Germany dominates Europe because it is so strong economically. It is also highly self-reliant in other ways. It is no longer an obedient part of the West. When NATO launched air strikes in Libya, Merkel isolated her country from all the leading Western powers, including the United States, Great Britain and France. When Vladimir Putin took over the Kremlin, he discovered many sympathizers in Germany.
All things considered, a dialectic movement emerged from the revolution. The federal republic made Germany's eastern parts western by incorporating it, but it also became less western, perhaps even more eastern in the process -- because of its top politicians and their understanding of political culture, and because of a reinforcement of old tendencies like anti-capitalism and a love of the social welfare state.
"The Long Road West," the title of a book by historian Heinrich August Winkler, has been interrupted. In fact, we have even taken a few steps back recently. Germany is not as western European in 2014 as it was in 1989.