On the Foundations of the Postwar Period?

The planned restructuring is full of administrative difficulties and regional conflicts.

That the future GDR will no longer consist of districts, as it has for nearly forty years, but will be made up of Länder, is by now no longer a topic of discussion. The date for elections has not yet been set, but as of January 1991, as announced by Minister for Regional and Municipal Affairs Manfred Preiß, there will once again be five Länder. But the clearer the schedule for introducing the Länder has become, the clearer it has also become that their establishment will by no means go off without controversies and quarrels. To be sure, the introduction of the Länder is in essence a restoration – namely, of the Länder structure that existed in the GDR up to 1952. But this operation isn’t as simple as it might seem at first glance – and there’s also the question of whether it would actually be a good thing to make the task of establishing a federal structure in the GDR such a simple one.

Like the Federal Republic, the GDR originally developed out of the Länder. But throughout almost its entire existence, it was a centrally governed unitary state, in which only some regional consciousness, culture, and folklore were preserved from the Länder. Therefore, for all the differences that once existed between the various regions of the GDR, the Länder must in fact be newly established as state-political entities. Should they be erected on the nearly lost foundations of the postwar Länder? Or are there alternatives more in keeping with the goal of an efficient federal structure?

Of course, the most obvious path would be to take the districts that replaced the Länder and recombine them into Länder once again. For in fact the district structure rests by and large upon the old Länder framework. At the very least, the districts have their basis in the former Länder: Schwerin, Rostock, and Neubrandenburg in the north in Mecklenburg; Magdeburg and Halle in Saxony-Anhalt; Potsdam, Frankfurt/Oder and Cottbus in Brandenburg; Erfurt, Gera, and Suhl in Thuringia; finally, Leipzig, Dresden, and Karl-Marx-Stadt in Saxony. But that’s true only in a very general sense. The current districts also deviate from the former Länder boundaries to no small extent. It’s here, especially, that new problem zones emerge.

In the north, the question arises as to whether Uckermarck and Westpriegnitz, which would belong to Mecklenburg if the districts were simply transformed into Länder, should revert back to Brandenburg. In the south, the issue is whether the counties [Kreise] of Altenburg and Schmölln, which are now part of the largely Saxon district of Leipzig, would have to become Thuringian again. Similar problems present themselves in the Lausitz, where parts of the current district of Cottbus could be reincorporated into Saxony, and problems could also arise between the future Länder of Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg with regard to the area of Bad Liebenwerda, Senftenberg, Brandenburg, and Rethnow.

The commission for the “Preparation and Implementation of Administrative Reform” appointed by the Modrow government[1] last year has proposed referenda for all these regions. But hidden in the details of the restructuring are not only objective-administrative difficulties, but also highly sensitive emotions and regional passions. The letters that Minister Moreth, the minister in the Modrow government responsible for local government bodies, has received on the subject show this just as much as the desire for separate political-administrative structures that has been voiced in some parts of the GDR. For example, in Vorpommern, which was added to Mecklenburg following the separation of the eastern territories after the war, a strong yearning for autonomy has arisen – just as it has in the part of Silesia on the German side of the Oder and Neiße [rivers] that belongs today to the Saxon district of Dresden.

Other conflicts have been ignited over the question of the capitals of the future Länder. In Mecklenburg, the traditional capital of Schwerin has competition in Rostock, which grew into the most important city on the Baltic Sea during GDR times; and in Saxony-Anhalt, whose capital was Halle, claims are being staked by Magdeburg, which has long been the center of the old Prussian province of Saxony. Such quarrels have already given rise to ideas like that of a “Free and Hanseatic City of Rostock” – which at least is a measure of the will to independence behind the decision to return to the Länder.

Does this will to independence play too dominant a role in the pull toward the Länder? It is, after all, obvious that the five Länder that would emerge would not only enrich German federalism with an increase in diversity but also burden it with many problems. If one takes the population numbers as the key, the GDR Länder would increase the number of small Länder in a unified Germany, and these small Länder are already having trouble backing their politically guaranteed independence economically and financially. Only Saxony, with around 5 million residents, would rank in the middle, right after Hesse. All the others – Saxony-Anhalt with 3 million, Brandenburg with 2.7, Thuringia with 2.5, and, finally, Mecklenburg with 2.1 – would fall between Rhineland-Palatinate with its 3.7 million residents and the taillights of the list, the city-state of West Berlin with 1.8 million, Hamburg with 1.6, the Saarland with around a million, and Bremen with 650,000 residents. The number of “poor houses” – as these Länder are irreverently referred to in view of their weak economic and financial strength – would grow, and the need for financial equalization payments would cause tensions within the federal system to increase.

For that reason, too, there have been thoughts of combining the reconstitution of the Länder with a restructuring [of them]. At the heart of these considerations is the division of the state of Saxony-Anhalt; as it is, Saxony-Anhalt is the most artificial creation among all the GDR Länder, and it only existed in the form in which it would be reconstituted for a brief historical moment between 1945 and 1952. The government commission has proposed allocating the existing district of Magdeburg to the state of Brandenburg; the district of Halle would then join Saxony. As the commission report states, this would “give rise in the central part of the GDR to two efficient Länder that are comparable to the medium-size Länder in the Federal Republic and that would also be able to play a significant role in Germany as whole.”

Other thoughts go even further. They reflect on whether it might not be better to organize the GDR into three or only two Länder. If one considers that the GDR as a whole is equal in size to North Rhine-Westphalia, this idea has much to recommend it. A large southern state, formed by Saxony and Thuringia, would have a counterpart in a northern state – either with or without Mecklenburg, which, because of its pronounced historical and regional peculiarities, has a special role in all discussions of restructuring. That such a radical solution by no means represents merely a drawing board-creation of the technocratic mind, but has its historical, political, and cultural corollaries, is made clear by the proposal from Karlheinz Blaschke, a Dresden historian who specializes in regional history […].

A special problem arises from the role of Berlin. Should the city, whether as the German capital or not, form a separate federal state – as West Berlin does now within the context of the federal states of the Federal Republic – or should a state of Berlin-Brandenburg be established?[2] The latter has mostly practical reasons going for it. A state of Berlin-Brandenburg would make it possible to get some kind of a handle, in terms of planning, on the problems that will emerge from what is expected to be a large “intertwined region” surrounding Berlin and stretching all the way to Brandenburg and Frankfurt/Oder. Moreover, Berlin would avoid the fate of a city-state like Hamburg. For a long time, the Hanseatic city has been complaining vociferously, and for good reason, that it’s losing more and more industry – and thus tax revenue – to the surrounding area, without being compensated for the cultural and social services it provides to that area. On the other hand, West Berliners – according to FDP Bundestag representative Lüder – are afraid that in such a federal state they’d be “demoted to a Brandenburg commune;” whereas the western half of the city is now federal land. This argument, however, is presumably outweighed by the fear of having to use their own tax revenue to help not only East Berlin, but also scenic but economically poor Brandenburg get on its feet.