German Unification and the Union of Europe

On October 3, 1990, the German Democratic Republic dissolved into West Germany accompanied by formal ceremony and joyous celebration. In the same moment, the new territories joined the European Community, an event that passed with little fanfare or controversy even though something extraordinary had taken place. German unification, experienced and observed with immense hope by some and visceral unease by others, had occurred not against but within Europe, indeed for Europe: The Community channeled the unification process as unification in turn imparted new impulses to integration. Unification and union combined to produce an equilibration of political momentum.

To many observers, these events confirmed elemental postwar continuities. For forty-five years after the end of World War II, West Germany's relationship to Europe resembled a virtuous circle in stable equilibrium: the Federal Republic drew economic prosperity and political legitimacy from its membership in a larger European project, which in turn gained strength from Germany's constructive engagement on the continent. The contrast with prewar Europe could not have been more stark.

And yet there is good reason to peer more closely into this comfortable and still intact fit between Germany and Europe, if only because so much of the postwar landscape has changed since the collapse of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. Internationally, Cold War constraints on German foreign policy vanished with astonishing rapidity.