World Notes Germany

Everyone knows the jokes about Bonn: it is the Bundesdorf, the federal village, with the same population as a Chicago cemetery and half the animation. For 42 years, pending unification, it has been only the "provisional capital." The treaty that reunited the country last year named Berlin the capital.

But that did not settle the matter. A heated nationwide argument broke out about actually moving the government and its ministries from the somnolent little town on the Rhine -- whose only other major industry is a candy factory -- to the metropolis 375 miles farther east. In last week's deciding debate in the Bundestag, much of the discussion was about symbolism: Westward-facing Bonn vs. Berlin's periods of imperialism and Nazism. In the end, the issue turned on the promise to former East Germans that the capital would change. Berlin won the close vote, 338 to 320.

The decision still provides for a partial compromise. The Chancellor's office, the Bundestag and key officials in the ministries will go to Berlin, but thousands of bureaucrats are to remain in Bonn. The transfer, which will cost more than $30 billion, will take 10 to 12 years.