ABSTRACT
In late 1987, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl made a diplomatic visit to the Netherlands. Ostensibly not an earth-shaking event. In 1989, Dutch historian Maarten C. Brands explored some of the developmental contrasts between Germany and the Netherlands and suggested that since at least as far back as the 17th century, Dutch history has almost been the opposite of German history. Positive and negative elements came to characterize much of the German image of the Netherlands. The Dutch have generally been seen as hospitable, tolerant, egalitarian, Calvinistically stingy and narrow-minded, unromantic, unnecessarily self-critical, often overly moralistic, commercialist, thoroughly bourgeois, and usually pacifistic. According to Brands, Holland's "democratic tradition" formed the "basis of a strong sense of autonomy and of being different from neighbouring countries." The foregoing discussion makes clear that issues of security and economics form the two areas of principal Dutch sensitivity, if not vulnerability, in the Dutch-German relationship.
