East-West Little Man vs. Big Man

When foreign dignitaries visit Bonn, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl usually greets them like a jolly innkeeper, slapping backs and exchanging jokes. But last week, as Erich Honecker’s 18-car motorcade pulled up outside the Chancellery, Kohl could barely contain his distaste for the historic occasion, the first time a top East German leader had set foot in West Germany. After glumly shaking hands with the East German Communist Party chief, he bluntly waved away photographers asking for a replay. Said Kohl: “We’ve already done it.”

Kohl’s irascibility reflected the deep ambivalence that attended Honecker’s five-day visit. Polls showed that three out of four West Germans were in favor of the trip. But like Kohl, many of them took no enjoyment in providing de facto recognition of East Germany, which Bonn still considers part of a single German nation. They were especially unhappy that such recognition was being awarded through Honecker, architect of the infamous Berlin Wall.

! Kohl’s chilly welcome proved downright warm compared with his performance during twelve hours of meetings with his guest. Indeed, only once during the trip could the Chancellor force himself to refer to East Germany by its official name, the German Democratic Republic. Usually he called it “your place.” Far from dwelling on the progress achieved over the years in relations between the two countries, Kohl launched into a blistering attack on Honecker’s regime, denouncing it for everything from holding political prisoners to enforcing a shoot-to-kill order against East German citizens who try to flee to the West. Such policies, he said at a Bonn banquet, collide with the goal of the “unity and self-determination of a free Germany.” Visibly irritated, Honecker included an extemporaneous riposte in his prepared remarks. Communism and capitalism, he said, “are like fire and water.”

At 6 ft. 2 in., Kohl towered eight inches over his guest, leading police escorts to dub the pair Big Man and Little Man. Despite his height advantage, Kohl later complained that he had developed a visceral aversion to his guest, who “physically gave me the jitters.” Honecker, spry at 75 but stiff and formal around Kohl, visibly relaxed as he toured four of West Germany’s eleven states. He softened his rhetoric, at one point predicting that the border between East and West Germany will one day “no longer divide us but unite us.” The most touching moment came when Honecker arrived in Wiebelskirchen, the Saarland town where he grew up. After visiting the graves of his parents, Honecker seemed close to tears as he greeted acquaintances he had not seen in 40 years.

Though the two leaders signed three technical accords, the only real point to the meetings, as a West German official put it, was to establish once and for all that “there are two Germanys and there will remain two Germanys for some time to come.” That being so, Kohl and Honecker agreed to meet again in East Germany, though no date was set. West German Industrialist Otto Wolff von Amerongen may have best summed up the mood when he met the East German leader in Cologne. Alluding to Honecker’s banquet jab, he said, “As long as the German people are not on fire or under water, we may be O.K.” Throughout a trip filled with tension, it was one of the few lines that brought a smile to Honecker’s lips.