ABSTRACT

The fear of Germany produces more fear than Germany does in actuality like ghosts, like all things which one evokes out of the obscurity of symbolic memory, out from under a covering thickened by the passing of time. The parliament in Strasbourg, for example, met a few weeks ago and had a discussion of great interest regarding the November events the Berlin Wall, changes in the Community schedule set off by the new and overwhelming events in Eastern Europe. In the interest of mental health one would have to confess every morning and rattle off a litany of things that we all know: that the division of Germany and Berlin has already lasted an historically significant amount of time and an infinite political time. By worrying about the Oder-Neisse line and the legal tidiness with which Germany must regain her tragic, but unavoidable European political centrality, the continental chancelleries and questioning of German intentions.