GOOD-BYE, HONECKER:

The young Merkel: Idealist's daughter (Judy Dempsey, SEPTEMBER 6, 2005, International Herald Tribune )

Half a century ago, Pastor Horst Kasner made an extraordinary decision: He packed up his young family and his belongings and took them from the democratically governed, West German city of Hamburg to this small town in the Brandenburg countryside, the heart of communist East Germany.

"We were young and idealistic back then," said Kasner, perched high above the pews in the choir of a Protestant church he rebuilt from ruins when the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989.

It was an almost laconic explanation of how Angela Merkel, Kasner's daughter and the woman who could make history Sept. 18 by becoming Germany's first chancellor from the East, grew up and lived under communism until the Wall fell, when she entered the gritty world of politics.

A slim, tall man looking younger than his 79 years, Kasner sat down for more than two hours last week with a reporter from the International Herald Tribune and offered a fascinating insight into the workings of the communist system in which he struggled to tell the truth - even discussing the dissident writings of the Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov - and fended off the secret police.

Merkel, who was just three months old when the family moved east, has said little about the effect of living under communism, where, after excelling at school, she became a scientist, eventually working at the prestigious Academy of Science in East Berlin.

Only in recent interviews has she revealed that her parents instilled in her the need to shine at everything if she was to survive a hostile environment suspicious of her father's Christian teachings and, as Kasner revealed, of his gatherings of local intellectuals discussing dissident statements. [...]

People in the Christian Democratic Party who know Merkel well say her experiences as a youth was the reason she has so strongly embraced the market economy and the United States.

While Kasner does not talk about his daughter, it is clear he does not support her beliefs. "I believed as long as I lived that the Wall would last. We had established ourselves here over the years. Over time, it was about adapting and resistance."

When the Wall did fall in 1989, Kasner preferred to have two separate Germanys. "I wanted a democratic East Germany. But the people wanted the deutsche mark. The revolution is now over."

Merkel, now 51, could hardly wait to seize the moment to embrace reunification.

"As far as I have been shaped by politics, I have been shaped by German reunification," she said Sunday night during her television duel with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. "I am proud to be a politician for all of Germany with East German roots.

Just a tweak here and there and the East would have worked....

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 5, 2005 11:03 PM