re: #78 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

It was not reunification, it was annexation.

According to the West German Constitution, a new, reunited Germany was supposed to be reconstituted as an entirely new nation with a new Constitution. Instead, East Germany simply joined the West much as the Saarland province of France did in 1956.

That is Article 146 of the Basic Law. There was also an Article 23, under which “any new prospective Länder could adhere to the Basic Law by a simple majority vote.” This is what happened on August 23, 1990, when the GDR parliament passed a resolution “declaring the accession (Beitritt) of the German Democratic Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany.” It is under Article 23, rather than Article 146, that reunification. It IS reunification, too, since the separate parts of a previous whole are now re-united.