186 Habermas: An intellectual biography
Habermas believed that East Germany should have a founding
constitutional moment to compensate for West Germany’s lack of
one. In 1949, there had been no constitution-giving assembly but
rather a parliamentary council elected by the regional parliaments.
The council deliberated under Konrad Adenauer’s chairmanship
and submitted its draft constitution to the Allied military governors
for approval. “I do not undervalue the weight of reasons for conserv-
ing our constitution,” he explained, but practical considerations for
“stability” could not substitute for normative considerations.^61 He
thought that a founding moment would help to constitute a future
collective memory for all Germans. A founding act – of “conscious
will and decision” – would form a historical event around which
the republican self-understanding of future generations could crys-
tallize.^62 Habermas appears to have been at least as concerned that
future generations have a coherent memory of a founding moment
as that the current generation experience it.
Habermas therefore sided with the group of professional jurists
who advocated a new constitution-giving assembly. He especially
admired the efforts of the “Round Table,” advised by Preuss. But
their work was outpaced by the Christian Democratic Union’s
(CDU’s) effectiveness in winning over East Germany to its plan
for quick reunification. By the end of September 1989, Chancellor
Helmut Kohl had seized the initiative with his “Ten Point Program”
for reunification. New elections to the East German Parliament
(Volk skam me r) were set for March 18, 1990. The Western parties
moved into the East and mobilized voters. The CDU-allied party,
“Alliance for Germany,” with Lothar de Mazière at its head, won the
elections with 48 percent of the popular vote. In April, de Mazière
announced that the East would seek to join the Federal Republic
under Article 23, the option for “accession” – thereby rejecting the
alternative constitutional route to German reunification, Article
146, which mandated a new constitution-giving assembly. On
July 1,1990, monetary union was established; on August 23, the
Volk skam me r voted to accede to the Federal Republic of Germany.
Before 1989, constitutional lawyers and politicians were nearly
unanimous that reunification would be achieved by means of
Article 146 and that a new constitution would be required. Article(^61) Ibid., 216.
(^62) Ibid., 218.