On Sunday, September 27, Germans did something extraordinary -- for the first time since World-War II, they voted a sitting Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, out of office. However, this was not so much a true victory for the winning Social Democratic Party, according to PNS commentator William O. Beeman, as the action of a wounded society grasping at hope. Beeman, who teaches anthropology at Brown University, lived and worked in Chemnitz, Germany, an important industrial city in the Eastern state of Saxony from 1996 to 1998. He is currently writing a book about his experiences there.

A strange malaise has arrived in Germany following nearly a decade of reunification between East and West. Understanding and healing that malaise is the essential task facing Chancellor-elect Gerhard Schroder and his party colleagues if they are to succeed in healing Germany.

The malaise is complex and difficult to understand. It might be likened to the mixed feelings that arise in a family when long-lost, elderly, indigent parents are found by their children and then move in with them.

The children are glad to see the parents and love them, but inter-generational conflicts make tensions intolerable for everyone. The parents love their children, but they want to be respected for their age and experience and hate being dependent and feeling useless.

The children love their parents, but see them as irrelevant to their lives, and resent the financial drain. After a while both sides want out, but family ties and economic realities make that impossible. They badly need a family counselor. As tensions increase, all become desperate.

The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the elimination of borders that followed was like a family reunion. The Germans, euphoric, looked for a vast cultural and economic revival.

When the two groups moved in together, the reality was sobering. Reunification cost the West Germans much more than they ever imagined. East Germans who had dreamed of renewal watched the systematic dismantling of their commercial and industrial base instead. They began to long for the Communist period when there was full employment, even if material goods were lacking.

The bitterest recriminations revolved around the manner of the rebuilding. Formerly viable industries were purchased for pennies on the dollar and immediately closed to insure the continued dominance of firms based in the West. North Sea seaports and fisheries are now vacant and deserted, and even viable manufacturing firms -- like the venerable Zeiss lens works -- were dismantled.

This approach created monumental unemployment, exceeding 20 percent in most of the East. The problem spread to the West as workers from the East migrated there in vast numbers, willing to work for less. Most Germans over 40 who are now unemployed have no prospect of ever working again. All is not well with young workers either -- unemployment is so high, they have no point of entry into the labor market. Apprenticeships at impossibly low wages are fiercely sought, but thousands are without even a first job.

The vast housing and commercial building stock in the East was renovated through tax schemes designed to promote investment. This resulted in wholesale absentee land ownership as wealthy West Germans bought up buildings that Easterners lacked the cash to buy. Eventually the scheme worked too well. Overbuilding created a housing and office glut, and renovation costs were so high that the unemployed easterners could not afford the rents. The result is urban landscapes full of beautiful properties that stand empty.

To add insult to injury, most construction was done by foreign workers. Freely allowed to work in Germany, they came in droves from Portugal, Italy and even Great Britain. Easterners blame the capitalists of the West for not only destroying their economy but failing to employ them even while restoring their patrimony. Westerners think the Easterners are simply ungrateful.

Schröder labeled his campaign "The New Middle," and this clearly attracted voters, but the question is whether Schroder's "Middle" is in reality a gaping hole -- the still volatile gap between East and West. The Social Democrats will rule in coalition with the Green Party, which calls for renewal and healing of the land. Germans can hope that the new government will be able to put this national family in order -- healing both its land and its spirit.