THE OPENING OF THE BERLIN WALL on November 9, 1989, was one of the most dramatic events of the post-World War II time. In the ensuing months, much more than just the graffiti-covered concrete panels of that infamous structure came crashing down during carnival-like celebrations. After four decades, the division of an entire continent, a nation, and a society came to an abrupt end.

A powerful force setting the revolutionary change in motion was a substantial movement of people from the German Democratic Republic westward. Throughout its forty-year history, the GDR had resorted to extreme measures to control its borders and halt the exodus of productive workers. The most extreme of these measures was the erection in 1961 of the Berlin Wall to check the sustained movement of East Germans to the Federal Republic of Germany whose booming economy had created millions of new jobs. Nearly three decades later, for a time of several years beginning in the summer of 1989, the appeal of West Germany, even with its economy mired in recession, prompted another wave of migration of more than 700,000 East Germans, most between the ages of eighteen and thirty.

By mid-1995 it appeared that the physical and administrative mergers of the two German states would be far easier to accomplish than the social aspect of the union. In the postwar time, the two Germanys had assiduously developed two mutually exclusive models of society. Thus, the major challenge lay in harmonizing and integrating these societies, which were only gradually emerging from the long shadows cast by four decades of separate development in antagonistic systems.