Germans and Czechs walk the road of reconciliation: earlier this year the presidents of Germany and the Czech Republic won the European Statesman Awards of the Institute for EastWest Studies.

Not long ago the idea that unhealed wounds of history could determine the relations between peoples or countries would only have caused raised eyebrows. Today it has become almost fashionable to go back in history whenever a problem between countries or ethnic groups occurs. But the number of such conflicts that have been solved and therefore disappeared from the front pages of the newspapers has been relatively small.

After World War II a great effort was made to heal the painful relationship between Germany and France. Later, relations between the German and Polish peoples were given special attention and steadily improved, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But efforts by Germany to normalize relations with their other Eastern neighbours were less successful.

The German-Czech relationship proved particularly difficult. While the roots of some tensions between European nations go back centuries, the German-Czech problem only became acute after World War I and the treaties which ended it. During the war, US President Woodrow Wilson had proclaimed the `right of self-determination of peoples'. But neither Wilson nor his advisors foresaw what self-determination would mean for regions and countries with mixed populations.

So when the Czechs, who had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were given the right to form their own state in October 1918, it contained not only 46 per cent Czechs but also 28 per cent Germans, 13 per cent Croats, eight per cent Hungarians and other minorities such as Poles, Ukrainians and Jews.

In the Thirties, when National Socialism was rising in Germany, the German minority in the Czechoslovakian Republic (the Sudetendeutsche) demanded to join the Reich. The Allied Powers felt so weak that they reluctantly agreed to the dismantling of Czechoslovakia in the Treaty of Munich (1938), and then could do nothing to stop Hitler marching into Prague and turning the country into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. A fierce, terrifying period of occupation followed. So it was natural that after the war the Czechs drove the Germans out of their lands. It is hard to establish exactly how many were driven out (about three million) and how many died in the process. About two million Sudeten Germans settled in Bavaria which in 1949 became part of the Federal German Republic.

It was against this background that, after years of negotiations, Chancellor Kohl and Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus signed a `Czech-German declaration of reconciliation' on 20 January this year. Kohl closed the speech which he gave on that occasion with the words that the Polish Bishops had used to move the process of German-Polish reconciliation forward: `We forgive and ask for forgiveness.'

The declaration contains passages which were opposed by radical elements amongst both the Sudeten Germans and the Czechs. The former protested against the recognition in the declaration that the Germans would make no further demands for the return of land and property. Some Czechs, on the other hand, found it hard that there was explicit recognition of the `expulsions' of the Germans.

What gave this declaration special significance were the speeches of the Czech President, Vaclav Havel, before the German Bundestag in Bonn and the ensuing visit of Federal President Roman Herzog to Prague. Both dealt with broader issues than just German-Czech relations.

President Herzog called his speech: `Generosity and Forgiveness--Czechs and Germans must not remain prisoners of their history'. Looking back to 1933-45, Herzog said, `When I think of these years, I am not overtaken by a feeling of collective guilt, because every thinking person knows that guilt is only possible on the individual level. What befalls me is a feeling of shame and revolt against the injustice and suffering inflicted by the Germans on millions of people during that time, but first of all a feeling of great sadness when thinking of those victims of criminal and senseless policies. This is a bitter inheritance but one that I cannot refuse.'

Herzog then quoted from a New Year's message of Pope John Paul II: `It is true that one does not need to remain a prisoner of the past: for the individual and whole peoples need a kind of purification of the memory, so that the evils of the past are not repeated. The point is not to forget what has happened but to read it once more with new feelings, and to learn from the experiences of suffering that only love constructs while hatred brings with it destruction and decadence.'

Addressing those on both sides who found it difficult to accept any policy of reconciliation, Herzog added, `Human feelings must always be taken seriously, especially in politics. To suppress sadness or pain, fear or worry, is no solution. We need therefore to accept the bitter feelings that still exist on both sides.' Only if such feelings were articulated could `we recognize, accept and deal adequately with them'.

President Havel said that a community had to recognize the truth about its own history to be a truly free community. And `only in a truly free society can the politicians behave as free people'.

Havel then concentrated on the concepts of patriotism and nationalism. He used the German word Heimat--which combines the meanings of home, fatherland and country--to describe that part of the search for identity which is common to all people. Heimat was `no closed structure but the contrary ... a bridge between the individual and the world.... It is the solid ground under one's feet when one looks to heaven for orientation.'

He then spoke of the tragic effects of making Heimat the one supreme value, thereby destroying any sense of personal responsibility. `I am Czech, German or French; the Czechs, Germans or French are best; the Czechs, Germans or French are always right; the one who is not Czech, German or French is suspect; I shall do what all Czechs, Germans or French do; I shall let myself be dissolved into the collective will of my tribe and sail through life as a passive element of it.'

Havel went on: `I believe that the modern world will slowly leave behind the traditional concept of the nation-state as the high point of national existence and as the de facto end of history.' He appealed to Germans and Czechs `to strengthen what could be the strongest bond between the European states and nations--the consciousness of sharing a common Heimat of thoughts, values and ideals'.

On 15 May this year, her 60th birthday, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented Presidents Havel and Herzog with the Institute for EastWest Studies' European Statesmen Awards in New York. She said that they did not `wield the power over budgets, bureaucracies and armies' that Americans associated with presidential leadership. But `by practising the politics of responsibility and reconciliation, they have reminded us that the power to inspire can be even greater than the power to command'.