ABSTRACT
If there was any defensive note about the developments of the recent past, it concerned the nature and speed with which unification had taken place. In answer to the criticism that complete union needed a longer period of preparation, spokespersons for the governing coalition pointed out repeatedly that a million East Germans would have moved to the West if economic and social union had not taken place in July 1990. As for the political dimensions of reunification, the political leaders did their best to play down what was actually true: The old GDR had essentially been annexed by the Federal Republic. Since Hitler’s annexation of Austria, the word Anschluss has had an unpleasant connotation in German political vocabulary, but German reunification really was a form of peaceful and popular Anschluss by the Federal Republic of the old GDR. The new country consists of sixteen federal states, including a single Land composed of what used to be East and West Berlin.
