SPECTAT THE OR
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THE MARK OF STABILITY
Afew months ago only a madman would have predicted that one East Ger- man mark would soon buy one West German deutschmark. But the madman would have been right, that is precisely what will happen this Sunday. And from the point of view of an accountant it still would seem an act of madness.
The accountant is not alone. There are plenty of doomsday-sayers, including West German intellectuals such as Gunter Grass, who predict disaster: up to 40 per cent unemployment in the former GDR, industries and businesses wiped out by more efficient Western competition, East Germans duped by clever salesmen to buy flashy knick-knacks on the never-never, bankruptcies, penury, dispossession and, finally, that old goblin of German malaise, resentful right-wing extremism.
But is currency union and eventual German unification therefore a mistake? Probably not. For one thing East Germans voted for unification, whereas they never voted to be a Soviet vassal state. There are those who deplore the demise of an East German 'identity', but this is something that exercises people who either never shared this identity, or who were highly privileged in the communist state. It may be so, as Gunter Grass observed, with his customary suspicion of capitalism, that `money will replace the failing, over- arching idea'. But given the awful legacy of this idea in East Germany (not to mention the other parts of the Soviet Empire), money may not be a bad thing to focus on. If one is going to have a unified Germany, it is surely safer for all of us if Germans are ruled more by the pursuit of wealth than by over-arching ideas, which have caused such havoc in the past.
It is of course precisely the past that causes people to worry about Germany, particularly a Germany that will, economi- cally and financially, dominate Europe. Grass believes that the memory of Au- schwitz alone should halt the dreams of a unified Germany. The American play- wright Arthur Miller is even worried about the identity of the Federal Republic which, he writes, 'does not seem to have imbued the Germans] with sublime sensations'. Well, thank goodness for that. Others worry that a unified Germany will not be able to control its own strength, like a wild bear which cannot be trusted if released from its chains. To be sure, Germany has often behaved like a wild bear in the past, and history should never be ignored. But neither should it deter- mine a nation's destiny, for that is precisely the idea — an obsession with historical destiny — that helped to cause catas- trophes before. Constantly invoking Ger- many's dark history as a way to stop Germans from working out their own destiny is to fall into the same historicist trap as the intellectual architects of Ger- man aggression. Not the laws of history, but practical decisions, legitimised by democratic institutions, must determine Germany's fate.
But, so we often hear, even if unification is inevitable, is it not going much too fast? It is interesting that proponents of speedy unification, such as the West German Chancellor, use the same cliché as EEC federalists: the train has already left the station, so there is no stopping it now. It is true, as with the EEC, that the linked-up German train has left the station. The question is whether it is worth trying to slow it down. No matter how painful unification, starting with the currency un- ion, is going to be for the East Germans, there is no reason to believe that postpon- ing the process will ease the pain. If anything, it will be worse. The sooner that East Europeans learn to hold their own in international competition, the sooner their countries will gain real prosperity. The East Germans are relatively lucky, since their Western deutschmarks can cushion some of the early blows. To whine, in the comfort of our Western armchairs, about the rush to materialism (read deuts- chmarks) in East Germany is not just insulting, it is counter-productive: a prosperous East Germany is much less threatening than a frustrated and impover- ished one.
It would be naive to assume, however, that a prosperous unified Germany will automatically be the end to what has come to be known as the German Question. There is an economic problem, which has nothing to do with jackboots and concen- tration camps. The problem is the compati- bility of economic systems: on one side the Anglo-Saxon one, based on classical free trade, where stock-holders reign and goods, services and companies are for sale, and on the other, the German and Japanese one, where companies are fed more by bank credit lines than equity, and where national assets are protected from foreign acquisition. Soon most or all of Europe will be dependent on the equally formidable power of Germany. But however we cope with that problem will not be greatly influenced by the future of the former GDR. That problem is already in the here and now with the Federal Republic of Germany.
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