ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects upon Germany's fitful, hesitant, sometimes zigzag steps toward reconciliation, and unification. The recurrent outbreaks of public violence and sharp conflicts of opinion about Unity Day represent the dark shadow writ large of the individual traumas and tensions that the study has portrayed. The unification ceremony in Staufen was brief, even solemn. The chapter reflects the prevailing mood: disquiet about the uneasy historical resonances of a united Germany and anxiety, already, about the possible shape of anniversaries to come. Internal unity is a lofty goal, and Americans might well ask if the Germans' dour attitude about reunification is just another manifestation of Teutonic Weltschmerz, a temperamental heaviness of heart that characterizes so much of German life. The fifteenth anniversary of German reunification in 2005, which was hosted in Potsdam, represented an integration of past and present in more somber and probably more enduring hues.
