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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT·
, DECEMBER 9, 1983
East-bloc propaganda plays insidiously on the West German yearn
ing for reunification, hammering away at the tempting message
that Germany could be united again--if only the Federal Republic
would detach itself from Washington's apron strings.
Bonn's "Midlife Identity Crisis"
As Bonn's economic miracle--which absorbed the energies of the West German
people for so long--fades into the past, a more subjective and emotional
question looms larger on the scene:
"What does it mean to be a West
German?" Julian Crandall Hallick, a writer and frequent visitor to West
Germany, writes in the August 8 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR about West
Germany's "midlife identity crisis."
Ask a young American what being an American means and you will
most likely receive a clear and con£ident reply. Ask a young
West German and the answer will be at best unclear, at worst an
embarrassed refusal.... The reason lies in the fact that one of
the two successor states to the Third Reich, the Federal Republic
of Germany, was forbidden and disqualified from developing any
emotional identification with Germany's past. West Germany has
been left stranded, neither fish nor fowl, a wealthy, orderly
society with� midlife identity crisis.•••
What does being West German mean? Who are its heroes? What is
the Federal Republic's history?... How can a young German think
his country worth defending when he or she is discouraged from
the normal feelings of emotional and cultural attachment with its
past? It is surely no accident that so many young Germans would
like to emigrate, preferably as far away as possible, with
Australia a favorite choice.
..!_! doesn't help that the Federal Republic is still� "provision
al" state, with � provisional capital and institutions,
officially waiting to become something else. Paradoxically, the
problem is made worse by the official doctrine of eventual re
unification, which merely postpones the day when West Germans
must face up to the fact that they are a separate and permanent
state which must get down to nation-building.
The terrible scar left by Nazism obviously complicates matters.
Nazism penetrated to the core of Germany's being, leaving� black
hole in the country's history that neither parents nor teachers
have managed to fill. But we in the West also are to blame for
creating a generation of Germans without a homeland•••• The West
has allowed the Federal Republic to be portrayed as the successor
state to the Third Reich, while the German Democratic Republic,
or East Germany, somehow has been able to confiscate all that is
po
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itive . in Germany's history and to emerge unsullied from the
Third Reich.
There comes a time when the past has to be forgiven, if not for
gotten, and wounds, however dreadful, allowed to heal. Should
today's young Germans be made to bear the sins of their grand
fathers and denied the right to a past? Shouldn't they be en
couraged to develop an emotional identification with their German