Germany is governed by hidden rituals. On November 11, St Martin’s Day, German omnivores always eat goose and red cabbage. The following day they start to organise their summer holidays.
Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, is no different. She too follows the calendar. After November 9, the grand anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall — the quintessential celebration of Germany’s recovered sovereignty — she will go to France for Armistice Day with President Sarkozy. The gesture is a theatrical one, designed to replicate in modern form the rendezvous of Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand on the battlefield of Verdun.
It is also more than that: Germany is about to re-engage with Europe. Having turned inwards for the best part of a decade, Germany is ready again to become an active, even assertive, player in the European Union.
Ms Merkel’s erstwhile political patron, Mr Kohl — notably absent from the Wall ceremonies yesterday — always argued that, German unity and deeper European integration were two sides of the same coin. If Germany was to grow bigger, then, it had to reassure its neighbours — and not just a sceptical Baroness Thatcher — that it was embedded in the European Union.
For Mr Kohl, the abandoning of the cherished Deutsche Mark and the embrace of the euro was the price that had to be paid for November 9, 1989. It was an implicit promise that Germany would never again try to dominate the continent. German unity was wrapped in a blue EU flag.
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Yesterday though, there were only a few EU flags flapping in the wind. The struggle in the 1990s for the Mastricht treaty and for European Monetary Union seemed to exhaust Germany’s passion for an ever-more organised Europe. Instead, it turned inwards and applied balm to the painful process of German unification.
Two decades on, eastern Germany has double the unemployment of western Germany. It has seen a costly east-to-west German migration of more than one million people; great swathes of the country are underpopulated. Some €1,300 billion (£1,164 billion) have been invested in the east.On the plus side life expectancy is almost at western levels. The rivers are clean again. It is possible to breathe once more in the industrial complex of Bitterfeld.The eastern regions of Saxony and Thueringia have some of the best school results in the country; students scramble to get a place at Leipzig university. The east is still a work in progress but, more and more the dividing line in Germany is between north and south rather than east and west.
So Chancellor Merkel feels that the time has come to turn Germany outwards again. Her first task, because it will be popular at home, will be to put a German at the helm of the European Central Bank, the current Bundesbank chief Axel Weber. In return she is willing to have a Belgian as EU president for one 30-month term, a non-German as a foreign minister (although Berlin insiders have long argued that Joschka Fischer, the Green ex-Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer is by far the best candidate) and place a burned out Christian Democrat regional premier as Germany’s new European Commissioner.
Why? Because she wants a big German input into the euro-zone over the coming years of delicate economic recovery. Because this is exactly what her mentor Mr Kohl would have done.
All the signs are that this will only be the beginning. Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg,**correct** Ms Merkel’s new Defence Minister, even started to talk of the Afghan operation as a war — previously a taboo word. Germany unity is, after 20 years, not exactly Mission Accomplished, but it is well enough advanced for the Chancellor to begin a new chapter. Germany, say those who know Ms Merkel, is about to become less mealy-mouthed, more active globally, readier to lead.
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Is that what we want? Perhaps it is.