Recasting the Public Sphere

Abstract

Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989 the German question has received a great deal of attention in the international media. While the dramatic events of 1989 and October of 1990, when the unification of the two German states took place, were the right stuff for television, most of the debates about their meaning and their implications for the future of Germany and Europe have been carried out in the printed media-in newspapers, magazines, and journals, as well as in a flood of books that would easily fill a library.1 There is clearly a public demand in Germany for more in-depth information and analysis precisely because the events that resulted in the unification occurred so fast that those who participated in them as citizens of the Federal Republic or the German Democratic Republic have found it difficult to get a complete picture of the structural transformation, its economic, legal, and cultural aspects, since they seem to point in many different and sometimes conflicting directions. It is safe to argue that after five years public opinion in Germany (and elsewhere, I suspect) is still very much divided about the character of the situation, and even more so about its historical meaning. As more than one commentator has suggested, there is a widespread feeling among the German population in East and West that the sudden and unexpected unification will be only the beginning of fundamental metamorphoses, but there seems to be no consensus about the nature and the direction of these changes. If there is going to be a new Germany, its contours have not yet emerged very clearly. Has the German Democratic Republic simply disappeared by joining the Federal Republic, or does its former existence still have an impact in the economic and cultural sphere? More specifically, will the