Roger Cohen

The New York Times, 20.04.99

 

With solemnity but little pomp, and with Europe at war in the Balkans, Germany returned its Parliament to the Reichstag today, 66 years after a fire there ushered in Hitler's dictatorship.

 

The first session in the renovated Reichstag, now topped with a glass dome to symbolize the political transparency on which Germany has based its postwar revival, marked the dawn of the ''Berlin Republic,'' a phrase dear to Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, but one he insists will bring no fundamental changes in German policy.

 

Addressing the Parliament today, Mr. Schroder, a Social Democrat, said that to equate the word ''Reich,'' or ''empire,'' with ''Reichstag'' would be ''as senseless as equating Berlin with Prussian glory and German centralism.'' He went on, ''The federative model of German politics is well-established and in no way endangered.''

 

With its many ghosts -- of imperialism, fascism, communism and division -- Berlin has stirred some old fears that its periods as a German capital are synonymous with disaster. The Chancellor appeared concerned to allay any such concerns, saying it was the success of ''Bonn democracy'' that ''makes the Berlin Republic possible.''

Mr. Schroder spoke in a 669-member chamber of striking informality, evidently intended to counter any imperial nostalgia that the massive stone edifice begun under Bismarck might kindle.

 

Gray carpets, simple mauve seats, low public galleries, and the glass cupola and big windows give a feeling of accessible ordinariness. Hovering over the proceedings is the pudgy eagle known affectionately as ''the fat hen'' that adorned the Parliament in Bonn, retained after several leaner models more suggestive of Prussian virility were rejected.

No national anthem was played, and no thumping rhetoric delivered, as speaker after speaker emphasized that the westward-looking democratic values that have anchored Germany's postwar rebirth and then unification in 1990 would remain strong.

 

Sensitivity about the move back to Berlin has been heightened by the fact that the first session in a building touched by so many of this century's conflicts took place as war raged in the Balkans with German planes taking part in NATO attacks on Serbia.

Mr. Schroder did not directly refer to the violence, but said he was convinced that a united Germany, assuming new political responsibilities after its long postwar tutelage, must be prepared to fight for ''a Europe of human rights that does not exclude anybody on our continent.''

 

To applause, he quoted the Albanian writer, Ismail Kadare: ''The Balkans is the yard of the European house, and in no house can peace prevail so long as people kill each other in its yard.''

 

But Ludger Volmer, a Deputy Foreign Minister, echoed growing uneasiness in his environmentalist Green Party, the junior member of Mr. Schroder's governing coalition. ''We are initiiating our Berlin Republic in the midst of a European war,'' he said, ''and I am one of the people responsible for a policy that leaves me no reason to be optimistic or happy.''

 

Referring to the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, Mr. Volmer added: ''We failed in our first goal of bombing Milosevic back to the negotiating table within two or three days, and we failed to stop a genocide in Kosovo. Now we must persevere, but the outlook is not encouraging.''

 

On Sunday, Gila Altmann, a Green and a Deputy Environment Minister, added her signature to a petition for a cease-fire already signed by about 1,000 Green Party members. These divisions in the party are putting pressure on Joschka Fischer, the Green Foreign Minister, although his support in the country has risen since the bombing began.

 

Despite the crisis in the Balkans, the overriding symbolism today was of European and German reconciliation. The first sitting came almost exactly a decade after the fall of the Berlin wall, which the Reichstag abutted during its long postwar hibernation.

 

Accepting a symbolic key to the Reichstag, Wolfgang Thierse, the Speaker of the Parliament and a man who grew up in Communist East Germany, stood in bright sunshine beneath the old inscription ''Dem Deutschen Volke''' -- ''To the German People.''

He said the words, betrayed by those who repeatedly trampled the democratic aspirations of Germany in this century, symbolized the grave responsibilities of every member of Parliament on a day when ''all doubts are set aside, all resistance overcome, all problems solved.''

 

Mr. Schroder took a somewhat more somber view, noting that every sixth Berliner is unemployed and suggesting that the special role of Berlin would lie in overcoming the lingering mistrust between the eastern and western parts of the country and so completing the unification of Germany ''Just as Bonn stands for the western part of the republic, Berlin symbolizes a united Germany,'' he said. He accused ''a sheltered generation'' of westerners of arrogance in criticizing easterners without asking, ''What would we have done under similar conditions?''

 

Growing support from the eastern part of the country was critical to Mr. Schroder's victory in elections last year, and he has made the struggle against high unemployment in formerly Communist areas a central plank of his Government's program. Up to now, results have been modest.

 

The Reichstag, which was completed in 1894, was a center of war propaganda during World War I, the Parliament of the Weimar Republic and the site of a Nazi exhibition in 1938 on ''The Eternal Jew.'' After the war, the border between the British- and Soviet-occupied sectors ran through its damaged masonry.

 

It has been restored at a cost of about $330 million by the British architect Sir Norman Foster, who said today that the ''openness, fairness and resolution'' with which the project was completed said much about the qualities of German society.

 

Many of the major architectural projects in Berlin have been entrusted to foreign architects, causing some grumbling here. The decision clearly reflects the great sensitivity of architecture in a city where Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, laid out elaborate plans for ''Germania,'' the planned capital of the 1000-year Reich.

 

After the inaugural session, the members of Parliament and Mr. Schroder moved upstairs for a jolly reception, at which an oompah band performed as meatballs, smoked salmon sandwiches and beer were consumed with evident relish.

 

The scene was extremely relaxed and low key, very much Prussia-lite. ''Behind its monstrous dress, what we now have inside the Reichstag is a rather modest woman,'' remarked Michael Naumann, the State Minister for Culture.

With Smoked Salmon and Beer, Berlin Greets Parliament