ABSTRACT
The emotional challenge of German reunification created more anxiety and possessed a different character than Eastern Europe's dismantling of the Yalta system. While Poland's Solidarity movement and Czechoslovakia's Civic Forum lent themselves to an easy reading as the victory of the people over a discredited political and economic order, German events carried a variety of mixed meanings. All developments in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from the first demonstrations against the state had a reciprocal effect in the Federal Republic and in the European Community where West German economic strength makes it a dominating force. This chapter presents the varieties of ambiguity, tension produced by the collapse of the East German state and its merger with the Federal Republic. German unification took place with speed that it was difficult to hear all the discordant voices at the time. In this way, the collection is about giving space to the many voices, dominant and minority, assenting and dissenting of the process.
