Winard Gellner, John D. Robertson, eds. The Berlin Republic: German Unification and a Decade of Changes. London and Portland: Frank Cass, 2003. 262 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7146-8328-7.

Reviewed by Georg Menz (Goldsmiths College, University of London)
Published on H-German (June, 2004)

In November 1989, I tuned into West German radio station Hessen Drei. Rather than the expected dose of U.S. pop music, I was treated to an offensively poor rendition of "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit." Out-of-tune, out-of-synch and completely out of place, performed by what sounded like a group of well inebriated lunatics, it sounded so much like a satire of the real thing that I expected it to be just that, possibly performed by a punk band.

But it was not.

It was Helmut Kohl and an assembly of West German politicians singing outside the city hall of West Berlin in Schöneberg, interrupted by cheers and jeers from the audience, mainly the latter. Also present was Willy Brandt, mayor of West Berlin in 1963, when Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech on that very square. The former mayor enthused, "Jetzt wächst zusammen, was zusammen gehört."

Nearly fifteen years later, a plethora of academic literature[1] seeks to examine just how close these two Germanies have indeed grown together. Unlike other studies, this volume is more academic in terms of its approach, the composition of its authors, and its target audience. It is also a well-executed effort, though it falls far short from answering the ambitious array of questions it purports to address in the introduction. What it can provide, despite this shortcoming, is a serious exercise in stock-taking of German unification fifteen years later.

The book casts some doubt on early predictions that Germany would indeed unite and grow together relatively rapidly and seamlessly. In fact, the first four chapters provide ample evidence of a resilient two-tier division in public opinion, political culture, and identity. However, an obvious rejoinder that is not addressed in these pages is that the abolition of the Mauer in den Koepfen cannot be expected to be completed in less than twenty years. More importantly, however, is the extent of distinct regional identity that has always characterized German politics. In 1990, Germany might have been united, but not re-unified, since the current borders of Germany have no exact historical precedent. Historically, a politically united Germany is the exception, rather than the rule. Why should we expect (much less hope for) one single political culture? Even cushy corporatist West Germany contained significant regional variety between the larger and smaller Laender and the conservative South and the progressive North. The extent to which the new Laender maintain a distinct regional identity despite the wholesale transfer of Western institutions and the thorough delegitimation of all things Eastern should thus come as little surprise. What is more interesting is just how little impact unification has had on the political culture of the West. The PDS may have established itself as a regional force to be reckoned with, despite its largely confused sense of political identity, but its impact in the West has been marginal, offering a home to a few on the far left. For most Wessis, Magdeburg is still more foreign than Mallorca. Thomas Saalfeld's chapter on changes (or the lack thereof) in German party politics draws a relatively stable picture in the West, despite perhaps slightly more volatility, more de-alignment, and less stable party milieus. If anything, these syndromes are even more pronounced in the East, where membership in political parties is low, voter volatility high. Moreover, coalition governments of the kind emerge that would do more than just raise eyebrows in the West.

Not all is well with Modell Deutschland. Much of what used to set the organized Rhineland model apart from liberal Anglo-Saxon varieties of capitalism has undergone dramatic change: decreasing union density, especially in the East; businesses more willing to outsource production to Eastern Europe; the growing importance of the stock exchange as a means of finance; and the Schroeder government's relentless attempts to portray cuts to the welfare system as necessary, nay inevitable. Michael Muenter and Roland Sturm chronicle the economic aspects of unification, but they seem to be more willing to pass harsh sentences onto the trade unions for seeking wage increases for their members than make the obvious connections between the lies, conceit, and bungled economic policy that was unification and the consequent problems that behexed Germany's macro-economy in the 1990s. Given Kohl's sagging electoral fortunes, his government was prepared to promise voters everything they wanted to hear in 1990: no new taxes for the West and rising living standards and the infamous "blooming landscapes" for the East. The only thing that is blooming in the East these days is unemployment, as Muenter and Sturm document. Effective de-industrialization has hit the East, not only as a result of inflated wage demands as the authors claim, but also as an outcome of corporate strategies by Western companies that bought up their Eastern competitors for pennies during the early 1990s free-for-all privatization rounds. Now that these Eastern companies have been closed down and a whole generation of workers has been sent into early retirement or onto welfare benefits, the obvious drain on the welfare state this sort of policy produces is portrayed by Schroederite pundits as proof positive that the German welfare state is in need of reform. The contributors fall short of pointing to some of these uncomfortable correlations. Nevertheless, their chapter remains empirically astute.

The same cannot be said about Stefan Schirm's chapter. The author purports to analyse why Germany has failed to succumb to the seemingly irresistible pressures of "the market" or "globalization" and to embrace Thatcherism. Regardless of the normative stance underlying this analysis, it is also riddled with inaccuracies. It ignores much of the recent theoretical advances in the comparative political economy literature and leaves us with odd conclusions. The author claims that Germany did not follow a full-fledged neoliberal strategy because of the strength of neocorporatist policy networks, especially a trade unions. Yet, he ignores the possibility of unions themselves accepting a junior role in neoliberal welfare state cuts, as happened in the very same Dutch and Danish cases the author references. Likewise, the lack of legitimizing discourse is seen as a contributing factor, akin to Vivien Schmidt's argument (2002).[2] But German business, their think tanks, and neoliberal politicians and academics alike have spent the past few years blaming Germany's lack of competitiveness on its decent wage levels and welfare spending. This discourse has been around for nearly a decade but has, so far, failed to sway the majority. Meanwhile, the so-called Dutch model, enthusiastically referred to by the author, in which welfare recipients are made to sweep the streets so as to "earn" their pitiful benefits and demonstrate solidarity (with whom?) is quickly unraveling. Despite past successes in hiding unemployment by encouraging early retirement, counting hourly employees as bona fide new members of the labor force, and artificially hyped domestic consumption through house price inflation, the so-called polder modell is sinking faster than you can say "Pim Fortuyn".

What does set the Berlin Republic apart from the more modest Bonn outfit, to say nothing of its poor relative in East Berlin, is a certain delusional sense of grandeur in its foreign policy. All too suddenly, German participation in military missions far beyond NATO's original remit is no longer a taboo issue. Instead, it has become common currency. This new sense of self-confidence comes in quite handy when faced with a Big Brother in Washington that makes the Reagan administration look well-behaved, sane, and reasonable by comparison. However, Berlin's reluctance to get entangled in Bush's oil crusades is not so much a display of pacifism as of plain common sense. Franz-Josef Meier's attempts to chronicle continuity and change in German foreign policy. United Germany remains wedded to Adenauer's policy coordinates: Westbindung, European integration, NATO membership, rapprochement and partnership with Paris, but not at the expense of a close relationship with the United States. However, Meiers's account of just how German foreign policy is responding to changes within the EU and NATO is not as detailed, in-depth or critical as it could be. The Chirac-Schroeder era has precipitated the Franco-German couple's midlife crisis, not least due to the distinct visions of the future shape of the EU. De Gaulle's vision of an Europe des patries cannot easily be reconciled with Joschka Fischer's federalist project. Likewise, NATO has been re-invented to help address whatever drummed-up security threat of the month there may be. Along with its eastward expansion, just up to the suburbs of St. Petersburg, the implication is that this is a fundamentally different animal from the anti-Communist club of the 1950s. One of Meiers's shortcomings is that the chapter takes concepts such as "new international responsibilities" (p. 214) at face value, rather than ideological constructs. This may be the result of the author's political leanings, leading him to posit that Germany's "reputation as reliable and predictable partner [sic] depends on its indispensable contribution" (p. 214) to these re-defined military institutions. Some may beg to differ.

In sum, this is a well-executed, if not particularly adventurous or ambitious exercise in policy analysis fifteen years after German unification promised or threatened to transform the country internally and to recast fundamentally the European landscape. Whilst the authors find more continuity than change within the country, they unearth a continuing significant divergence in terms of the two Germanies' political culture.

Note

[1]. Menz, Georg, "Review of Joerg Leonhard and Lothar Funk, eds., Ten Years of German Unification: Transfer, Transformation, Incorporation?," H-German, H-Net Reviews, June, 2003. URL: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=87651057898240 ; Menz, Georg, "Review of Dieter Dettke, ed., The Spirit of the Berlin Republic," H-German, H-Net Reviews, January, 2004. URL: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=168551075252748.

[2]. Schmidt, Vivien A, The Future of European Capitalisms (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

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Citation: Georg Menz. Review of Gellner, Winard; Robertson, John D., eds., The Berlin Republic: German Unification and a Decade of Changes. H-German, H-Net Reviews. June, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9434

Copyright © 2004 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.