The transcendence of a border: How West German intellectuals debated reunification

The German reunification process of 1989–90 sparked off a debate among West German intellectuals, which is still relevant ten years on. Three intellectuals made particular contributions to this debate: Gunter Grass, Jiirgen Habermas and Karl Heinz Bohrer. Grass insisted that Germany must never be reunified; Habermas maintained that the experiences of the revolution in the East must be incorporated into a new constitution; and Bohrer argued that Germany must ‘become a nation again’. Western perceptions of the East, as revealed by the debate, help to explain the sense of inferiority felt by many Easterners today.