An ambassador in the annus mirabilis of German Reunification

Meeting the neighbours

I had both the luck and the great honour of being the first ambassador since the end of the war to represent a united Germany in the United Kingdom.

When I took up my appointment here in London on 5 December 1988, German unity was still a long way off. No one, least of all the British had any expectation that the division of Germany would end within the 20th century, even though the German government constantly reiterated its goal of achieving a state of peace in Europe in which the German people would be able to regain their unity in free self-determination.

My East German counterpart, Dr Joachim Mitdank, took up his post in London, after a long vacancy, in late March 1989. Like me, he had worked for many years on the stony ground of German-German relations, most recently as head of the West Germany Department in the East German Foreign Ministry. As for me, I had served at our Permanent Mission to the GDR and then been responsible for German-German relations at the Foreign Office and latterly the Federal Chancellery.

In fact, the East German Embassy was just a stone's throw away from us. After the establishment of diplomatic relations between Britain and the GDR in the early 70s, the East Germans wanted to show they were our equals at least in terms of embassy location. Despite our differences, Ambassador Mitdank and I took care to deal with each other in an open and businesslike manner, as he himself recalls in his memoirs. Neither of us, at our first meeting, could ever have imagined that within a matter of months the German Democratic Republic would be in a crisis that threatened its very existence, and that it would not much later be integrated into the Federal Republic.

Britain and the two Germanys

As one of the original Four Powers with ultimate responsiblity for Germany as a whole and for Berlin, Britain was of the utmost importance. It was never forgotten that it was above all the British who had broken the blockade of Berlin through the Berlin Airlift in 1948-49. By virtue of common western values Britain and the Federal Republic were close partners, working together both in NATO and the EC, whereas Britain's relations with East Germany, with its Wall and socialist system, were much more distant and almost entirely limited to such areas as trade, science, technology, culture and language.

Berlin was very important for British foreign policy. British armed forces protected West Berlin's freedom and economic survival, and the city was very popular in Britain; when I presented my credentials to HM Queen Elizabeth II, she spoke warmly of her last visit there, which had clearly given her pleasure.

To highlight my professional links with the city, I invited the then Mayor of Berlin Eberhard Diepgen to be my first official guest, and he took the time to come to London shortly before the elections to the Berlin State Parliament in January 1989. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher displayed her usual shrewd instinct when she asked the Mayor how he planned to find accommodation and employment for the many East Germans who had applied to their authorities for permission to travel to West Berlin. The Mayor reassured her, yet this was to prove one of the unresolved issues that would eventually lead to him and his party losing the election.1

The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Throughout 1989 there were growing signs of the need for change in East Germany which were also apparent to my East German counterpart. Even so, we were as astonished as everyone else when, on 9 November 1989, the Wall suddenly opened. Today we look back on this event as the end of the Cold War and indeed of the whole post-war era. But at the time few can have imagined that the reunification of Germany would be completed within a year with the consent of the Four Powers2, all our neighbours and all the members of the CSCE3. One of the few who predicted this as early as March 1989 was the new American ambassador in Bonn, Vernon Walters. Passing through London, he gave me his assessment of imminent great changes which I for one, after Chancellor Kohl's talks with Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow in December 19884, could not have envisaged.

As luck would have it, I was with the newly-appointed Foreign Secretary Douglas (now Lord) Hurd at a reception when news came of the extraordinary events unfolding in Berlin on 9 November. It is a tribute to his political reflexes that on hearing the news he immediately decided to fly to Berlin, and was the first western foreign minister to arrive there just a few days later. We flew together to the centre of Berlin in a helicopter, and then continued on foot to the border area, surrounded by cameras which almost blocked our view. As we reached the border zone we were met by outstretched hands, which we in turn gripped with emotion. On raising our eyes, we sometimes found ourselves looking into the faces of border guards of the now-defunct GDR, and saw that they were every bit as moved as we were. No one, at that moment, had any thought for 'east' and 'west', 'them' and 'us'.

Towards reunification

The following months I remember as being particularly turbulent. On 28 November Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced his Ten-Point Programme5 without even informing Prime Minister Thatcher beforehand. She was surprised by the announcement during a Parliamentary Question Time, and the full fury of her staff poured down on my head that evening at an event to commemorate the 40th anniversary of NATO at London's Guildhall. My relations to Downing Street, which till then had been very good, cooled noticeably. The Prime Minister endeavoured through every means at her disposal to resist a rapid reunification of the two Germanys. But soon even she had to accept that at that time nobody, least of all a western government committed to freedom and democracy, could prevent the German people from becoming one nation again.

When the 2+46 talks to determine the external framework for reunification began in February 1990, even Margaret Thatcher was compelled to accept the inevitable. In an interview with Die Welt Foreign Secretary Hurd declared: "We can now say we support German unification without reservation".

A frosty reception

Of course even after this there were still some moments of drama, such as when PM Thatcher, in an interview in Der Spiegel magazine, tried publicly to put pressure on Chancellor Kohl over the timing of Germany's final recognition of the Oder-Neise border7 with Poland. The interview was given shortly before the 40th anniversary Königswinter Conference in Cambridge in late March 1990, which both Prime Minister Thatcher and Chancellor Kohl were to attend. On Cambridge's small airfield Prime Minister Thatcher waited in good spirits to receive our Chancellor who - to my huge embarrassment - descended frostily from his official airplane, in no mood either for small talk or pleasantries, and brushed off a request to take part in a joint tour through St Catherine's College, where the Königswinter Conference was being held. At the evening reception before the main dinner, both leaders avoided meeting one other, inducing the organisers to adjust the seating arrangements and deploy Conference chairman Sir Oliver Wright as a buffer between the two. Later in their after-dinner speeches the two leaders managed to clear the air with some humorous recollections of a joint visit to military manoeuvres on Lüneburg Heath, and by the next day at the bilateral talks in 10 Downing Street all the bad feeling had dissipated.

A day to remember

3 October 1990 - the first ever Day of German Unity - was, for someone who had dedicated so many years to inter-German relations and the Berlin question, an exceptionally moving day.

It began with the official handover to me of the keys to the former East German Embassy by the Chargé d'Affaires. Ambassador Mitdank had left in June 1990 after being recalled - like many others - by the East German foreign minister. His intended successor, Pastor Ulrike Birkner, duly arrived in London but because of the imminent reunification never received her accreditation. For the four remaining employees of the East German Embassy the handover was a painful experience, and I did what I could to make it easier for them through tact and understanding. For them, apart from four caretaking staff who were to stay on to help with the property, it was effectively the end of their careers in the foreign service.

The embassy building, whose reception rooms I already knew from social functions, had a few surprises in store for us. The consular section, where visas were issued, was located in the basement so that visitors could be kept under observation and prevented from getting into the main building. The six-story building also had no lift; this was to prevent anyone from the ground floor gaining access to the remaining offices, which had contained some secret equipment. The debriefing room was made of perspex glass and was suspended on the existing floor and walls in order to prevent the placing of any listening devices; it was later donated to the Museum of History in Bonn. It was I who successfully persuaded the ministers for foreign affairs and finance, Hans Dietrich Genscher and Theo Waigel, that the building should be kept and used as an information centre. Apart from the fact that we could certainly make good use of it, I wanted in this way also to make a respectful gesture towards our new fellow-citizens. Another building in a different part of London which had housed the East German trade mission was, however, sold off.

Apart from a very insignificant handful, most of the embassy's files had been carefully destroyed. We were, however, able to take over a showpiece of its cultural work, the Schinkel Exhibition then in preparation at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which I was able officially to open shortly afterwards as ambassador of the united Germany. It was especially moving for me to be able to invite Mr Schönemann, a manager of gardens and castles in Potsdam, and his wife to the opening ceremony. My wife and I had been friends with them since our time in East Berlin, and they had been banned from travelling outside East Germany because of their contacts with the West German Permanent Mission.

At midday on the morning of 3 October 1990, as part of the celebrations for the Day of German Unity in Britain, I hosted a grand reception at the Banqueting Hall in Westminster, where Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd and I stood under the great ceiling fresco by Reubens and expressed in our speeches our appreciation of these historic events. Douglas Hurd began with the words: "It is a glad day, a glad day for our German friends, a glad day for Germany, a glad day for Britain, a glad day for Europe and the world." Later, at 10 Downing Street, before dozens of cameras, I presented PM Margaret Thatcher with the official message from Chancellor Helmut Kohl on the occasion of the reunification of the two German states. Mrs Thatcher received me on the steps outside her office so that she could accept the note with a handshake before the assembled press. She took the opportunity publicly to congratulate the German people on their reunification. We then retired in a very small group to discuss the significance of these events for Europe.

That evening, some 800 Germans, including the former Chargé d'Affaires and staff of the former East German Embassy, came together at a reception at the German School in Richmond. The main speech was given by the Director of the German Historical Institute in London, Dr Lothar Kettenacker, entitled The Day of Unity: Examination of the Conscience. All those present were deeply moved by the significance of this moment. So ended this historic day that I shall never forget.

Footnotes

1. In 1989 a group of East Germans had occupied the West German mission in East Berlin to demand the right to travel to West Berlin. Their action was successful and later encouraged other East Germans to undertake similar and much larger scale actions via the West German Embassies in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which taken together critically undermined the East German regime of Erich Hönecker.

2. The Four Powers who occupied Germany after the war: USA, USSR, France and Great Britain.

3. CSCE: Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, later renamed Organisation on Security and Co-operation in Europe. CSCE was founded as part of the Helsinki Accords of 1975, and was made up of all European nations plus the USA and Canada. It was founded as a discussion forum revolving around issues of European co-operation and security, and made an important contribution to Détente and - initially at least - to a relaxation of Cold War tensions.

4. October 1988 Chancellor Kohl and General Secretary Gorbachev held bilateral talks on the future of Germany, in which Kohl declared that the division of Germany was not going to be the last word in Germany's history. But he did however accept that reunification was unlikely to be accomplished inside his generation.

5The Ten-Point-Programme for German reunification was presented by Chancellor Helmut Kohl to the Bundestag in November 1989, and saw the creation of a confederative structure between East and West Germany, the intensifying of inter-German co-operation and the integration of the two countries into the common structures of European security, co-operation and disarmament such as the CSCE. The final points dealt with reacquisition of German national unity.

6. 2+4 Talks: the two-Germanies plus the Four Powers.

7. The line of Oder-Neisse rivers marked the German-Polish border after World War 2, and saw a huge transfer of territory from the former eastern Germany to Poland. Although Willy Brandt had in fact recognised this border in 1971 there was still some concern after the fall of the wall that Germany might seek to revise the German-Polish border. Final recognition of the Oder-Neisse line by Germany was one of the prerequisites for German reunification laid down by the Four Powers.

Enlarge image Smiling for the cameras: PM Margaret Thatcher and Chancellor Helmut Kohl at Cambridge airfield in March 1990. Throughout 1989-90 there were simmering tensions between the two leaders about the pace of German reunification