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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 24, 1984
PAGE 9
"Open," insisted Alois Mertes, the deputy foreign minister. The
German question is still alive, he argued, and the divided city
of Berlin proves it. Mr. Apel's comments, he said bitterly, are
"factually incorrect and politically irresponsible"•..•
The German Question has been edging out into the open since the
ascent of the present Bonn government in the fall of 1982. Chan
cellor Helmut Kohl has positioned "German-German relations" on
the cutting edge of his administration's work. He, like many
West Germans, fosters the keen hope that someday the German peo
ple will be reunited. He concedes, however, that the present
East-West power structure renders such thinking fruitless•••• He
adds that the unity of the German people remains "an historic
task."...
In Washington, where Mr. Kohl's eastward efforts have thus far
been tolerated because of his strident pro-NATO stance, officials
are beginning to watch closely to make sure that the chancellor's
feet remain firmly planted in the West.
In Paris, which has
twice this century been invaded by a united Germany, officials
are following the German-German minuet more neurotically than
ever.
An AP story in July by Mort Rosenblum revealed that Germans, while looking
at events realistically, don't want to dismiss reunification as some kind
of "impossible dream." It's interesting to note that the "German dream" is
everyone else's feared nightmare.
Few Germans expect to see again a single fatherland, with 80 mil
lion people towering over uneasy neighbors. But many assert with
growing conviction that "Germany" goes beyond 35-year-old lines
on a map. "I don't wake each morning and think, Ah, reunifica
tion," a West German official said privately in Bonn. "But I get
mad when Americans and others dismiss it as an impossible dream."
The average German today is 38, born a year after Hitler's Third
Reich collapsed in World War II. In a series of interviews, Ger
mans on both sides decried history that refuses to recede into
the past••••
"I am sick of all this Nazi, Nazi, Nazi stuff," said a 42-year
old Munich engineer, typical of many.
"Why can't we be like
others, proud of who we are, without everyone calling it new Ger
man nationalism?"•••
Across West Germany, a new mood is clear. Deutsche Welle--Gerrnan
New Wave--sets it to a throbbing beat. In "USA," Peter Schilling
mocks a movie star president who treats Germans as pawns. An
other pop star, Nena, sings of West Germany as a "Satellite
State."••. Sociologist Erwin Scheuch of the University of Cologne
said few young Germans recognize a permanent debt for the U.S.
role in rebuilding Germany.
"Gratitude is historical," he
said•••.
Adolf Hitler, though roundly reviled, is seen increasingly in
terms of "Yes, but••." by Germans who evoke the social order and