different circumstances, before unification, to
come back to the land of their great-great-
grandfathers. During 1990 and 1991 alone,
almost three-quarters of a million took advantage
of this opportunity. One of the consequences
of recession and of pressure to enter the West was
that efforts to halt the flow began to play an
increasingly important role in German and in
West European politics.
Former citizens of the DDR in the 1990s had
to make many painful adjustments before they
could expect living standards comparable with
those in the West. Some lessons were psycholog-
ical, such as not waiting to be told what to do
but taking the initiative; others were more prac-
tical, such as adapting to the needs of the market,
working effectively to raise productivity and learn-
ing the skills of market management. Another
hurdle was to overcome the corruption of the
past, the evidence of which lay in twelve miles of
files in the former secret police (Stasi) archives.
These preserved denunciations by tens of thou-
sands of informants who had reported on their
neighbours, employers, employees, teachers and
students. It was not easy to accept that the old
system could not be divided into the good (such
as the guarantee of employment) and the bad
(such as the Berlin Wall), that a government and
society have to be judged as a whole. It was dif-
ficult for East Germans not to be resentful of the
West Germans who came over to patronise them
and fill the best managerial posts; and it was
hard for them to have to wait for an indefinite
number of years for the promised land of plenty.
Meanwhile in West Germany there was resent-
ment about the sacrifices necessitated by the
transfer of money to the east, the higher taxes and
high interest rates. The East Germans were
blamed for their own plight, for their unrealistic
expectations of achieving overnight what had
taken the West Germans decades to accomplish.
The shock to the economic system of pro-
viding aid for 17 million East Germans was felt
throughout Europe. High interest rates slowed
down hopes of recovery in France, Britain and the
rest of the European Community. Germany could
no longer act as the powerhouse of trade and lift
the Community out of recession. Unemployment
in the Community was running at around 10 per
cent and in some countries was even higher in- Europe in the early 1990s was mired in
recession, instead of enjoying the expected ‘peace
dividend’ from the collapse of communism. The
former Soviet Union stood on the edge of an eco-
nomic abyss. The enormous German effort to
transform had begun to show results. Islands of
industrial revival as around Dresden are develop-
ing, but much of the eastern Länderare in a sorry
state, the young and enterprising moving west.
The east and west remain economically, socially,
psychologically divided.
For two generations Germany’s formula for pros-
perity and stability has been to follow consensual
policies between three partners – the state, the
employer and the employee. Deliberately revers-
ing the structure of the Nazi state with its slogan,
‘one country, one people, one leader’, post-war
Germany ensured that decision-making was dis-
tributed by a federal structure of checks and
balances. This has made it difficult to change
fundamental polices such as rigid labour laws and
generous state benefits, which place heavy bur-
dens on employers and tax-payers. Labour became
too expensive, so foreign workers were brought in
legally or on the black economy, investment in
technology to replace labour was increased, and
products were manufactured outside Germany; all
these factors drove unemployment up to the high-
est levels since the 1950s. In 1997 the first signs
of recovery became apparent. An artificially low
rate of exchange favouring exports helped German
industry to increase productivity, but even then
employment was slow to pick up. The bankrupt
eastern Länderof the former German Demo-
cratic Republic were another German drain on
resources. Despite the transfer of over DM900 bil-
lion of West German tax-payers’ money there are
still not enough modern factories and services to
provide work; unemployment is even higher in the
east than in western Germany, with more than
one in seven out of work. Kohl’s vision of ‘flour-
ishing landscapes’ proved to be a sad delusion; the
gap between east and west will not be closed until
well into the new millennium. In the face of all
these problems, German democracy has remained