German Politics and Society

This theme issue of German Politics and Society, “Eastern Germany

Ten Years After Unification,” presents five key papers first presented

at a conference organized by Thomas Ertman at the Center for European

Studies at Harvard University in June 1999. We are pleased to

present this reworked collection of articles that, under Ertman’s able

direction, speaks to the central concerns of the former East Germany’s

integration into the new Federal Republic. Ertman’s introduction

contextualizes these articles in terms of their thematic content and

methodological approaches.

On October 3, 1990 the territory of the German Democratic Republic was incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany, thereby ending forty-five years of German division. At the time, assessments varied widely about whether the wholesale introduction of the West German political, legal, and socioeconomic systems into the formerly communist east would be a success, and what the implications of success or failure would be for the new united Germany. Ten years later, opinions on these fundamental questions remain divided. One group of optimistic observers maintains that the full integration of the east into an enlarged Federal Republic is well underway, though these observers acknowledge that progress has been slower and more uneven than first anticipated. A more pessimistic assessment is provided by those who claim that, if the present pattern of development continues, the east will remain in a position of permanent structural weakness vis-à-vis the west in a way analogous to that of Italy’s Mezzogiorno.

German social scientists have often stressed that the East German transformation was a process sui generis that differed strongly from the transformation paths of eastern European countries. This difference was of course mainly due to the integration of the former GDR into the Federal Republic of (West) Germany. Indeed, it is commonly assumed that the wholesale transfer of West German institutions left little room for the endogenous paths of transformation observed in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The unintended outcome of this strategy of “exogenous” institutional change was a transformation crisis with the effect of a profound external shock. To be sure, this shock was mitigated by the simultaneous introduction of the West German “social net,” accompanied by massive transfer payments. But many of the dire predictions made by skeptical observers in 1990 have indeed come true.

The transformation process of eastern Germany began with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 11, 1989. The time needed to formally replace the former socialist system with a market economy was short, not more than one year. But transformation should be defined in a broader sense and include the process of integrating the former socialist economies into the world markets and of establishing sustainable growth in that area. In that sense, the transformation of eastern Germany is far from finished (this is even more the case for central-eastern European economies).

Research on the enterprise transformation in East Germany after unification has focused mostly on the role of the Treuhandanstalt as the central actor in this process who widely determined its outcomes. David Stark and László Bruszt (1998) even suggest that this top-down model of transformation was rooted in the special institutional past of East German state socialism. They argue that the “Weberian home-land” was characterized by weak social networks among firms in comparison, for example, with firms in Hungary or Czechoslovakia, while the planning system and the industrial organization were extraordinarily centralized and hierarchical. Hence, social networks could easily be destroyed after German unification by market shock and by breaking up large enterprises into manageable pieces by the Treuhandanstalt. Moreover, the former, intact centralized planning system could easily be replaced by another centralized and cohesive administrative apparatus, now backed by the strong West German state.

On 9 November 1989, the government of the German Democratic

Republic decided to open the Berlin Wall, effectively signaling the

collapse of the socialist system in East Germany. The subsequent

transformation of the country’s political structures, and in particular

that of its political parties, took place in two phases. In the first

phase, directly after the fall of the wall, the GDR’s political system

underwent a radical democratic and pluralistic overhaul without

West German involvement—although the existence of a second German

state, the Federal Republic of Germany, naturally influenced

the goals, strategies, and scope of action of the actors concerned.

Carl F. Lankowski, ed., Breakdown, Breakup, Breakthrough: Germany’s Difficult Passage to Modernity (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999)

John Brady, Beverly Crawford, and Sarah Elise Wiliarty, eds., The Postwar Transformation of Germany: Democracy, Prosperity, and Nationhood (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999)

Christopher S. Allen, ed., Transformation of the German Political Party System: Institutional Crisis or Democratic Renewal? (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999)

Andreas Glaeser Divided in Unity—Identity, Germany, and the Berlin Police (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2000)

Lutz Niethammer Kollektive Identität—Heimliche Quellen Einer Unheimlichen Kultur (Hamburg: Rowohlts Enzyklopädie, 2000)

Jennifer A. Yoder, From East Germans to Germans? The New Postcommunist Elitesn(Durham: Duke University Press, 1999)

Review by Laurence McFalls

Hölscher, Jens and Anja Hochberg, eds., East Germany’s Economic Development Since Unification: Domestic and Global Aspects (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998)

Review by Jeffrey J. Anderson

Brigitte Young, Triumph of the Fatherland. German Unification and the Marginalization of Women (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999)

Review by Vanessa Beck