Word: germanic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Most moved on quickly, eager to complete the 250-mile trek across Austria to their new homeland. Cries of "Free at last!" filled the air as newcomers leaped from their vehicles to kiss the West German asphalt. In Passau, volunteers passed out candy and fruit to sleepy-eyed children, who must have thought they had awakened in the midst of a carnival. "I came for her," said a young father, hoisting his daughter into his arms. "She deserves more than a life in East Germany." The first signs were promising. Because Bonn acknowledges only one German citizenship, the refugees were...
They are also on average far younger than the East Germans who beat a path to West Germany's door in the past. According to polls conducted for the Ministry for Intra-German Relations, more than half of the refugees are under 30, and only 17% are over 40. Surveys showed that fully 86% have vocational or professional training, and an equal number held down professional jobs in East Germany. All of those polled owned television sets back home, almost two- thirds owned private cars, and 15% had weekend homes...
...dissipate, so does the postwar division of Europe. With the receding of the two empires, many long dead questions return -- the Hapsburg, the Balkan, even the Danzig question. But none are so formidable as the one the wartime Allies thought they had buried in Berlin in 1945, the German question...
Germany was conquered, then divided into two states designed to remain forever in a state of permanent, if cold, antagonism. Pax Americana and Pax Sovietica solved the German problem. To put it another way, the first achievement of NATO is that it contained the Soviet Union. The second achievement, underappreciated now but not for long, is that with the collaboration of the Soviet Union, it solved the German problem...
...longer. It may not yet be polite to say so, but the German question is back. The first widely noticed hint occurred this spring when the West German Foreign Minister, in a rare demonstration of German assertiveness, forced a change in the American position (and entirely undercut Britain) on the issue of short-range nuclear weapons. The issue is relatively minor, but the demonstration was not. It not only showed alliance willingness to accommodate German demands, it also showed German willingness to make them, and to make them purely and unashamedly in terms of its national interest...