Auf dem Wege zum und im Epochenjahr 1989: Oskar-Halecki Vorlesung 2009 by Hans-Dietrich Genscher (review)

Hans-Dietrich Genscher is one of the major figures of postwar German political history. A member of the German Bundestag for thirty-eight years (1965-1998), he also served as minister of the interior from 1969-1974. Most notably, he was foreign minister of West Germany for a total of eighteen years (1974-1992). His party, the Liberals, played kingmakers throughout the period, swinging their support between the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats. Genscher's greatest achievement, together with Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was to realize the political reunification of Germany. In November 2009, on the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall, the University of Leipzig invited Genscher to deliver the Oskar Halecki Memorial Lecture. Halecki, born in Vienna but of Polish citizenship, was a leading scholar of Polish and Eastern European history. Genscher used this opportunity to reminisce about Cold War history and talk about his personal involvement in 1989. The lecture has now been published in a handsome booklet printed by the University of Leipzig Press.

The most interesting part of his formal speech focuses on the question of what kind of political order would follow the collapse of the Cold War order. The key question, he asks, is whether there would be a unipolar world focused on the United States, "oder eine multipolare Welt, in der Staaten wie Indien, China, Brasilien und andere regionale Zusammenschlüsse wie Mercosur in Lateinamerika, wie die Asean-Staaten in Südostasien aber auch die Staaten Afrikas als neue Kraftzentren zur Geltung kommen" (18). Although he remains too much of a diplomat to say so bluntly, Genscher leaves the strong impression that he would have preferred the latter option to the American dominance of the post-Cold War era. His subsequent criticism of the United States in general, and of the George W. Bush administration in particular, only intensifies this impression.

The booklet includes an interesting postscript that summarizes the question-and-answer period that took place after the lecture. Genscher was more specific in the discussion than during the formal lecture. For example, he contrasts the reactions of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand to the question of German unification. While Thatcher was irrevocably opposed, "Mitterrand war . . . nicht gegen die deutsche Vereinigung, aber Mitterrand war dafür, dass der deutsche Vereinigungsprozess, der die Ost-West-Spannungen beseitigte, nicht neue Spannungen hervorruft, die letzlich dazu hätten führen können, dass Deutschland in Europa neue Machtbestrebungen entwickeln würde" (23).

He concludes with his memories of helping East German refugees who had fled to the West Germany embassy in Prague in hope of getting to the West. With the help of others, he arranged for the refugees to travel on sealed trains from the Prague embassy back through East Germany and finally to the West. Because the refugees were understandably worried about traveling through East Germany, Genscher reassured them by pledging to assume "die persönliche Verantwortung dafür, dass Ihnen nichts geschehen wird" (30). Given the fact that he could not control the actions of the East Germans, he explains how relieved he was when the trains did, in fact, arrive in West Germany without incident.

In short, this brief booklet is an interesting item for specialists on German unification, who will welcome another avenue into Genscher's thinking—especially given the fact that the German Foreign Ministry has released very few primary source materials related to the unification process (apart from a recent exception to mark the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the Wall). In particular, his comments in the final paragraph provide an interesting take on the significance of the emigration to Prague, a key link in the chain of events that ended the division of Europe.