On 3 October 1990 The Cold War officially ended on German soil. With the demise of the German Democratic Republic and the emergence of a unified state in the form of the Federal Republic of Germany, not only the Cold War but in some ways also the Second World War faded into history. The fall of the Berlin Wall and unification allowed the postwar era to take on the contours of a completed historical period that occupies the immediate past and provides an epochal buffer zone between the present and the Third Reich. The year 1989/90 marked a profound shift in international relations and allowed the postwar era to supersede the Third Reich as the defining moment in recent German history. The signing of the 4+2 treaty implied that the international community had formally pardoned Germany and, to more cynical minds, had lifted its sentence of postwar division as retribution for the atrocities committed under National Socialism. International approval of plans for unification implicitly paved the way for a redefinition of Germany as a reasonably contrite former combatant and morally acceptable modern state. But how can a divided country whose common jingoist, genocidal past has rendered nationalism deeply suspect begin to conceive of itself as a viable and future-oriented unified nation?

Divided Germany, more than any other country, marked the battle lines between the competing superpowers. In official rhetoric, the FRG imagined itself as a prosperous, peace-loving democracy repelling the Bolshevist threat and pitted against the rival GDR, which in turn saw itself as the showcase of the socialist planned economy and the bulwark against capitalism’s fascist legacy. Little of the GDR’s political and social institutions, artistic heritage, everyday culture, and value systems, or even material goods and architecture survived the unification process, which some critics have labeled an annexation.