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Debate over East Germany Goes Presidential

To outsiders, it may seem like mere semantics. But for Germans it's a matter of grave political importance: how to refer to the former East Germany? Now presidential candidate Gesine Schwan has put in her two cents worth with a position that compliments her political ambitions.

German presidential candidate Gesine Schwan has rocked the boat again with her contribution to the ongoing debate of how harshly to judge former East Germany. A week before the presidential elections on May 23, the candidate put forward by the Social Democrats has shied away from referring to the ex-communist dictatorship as an "unjust state."

Such a formulation, she told the Sunday paper Tagesspiegel am Sonntag "implies that everything that happened in that state was unjust. I wouldn't go that far when it comes to East Germany."

If this were not an election, that comment might have fallen below the radar. But the reality is that Schwan desperately needs the support of the Left Party in her bid for the presidency. The party was formed in 2007 after the marriage of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor to East Germany's communists, and the left-wing western German party WASG created after former Social Democratic Party leader Oskar Lafontaine bolted his party.

Were Germany's president chosen in a direct election, the result would be clear. According to an opinion poll published in Bild am Sonntag, 70 percent of Germans would re-elect Horst Köhler, who is seeking his second five-year term. Only 10 percent would support Gesine Schwan.

But the president is elected by the 1,224-seat Federal Assembly, a body made up of both federal and state parliamentarians, in which the parties supporting Köhler -- the Christian Democrats (CDU), its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) -- have 604 seats, 9 shy of the 613 he would need to achieve the absolute majority required in the first two rounds of voting.

Schwan did battle against Köhler in the last presidential elections in 2004, but this time she is counting on broader support from the left side of the political spectrum -- the SPD, the Left Party, the Greens and the Free Voters, a minor Bavarian party which could decide the vote.

In courting votes from the Left Party, Schwan walks a thin line. The life-time academic and former president of Viadrina University in the Polish border town of Frankfurt an der Oder has always been an overt critic of the far left, falling into disrepute within her own party in the 1980s for her support of dissident movements in Eastern Europe. With her election now dependent on Left Party votes, however, she has opened up the Social Democrats to criticism of being willing to cooperate with the former communists -- despite repeated claims to the contrary.

The office of the German president is supposed to be above the fray of party politics but Saturday's presidential vote is turning into a political show-down, and something of a precursor to German general elections scheduled for September. Furthermore, Schwan's campaign for the largely ceremonial office has been more aggressive than Germans are used to.

The debate over East Germany was unleashed in March by the governor of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Erwin Sellering (SPD), who, in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, defended his native East Germany, claiming that it was not a "totally unjust state...utterly devoid of good."

Since then, a debate has simmered over a suitable vocabulary for the characterization of East Germany, also known as the German Democratic Republic or GDR. Several politicians responded to Schwan's weekend comments. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) praised the people of former East Germany for having overcome great challenges and claimed that "there is no call for condescension." Brandenburg Governor Matthias Platzeck (SPD) proclaimed the GDR "dead as a door mouse," not in need of reburial. He warned against dumbing down the debate to categories of "for or against, culprits and victims."

But as the editorials suggest, a more differentiated discussion is unlikley in the context of the neck-in-neck presidential competition.

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung comes to Schwan's defense:

"Two decades after its well-deserved downfall, many people play down the one-party regime, some even exalt it. University students in both western and eastern Germany demonstrate huge gaps in their knowledge. It's time for clarification. And if it can only be one word, then let it be this one: dictatorship. The single-party rule depended on repression, espionage and the silencing of dissenting voices. We don't need to use the term 'unjust state' to describe it. That loaded vocabulary has come to represent a complete rejection of the GDR. The 'u word' is being used to ingratiate nostalgic East German sensibilities. Or to drive the political opponent into a disreputable corner."

"Gesine Schwan is refusing to submit herself to a public quality check of her conscience, possibly because she wants to be elected president with the help of the Left Party. But this alone doesn't constitute the crime of GDR glorification."

The conservative daily Die Welt writes:

"The trivialization of the governmental injustice of the GDR makes a mockery of the 1,245 people who were killed trying to cross the German-German border. The fact that most people made the most of their lives within the context of the dictatorship is completely unrelated -- they did despite the dictatorship, not because of it."

The SPD's intention to have Gesine Schwan elected president with the help of the Left Party is a worrying signal, in complete contradiction to the SPD's claim of not relying on the Left Party to help elect their chancellor. Anyone who allows the president to be elected with votes from the Left Party won't hesitate to do the same with the chancellor. The SPD's credibility is becoming a campaign issue."

-- Naomi Buck, 2:30 p.m. CET