Having seized the opportunity to unify Germany in 1990, Kohl has anchored the new great power firmly in the Western world. And he is now trying, almost by sheer force of personality, to bind Germany to a stronger European Union. He has been willing to reduce the occasions on which Germany can commandeer the decision-making process in the EU; in the pursuit of a common currency, he is even willing to sacrifice the sacred Deutsche mark, probably the only symbol of modern Germany in which its citizens can take unvarnished pride. Few members of Kohl’s own party, let alone the opposition, share his enthusiasm.
What Kohl is trying to do is solve a problem that has twice thrown Europe into world war and vexed its statesmen for 150 years: how to let Germany stay strong without terrifying its neighbors. To Thomas Mann’s famous question–Are we to have a German Europe or a European Germany?–he has unhesitatingly chosen the latter.
The provincial image that still dismays intellectuals has worked well for Kohl. For many Germans, he embodies a kind of simple, common-sense patriotism. He has cleverly revived certain elements of German nationalism, urging Germans to take pride in their country, using once taboo words like ““Fatherland,’’ ordering that German flags fly once again over government buildings, honoring Prussian heroes like Frederick the Great and Bismarck. Thus when he proposes that Germany surrender parts of its sovereignty to Brussels (or France), he has not been criticized from the right. His gift is to combine an authentic, even conservative German nationalism with staunchly pro-Western, indeed pro-American, policies.
To Germans, Kohl offers not drama–they have had enough of that–but security. His vision comes from his political hero Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of postwar Germany. Both have sought to bring Germany greatness, not through realpolitik and militarism, but by making the country liberal, democratic and bourgeois. The result: the West Germany they presided over was the smallest Germany in history, and also the most prosperous.
In many ways, however, Kohl will surpass Adenauer’s legacy, even as he surpasses his 14-year record in office. Adenauer had few choices; he was the head of a defeated, impoverished country in the shadow of occupation. It was the Allies who insisted on a democratic Germany; at first, they would not even allow the existence of a German foreign ministry, preferring to take charge of the country’s foreign relations themselves. Adenauer was widely admired by many of his countrymen–but others called him ““Chancellor of the Allies.''
By contrast, on the eve of German reunification Kohl led a country that was the most powerful in Europe, the third-largest economy in the world, and a mature democracy. When the Berlin wall came down he faced a plastic moment in history. He could have pursued the age-old German dream of glory: independent, part of neither West nor East, the arbiter of Europe. Instead he continued Adenauer’s vision–““a free and united Germany in a free and united Europe.''
Whether he succeeds or fails, Kohl will be the last of Adenauer’s line. Kohl’s own successors will not have lived through ““the German problem’’–of the 1930s, but also before–and they will not have been present at the creation of the German solution of the late 1940s. The new generation of leaders is, of course, democratic and pro-Western, but they lack Kohl’s passion and determination.
They will also survey a different political landscape, one transformed by reunification. West Germany comprised the most bourgeois, urbane and Westernized parts of the old German Empire. Kohl and Adenauer shared a base (Rhineland-Palatinate) that has historically been one of the most pro-European and even pro-French parts of the country. East Germany contained more eastward-looking regions and, most important, contains the rural lands of Prussia–the heartland of German expansionism. The next generation of German leaders will represent a larger, more diverse country, and perhaps speak a different language of nationalism.
If Helmut Kohl runs for re-election in 1998, which seems increasingly likely, he could become the longest-serving chancellor in German history, overtaking the founder of Germany, Otto von Bismarck. The comparison is cautionary. For all Bismarck’s brilliance, he left behind a country that became unhinged in the center of Europe, leading to World War I. The Iron Chancellor had put his country on a path that he alone believed in, that he alone could manage. That is a historical parallel that Kohl must work hard to avoid.
