomat listening, maybe they put me right.
Q: This is somebody who gives their surname as its MW, must be the first names, MW, initials and Septum. But anyhow, “In the 1920s, there was an active movement destroy the Weimar Republic. Was there a similar German moment movement, I think to destroy democracy, time of unification?”
A: No, there wasn’t, but today is a different matter. Do you remember that mad moment when there was an attempt at a coup when when they put up one of the ex royals and Oh, the whole thing? It was mad, but no, there wasn’t then. But there are certain groups being carefully monitored by internal German intelligence forces as we are hearing, as we are sat here today.
Who says? Michael, “The analogy of removing bricks in the dam wall does not hold up to scientific examination, would actually reduce the pressure.” Oh, Michael, how wonderful. I love that. Oh dear, no dear. You can see that I never did science at all. The zoo person who described, I love that, Michael, that’s fantastic.
The Zoom user says, “The Weissensee accent TV series about life in East Germany.” That’s, that reminds me, there is also, there’s a short six episode series. I think it’s going to a second series on Netflix called, oh Lord, can I remember? Is it Cows Hammerer? Somebody here put me right, which is set up past unification in East Germany, in fact, near Kobos in the mining area and it has nice lit. If you’ve been following this course, you will get all the little bits that most people listening won’t get to, and they complain about not having jobs who used to have them and all of that. The title, it’s gone.
The cracks says, “Jonah, And Alfred in East German system should have been clear years earlier. The very need for the country to go into debt and to actually go into debt should have shown the need for a capital based structure, which in of course, the Marxist doctrine is anathema.” That’s a problem. That is precisely the problem. The Marxist doctrine could not cope with that. Marxist economics couldn’t cope with that. Yet there are still people arguing for Marxist economics. I’m not going to get into an economic argument. If my knowledge of science is zero, my knowledge of economics is much better.
Yeah. Rose, you’re right. “Gorbachev died recently as sad and lonely man, not given the time of day.” Yes, I think he did. I think he, it seemed to me that life went out of him when his wife died. They were very close.
Paul and Patrick. Oh, this sounds interesting. “I was by chance at a medical conference in West Berlin the night the war came down. The morning was greeted by a mixture of shock, excitement and joy. We travelled to checkpoint Charlie and saw waves of traverse being greeted enthusiastically by crowds of West Germans who banged on their roofs.” Actually think their hands went through the roofs .
“Our German colleagues said that they themselves would now be poorer, but unification was what they had always wanted. My Polish, Czech and French colleague, sadly, murmured, here we go again.” Isn’t that interesting? Patrick, that really is a most interesting firsthand experience, which bears out some of the things I’ve been trying to say today.
Q: Clive says, “Do you worry about a future militarization of a nationalised Germany of old?”
A: No, I don’t worry about militarization. In fact, I think we’re along, we are desperately in need of it in terms of NATO. Do I fear a nationalised Germany? Well, this is where the problem begins with language. As I’m saying, the AfD have used the term national conservatives. That term has recently been used by part of the conservative party in Britain. That is worrying. National is a difficult word in today’s political climate to use not least nationalised conservatism, which raises issues of national socialism. Hitler, Nazi. Yes, I do worry about that. Do I think Germany will go to extremes? No more so than France or Britain might go to extremes would be my answer. I think that the democracy is well based. I think the EU is a barrier to the breakdown of democracy. Although you can point to the East and say, “It’s not been much of a barrier in places like Hungary.” Yeah, I can’t do any more than that.
Your land, “I heard a bit of the Berlin War. Got it after a mission to Poland in February, 1990, when my colleagues went to Berlin and came back with a piece of the wall, they helped demolish.” No, I talked about Ronald Reagan last time, Lynn and Rodney and I talked about his speech and the effect that had says thank you with him.
“You have brought back what my late husband and I experienced having been in Heidelberg from 1983 for seven years. Lucky you Heidelberg is a beautiful place. On our return to Brighton, Sussex University, no one wanted to know what we had experienced in Germany. We had so many stories to tell disgraceful.” No, no, I take it that you and your husband, or you or your husband were academics? How extraordinary? And Heidelberg is one of the great mediaeval universities of Europe.
Myrna, “Don’t forget the war was breached the night, 10th, 11th, October Christ on.” Well done, Myrna. I should have said that and did not. You are right. I can’t tell you the extent of people of Jewish origin and the Stasi. Lots of Jews in the East that were left. Remember this is after the Holocaust would’ve got out to the West.
I do not know the, Robert, I’m sorry. I do not know the answer to that question. It is possible that Trudy may know, but my impression is that there would’ve been a relatively small number.
Q: “How smooth did East adoption of the West education system?”
A: Wow, that’s good. Higher education was pretty good. Yes, if we go to primary, then I think they lost out because the East German system was much more efficient at things like reading. The secondary system would had a improved curriculum. Things you weren’t allowed to study. You now could, but there was a loss in there. This betrays my age to it. The East had a much more rigid, that’s the wrong word, a much more structured system than the West. I don’t know, Stuart, whether you are, where you live. If you are living from Britain. The the German system is far superior to ours, but there are things in the Eastern system. I worked for a charity at one point, which was dealing with Russia, not East Germany, and the education system there that we saw was given that it wasn’t politic, well, this was after the fall of , but it looked really good compared to ours. One of the things that they did was to integrate properly, properly students with learning difficulties of one sort or another. Very impressively in the Eastern West.
“Did the armies board a guard yet? They all merged together, but as the article from the Economist showed, they put West Germans in charge, changed the uniforms and so on. I was in Germany last November.” Says, Gloria, “At the hotels, only foreigners worked at the front desk, et cetera.” Well, that’s like Britain.
“Taxi drivers were from Turkey. It was only on the streets that I saw Germans. When I asked directions, they were either too busy or didn’t know.” Well, yes, I think there is, well, the idea of foreigners working, I as taxi drivers and hotel desks is exact. Go go to the Netherlands and there isn’t a Dutch taxi driver outside of Amsterdam Central Station, for example, but you’d be hard pushed. Now, I’m always absolutely shocked if I get into a cab in London and it’s an indigenous Britain who is driving the cab and not someone whose family has more recently arrived in Britain. It’s quite extraordinary. Mind you, if they’re Londoners, I don’t entirely trust them to take me the direct route. Fortunately, Enola rather sharply say, “I don’t think this is the quickest route.” but they always have an answer.
Q: “Did Merkel’s family do under the Nazis?” Did that have anything to do with refugees?
A: I do know. I can’t remember what Merkel’s family did under the Nazis. I’m very sorry. I don’t know.
“I do understand that,” Marilyn, “My Germany will want links with Russian, the Russian sighted a loss of life in the great war and treating the Russian prisoners war must be very deep. Former foreign minister Fisher is entitled to his opinion by the AfD, but he’s of course highly partisan act being firmly from a different political transition, left green.” “The AfD does not appear to be going in anything like a or the Nazi division, in my opinion.” Says, James, there’s simply a right-wing party that isn’t, I’m sorry, but that is not actually, I have to disagree with you James. No, no, it isn’t. There’s antisemitic elements, to start with, let alone other things. It’s, no, it isn’t and there are elements in the AfD which are decidedly neo-Nazi. It, no, I, you are absolutely right about Fisher. You are entitled to your opinion. My opinion differs from yours. I can’t argue with that, James. There we are, we agreed to differ.
Q: “Should it be considered,” says Ralph, “Amazing that an Angela Merkel rose at environment comes such a prominently during Western democracy. Did she have any record of the Stasi?”
A: I can’t answer that question either, but no, no, it isn’t particularly because she was one of those who was, who never accepted Marxism. She wasn’t a Marxist who suddenly had what I would say as a Christian, a road to Damascus conversion. She didn’t have that. She was genuinely democratic living in an autocratic country, but that she was East German and grow to that right, is highly spicy.
Q: “Why should we be surprised,” says Shelly, “Like some in Germany, wanting to go back to government by regional areas when Britain is devolving, I’m an American?”
A: Well, this is a very interesting question and whether the day, the time of the nation state is passed, I’m interested, you should say, because you’re an American, you can say that about Britain and Germany, but from Britain’s point of view, it looks as though America might well split. I don’t think America as an empire can continue as it is. Remember how, what is California in terms of international status economically? It’s high up in the list. So I’m just being naughty now, Shelly. But I think the wider point is that it may be that law that, that the nation state concept is one that may be changing. It’s changing maybe in Britain, but not necessarily in England. It’s changing as regards Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. But in Britain, well, we might fragment, we might, I don’t see that happening. We may devolve more power, but that mean we have too much, I don’t know about anybody else in any other country or living in, but I think there’s too much power in government’s hands, national and local, that they don’t really need to have. In Britain’s case, we lost an empire, but increase the number of MPs and the members of the house of lots and nonsense and they have to find something to do. Oh look, education, we honour education, let’s change the system again and again and again. Whereas before they’ve been worried about the budget in India.
Oh, you’ve got me on the raw side there, Shelly. Your point is an extremely good one, ‘cause you’ve got me going.
Q: “Should Britain,” says Marcus, “Not have stayed in EU?”
A: Marcus that is why I voted to stay. I didn’t vote on economic grounds. I didn’t vote on international grounds. I voted on the grounds what was best for Britain. And I believe that what was best for Britain was the European Alliance, which is represented by the EU. And undoubtedly we could balance Germany. But actually my view would be that a German, an Anglo German alliance is a more natural one than a Franco German alliance. It it’s France that’s the problem rather than Germany. We could argue that. That’s a really interesting Marcus, that’s really a good question.
Susan asks, “I asked the Mayor of Berlin why they took the war down on . He said they never thought about it.” And that will be true.
Nina, “Putin’s position with the Stasi early on must have shaped what he became.” Yes, you’re right Nina, because Putin served in East Germany for the KGB and never had big links with the Stasi. And I think that that did have an impact. He also married a woman, his wife now their divorce, who was from Kaliningrad. That little bit of Russia that lies inside the EU. Kaliningrad, formally Kaliningrad, which is formerly Konigsberg. His wife came from Kaliningrad, but of course he doesn’t have a wife now. He has this, we won’t go there. It’s also to sort it.
I think I’ve come to the end of the questions and thank you so much for all the questions you’ve asked, which have put me on my, well, I was going to say, put me on my metal, showed up my many deficiencies. Not least that I don’t know anything about science tonight. That was wonderful, I loved that.
Michael, that was such a wonderful comment. So, all I need to say now is thank you very much for joining me. I hope you’ll join me in Victorian Britain and there will be a quite a different topic each week. It will not be chronological, it’ll be a different subject and I hope some of the subjects will really engage you as individuals, and others you’ll give a try to because you enjoyed another topic and see if you can learn something that perhaps you don’t know.
Thanks ever so much. Now I shall spend my holiday preparing my book. No, I’m . See you, bye.