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progress with rapt attention. Will they become independent or second–
class citizens in the new, unified Germany? How the East Germans fare in
the capitalist shock therapy they are now receiving will be a telling
omen for us. After all , they are now part of the much coveted fold, en–
joying not on ly the relative confide nce of the thirty-five countries of
Europe - the super- continent that, broadly conceived, includes both
Siberia and North America, reaching as it does from one coast of the
Pacific to the other rather than merely from the Atlantic to the Urals -
but also a certain intimate advantage vis-a-vis the old-boy networks of
NATO and the European Community.
East German identity - if there ever was one - seems from the out–
side to have given way. But can those forty-five years be forgotten like
the twelve that preceded them? Perhaps forgetting has become expedient
aga1l1.
Germans living east of the Elbe seem from the outside to have placed
themselves totally in the hands of Germans living west of the Elbe. Not
on ly are their machines run down; they themselves are run down, their
self-image impaired. Hard as it is to accept, liberation and collective self–
deprecation can go hand in hand .
Hungarians, Poles, and Czechs have no rich Western uncle, but they
do have a millenium of history in whic h communism was but a brief
chapter. True, they played their part, but they overcame it as Hungarians,
Poles, and Czechs and thus emerged with their self-identity in tact. The
Germans' dilemma, as I see it, is whether to reject communism as an
ali en construct and claim it did not happen to them or to accept it as a
part of German history. The East Germans played their communist roles
with no less devotion than the East Europeans, and the on ly way of
proving that West Germans would not have done the same is to prove
that the people living on the even-numbered side of the streets separated
by the Wall differed radically in character from the people living on the
odd-numbered side.
Communism, like national socialism, is a part of German history .
Jettisoning such lengthy chapters from a tradition is psychologically un–
sound. During the seventies and eighties my impress ion was that the
Germans had done more to confro nt their World War
II
past than the
Hungarians, a situ ation connected with - among other things - the
Germans having played a more active role, the Hungarians a more ac–
quiescent role in the events. Last year a number of German journalists
asked me whether I feared them, meaning the new en larged Germany.
0,
I said. Germany may be powerful, but each individual German is as
much the little man as any other mortal.
