Much has been written in the more than 30 years since German reunification, how everything came about, what has been neglected, what has moved East and West Germans since then – and yet there are still discursive gaps. It is well known that filling these gaps is more necessary than ever. What helps is reading a small volume of essays, the composition of which is quite original. The writer Ingo Schulze and the historian Kiran Klaus Patel have given some thought to this. And it’s about more than just the “accession of the GDR to the FRG and the European Community”, as the title promises.
“In the guise of West German norms”
Patel, an excellent expert on European unification, points out in his contribution that the ex-GDR did not join the FRG on October 3, 1990, but also the then European Community (EC). This Brussels “by-catch” ultimately made a decisive contribution to the East Germans quickly losing interest in Europe – and in unification, because EC law came “dressed up in West German norms”. And it came immediately, with no transition periods.
Kiran Klaus Patel, Ingo Schulze: Doubly connected, half united. The accession of the GDR to the FRG and to the European Community. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2022. 128 pages, 15 euros.
And so one can also read a lot about disappointed hopes and the utopian potential of the upheaval in Ingo Schulze. It’s about “spaces of possibility” and “sense of possibility”, about interdependence and concentration and the power of the D-Mark. In any case, reading it widens the view – all the way to Brussels.