GERMAN REUNIFICATION
The Will of the People
From SARAH GAINHAM
BONN
NOBODY outside the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity party of East Germany knows just what Walter Ulbricht had in mind when he sent an open letter to the West German Social Democrat party congress on February 7. But it is certain that Stalin's able pupil, sur- vivor of every storm of the Communist world, did not send his fraternal greetings to 'valued comrades,' nor claim them for the 'German Workers' Movement' as allies of his own, with sincerity.
There is little doubt, however, that the chief reason was the wish to put the attempt to talk to West Germans on the record, and to demon- strate its impossibility to the 17 million East Germans. It is almost always internal situations that motivate such outward ploys from totali- tarian governments.
It is therefore possible to deduce two things from the fact that a public proposal for dis- cussions was ever made at all. First, that Herr Ulbricht is ill-informed about public opinion in Federal Germany and still believes his own 'mili- tarist and revanchist' propaganda; and, second, that the desire for reunification is becoming stronger and more openly vocal in the German 'Democratic' Republic. The misinformation about opinion in West Germany was a serious mistake: the SPD accepted the challenge after only two days' internal debate and, even more astonish- ing, the government coalition parties also agreed that the challenge should be met. It led, in fact, to the first real inter-party discussion and agree- ment on a common West German attitude to- wards dealings with the zone authorities.
The avuncular warnings to the West German public against optimism are unnecessary. No- body thinks that the talks now possibly going to take place at Chemnitz (or Karl-Marx-Stadt) are going to produce instant reunification. Public opinion on this subject .has been far ahead of official opinion for a long time, and the people who increasingly demand that something be done to talk to their countrymen on the other side of the country, in spite of Ulbricht, are better aware of the difficulties than politicians give them credit for. It was clear months ago, when Die Zeit of Hamburg tried to arrange a swop of articles between itself and the official Communist organ, Neues Deutschland, that people found it absurd and contemptible for West German, as well as East Germane.laws to make such an ex- change impossible.
Moreover, the general reactions to the recent memorandum of the Lutheran Church Council, which proposed, among other things, recognition of Germany's present frontiers as peaceful ges- tures to Eastern Europe, were sufficiently moderate to show a real swing of opinion to- wards reconciliation. The joy that greeted the invitation from the Polish Church to German Catholic bishops to attend the one thousandth anniversary of Poland's Christianity was yet another sign. The Polish government's refusal to allow the visit was judged as weakness, while Cardinal Wyczinsky became a hero to many Germans who never go inside a Catholic church. Now Hamburg and other SPD-ruled areas are to allow subscriptions to Communist newspapers and several meetings arranged by religious or other respectable bodies have taken place m public halls, and one, which I watched, on tele- vision. The most striking moment of the pro- gramme was when the editor of Neues Deutsch- land, pushed into a corner by Theo Sommer of Die Zeit on the subject of 99.5 per cent Com- munist majorities in the 'Democratic' Republic, replied that the figures showed the complete approval of the zone population. There was a roar of laughter from the hall, and for a moment the East German's face was a study of blank dismay and astonishment. Living all his life under the Nazi and Communist systems, he simply had never been laughed at before.
How has the change of atmosphere in Federal Germany come about? The young who do not remember even the post-war attempts to com- munise all Germany, and know nothing of the role played by the Communist party in the rise of the Nazis, are increasingly scornful of the cowardice—as they think—of their elders, for they take it for granted that the real arguments are all on the side of libertarian economics and politics. The guilty personal consciences of West Germans towards their poorer cousins in the zone steadily increases. Here a factor, which is mistakenly ignored officially, is the effect of the visits to their families which old-age pensioners are now allowed from East to West. The East Germans believe the old people to have little influence on their return and, if they stay away, they are no economic loss. In West Germany the general conscience has been sharply touched.
There are thousands of German families who now intimately mognise how against nature this long separation is, and feel that 'we' must do more to change it than send Christmas parcels.
And the efforts of the Federal government to help such family meetings financially, although often needed, are also often a demonstration that money is not enough. If this is true in West Germany. how much stronger must be the hidden reaction in East Germany when tales of Western life are spread! In the East a common language forms a strong influence, where it is impossible to prevent even party members listening to and watching Western broadcasts.
Probably the strongest cause for the increasing sense of urgency is the passage of time itself. The longer the two parts of Germany are divided and mutually hostile, the harder it must become ever to reconcile them, and the reminder given by last year's 'Twenty Years After' mood had its effect. Both the Churches have tried to soften cold-war attitudes, the Lutherans having the greater influence because the zone is largely Protestant. The changed attitude of the Vatican to Eastern Europe has also been powerful.
Finally, the Auschwitz trial, with its publicity, opened the eyes of many young people and made them more sensitive to the claims of humanity, and less satisfied with themselves and their unthinking enjoyment of prosperity. This endless discussion of responsibility was bound to widen to include other forms of tyranny in the East as well as the West. If it is a crime for the Nazis to put people in prison for political or religious reasons, then it must be a crime to put a harmless crank in jail for eight years for pray- ing at the Wall for peace . . . ? It is an exten- sion of Communist demands for justice against the Nazis which they can hardly have expected.
Willy Stoph's sudden illness may provide a way out for East Berlin and the authorities there may yet prevent the meetings, but the SPD has wisely set the date so near—in May—that delay- ing tactics are hardly possible. For Herr Ulbricht it should be a point of no return which he could live to regret bitterly. But he could regret it even more if the meetings do not take place.
`. . . and we will push on fearlessly with our programme of modernisation . .
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