L'Italia tra questione tedesca e ri-unificazione: Esistono due stati germanici e due stati germanici devono rimanere (?)

This research project was originally meant to focus, within a stricly bilateral approach, on the Italian perceptions and their reactions towards the German events. Firstly, Italian fears and expectations were to be addressed; then, the changing process of the relationship between Rome and Bonn from 9 November 1989 until 3 October 1990 was to be critically discussed. More than any other frontier, the division of Berlin (and the Berlin Wall as its physical representation) epitomized in people’s mind the ultimate sign of the division of Europe into spheres of influence. More than any other event in Central-Eastern Europe, its demolition contributed to reshape both geographical and ideological maps. All the information provided by the documents collected, together with the specific issues they highlighted, have turned, however, the subject of this work into something broader: a study of the Italian vision of the “deutsche Frage” from 1979 up to the re-unification. Its temporal perspective has therefore shifted backwards, from 1989-1990 to the 1980s as a whole. At a closer glance, Italy’s reactions to the 1989-1990 dramatic transformations revealed themselves as being part of a set of events associated with a peculiar awarness of the “German question”, which is deeply rooted in the past.