Willy Brandt, the mayor of West Berlin when the Wall went up, also spoke forcefully about Berlin’s mission now that the city was reunited. He too admonished his colleagues not to be guided by narrow considerations like personal comforts and moving costs when the demand of the hour was “to show solidarity with the east.” He then went for the Bonners’ jugular with a pointed historical comparison. Would anyone have expected France, he asked, to keep its government in idyllic Vichy once the end of foreign control over Paris allowed a return to the Seine? Not surprisingly, the implication that Bonn was Germany’s Vichy inspired howls of protest from the Bonner, and even from Kohl. Undaunted, Brandt went on to belittle the Bonn contingent’s proposal for a division of labor in which Berlin would remain Germany’s “symbolic capital” while Bonn kept the real power. Germany, he said acidly, did not need “a separate capital for cocktail receptions.” The old capital, having stood “as an outpost of freedom through difficult times,” surely deserved more than “an honorary title devoid of real content.”
Another eloquent appeal for Berlin came from the East German politician Wolfgang Thierse (SPD). The choice the Bundestag faced, he said, was “not between two cities.” The deeper issue involved “the future social and political development of Germany,” whose “completed unity” could be decisively advanced through a move to Berlin. At stake also was the relationship between east and west in Germany, the identity of the unified German state, Germany’s relationship to its own history, and finally, Germany’s understanding of the meaning of Europe.
Such pleas for the larger view may have influenced some delegates, but mundane matters of money, jobs, and domestic power relationships could not be wished away. Nor could the belief, harbored by many representatives, that Germany’s federal traditions were more likely to be preserved by Bonn than by Berlin. The argument for Bonn was forcefully advanced by the Bavarian CSU politician Theodor Waigel, who also happened to be federal finance minister. Wearing his financial hat, Waigel pleaded for “a politics of just proportions” and economic caution. The integration of the new states was already imposing severe strains on the budget, he said. It was not “small-minded” when, along with the broader historical dimensions, one worried about the capacity of the federal government to function efficiently under the altered political and economic circumstances. Estimates for a move to Berlin stood between DM 30 and 40 billion, he announced, though some predicted twice that much. If sums like this were expended on a move to Berlin, spending on other items, such as social services, would have to be cut. It would be much more sensible, he concluded, to shift the presidential office to Berlin, and perhaps the Bundesrat, while keeping the rest of the government in Bonn.
There were many other speeches that day, and the delegates must have been relieved when, at 9:00 P.M., Bundestag President Rita Süssmuth started the voting on the five competing resolutions. In the crucial duel between the main Bonn and Berlin resolutions, the Berliners won by the narrow margin of eighteen votes, 338 to 320. To the parliament’s credit, the voting was by no means on strict party lines. Schäuble’s impassioned speech seems indeed to have had some impact on his own party, for the number of anti-Berlin votes in the CDU faction turned out to be fewer than in earlier counts. The party came down narrowly in favor of Bonn, 164 to 154. The SPD remained sharply divided, though tilting for Berlin at 126 to 110. With the largest parties so deeply split, the smaller groups had the decisive voice. The FDP voted 53 for Berlin, 26 for Bonn. The Bündnis 90/Greens went 6 to 2 in favor of Berlin, while the PDS came down 15 to 1 for the old capital. The Bavarian CSU, as expected, went solidly for Bonn.
Although relatively nonpartisan, the voting revealed an ominous division between east and west and a great deal of resistance to the prospect of a capital move. Delegates from the new eastern states, regardless of party, voted overwhelmingly for Berlin, while the majority of their western counterparts preferred Bonn. Moreover, given the ways in which internal German relations were to evolve in the next few years, it is safe to say that if the Bonn/Berlin vote had been held any later, the result would have been reversed.
A Wonderful Catastrophe
Cheers and clanging church bells on the Spree, howls of rage on the Rhine. “A Catastrophe for Bonn,” wailed Express, a tabloid in the Rhine city. Angry demonstrators in Bonn’s Marktplatz promised an “intifada” against the Bundestag’s decision to move east. Noting that the national governmental train “still stands in the Bonn station,” a local politician declared: “It is up to us to ensure that it never leaves.”
In the end, the Bonner would prove unable to prevent the capital train from leaving for Berlin, but they would manage to delay the departure and substantially reduce the amount of baggage it carried east. For Berliners, Bonn’s foot-dragging offered yet another reason for self-doubt. Their city was slated to become the new “capital of Europe,” but they had cause to wonder whether Berlin would even become the full-fledged capital of Germany. “Berlin is on the razor’s edge,” declared the architect Hans Kollhoff. “It can be a great metropolis, or it can be a poverty zone. Both are possible.”
Such fears notwithstanding, in the immediate aftermath of the Bundestag’s historic vote, Berliners hailed a decision that promised to make their city a true national capital again, like Paris, London, Rome, and Madrid. In anticipation of this elevation of status, the town became the focal point of a short-lived investment boom reminiscent of the Gründerjahre following the first German unification in 1871. An American observer, Darryl Pinckney, made this parallel explicit when he wrote: “[Berlin] is once again the German Chicago, just like Mark Twain saw, a boom city, boiling over with secrets, deals, smugglers, entrepreneurs, contracts.” Speculators from all over the world saw gold in the city’s dilapidated buildings and vast empty spaces.
Some of the biggest and most aggressive players had moved in even before the city was officially reunited and designated the future seat of national government. Shortly before the Wall came down, Edzard Reuter, chief of Daimler-Benz, began negotiations to buy fifteen acres in the Potsdamer Platz from the Senate of West Berlin. In July 1990 Daimler bought the parcel for DM 92,873,550 (about $55 million), which real estate experts estimated was between one-third and one-seventh of the land’s actual market value. When details of the deal became known, there was a great hue and cry. The Momper regime, people said, was selling off the symbolic heart of Berlin at a bargain-basement price to a company known to have worked hand-in-glove with the Nazis. In a typical Berlin gesture, members of the local leftist scene erected a gallows in the square and “hanged” a Mercedes star. A leading architectural reporter spoke of “the mistake of the century.” City planners worried that the Daimler deal would set a precedent for future sales and undercut the possibility of coherent planning for the redevelopment of eastern Berlin. In response to the barrage of criticism, the Momper administration responded that the city had to be accommodating toward heavyweight corporations like Daimler, which in the past had been reluctant to invest in West Berlin. Local leaders also made much of the fact that Edzard Reuter was the son of Ernst Reuter, West Berlin’s revered former mayor. Reuter himself argued that his company’s decision to make a major commitment to Berlin would send an important message to the rest of German industry. His colleagues from other big firms, he confided, were following Daimler’s Potsdamer Platz project “with the greatest interest,” asking themselves, “Will large companies be welcome at all in the new Berlin? Or will Berlin remain little more than a Kleingärtnerstadt [small potatoes town], with a few cultural institutions?”