But Germany did not follow this advice. Unless we are completely mistaken, the failure predicted by Grass was avoided. But what about the other suspicions, the fears of takeover and commercialization of the revolution? Were the courageous citizens of East German cities like Leipzig and Halle merely added to the army of consumers, without bringing any political change to their new country?
A revolution has two goals: to put an end to everything that preceded it and to create something new. The revolutionaries of 1989 achieved the first goal when the GDR ceased to exist as a country. But the second goal was a different matter. The Federal Republic, as West Germany was (and today's Germany is) formally known, enveloped the former East Germany, and the new entity was something familiar, at least at first. The West had expanded eastward.
But now, 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is clear that this is not the whole story. The revolution also created the conditions for something new, a different Germany. The institutions haven't changed and the West German economy continues to dominate, but something has also flowed in the opposite direction. Could it be that the Federal Republic of Germany, which has been gazing westward since 1949, has become more eastern in the last few years?
Quieter in Germany
Nothing has contributed more to this change than the chancellor from the east, Angela Merkel. She is a democrat and a champion of freedom, and she hasn't created an expanded GDR. Nevertheless, there are aspects to the way she runs the country that are reminiscent of the former East Germany.
A dictatorship fears open discourse and conflict, and it thrives on the fiction of unity. The ruler or the ruling party claims that it is executing the will of the people, and because that will is supposed to be uniform, everyone is under forced consensus. Silence in the country is treated as approval. Merkel grew up in this system.
Elements of it are reflected in her political style. She despises open dispute, she does not initiate discourse and she feels comfortable when silence prevails. She prefers to govern within a grand coalition, because it enables her to create broad consensus within small groups. Things have become quieter in Germany.
Many people in the country like that. Eastern Germans are used to it. Even in the past, the Anglo-Saxon model, with its dualisms and heated conflicts, was suspect to most West Germans. Even the French argue more heatedly than the Germans. Merkel has enabled Germans to find themselves.
Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) have been forged into a new kind of SED, a more social-democratic one, one which generously funds the social consensus, providing money for families and retirees, as well as a minimum wage. The only party that managed to show some sympathy for Anglo-Saxon capitalism, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), has all but disappeared.
While Merkel brings the East German element of silence instead of discourse into federal German politics, President Joachim Gauck, also an East German, provides an audible dissidence. As a pastor in the northeastern city of Rostock, Gauck was no resistance fighter, yet he was a civil rights activist. He injects his energetic approach to freedom into German politics, along with the message that freedom must be fought for or defended, with armed force, if necessary.