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What's at stake?
German vote could have repercussions for Europe, U.S.

By Dan Williams
Special to CNN Interactive

(CNN) -- A story on the Sueddeutsche Zeitung's Web site this month speaks volumes about Germany as it prepares to elect a chancellor to lead it into the new millennium.

The Munich newspaper writes that a town outside the Bavarian capital has hired a public relations firm to polish its image. It's not that tourists stay away. Some 800,000 come each year, many of them Americans.

But the town hardly earns a pfennig on these visitors. Few shop, few spend the night, restaurants go begging. The town is Dachau, site of Germany's first concentration camp. The tourists aren't there to tour Dachau's handsome castle or learn about the town's 1,200 years of history.

And as one of the PR consultants quips, "After visiting the concentration camp, you can't just go eat a sandwich."

The Germany that stands before its most pivotal postwar election is a country of contradictions, an economic superpower with bare cupboards, a charming tourist destination dotted with reminders of past evil.

Germans aren't just electing a chancellor on September 27. They are, arguably, crowning Europe's most powerful man. Incumbent Helmut Kohl or challenger Gerhard Schroeder will preside over an economy that is the engine of the European Community, so dominant that many see the coming euro as a thinly disguised 2-mark coin.

A single-currency Europe poses a challenge to U.S. commercial dominance in the world, no matter who wins the elections. U.S. military influence in Europe could be affected in the long term if Schroeder's Social Democrats need to turn, as many predict, to the NATO-unfriendly Green Party for a coalition partner.

Germany is Europe's most populous country, with 82 million people. They produce one-tenth of the world's exports and gobble up one-twelfth of the world's imports.

They also like to travel -- a "change of wallpaper," they call it. While international tourists spend about $13 billion in Germany each year, Germans leave behind more than three times that when they venture outside their borders. And despite rules and regulations that seem downright hostile to innovation, German business is on the upswing.

But all is not rosy. Joblessness is at a staggering 10 percent. In the former East Germany it's twice that high, despite massive help from the richer West. And Kohl and Schroeder both realize the well is dry. Since 1990, reunification has sucked nearly $100 billion a year from the federal treasury. Neither candidate would dare tamper with that aid.

Bringing the two Germanys together was Christian Democrat Kohl's shining historical moment; Social Democrat Schroeder has an ideological imperative to keep healing the East's wounds -- not to mention a political imperative. Schroeder has high levels of support in the East, something Kohl can no longer count on.

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Germany's vaunted social safety net is also stretching the federal budget to the breaking point. Unemployment compensation and welfare are so lavish that many find that losing a job is the best thing that could happen to them. Both political camps push proposed solutions, but they largely amount to tinkering. Neither candidate is suggesting a radical reform. Stability and status quo are part of the postwar German psyche. So is guilt.

Even half a century after the war, when the country makes news, it often contains background noise from the Big Bang that was Hitler.

Skinheads make headlines by beating up immigrants and torching refugee homes. Holocaust survivors accuse Germany's most respected companies of profiting from forced labor during the Nazi era. A wiretap law prompts comparisons with an authoritarian past. And towns with ugly reputations turn to public relations firms for a makeover.

The winner of the September 27 vote will have the honor of packing up the government in Bonn and moving it to bustling Berlin next year. A far less enjoyable task also awaits: choosing the design for a planned Holocaust Memorial in the capital.

Helmut Kohl already has a favorite -- a stark field of columns, designed by an American, to be erected near the Brandenburg Gate. Gerhard Schroeder opposes it. The final decision has been delayed until after the election. It was threatening to become a campaign issue.

For the chancellor who takes Germany beyond the year 2000, it's far better to focus on the future than on a troubled past.

Dan Williams is a chief copy editor at CNN International and worked for nine years as a journalist in Germany.