ABSTRACT
German reunification in 1989/90 caused a lot of anxiety in the world. The sight of vast crowds in Leipzig waving the national flag and roaring for ‘Deutschland, einig Vaterland!’—‘Germany, united fatherland!’—awakened uncomfortable memories of the nationalist enthusiasms of the past. Chancellor Kohl’s evident reluctance to acknowledge the validity of the present Polish-German border, the Oder-Neisse line, until forced to by his liberal coalition partners and by hostile international opinion aroused the suspicion that a united Germany might look for territorial gains in the East, at a time when an economically shattered country such as Poland hardly seemed in a position to resist whatever pressure the new colossus in Central Europe might bring to bear. National feeling was reviving all over Central and Eastern Europe, and the violence to which it has given rise in a number of areas, from Abkhazia and Azerbaijan to Bosnia and Bulgaria, is grimly suggestive of the emotive power which nationalism still possesses as the twentieth century draws to a close.
