IN WATCHING RECENT events in Germany, personal and historical tragedies have sometimes blurred together in my vision. The shocking wave of German neo-Nazi violence against foreigners and Jews (still rising at this writing), and the German government's immigration policy concessions to xenophobia, have appeared alongside news of the death of Social Democratic Party leader Willy Brandt and the tragic murder of Green Party founder Petra Kelly.
The picture that emerged from this blur was one of a shiny new dream dying, while old nightmares revived. Willy Brandt, who was chancellor of West Germany from 1969 to 1975, in many ways represented the best ideals and aspirations both of his generation of Germans and of the European democratic socialist tradition. Brandt was among the only postwar West German political leaders of his generation who had joined the underground opposition during the Nazi era.
Later, as postwar mayor of West Berlin, Brandt stood at the forefront of resistance to the new totalitarianism of the Communist East. Still, as chancellor, Brandt helped open the way for better relations between East and West. He believed that peaceful cooperation, not armed confrontation, was the key to unlocking the gates of the Berlin Wall.
Petra Kelly was, in many ways, one of Brandt's many rebellious political children. From the ruins of the radical 1960s, she and the other founders of the Green Party caught a new vision of Germany and Europe—East and West—as a decentralized grassroots ecological democracy free from the rule of military blocs, multinational corporations, or bureaucratic superstates. This radical vision fueled the great European disarmament movement of the early 1980s. That movement, in turn, extended a hopeful hand of friendship to its emerging dissident counterparts in the East.
Throughout the 1980s the dissidents on both sides of the Iron Curtain seemed to be growing in numbers, influence, and political savvy. There was optimism that some tempered version of the Green dream might be possible in the lifetime of its dreamers. Then came Gorbachev and glasnost. One by one the client states of the Soviet empire drifted off into democracy. Finally, in one great and surprising surge, the Berlin Wall went down.
For about 30 seconds there, near the end of 1990, anything seemed possible. From the ruins of the two old German states might emerge a third, entirely different one. The death of the old totalitarian socialism could open the way for a new decentralized version, for a nonviolent national defense, for the whole radical democratic ball of wax.
Of course Helmut Kohl and the other rulers of the Free World saw those possibilities, too. And in about 31 seconds, while the East German opposition dithered, the emergence of a new German nation devolved into an expansionist coup by the old West German state. In about another 15 minutes, the new European economic and political union—an extension of the old Common Market into a unitary economy and a loose superstate—had emerged as the overarching non-Green utopian vision of a new Europe favored by Europe's old ruling class.
Two years later it is safe to say that nothing on the European scene has worked out quite the way that anyone planned. With the collapse of the old repressive order, Central to Eastern Europe looks less like a vision of freedom and prosperity and more like an ethnically defined Hobbesian war of all against all. Meanwhile, the bitter medicine of capitalist reform in the old communist world has inflicted horrible economic pain and few compensating comforts. And in the old capitalist world of the West—the territory of the new European Union—the worst economic downturn since World War II persists with Britain, France, and much of the new Germany suffering double-digit unemployment.
NATURALLY ALL of the problems of the New Europe—East and West—have come to roost in the new Germany, which stands Colossus-like astride the old divisions. Germany has incorporated into its territory an important portion of the old Soviet empire and assumed responsibility for integrating it into the new, capitalist European order. Meanwhile another symptom of Europe's problems came to Germany in the form of a tide of refugees from the war in Yugoslavia and the poverty and chaos in the other states to the east and south.
At the same time, the new European economic order makes Germany, its strongest partner by far, into the thermostat for fiscal and monetary policy throughout the union. With their currency values and interest rates tied to the overwhelming weight of the German mark, the other nations are forced to let Germany, in effect, set their domestic budget policies. And these days Germany is more interested in shoring up its new territorial acquisitions than it is in easing the economic pain of Britain, Italy, or France.
As a result of these various tensions, voters in Denmark rejected the European union treaty, voters in France approved it by a margin so slim that it amounted to moral defeat, and, as this is written, Britain is poised at the brink of a parliamentary crisis over the treaty.
It is into this already hypertense political atmosphere that the new wave of Nazi violence in Germany came. Nazi groups, mostly headquartered in the old West Germany, have moved in to take advantage of the economic pain and historical amnesia of many young people in the formerly Communist East.
In short, Europe is a mess, and an increasingly bloody one. And it is hard to see any easy answers on the horizon. But it is safe to say that the intuition of so many ordinary European voters is correct: The current economic and political union plan, embodied in the Maastricht Treaty, is not the answer for the European future. With its dramatic centralization of economic power, and its moves toward a similar political centralization, it promises to create a two-tier Europe of rich nations and poor ones, and threatens to usher in a new brand of European bureaucratic authoritarianism.
It is equally clear that the various political forces in Europe, and the peoples they represent, need to slow the headlong rush to utopia that began with the collapse of communism. There is no utopia, of the Left or Right, in view—and judging from the history of this century, Europe will be better off without one. Instead it is time for Europeans to pull back, breathe deep, and begin to search their souls for new dreams. They need new dreams that can be rooted in the new realities of self-determination and ethnic diversity and united by respect for universal human rights.
The role of the United States in today's Europe is also clear. Europe no longer needs our occupying troops, if it ever did, or our economic aid. But it does need, now more than ever, our promise to be an example of a healthy and functioning multicultural nation, one where political identity and destiny is not defined by ethnic heritage. And they need our honest and ongoing struggle to make that promise real. It is up to us to put flesh and blood on the widely shared intuition that the American struggle for multiculturalism is one of the most important keys to the post-Cold War global future.
Danny Duncan Collum, a Sojourners contributing editor, was a free-lance writer living in New Orleans, Louisiana when this article appeared.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!