Word: bundestag
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Kohl's proposal, delivered in an uncharacteristically bold speech to the Bundestag, is predicated on the assumption that there will be free, multiparty elections in East Germany. Though the details remain nebulous, the outline provides for a massive infusion of economic aid from West Germany to follow soon after the polling. The two countries would then establish joint committees for determining what political and economic links would be established between them and how extensive the reunification ought to be. "Nobody knows how a reunified Germany will look," said Kohl. "But I am sure that unity will come...
This time Kohl got the better of it. His speech was interrupted with applause by supporters and opponents, and his party's main rival, the Social Democratic Party, at first had no choice but to endorse the speech. Later in the week, though, when the Bundestag formally approved the plan, the SPD began feeling its politics again and abstained from the voting. Kohl also seized the high ground from the far-right Republican Party, which has issued absurd calls for complete German reunification to 1937's borders, which now include parts of Poland. Kohl reassured Germans across much...
West Germany, the country most immediately and strongly affected, was both overjoyed and stunned. In Bonn members of the Bundestag, some with tears in their eyes, spontaneously rose and sang the national anthem. It was a rare demonstration in a country in which open displays of nationalistic sentiment have been frowned on since the Third Reich died...
...Party, a tiny far-right grouping founded in 1983 and headed by a former SS officer, emerged with a surprising 7.5% of the vote. The showing not only secured the Republicans their first eleven seats in the 138-member city legislature but guaranteed the party two seats in the Bundestag, to be occupied after the national elections in 1990. As for the cocky Christian Democrats, they trailed their own 1985 performance by almost 9 percentage points, winding up with just 55 seats, the same number captured by their perennial rival, the Social Democratic Party. The Free Democrats fared so poorly...
West Germany's Bundestag is normally an orderly parliament, courtly in its procedures and respectful of its leaders. But last week the Bundestag convened in an unaccustomed turmoil of accusation and recrimination over West Germany's role in building Libya's suspected chemical-weapons plant at Rabta. Members shouted angry questions at a government spokesman, to the visible discomfort of a dour and silent Chancellor Helmut Kohl. "Once again our history has caught up with us," said Norbert Gansel, arms-control spokesman for the opposition Social Democratic Party, referring to the country's Nazi heritage. "Once again the evil, blinkered...