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—— ON THIS DAY ——
OCTOBER 3, 1990
Berlin, Germany
36 years ago
German reunification, completed on October 3, 1990, when the German Democratic Republic acceded to the Federal Republic of Germany and the postwar division of the country came to an end.
At midnight on October 3, 1990, a huge black, red, and gold flag was raised in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin while a crowd of several hundred thousand cheered and fireworks went up over the Brandenburg Gate. At that moment the German Democratic Republic, the communist state founded in the Soviet occupation zone in 1949, legally ceased to exist. Its territory and its sixteen million citizens became part of the Federal Republic of Germany. The division of the country, which most Germans had assumed would outlast them, was over.
The speed astonished everyone, including the people who brought it about. At the start of 1989, East Germany had been one of the most tightly controlled states in the Soviet bloc, with a fortified border and a secret police force, the Stasi, that kept files on millions of its own citizens. By the autumn of that year the state was coming apart from below.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
The Peaceful Revolution of 1989, the wave of mass demonstrations in Leipzig, East Berlin, and other cities that brought down the East German government without violence.
Two pressures broke the regime. When Hungary opened its border with Austria in the summer of 1989, tens of thousands of East Germans fled west through the gap. At the same time, weekly Monday demonstrations that had begun with prayers at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig swelled to hundreds of thousands of marchers chanting 'We are the people.' Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear that Soviet tanks would not intervene. On November 9, a fumbled announcement at a press conference sent crowds to the Berlin Wall checkpoints, and overwhelmed guards opened the gates.
Within weeks the chant in Leipzig had changed to 'We are one people.' West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl seized the moment with a ten-point plan for unity. East Germany held its first free election in March 1990, and voters backed the parties promising the fastest route to unification. The West German mark replaced the East German currency on July 1. The remaining obstacle was international: the four wartime Allies still held formal rights over Germany. The Two Plus Four Treaty, signed in Moscow on September 12, settled the borders, confirmed the united country's membership in NATO, and restored full sovereignty.
Unity proved harder than unification. Much of East German industry collapsed when exposed to western competition, unemployment soared, and transfers from west to east have since run to around two trillion euros. Differences in wages, wealth, and voting patterns between the two halves remain visible on any map of the country. Even so, the essential fact stands. A nuclear-armed frontier through the middle of Europe was dismantled by demonstrators carrying candles, and October 3 is now the German national holiday.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
Reunification ended the central division of the Cold War. Germany had been the front line between East and West for four decades. Its peaceful unification marked the effective end of the postwar order in Europe and came a little over a year before the Soviet Union itself dissolved.
It was achieved without bloodshed. A heavily armed police state gave way to unarmed crowds, and the four former occupying powers negotiated their own departure. Peaceful transfers of power on that scale are rare enough to deserve study.
It created the dominant power of modern Europe. A united Germany of more than eighty million people became the largest economy on the continent and the anchor of the European Union and the euro, which was in part the price France asked for accepting German unity.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
At midnight on October 3, 1990, East Germany vanished from the map and its people became citizens of a single German state. It had taken less than a year from the first mass marches in Leipzig. Thirty-six years on, the seams still show, but the country that was divided by concrete and barbed wire is one.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
“Now what belongs together will grow together.”
— Willy Brandt, former West German Chancellor, Berlin, November 10, 1989
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about German reunification, the Peaceful Revolution in East Germany, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Two Plus Four Treaty?
