Political point-scoring threatens to overshadow the 10th anniversary of German unification next week, as the country's two opposing political camps clash over their importance in the historic event. The Chancellor, Dr Gerhard Schroder, yesterday told the federal parliament in Berlin that it was ordinary Germans, not politicians, who were responsible for the reunification of the country.
"The wall did not fall in Bonn, it was broken down on the streets from east to west," he said, directly snubbing Dr Helmut Kohl, the former Christian Democratic (CDU) leader and chancellor at the time of reunification.
Dr Kohl had already attacked the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) in a speech earlier this week, breaking the silence he has kept since a slush-fund scandal enveloped the CDU late last year.
Dr Kohl had said that Dr Schroder, then an aspiring state premier, had insisted in June 1989 that the government "should not lie" to a new generation of Germans by telling them reunification was a realistic possibility.
A month later, the current German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, had called the "demand for reunification a dangerous illusion", Dr Kohl said.
Dr Kohl views the unification of Germany as the greatest achievement of his political career and the approaching anniversary has seen previously frosty relations thaw between the "reunification" chancellor and the present CDU leader, Ms Angela Merkel.
They were seen exchanging friendly remarks earlier this week at a CDU-sponsored ceremony, organised partly to give Dr Kohl a chance to speak on the anniversary of the reunification, after he was not invited to speak at next week's official ceremony in Dresden.
The political polemic in the run-up to the celebrations has prompted dismissive editorials in German newspapers.
"Germany is witnessing an extraordinary `I told you so' quarrel over who we have to thank for reunification," the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper said yesterday.
The newspaper criticised as pointless the "sudden popularity" of the "what would have happened if . . ." debate that had possessed the country's politicians.
As the lower house debated the legacy of reunification, Germany's upper house, the Bundesrat, reopened in Berlin on Thursday.
The Bundesrat was the last main federal institution to move from Bonn and completes the federal government's return to its pre-war seat just in time for the 10th anniversary of reunification.
The move began last year when the lower house, the Bundestag, returned to the refurbished Reichstag building adjacent to the Brandenburg Gate.
"The move of the capital is now complete and everything that we achieved in Bonn has been brought to Berlin," Chancellor Schroder said. He has been working out of the offices used by east Germany's communist rulers until his chancellery is completed.
