‘German unity came like a thief in the night – no one had expected it.’ This was, of course, not the first time in German history that the unexpected had happened. The apparent stability and permanence of the Cold War division of Germany turned out to be no more firmly rooted than the monarchical principle that had dominated the lands of the Germans until defeat at the end of the First World War. There were, however, enormous differences between the two transitions. After 1918, new constitutions had to be written and implemented against a background of political turbulence, including violence, and the shock of defeat and a detested peace settlement. After 1989, it proved possible to incorporate East Germany into the constitutional order of the Federal Republic without the formation of a new constitution despite the fact that the latter had clearly been envisaged by the Basic Law.

The apparent ease of reunification was deceptive in several senses. In the first place, the rapid process of reunification unsettled some observers. Indeed, the prospect of reunification had not seemed attractive at all to those who still saw the kleindeutsch Germany of Bismarck as a more or less unmitigated disaster. Thus, Joschka Fischer warned that ‘The German national state of Bismarck, the German Reich, had twice overrun the world with wars, which brought with them unspeakable suffering’. The fact that it took place without a fundamental debate about the future state of the Germans compounded the reservations of those with strong attachments to the achievements of the Federal Republic.