United Germany: Debating Processes and Prospects ed. by Konrad H. Jarausch (review)

This well-conceptualized, informative volume offers an overview of the conflicting assessments of “united Germany” that fuel ongoing debates about reunification. The book addresses five themes: political transition, economic crisis, gender relations and feminism, East German literature, and foreign policy. Jarausch introduces the collection of articles with a masterful and succinct summary of perceptions of German democracy, capitalism, society, culture, and international relations since 1990. Each theme is discussed in three chapters, written, respectively, from a western, an eastern, and an American perspective. As Jarausch notes in his preface, the pattern of academic opinion is typically (but not always) characterized by eastern skepticism, western optimism, and an American balancing act.

The process of knitting together the political and social worlds of populations that lived in different systems for four decades has been much more difficult than assumed in 1989–1990. The “Ostalgie” of easterners is well-known. In fact, “Westalgie,” a term coined by Klaus Schroeder, is just as pronounced, the easterner Heinrich Bortfeldt reminds us in his contribution on political processes. The contrast between economic expectations and consequences and the asymmetry of east-west power relations have fostered dissatisfaction. The Federal Republic encompasses, Bortfeldt concludes, two “partial societies” (60). The westerner Gero Neugebauer acknowledges the rocky course of support for democracy among easterners. He finds a sign of convergence, however, in the emergence of a national five-party political system that includes the Left Party. Helga Welsh usefully reminds readers that Germany is not the “singular case” (66) that the discourse surrounding reunification often presents it to be. Other countries too were divided by the Cold War, made the transition from communism to capitalism, and/or incorporate sharp regional differences. The struggles of reunification are also mirrored in the difficult process of integration occurring in the European Union and NATO.

Turning to the disastrous economic transition, Wolfgang Seibel contends that the Treuhandanstalt had to act as an “institutional buffer and absorb the social and political costs of its own privatization policy,” serving as a “political shock absorber” for the federal government (94). In his view, East Germans did not, however, fall victim to an “Anschluss.” As voters and politicians, they “made the key decisions of 1990 that paved the way to reunification” (97) but then lost control of what they had initiated. Jonathan Zatlin places more responsibility for the rush to currency union on Helmut Kohl who hoped that the arrival of the West German mark would stanch East German migration to the west. Assessing the economy today, the American Zatlin sees an “Eastern Mezzogiorno” (126), while the eastern economist Rainer Land is somewhat more sanguine. Land argues that privatization and monetary transfers have produced “neither a uniformly thriving country, nor is it a wasteland or Mezzogiorno” (116).

In the contributions on feminism, Ute Gerhard, Ingrid Miethe, and Myra Marx Ferree all recall the disillusionment that gripped eastern and western feminists after 1990 as they realized that their understanding of feminist politics did not mesh. Put crudely, western feminists worked to forge power through autonomous activities and looked askance at state policy as a tool for cultural transformation; eastern feminists focused on promoting equality in education, career, and family through policy. The authors agree in their view of feminist tensions but diverge in their assessments of the current situation. The westerner Ute Gerhard yearningly remembers the pre-1990 feminist movement and emphasizes women’s lack of progress since 1990, including in wage equality and economic leadership. She criticizes the “neoliberal spirit” (148) and expresses rather skeptically her hope that young women will forge a new movement for gender equality. Miethe and Marx Ferree see evidence of cultural convergence as German attitudes and policies about gender shift in a European (and East German) direction. Young westerners increasingly recognize, Miethe notes optimistically, “the desirability of the compatibility of family and career” and the “responsibility of the state to address women’s issues” (166).

Klaus Scherpe, Frank Hörnigk, and...