East Germany: No Longer If But When

By JOHN BORRELL VIENNA

The minute the ban was lifted, they were on the move again. At midnight last Tuesday East Germans regained the right to travel to Czechoslovakia that had been taken from them a month ago. Within days more than 8,000 had crossed the border, and by the weekend Czechoslovakia flung open its Western border to let the growing flood pass unhindered into West Germany. Those who stayed behind stepped up the mass demonstrations for reform that have dogged President Egon Krenz from the moment he took office three weeks ago. Hundreds of thousands marched through East Berlin on Saturday calling for change. In many major cities tens of thousands attended open-air meetings with government and party leaders to vent their complaints and demands. In Moscow Krenz sought to cool the reform fever raging through his country by paying polite compliments to the perestroika that East German leaders had formerly held in contempt. The Soviet experiments could "teach us a great deal," he said after being closeted for three hours with Mikhail Gorbachev. "We are ready to put the vanguard experience to use."

If true, that is a heady promise for a country that barely a month ago still cowered under one of the most monolithic and authoritarian of Communist regimes. The transformation east of the Wall has already been dramatic, indeed incredible: Who could have imagined East Berlin's Communist Party boss, mayor and police chief standing on the steps of city hall for five hours, listening patiently to criticisms that would once have been considered virtually treasonable?

Countless citizens harbored continuing doubts that East Germany would really change: many who fled last week said they had no faith Krenz would fulfill his pledges. But change -- radical change, unimaginable change -- is coming to East Germany one way or another, and some think it will not stop until it has redrawn the boundaries of the country. The tide of events is washing away leaders and eroding the ideology of a rigidly orthodox state. Swept away too are many of the old certainties that have given shape and substance to the division of Europe settled at Yalta. Among them is the central and long- standing assumption, in Moscow as well as in the West, that two Germanys are a long-term if not permanent feature of Europe's political landscape.

Krenz seems determined to keep that, at least, true. He fired five Politburo members and begged those who "think about emigrating" to give him a chance. "Put trust in our policy of renewal," advised Krenz, promising a "far- reaching program" to change the constitution, the economy and the education system. Yet he defined perestroika merely as something to "make socialism more attractive." For him, Soviet-style reform seemed not so much a welcome formula for change as a last-ditch effort to prop up the East German system before the rift between the party and society grows too wide to bridge. He flatly rejected any suggestion that East Germany might be merging into the West. "The question is not on the table," he said. "Socialism and capitalism have never existed together on German soil."

Yet Gorbachev, in particular, can have little confidence that such a view is still justified: the Soviet Union is not in any better position to control events in East Germany than the U.S. is to set West Germany's agenda. "The German question has already slipped quietly out of the Soviet grasp," says Hans-Heino Kopietz, a senior analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "It will now be decided by Germans."

The first steps in that direction are already being taken. Just two days before Krenz's visit to Moscow, as many as 300,000 people turned out on a wet and windy evening in Leipzig to chant "We are the people, we are the people," mocking the Communist Party's claims to represent them.

Reunification is not the word most on the lips of the Leipzig protesters. Yet their demands for political and economic liberalization, if realized, would create a new East Germany -- and a new German-German relationship. Were the Communist Party to opt for democratization, something it has so far rejected, the issue of reunification would inevitably follow, as the raison d'etre for a separate state crumbled away. If the party resists, then widespread unrest and the continued flight of discontented citizens would further discredit Communism. "Whatever happens, the German question is now much closer to being posed seriously than it was even a few months ago," says a senior U.S. diplomat in Europe.

Despite their different politics, Germans on both sides of the wall are bound together by a common history, culture and language. For many of Germany's neighbors, that joint heritage is cause enough for apprehension, as the disintegration of the Soviet Union's empire raises the prospect of an entirely new order in Europe. From the Teutonic Knights in Poland in the 13th century, through Frederick the Great, Bismarck, and Hitler just half a century ago, German economic power and military prowess have been harnessed for the purpose of conquest and subjugation. Understandably, there is little enthusiasm in the region for any form of German reunification, whether confederation or full integration. "History doesn't necessarily repeat itself, and there are no reasons to anticipate the emergence of a new belligerent Germany," says Professor Adam Bromke of the Polish Academy of Sciences. "But it is difficult to forget the past, especially the methodical, calculated and systematic genocide of the last war."

Aware of those concerns, many West Germans believe the question of unity can only be resolved in a larger forum. "Reunification is something that cannot be done against the will of the rest of the world," says Burkhard Dobiey, a senior policymaker at the West German Ministry for Intra-German Relations. "It can only be done within the European framework -- not against Europe."

The trouble is that Europe, East or West, has few ideas, let alone answers, about how historical fears might be reconciled with a democratic German decision to reunite. The European powers and the U.S. may not like the idea of a single Germany with 78 million citizens in the heart of Europe. But they have paid lip service to the proposition since World War II, so they are hardly in a position to object if it emerged as the freely chosen will of a divided people.

Even the Soviet Union, perhaps the most obsessed of all by historical security considerations, has fewer options than it used to in dealing with reunification. But the Soviet leader may be less worried about losing East Germany as an ally than anyone thinks if, in giving it up, he manages to pry the U.S. out of Europe. Ever since Stalin, the U.S.S.R. has aimed at the domination of Europe and the maintenance of a security zone around the Soviet heartland. For most of the postwar period, the Soviets pursued those goals by raw military power and ideological control. Both have slipped as a series of military stalemates and the example of failed economies under police-state oppression led restless East bloc nations to turn westward for inspiration.

Gorbachev's genius may be to recognize that he can achieve the old ends by different means. The demilitarization and economic liberalization of Eastern Europe, even up to and including a reunified Germany, might well result in the kind of safe, neutralized continent Moscow has long sought. The U.S. role would wither, and the Soviet Union, the largest land power, would be free to dominate. Josef Joffe, foreign editor of the Munich newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, argues that decay of the East bloc is not harmful to the Soviet Union as long as it does not proceed more quickly than the loosening of the transatlantic tie in the West. "If Gorbachev can pull this off," he says, "the rewards will be handsome: maximal Soviet influence in Europe, which will more than compensate for partial loss of control in the eastern half."

Germany itself might challenge that. Even without reunification or major changes in the present alliance system, West Germany is set to become the overwhelming economic power of Middle Europe. It is already the most important Western trading partner of all seven Warsaw Pact countries. And the slow disintegration of Comecon, the Moscow-based council that brokers East bloc trade, coupled with Eastern Europe's desperate need for capital and expertise, will open up enormous new economic opportunities that West Germany is poised -- financially, geographically and politically -- to exploit. "Between the two superpowers, there shall be a union of European states from Poland to Portugal, with a united Germany in the middle of it," said Alfred Dregger, leader of West Germany's conservative parliamentary majority.

Such predictions bestir fears that a reunited Germany will also be a restless one, eager to reclaim former territory, one of many touchy issues that will be raised as the old order in Europe breaks down. Formal reunification may still be some way off. But each demonstration, each improvised banner calling for freedom and each East German who turns up seeking asylum at the West German embassy in Prague is already bringing a divided nation closer together.

With reporting by James O. Jackson/Bonn