Charles W. King

Today the depiction of Germany as a country and a people is inherently conservative. German restraint in foreign policy and the insistence on austerity in the wake of sovereign debt crises in Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Greece have bolstered this reputation, but it goes back much further, before Germany was a unified state. The revolutions of 1848 reached Germany last, the counter-revolutionary push back began in Germany first, and in between the character of the revolutions of 1848 in Germany were never as radical as those in Hungary, Italy, or France. Germany, the United States, and United Kingdom are the three poster children for Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. How does this square with Germany as one of the standard bearers for the modern welfare state?

While not providing as extensive safety net as the Scandinavian countries, the welfare state in Germany is extensive. While many would be inclined to chalk this up to the prevalence of post-World War Two Social Democratic parties, similar to Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, this is incorrect. While the revolutions of 1848 may not have been as radical in pre-unification Germany, they did leave their mark. By the time of unification in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 industrial capitalism had spread throughout Germany, and support for socialism and anarchism had increased, as had anti-clericalism among the Protestant majority. Similar to the food protests in England in the 1700s described by E. P. Thompson in The Moral Economy of the English Crowd, social unrest increased in Germany as urbanization and industrialization increased, egged on by socialists and anarchists.

Otto von Bismarck was the architect of German unification, an arch-conservative he was concerned with the increasing support for the left and the level of social upheaval in Germany in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War. He correctly discerned that the majority of the popular support for the German left was not because the general population supported or even understood the political objectives of the Communists, Socialists, or Anarchists, but these groups advocated programs like state provided medical care that directly addressed the needs of working and middle class Germans whose economic situations were precarious in the new industrial capitalist economy. Bismarck concluded that if economic precariousness was a source of political instability it was in the interest of the state to provide an economic safety net. This is why the arch-conservative German Empire was the first state to implement what we would recognize as a modern welfare state.

Part of the reason for the political instability that Bismarck and other political leaders across Europe and the United States needed to address during this period is a result of what is known as the “Paradox of Rising Expectations”. As people’s economic situations got better over the course of the 1800s they expected them to continue increasing, as wealth concentrated at the end of the century and growth slowed the increase over time in the standard of living began to slow political unrest increased. However, as Imperial Germany and other European nations demonstrate this does not always lead to revolution or democratization. Policy-makers expecting to see increasing democratization in the People’s Republic of China have recently been surprised by a reassertion of control by Xi Jingping. They would to well to remember that the paradox of rising expectations can be weathered not only with economic growth, but also with the pragmatic implementation of government programs.

Charles W. King

In addition to fewer and fewer South Koreans with direct connections to the North another major reason exists for the low support for reunification among younger South Koreans: the lesson of German reunification. Officially reunified in 1990, the Federal Republic of Germany is a major driver of economic and political progress in the European Union, and possesses increasing influence on the world stage. That Germany was unified at all can be considered a great success. In the early 1990s there was resistance to German reunification in the United Kingdom, France, and Russia for precisely the same reason as why Germany was divided and occupied in 1945. European leaders were concerned that a unified Germany would once again attempt to dominate Europe. It was at American insistence that Germany was reunified and remained a member of N.A.T.O.. Since then Germany has proved to be a staunch proponent of the European project.

The significant success of German reunification—particularly on the international stage—does not mean that it has been without its issues. There remain significant differences between East and West Germany within the unified German state. In 2009 German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that, “The process of German unity has not ended yet.” This is due in large part to the continuing economic discrepancies between the East and West. According to a report by the Berlin Institute for Population and Development in 2015, twenty one of the five hundred richest Germans live in the East, and only one of the twenty most prosperous cities is located in the former East Germany. None of the thirty largest firms on the German stock exchange are located in the East. Productivity, wages and savings are lower and fewer goods from the East are nationally or internationally significant brands. Perhaps most telling: the only two teams in the top tier of German football located in the former East Germany are Hertha BSC Berlin and RB Leipzig. The former was located in West Berlin during division, and the latter was founded in 2009 and was promoted to the Bundesliga in 2016.

While the former East Germany has grown economically since reunification in 1990, it has not yet reached the prosperity of the West. As a consequence of this the federal government of Germany continues to subsidize the east in many ways. Peer Stienbrück, the German Finance Minister from 2005 to 2009, was quoted in a 2011 interview saying, "Over a period of 20 years, German reunification has cost 2 trillion euros, or an average of 100 billion euros a year.” In the past decade is has become clear that this largess has been at the cost of other federal spending; Germany desperately needs infrastructure spending and the German military is woefully under-trained, under-equipped, and under-staffed.

The benefits and costs of German reunification are increasingly clear as we reach its thirtieth anniversary. Historians, economists, social scientists, and political scientists are producing academic studies of the project. These studies and examinations provide a glimpse into what the problems and costs of Korean reunification might look like, and every indication is that Korean reunification would be significantly more complex and costly. For this reason as well, young South Koreans are increasingly skeptical of their elders’ desire for unification with the North. As older South Koreans pass and younger ones gain political power it will become increasingly more difficult to turn armistice into unity.