If we want to overcome the division, if we truly want to find unity, we need trust and we must be able to depend on each other. Therefore, in making this decision, it’s important to me that, over the course of 40 years, no one had any doubts that parliament and the government would have their seat in Berlin again after the restoration of German unity.
(Applause from deputies of the CDU/CSU, the FDP, the SPD, and Alliance 90/The Greens)
In these forty years – this much is also true – the Basic Law, the old Federal Republic of Germany with its provisional capital of Bonn stood for freedom, democracy, and the state under the rule of law. But it always stood in that way for all of Germany. And the symbol for unity and freedom, for democracy and constitutional statehood for all of Germany was, like no other city, always Berlin:
(Applause from deputies of the CDU/CSU, the FDP, the SPD, and Alliance 90/The Greens)
from the airlift to June 17, 1953, from the building of the Wall in August 1961 to November 9, 1989, and to October 3 of last year.
Integration into a unified Europe and into the alliance of the free West has preserved peace and liberty for us and made unity possible. And the free world’s solidarity with the unity and freedom of the Germans expressed itself nowhere more strongly than in Berlin. Would we really be reunited today without Berlin? I think not.
(Applause from deputies of the CDU/CSU, the FDP, the SPD, and Alliance 90/The Greens)
German unity and European unity are interdependent. We have always said that, and it has proven to be true. My home, as I have said, is in the neighborhood of Straßburg. But Europe is more than Western Europe.
(Applause from deputies of the CDU/CSU, the FDP, the SPD, and Alliance 90/The Greens)
Germany, the Germans, we have won our unity because Europe wanted to overcome its division.
That is why a decision for Berlin is also a decision for overcoming the division of Europe.
(Applause from deputies of the CDU/CSU, the FDP, the SPD, and Alliance 90/The Greens)
I say it once more, dear colleagues: the issue today is not Bonn or Berlin, the issue is the future of all of us, our future in our reunited Germany, which must still find its inner unity, and our future in a Europe that must realize its unity if it wants to live up to its responsibility for peace, liberty, and social justice.
That is why I ask you sincerely: vote with me for Berlin.
(Long sustained applause from deputies of the CDU/CSU, the FDP, the SPD, and Alliance 90/The Greens – Deputies of the CDU/CSU and the SPD rise. – Deputy Willy Brandt [SPD] congratulates deputy Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble [CDU/CSU])
Source: German Bundestag, ed., Stenographische Berichte [Stenographic Reports], 12th legislative period, 34th session, June 20, 1991. Bonn, 1991, pp. 2736-38 and 2746-47.
Translation: Thomas Dunlap
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