Observers followed the twists and turns of reform communism in Moscow and in Eastern Europe during the 1980s with keen interest, but no one, least of all in West Germany, thought to connect them with the imminent demise of the Berlin Wall. Yet within three weeks of November 9, 1989, unification – an existential goal transformed by Ostpolitik into a heartfelt but largely barren mantra of West German politics – vaulted to the top of the national agenda. The Bonn government, motivated largely by a belief system built around the social market economy and European multilateralism, adopted a unification policy of rapid institutional transfer. However, by aiming at nothing less than the wholesale extension of the West German model and its supranational linkages to East German soil, the government's policies produced severe hardship in eastern Germany, which eventually resulted in a significant political challenge to the passive consensus in Germany about the domestic model of political economy and the larger goals of European integration.

Formal unification, November 1989 to October 1990

The story of the how the Berlin Wall came tumbling down is well known. The near-term origins of this bizarre tale of civil courage and official myopia, leavened with a dash of farce, lie for the most part in Kremlin politics.