Germany has been a part of our destiny, our inspiration as well as our pain," said the Czech president V?clav Havel in 1995, "a source of traumas... as well as of standards to which we aspire; some regard Germany as our greatest hope, others as our greatest peril."
Large parts of central and eastern Europe have been subject to cultural, economic and military domination by Germany over many centuries: from the German knights' conquest of the Slavs, through the German-Russian treaty of Rapallo, to the barely healed wounds of the second world war. This has left a curious mixture of resentment and admiration towards Germany, now complicated by a post cold war dependence on it-both economically and politically.
German dominance of the economies and to a lesser extent the polities of the main central European countries-Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic-was widely predicted at the time of reunification. It was also one of the main reasons for misgivings about reunification in several countries. In her memoirs, Margaret Thatcher recalls a meeting in Paris with Fran?ois Mitterrand, in January 1990, where they both expressed severe anxieties about Germany's "mission" in central Europe.
In truth Germany's new hegemonic role in its eastern hinterland-stepping into the vacuum left by the retreating Russia-has been almost entirely benign. Germany is playing a vital role in the economic take-off of the region, similar to the Japanese role in the take-off of east Asia. And politically, Germany acts as the tribune of central Europe in the European Union and Nato.
This position as a "regional superpower" clearly does enhance Germany's global authority. But the German political class remains acutely aware of the temptations of eastern adventurism, and partly for this reason continues urgently to seek deeper integration into western Europe. Yet, sensitivity about the past in central Europe has not prevented the German government from behaving with some directness-especially in relation to the Czech Republic-where it believes the brutal tit-for-tats of recent history continue to leave German interests unsatisfied.
After the revolutions of 1989 and the free elections that followed, it was not just Germany which leaped into the breach in central Europe. The US, France, Italy and Britain (with its Know-How Fund) all played, and play, important roles, as does the EU with the Phare fund for infrastructure.
A benign invasion
None the less, it was the Germans who truly invaded central Europe. First, there were the tourists. Audis, Golfs and Mercedes began to clog the streets of Budapest, Prague and Krakow as never before. Many west Germans seemed keener on visiting the newly democratic countries of central Europe than they were on visiting Dresden or Leipzig in their own eastern backyard.
Next came the German businesses. In little more than five years the German economy has come to absorb between one quarter and one third of its central European neighbours' total exports, and accounts for about 25 per cent of their imports.
Central and eastern Europe has become a rapidly growing market for German exporters-especially of investment goods-and the whole market (including the former Soviet Union) now accounts for about 10 per cent of total exports, exceeding the value of Germany's exports to the US.
Also just as Japanese businesses in the 1970s and 1980s escaped from their declining profitability at home by moving to cheaper locations in Asia, so German companies are contracting out all or part of production processes to central Europe. Direct investment in the region by German enterprises came to about DM5 billion in 1995. Although the US role is sometimes understated both in trade and direct investment by the fact that western Europe-based subsidiaries undertake the transactions, Germany is comfortably the largest inward investor in most of the larger countries (with the exception of Poland).
One of the most ambitious investments is Volkswagen's acquisition of the Czech car-maker Skoda. VW beat off Renault to win the deal and now owns 70 per cent of the company. At the end of 1995 VW had invested DM1.4 billion, rising to DM3.7 billion by the end of the decade. It has not always been a happy experience for VW but it now has a strong position in the family car market in central and eastern Europe, and benefits from labour costs a quarter of Germany's level.
There is ambivalence, too, on the receiving end of Germany's economic invasion. As the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) put it in a recent report: "The only thing that central and eastern Europeans fear more than Germany coming into their countries is Germany not coming." German businesses have often found themselves at the centre of awkward disputes when acquiring enterprises. Many Hungarians, for example, were upset when a German company took over Budapest's famous Caf? Gerbaud, associated with the glory days of the Austro-Hungarian empire. But the protest was as much to do with fears about western management as with the nationality of the new owners.
Business and culture
German capital and trade is also bringing a distinct economic culture and, of course, the German language. Many countries in the region have pegged their currencies to the DM and their new central bankers have often had a German training. In corporate culture and commercial banking the German model, increasingly battered on its home soil, appears to be beating the Anglo-American one. "Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia and Latvia are all developing corporate and banking systems which are closely aligned with German traditions... Croatia was a test case country in terms of exporting the German legal system; a professor from Heidelberg University was a key architect of the country's tax system in 1994," according to the EIU.
When a German company acquires a local business the senior local managers will usually return to Germany for business and language training. This is clearly helping to promote the use of German. For 40 years, Russian was the first official foreign language in the region, although few could be bothered to speak it properly. Then came English (or French), the language of aspiration, the language of the west. Only in third or fourth place came German-a language spoken, above all, by the older generation.
This is beginning to change. There are 20m students of German (outside the country) and 13.5m are in central and eastern Europe. The German government has invested a lot of money in the teaching of German in the region through the Goethe Institute, but the spread of German use differs from country to country and even between industrial sectors. In Hungary and Slovakia, German is widely used and is the first foreign language in schools. The pre-war elite of Czechoslovakia was German speaking, and Prague used to be a German-speaking town, so the language has roots there. In Poland its use is patchier. In business, German is often spoken in the manufacturing sector, where German influence is greatest, while in the financial sector and information technology English holds sway.
"German is making a big comeback, especially in business, but English will be the dominant international language by the time the Czech Republic joins the EU," says Floyd Curtis, of Channel Crossing Services, a Prague-based language company. Goethe Institute officials in the region agree that German will never be able properly to compete with English, the global lingua franca.
The minority problem
The revival of German language and culture in the region can draw upon the traces left by the large German minorities in most countries until 1945-as well as the postwar presence of East Germany (disproportionately rich and influential for its small size). Following the expulsion of the German minorities after the war, from Poland and Czechoslovakia in particular, the region is now far more ethnically and nationally homogeneous than it was in the Habsburg days. More than 3m Germans were expelled from Silesia and Pomerania in what is now Poland and a further 2.5m from the Sudetenland, the industrial heart of the Habsburg empire and now part of the Czech Republic.
It is arguments about the treatment of those German minorities prior to the Nazi invasion of the region, their subsequent role under Nazi rule and the manner of their expulsion after the war, which lie at the centre of the most intractable disputes between Germany and some of the region's governments.
In the aftermath of the war, more than 10m Germans descended on the shrunken territory of west Germany from central and eastern Europe. Unable to return there for nearly 50 years, those families are now showing an enormous interest in their former lives. German bookshops are filled with travel guides to the old eastern territories-as far afield as K?nigsberg in former east Prussia, the birthplace of Kant and now the Russian city of Kaliningrad. This renewal of interest causes unease in central Europe. What do the Germans want? Are they about to come and seize the homes that Czechs and Poles have lived in for 50 years?
They are not. But the rhetoric of the associations representing the Vertriebene (expellees) at times suggests otherwise. Support for these associations has actually waned as a new German generation has grown up without the same yearning as their parents for lost domains. One association which does retain political clout, however, is that representing the Sudeten Germans. Most of the Sudetens went to live in Bavaria where they still form a big lobby within the Bavarian ruling party, the Christian Social Union, which in turn is part of the ruling coalition in Bonn.
This partly explains why the German-Czech relationship remains the most difficult in the region. By contrast, the relationship with the non-Slav Hungarians (who fought with the Axis powers in the second world war) is unencumbered by disputes over territory or minorities. But the biggest success story, so far, is the other historically tense relationship-between Germany and Poland.
Polish success
It was not until 1970, 25 years after the war, that German Chancellor Willy Brandt fell on his knees during a remembrance ceremony in Warsaw (his famous Kniefall), conveying the simple message: "We are sorry."
Twenty years later-in 1990, just after unification-Bonn finally acknowledged that the territories which it lost to Poland in the postwar settlements would no longer be the subject of argument. Maps no longer describe pre-war German cities such as Breslau and Stettin as unter polnischer Verwaltung, (under Polish administration). The cycle of blame and counter-blame is broken.
The Poles-simultaneously invaded by Germans and Russians in 1939-have thus begun to admit to the injustices they too committed against the Germans who were expelled from their homes and bundled into cattle cars out of what is now western Poland. Poles can address those injustices of 1945 because they know that the Germans, in turn, accept responsibility for their own crimes and officially recognise the Oder-Neisse line dividing the two countries.
The Polish government still bans German citizens from buying land in the once disputed western part of the country, a measure which will probably have to be dropped when Poland joins the EU. But in most other respects the relationship is normal, thanks in part to the high priority placed on resolving the "German question" by the first Solidarity government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki. In 1993, a German-Polish military co-operation agreement was signed, the first with a former Warsaw Pact member, and the armies of the two countries have built a symbolic pontoon bridge together across the river Elbe.
In the weekly Die Zeit Christian Schmidt-Hauer wrote: "This country of nearly 40m inhabitants exhibits more dynamism and fewer hurt feelings about the past than the Czech Republic and even Hungary." He cited the work of the Polish pollster Lena Kolarska-Bobinska of CBOS. When asked with whom Poles would like to work in business, 77 per cent said Germans, and 58 per cent Americans; as partners in politics, 74 per cent still preferred Germans, and 67 per cent Americans; and in defence matters the Germans and Americans tied on 67 per cent.
According to Andrzej Szczypiorski, the Polish writer, Germany has earned these ratings: "Germany has done more for Poland in recent years than France, traditionally favourably inclined towards us, or the US, so beloved of the Poles. Germany pushes Poland steadily towards European integration. The Germans see their self-interest in doing so-but this is also the continuation of German postwar history, which developed in the shadow of a guilt complex towards Europe." The Poles now talk about a Franco-German-Polish bridge across Europe, and meet regularly with the French and Germans in a business conclave called the "Weimar triangle."
Unreconstructed attitudes can still be found on both sides. Recently, for example, I witnessed this exchange at a Bonn diplomatic dinner party. Herr B, a civil servant in his 50s, was chatting with the woman on his right. The woman, it transpired, was Polish. Whereupon his tone changed and he delivered a speech about Polish-German relations. He was, he proclaimed, now able to forgive the Poles for killing a relative in the war. He did not appear to realise that almost every central and east European family could trump his own story, with tales of death and destruction, wrought by Germans. A mental filter allows him to recognise German suffering, while blocking out the pain of others.
The Czech stand-off
Such attitudes are still all too common in the German-Czech relationship. At the time of writing, in December 1996, a much delayed reconciliation treaty between the two countries was about to be signed. But a more realistic emblem of the relationship was the resignation early in 1996 of Gerd Albrecht, the German conductor of the Czech Philharmonic orchestra.
Albrecht, the first foreigner to occupy the post, fell out with the authorities and was accused of failing to continue the orchestra's tradition of propagating Czech music. Others questioned why a German was running the orchestra in the first place. Similar sentiments were echoed more recently in a commentary in the Prague Post which declared: "The status of the Czech Republic has gone from that of a Soviet satellite to that of a German protectorate."
Even without the Sudeten problem, some German-Czech friction was unavoidable. The Czechs do not have the critical mass or cultural confidence of the Poles, indeed elite culture in the Czech lands has historically been German. Also, Czechs feel doubly invaded by the Germans as East German tanks played a role in crushing the 1968 rising.
Things had, nevertheless, started on a positive note when in a speech in 1990, with the velvet revolution barely complete, President V?clav Havel talked of the sufferings of the Sudeten Germans. The tone of the speech was: "We, too, are not free from blame."
Klaus Kinkel, Germany's foreign minister, then asked the Czech government to distance itself from the Benes decrees, and appeared to question parts of the Potsdam agreement of August 1945-causing outrage in Prague. The Benes decrees were passed by the postwar Czech President Edvard Benes, and endorsed by the Allies. They painted the Sudeten Germans as a fifth column for the invading Nazis in 1938, sanctioned their postwar expulsion and granted an amnesty to Czechs who killed Sudetens (15,000 to 240,000 depending on whose figures you believe).
The Sudetens say that this was a historic injustice; that many ethnic Germans opposed the Nazis and to the extent that there was support for the invasion it stemmed from pre-war persecution of ethnic Germans. They have demanded a full apology, cancellation of the Benes decrees and the right to acquire property in the Sudetenland.
Even the mellow Havel finds this unacceptable: "We can have different views on the postwar transfer of the German population-my own critical opinion is widely known-but we can never take that action out of its historical context. There can be no dispute about who was the first to let the genie of national hatred out of the bottle... We do not have the slightest intention to annul legal acts approved by our parliament, nor unleash new storms over property."
In the reconciliation treaty Helmut Kohl and Vaclav Klaus, the Czech prime minister, have agreed on mutual apologies and some German compensation for Nazi victims. The Sudetens will be disappointed, although, as in Poland, the restrictions on buying land may have to be lifted before EU entry.
a regional giant
Enthusiasm for integration into the EU co-exists in central Europe with a new sense of national identity released by the end of communism. This national identity is often expressed against the two regional giants Germany and Russia, while Bonn is simultaneously regarded as an aid and protector. Warmth between Bonn and Moscow can cause alarm in central Europe, where there are still anxieties about being squeezed between the two. Central European coverage of the Russian war in Chechnya was especially critical, and there were sharp words too for Bonn's rather tolerant attitude towards Russia's conduct.
Germany retains an overwhelming self-interest in stability in central Europe. Any military or economic disaster would rapidly spill over Germany's borders. And sensitivity to the region is likely to grow rather than diminish when the German capital moves to Berlin, so close to the Polish border. The current aim is to bring Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into Nato in 1999, although full membership of the EU for those countries may not be possible (mainly on cost grounds) until around 2005.
Germany's role in central Europe reflects a self-interest of a different kind, too, one which German diplomats are less keen to talk about. It is summed up by the EIU thus: "By wielding power in its own backyard, influencing, and even dictating, events from the Balkans to the Baltics, Germany is also bolstering its claim to a global role." The quid pro quo, for those who still fear an overmighty Germany, is the willingness to swap the DM for the European single currency.
Thanks to central Europe, Germany is, in other words, no longer a political dwarf. Germany's western allies, although sometimes irritated by the way Germany takes its regional pre-eminence for granted, are happy to concede it a special role. And the people of central Europe themselves cling hopefully to Germany's coat-tails-even the anti-Germans among them. As V?clav Havel points out: "I meet people who frighten those around them with talk of the German threat but at the same time hang out signs saying Zimmer frei in their windows and collect rent in DM even from their Czech tenants."
