ABSTRACT
The political unification of Germany in 1990 constituted the major and most surprising political event at the beginning of the 1990s. At home, it temporarily diverted attention from more prosaic questions such as economic growth and unemployment, the environment, and social welfare, thereby contributing to the victory of the conservative-liberal coalition government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl in the 1991 elections. Abroad, it gave rise to an intense debate on the future position of a united Germany in world politics, kindled by (exaggerated) fears for a renewed German orientation towards Eastern Europe and/or a new German bid for supremacy and world power.
