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East Germany The German Question Today: One Nation or Two?
Until the 1970s, the governments of both East Germany and
West Germany went to great lengths to preserve the concept of a
united Germany. Both cast themselves in the role of national
protector; both claimed to embody all that was good in the German
culture and heritage and to speak for all German people; and both
purported to be working toward the reunification of divided
Germany. At the same time, officials in the two Germanies
initiated policies aimed at developing a base of popular loyalty
to their separate governments. This necessarily meant
implementing certain policies that were contradictory to the goal
of unification. Nationhood, national identity, and nationalism
became concepts defined by official policy and manipulated to
affirm the legitimacy of the state. The balance struck by each of
the governments between an apparent desire for unity and the
development of a separate "state consciousness" is at the heart
of the "German question."
Data as of July 1987
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