Berlin 25: The new German division

A quarter century after the Berlin Wall fell, triggering unification a year later, there have been times of late when you'd be forgiven for thinking two Germanys still exist. Not Germany east and west, but Germany inside and out.

These two Germanys don’t exist on any map but inside people’s minds. The first is the country as Germans see it: a prosperous place – poorer than West Germany, richer than East Germany – that scores goals and sells cars. Historical shadows are retreating in this Germany as a confident “unity” generation, born around 1989/90, discard their parents’ old east-west distinctions.

But there is a second Germany: a place that exists in the minds of its European neighbours. A decade ago this Germany was hyped as the sick man of Europe. Now the media hype machine has reversed, and Germany is an all-powerful, über-efficient hegemon in Europe, looming particularly large in EU countries whose economies – and confidence – have taken a beating in recent years.

These two Germanys – the domestic one and the external one perceived by its neighbours - are part of a larger picture. Rather than viewed as complementary, these two Germanys are left to rub each other up the wrong way.

The post-crisis debate about whether the continent can expect a German Europe or a European Germany goes over the heads of most people, yet it electrifies Europe’s political and media elite.

"I see in Berlin's political elite a growing confidence, a feeling of 'we're somebodies again', while around the EU a growing scepticism towards Germany, that Berlin has too much power," said Prof Ingolf Pernice, a professor of European law at Berlin's Humboldt University.

The last years have seen German leaders both flattered by their new prominence in Europe and put upon by the resulting expectations. They feel confident about Germany’s strength in Europe’s present yet vulnerable about its future weak spots: a ticking demographic timebomb, industrial-based prosperity based on an uncertain transition to renewable energy and an overstretched infrastructure in western Germany.

These confident-yet-vulnerable Germans see red when confronted with others’ ideas that Berlin can and should bankroll solutions to Europe’s financial problems.

During the crisis, German chancellor Angela Merkel adopted a strategy of plausible deniability: politically ambiguous signals that unsettled EU partners just enough to agree reforms to sell back home to secure backing for unpalatable bailouts. With this dual strategy, Dr Merkel avoided being taken fiscal hostage by her EU partners, kept her voters on board, calmed financial markets inflated expectations of what Germany could afford to do and, despite her critics claims of "too little too late", helped to ensure the euro's survival.

Berlin’s thinking

But what is her plan beyond the euro crisis? Even Dr Merkel’s admirers suggest her recent ambiguity strategy may have worked too well.

Peter Sutherland, chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former European Commissioner, says her failure to deliver a Draghi-style "whatever it takes" speech to stabilise the euro was a smart political tactic but a strategic problem for Europe. "Where Merkel has failed," he said, "is not being generous enough in communicating terms of financial support that would mitigate some of the negative feeling."

Not explaining Berlin’s thinking in the euro crisis for strategic reasons has allowed doubt to creep into Germany’s perceived European commitment around the continent and at home.

A mood of prosperity chauvinism towards Germany’s neighbours has taken root and a small but loud minority in the Alternative für Deutschland party are challenging Germany’s traditional pro-European vocation.

The challenge for Dr Merkel is to get beyond her euro crisis strategy – balancing EU partners’ demands with begrudging elites at home – to come up with a new chapter. Euro crisis rows have left their mark and an economic standoff between Germany and its neighbours over whether Berlin’s demands were a success or failure.

Beyond the ongoing economic debate over austerity, the standoff is one of leadership. Berlin, some European critics say, is suffering from Garbo syndrome: it wants to be left alone rather than lead. Put these arguments to senior German officials, however, and they turn them on their head. Calls for greater German leadership from its partners, they claim, are actually demands for Germany to do as it’s told, particularly on economic matters. The frustration stems less from a German failure to lead, they say, but others’ disinterest in following.

“Germany has been urged to take on a leadership role and when it does, it is criticised for the positions it takes,” says Prof Pernice. “The problem for Germany is its tendency for overdoing things, for playing the schoolmaster, and often a lack of tact and understatement.”

Bismarckian dilemma

Amid this friction German historians are debating whether we are witnessing a new iteration of the old Bismarckian dilemma of Germany: too big for Europe and too small for the world.

Most ordinary Germans don’t view their country as a hegemon, says German historian Prof Sönke Neitzel, while an elite that might harbour such notions are hobbled by a lack of intellectual and institutional skill. “Germany has achieved its post-war aim of living in a united Europe in security and peace,” said Prof Neitzel, a historian at the London School of Economics (LSE).

“I don’t think Germany ever strove to be a big power again but here we are. Yet just because Germany is now economically strong, there is a false assumption elsewhere that Berlin has a cunning master plan. It doesn’t.”

When pressed, senior government officials in Berlin concede this point. Merkel-era Germany is very precise on what it wants and expects of its European partners, particularly after the euro crisis, but vague on what it wants and expects of itself. “This is the price we pay for the Merkel method of small steps: she refuses to define anything for fear of being measured up to it later,” says a very senior German official in Berlin. “We cannot explain to people Germany’s wider interests and priorities – for itself or for Europe – because the chancellery refuses to define them for us.”

While Dr Merkel hesitates, another former East German is nudging things on: incumbent German president Joachim Gauck. A former pastor and a player in the events of 1989, he has used a series of his speeches this year to challenge Germans into defining the country beyond negative terms – as a country that is not a dictatorship, as not ready to accept military action for stability purposes.

Faced with new global terror threats, Mr Gauck argues, the people who toppled the Berlin Wall must redefine their interests and use their regained sovereignty as a constructive force in the world. “We do not want others to decide how we live but decide for ourselves,” said Mr Gauck last month in Leipzig. “We need to think anew about what responsibility Germany is willing to take on for our world, along with its friends and partners.”

Ask long-time Berlin watchers about Germany’s looming challenges and two are mentioned regularly. First: how will Berlin respond to an economic slowdown at home, given the tight fiscal corset it fashioned for the euro zone during the recent crisis? Second: how will Germany react if – or, as many leading officials concede, when – it is finally targeted in a major terrorist attack? After 25 years knitting together east and west, these two challenges could resolve the tension caused by the country’s new division: Germany’s expectations of itself and those of its partners.