The challenge soon became evident in a host of legal, political, and social dilemmas that complicated the process of unification. Among the trickiest of these problems was the welter of conflicting ownership claims attached to many factories, houses, and even vacant lots in eastern Berlin. In a fateful decision, the German government elected to restore ownership to those whose property had been confiscated by the Nazi or Communist regimes. (An alternative would have been to pay compensation, which is what the new Czech government did.) This meant that ownership issues had to be resolved before a property could legally be sold. Although the problem was hardly restricted to Berlin, the former capital was a veritable minefield of conflicting claims owing to its premier importance in the Communist and Nazi systems. By the summer of 1992 over 2 million claims had been filed throughout the former GDR, 200,000 of them in eastern Berlin alone.
Berlin’s postunification boom, it quickly turned out, could not be sustained amidst all the doubts about the city’s prospects. In addition to the problem of conflicting ownership claims, continuing resistance by the pro-Bonn lobby to the shift of central governmental institutions from the Rhine to the Spree undermined confidence in the capital-elect. According to the victorious Berlin resolution of June 20, 1991, the parliament was supposed to move east in four years. But later that year the Bundestag passed a new resolution establishing a commission to study the transfer based on “a division of labor between Bonn and Berlin.” No time frame for the move was specified. The federal government, meanwhile, decided in December 1991 to relocate the chancellor’s office to Berlin but also to divide the ministerial functions between Bonn and the new capital. Eight ministries (later changed to six) would retain their main offices in Bonn, including Defense, the largest. As further compensation for Bonn, eleven bureaucratic agencies already located in Berlin would be moved to the Rhine. As for the ministries slated to move east, Kohl’s cabinet decided that the transfer could not be completed until the year 2000, with individual offices making the shift as their designated quarters became ready for occupancy. In an effort to expedite this process, the municipal government of Berlin proposed refurbishing existing structures that had served the GDR and/or the Nazis. Bonn, however, called for totally new buildings, whose construction would require more time, not to mention a lot more money. The inconsistency between Bonn’s warnings about the high cost of a capital transfer and its demand for brand new government buildings was not lost on the Berliners. They spoke derisively of a “luxury move,” suggesting that Bonn’s insistence on new construction was designed to delay the transfer and to make it less palatable to the public.
The plan to shift capitals was in fact becoming increasing unpopular. A poll taken in early 1993 showed that 55 percent of the populace opposed the move, with only 39 percent in favor. The pro-Bonn faction voiced the hope that the next Bundestag, due to be elected in 1993, would reverse the parliament’s decision to move. “I considered the decision to have been wrong at the time, and I still do,” said Bonn’s mayor, Hans Daniels. “You would have to be a prophet to say what the next parliament will decide,” he added. For their part, Berliners complained that the efforts by the Bonner to postpone or cancel the move were having a negative effect on the local economy. As Mayor Diepgen put it, the campaign “makes investors uncertain and harms Berlin and the eastern states.” As evidence for this, Diepgen pointed to the fact that of the eighty Japanese firms that had initially said they would establish branches in Berlin, only ten remained on board in 1993.
The Berliners themselves, however, were partly to blame for their city’s failure to blossom economically in the wake of unification. Instead of focusing all their efforts on knitting the city together and creating an attractive climate for business, city officials divided their time between internecine battles over turf and all-too-ambitious schemes to elevate the city’s profile.
