Cultural exchange, but ‘no way’ that Germanies can unite

Press, 13 March 1986, Page 21

Cultural exchange, but ‘no way’ that Germanies can unite

From

ROBIN CHARTERIS,

“The Press” London correspondent

who has been a guest, with a small group of Australian and New Zealand journalists, of the West German Government

In spite of the probable signing of a long-awaited cultural exchange between East and West Germany in a few weeks, and other recent improvements in inter-German relations, few people west of the Wall in this divided country hold out hopes of reunification.

“There is no way we can be together again,” says a senior Government official in Bonn.

The restructuring of Germany is not an isolated issue. It revolves around the restructuring of Europe, at present and in the foreseeable future an insurmountable problem, says Dr Berber T. Limmer, director-gen-eral for foreign affairs of the press and information office of the West German Government.

The cultural agreement, first mooted in 1972 but not even discussed for eight years because of East Germany’s refusal to consider including West Berlin, is seen as but another tiny step forward. The East may be relenting this time over the inclusion of West Berlin, but most proposals for a thawing of relations are at the whim of the socialist powers. West Berlin, that beleaguered Cold War symbol, lies at the heart of the issue for Germans on both sides of the border.

A city in an extraordinary situation, a western outpost at both the centre and the border of the east, it stands as the prize in the ideological tug-of-war between East and West. West German officials describe the shared heritage of the Ger-

man people as drawing the inhabitants of both sides of the 749-year-old city together. The communist identity is not sitting easily on East German shoulders, they say, and increasing patriotism, as compared with earlier nationalism, is today another common bond.

But the physical mingling of the people is rare. It is almost impossible for those in the East to travel West — and difficult, because of East German restrictions, for West Germans to cross the Wall.

Since 1949, some 3.25 million East Germans have “escaped” to the West. Most — 2.7 million — left during the 1950 s and until the Berlin Wall was suddenly erected in August, 1961. Exit permits from the East are restricted now to between 9000 and 12,000 a year (although 30,000 people were allowed out in 1984). For the privilege of adding what it sees as its own people to its population, West Germany pays the East German Government about DM3OO million (about $270 million) annually. Statistics confirm the close network of private ties between the peoples. One West German in three over the age of 14 has relations or friends in the East; one in five regularly sends letters, packets, and parcels; one in eight visits the East periodically, in spite of the difficulties. In 1983, five million people from all countries visited East Germany. Visitors from East to

West totalled 1.6 million, 93 per cent of whom were pensioners. Successful escapees from East to West total up to 300 a year, most crossing the border in Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia, where controls are not as rigid. How many others try and fail is not recorded. Few now attempt illegal crossings of the Berlin Wall, perhaps 10 or 20 a year successfully escaping that way. Althouth East Germany removed the “death machines” — mines — in the no-man’s-land immediately to the east of the wall in a "good-will gesture” two years ago, the 136 km-long, 4.5-metre-high wall is very tightly guarded with a sophisticated array of installations and troops.

The wall winds like an obscene serpent through the divided city, much of its western side decorated with brightly painted protest murals by artists competing with each other in anti-communist political comment. Removing the Wall and freeing all barriers between East and West may be the stated aim of the western world, but few people in this isolated outpost believe it can ever happen. The signing of formal cultural exchanges and the easing of a few minor restrictions might be chinks in the armour of the East, says one pragmatic official, “but East Germany will only let interGerman relations go as far as they want — and there is no way they will allow us back together, short of the East losing the Third World War.”