Taipei, Oct. 4 (CNA) The most important aspect that the experience of German unification might offer Taiwan is that there was not a single incident of bloodshed, a visiting German professor said Thursday in Taipei.
"There was not a drop of blood shed during the process of German unification. I think it's the most important part of the experience," said Rudolph Wagner, a professor at Germany's Heidelberg University and one of the most respected sinologists in Europe, during a roundtable with press.
Wagner is scheduled to deliver a speech, titled "German Unification: Popular Culture, Maoist Students, and the Socialist Disneyland, " Saturday in an international lecture series organized by Lung Yingtai Cultural Foundation.
The background to and process of German unification was unique, as is the Taiwan Strait issue, which is why the experience cannot be duplicated, he said, adding that it's not suitable to compare these two cases.
Most West German citizens neither talked about unification, nor saw it coming six weeks before the 1989 unification. In fact, it was East German citizens who pushed for unification. And the German unification essentially defied post-Cold War common sense, which postulated that continued separation, rather than unification, was more likely he pointed out.
Wagner described German unification as an "accident" of history amid the unpredictable and rapid changing international situation of the late 1980s.
"Wait for the historical moment, then something will happen, " he said in a comment on the future of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.
With a Ph.D. from the University of Munich, Wagner has done extensive research on Buddhism, Taoist philosophy, and contemporary Chinese politics and the media. In 1992, he was awarded the Leibniz Prize, Europe's most prestigious prize in the humanities.