ABSTRACT
The question of German unity returned dramatically to the agenda of European politics in the wake of the peaceful revolution of November 1989 that swept away East Germany's traditional Communist regime. In this chapter, the author describes the contours of the extraordinary relationship between two German states as it developed over a twenty-year period. He argues that it was especially this relationship, not the opening of the Hungarian-Austrian border as an escape route for discontented East Germans or the policies of Mikhail Gorbachev that best explains the sudden explosion of domestic change in the German Democratic Republic and the unexpected revival of the question of reunification. The author utilises as his starting point the Ostpolitik treaties negotiated at the beginning of the 1970s. By the end of 1989, the word "reunification" was once again not only on the lips of Germans but on those of the nervous allies of both German states.
