No matter how you see it, the Reichstag building in the center of Berlin's new government district is no longer a shadow of its former self. Built from 1884-94 during the time of Germany's Kaisers Wilhelm I and II, the Reichstag was heavily damaged during the fighting to capture Berlin in the final weeks of World War II. Soviet soldiers, precariously perched on its pockmarked roof, hoisted the red flag in early May 1945 to celebrate their victory over Nazi Germany. For some 15 years, the building remained a scarred shell.

In the early 1960s, a drive was launched to raise money to restore the Reichstag. Along with other donors, thousands of schoolchildren willingly contributed pennies to help fund the effort. The restoration began in earnest at a time when the Reichstag's location made it a symbol of sorts in the free city of Berlin during the Cold War period.

On August 13, 1961, East German "people's police" began cordoning off all streets, canals, real estate and anything else that bordered on West Berlin. Within days, the hastily rolled out barbed wire barrier was being replaced by prefab concrete slabs. Located just a few feet to the west of this demarcation line between the three allied zones that became West Berlin and the Soviet zone that became the capital city of Communist East Germany, the Reichstag and its restoration presented a stark contrast to the other side of the wall. There a veritable no-man's-land was created, with buildings near the border either torn down or made completely windowless on their western facades.

The artificial division of Berlin lasted 28 years and 90 days. On November 9, 1989, East German border police, acting in response to a directive issued earlier in the day by their country's politburo, opened the Berlin Wall at selected locations. The rest is history, including the historic unification of the two German states in 1990 and the accompanying treaty officially ending World War II. (Prior to the so-called "four plus two" treaty signed in 1990, the state of war between Germany and the three Western allies and the Soviet Union had never been formally declared over.)

The decision is made

The opening of the wall and the unification of Germany prompted Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, to vote to relocate the center of national government to Berlin. The Bundestag's decision meant that the Reichstag would again be used for its original purpose: as a house of parliament. During the 1970s, the center of the building had remained a large unused area, reserved for a future freely-elected parliament of a unified Germany. A permanent exhibition on German history was housed in the wings of the Reichstag, and on occasion parliamentary committees from the Bundestag in Bonn conducted meetings in its conference rooms.

All that changed with the Bundestag's relocation to Berlin. The history exhibition was moved to a museum in Bonn, and the Reichstag's interior was redone to accommodate the parliamentary plenary hall. The building's central domed roof, destroyed at the end of World War II and not rebuilt during the '60s restoration, was redesigned by British architect Sir Norman Foster. Vast expanses of glass in the spectacular dome flood the interior of the building with light. The new dome-like construction in the roof was included on the insistence of the German parliament and acts as an illuminating device for the Bundestag's debating chamber.

Accessible daily for viewing, the Reichstag's glass dome provides a remarkable view of central Berlin, especially of the government district. Moving in a circular direction, one sees the Victory Column (Siegessäule) in the middle of the Tiergarten, the Brandenburg Gate and on its far side, the location for the new American embassy and the Holocaust memorial (which will be built practically on the former grounds of Hitler's seat of office, the Reichskanzlei), Alexander Square (a former showcase of East Berlin, East Germany's capital) and then the Bundeskanzleramt (Germany's new "White House") just a short distance away.

What Germans think of the change

What is the current state of the unified Germany 40 years after the Berlin Wall was erected? On a recent visit to the Reichstag's rotunda, I asked several German couples to reflect on their personal impressions as they enjoyed the view. I asked them, "What do you feel here when you visit the Reichstag? Are you proud of what you see from here as a symbol of the unified Germany?"

A couple in advanced middle age, from the state of Rheinland-Pfalz in western Germany, smiled and admitted to being somewhat proud, but quickly added, "Without America's help Germany would not be what it is today." The smartly dressed husband and wife live near Ramstein, the site of a large American airbase. Their comments reflect a sentiment often shared by older Germans in western Germany like former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who frequently mentioned his personal memories of the immediate post-war period and the support West Germany received from the United States. It is obvious that those who lived at that time on the eastern side of the dividing line between the free world and Communism do not have such memories.

Similarly, younger Germans in general do not have personal memories of America's help during the post-war period. On a positive note, the anti-American sentiment evident among students during the Vietnam War period and beyond has given way to the pragmatism of the Boris Becker generation, a widespread acceptance of American pop culture and the realities of the global economy. Making money appears to be more important than moralizing these days.

A young couple from Bremen, visiting Berlin for the first time, responded to my question by asking another question: "Did it have to cost so much?" Many Germans in western Germany ask the same question. The expense of moving Germany's capital to Berlin, originally estimated to cost US$9 billion, has long since exceeded the original figure and is, in reality, open-ended. Moving costs are not limited to construction of new buildings in Berlin and a one-time relocation of federal ministries to their new offices. With the retention of several key ministries in Bonn, which supposedly is to retain an equal footing with Berlin as a "federal city," government officials commute continually between the two cities via train and air. Oddly enough, the airline that won the contract to provide commuter service was British Airways' German subsidiary, Deutsche BA.

The unpopular cost of unification

German taxpayers are not only footing the bill for the new capital in Berlin. For 10 years, they have also contributed every payday via a "solidarity surcharge" to the development of eastern Germany's infrastructure: new roads, bridges, railways, etc. The surcharge is currently set at 5.5 percent of taxpayers' annual federal income tax liability. Originally intended to last only for an interim period, the surcharge will probably continue indefinitely.

Progress in the eastern part of the country is readily visible, but just as obvious is the gap that remains in the attempt to catch up to western Germany's standard of living.

The curious result is dissatisfaction in both parts of Germany. "Ossis" (slang for "Easterners") remember Chancellor Kohl's popular 1990 campaign promise that there would soon be "flourishing landscapes" in the East. In reality, the dismantling of East Germany's outdated economic structure meant the loss of a job for many in the new eastern states, where unemployment currently runs as high as 20 percent. "Wessis" (slang for "Westerners") are disappointed over the additional tax burden they have shouldered for years to rebuild the East and over the perceived lack of patience they believe exists among some of their new fellow citizens regarding achieving economic parity with the western part of Germany.

A middle-aged couple from Düsseldorf responded with obvious pride to my question. However, their satisfaction with Germany's new capital city was tempered by concerns about the difficulties the two German societies have experienced since unification in growing together into one. Separated nearly 45 years by the Iron Curtain and influenced by two opposing systems, communism and capitalism, post-war Germans in the East and West grew up with different value systems, expectations and even with slightly different vocabularies, since the German language in the East was not influenced nearly as much by the English language as contemporary German speech was in the West.

West vs. East mentality

After unification, the differences quickly led to stereotypes, as Wessis viewed Ossis as being demanding, unmotivated and unable to compete in a free-market economy. Ossis in turn accused their western counterparts of having glib tongues in business negotiations, being pushy and exhibiting an air of superiority. Although it is difficult to make generalizations, the reservations of Ossis and Wessis about each other do persist among those Germans who were already of adult age when unification took place. Some observers conclude that the melding of Germans from East and West into a more homogeneous single society may only be fully achieved by the younger generation now growing up without personal memories of Germany's post-war division.

The Düsseldorf couple also expressed concern over the influence of radical right-wing groups in eastern Germany. Communism's education promoted a value system generally devoid of Christian tenets. In eastern Germany God and church are no longer "on the horizon of thought," according to a report by the weekly newsmagazine FOCUS at the end of last year (52/2000). "We don't need the church, we get along without it and it doesn't interest us," remarked the chairman of the Mardi Gras Club in Stadtroda. According to him, that is what was taught in eastern Germany's schools, and one can survive well with this teaching (ibid.).

This underlying valueless attitude, coupled with post-unification high unemployment and right-wing influence from western Germany provided a suitable breeding ground for cliché-laden, anti-foreigner extremist ideas. German Interior Minister Otto Schily's annual report on right-wing criminal acts, released earlier this year, documented a 40 percent increase in violent xenophobic acts during 2000.

"That half [of the violent acts] are committed in the East, where only a fifth of the population lives, must cause one to sit and take notice. Especially since the number of foreigners living here is imperceptibly small" (Thüringer Allgemeine, February 8, 2001). Commenting on the same report, the Flensburger Tageblatt urged caution in accepting Mr. Schily's conclusion that eastern Germany is a stronghold for neo-Nazi activities: "Experts give warnings on this simple thesis, which leads to calm primarily in the West but upon closer examination is false.

Instead it is correct that the heads of crude Nazi ideology are sitting in the West and find their hollow clientele most readily on the streets of the new [German federal] states…where those romp about who feel disadvantaged by 'those at the top,' unification and the world in general" (February 8, 2001).

"It isn't good for us to be on top"

A middle-aged couple living near Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg admitted to being impressed by Germany's restored center of government in Berlin, but with mixed feelings. "When a unified Germany was ruled from Berlin, there was war," my conversation partner commented, referring primarily to the two world wars fought in the last century. "It isn't good for us to be on top," he added somewhat uncomfortably.

Most observers view such fears as totally unfounded. The European Union has resulted in greatly diminished influence for individual national states among its member countries, and within 10 years, nearly all of Europe will be part of the EU. All major political parties in Germany are firmly committed to progress and further integration within the EU. Germany is the European Union's most populous country with its largest domestic economy.

However, Germany's economy as the motor of European economic development sputters along, still restricted to some extent by its post-unification economic and social trauma. "As goes Germany, so goes the EU" is a comment one hears occasionally. It would seem logical that domestic budgetary demands resulting from unification will need to slow considerably for Germany to make a bigger contribution to the EU's economic development as the trading powerhouse of the future, as indicated in Revelation 18.

Forty years after Berlin's infamous wall was built and nearly 12 years after it was torn down, Germany remains in some ways a divided country. Could a fast-breaking, unforeseen external crisis or challenge to the EU provide the impetus for Germans to close ranks on a personal level and experience the unity that its political system achieved 11 years ago? That might seem far-fetched now, but by the same token, many Germans themselves never expected that political unification of the two German states would be achieved and certainly not so quickly as in 1990 when Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, seized what they called a four-month "window of opportunity" to negotiate a deal with the still-intact Soviet government.

The history of the Berlin Wall and Germany's unification show that things that may appear to be unchangeable sometimes do change. And very quickly. WNP