Berliners brace for a Communist takeover ­ again

Today the final legacy of the Berlin Wall will fall. For the first time since the physical barrier collapsed 12 years ago, the heirs of the Communist regime in the East are to be allowed to participate in a decision over the city's future, and help topple the last remnant of the Cold War.

Barring any late defections, a no-confidence vote will bring the controversial reign of Mayor Eberhard Diepgen at what is known as the Red Town Hall to an end. This auspicious moment comes at a time when the city is in financial chaos and faces the prospect of insolvency in a few months.

But Berliners and the rest of Germany have barely noticed the impending bankruptcy. With the capital bracing itself for a town hall Communist takeover, two powerful Länder are also threatening a blockade. Bavaria and Hesse, southern states run by conservatives, warned that they will cut subsidies paid to the capital city, if the so-called Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) gets its hands on the levers of power.

Generous payments from other federal Länder are what have kept (West) Berlin afloat for more than five decades. Even now, 11 years after reunification, non-Berliners cover more than half the city-state's budget.

Ken Livingstone and other mayors of Western capitals complain about the money syphoned off by their greedy hinterlands, but in Germany the peasants pay for Berlin's three opera houses, two zoos, and almost everything this city boasts in pairs if not triplicates.

The extra DM1m (£314,000) demanded by Sir Simon Rattle, for instance, before he starts work at the Berlin Philharmonic will probably have to be stumped up by the federal government, because the city is out of cash. What would happen to Berlin if all the manna from heaven were suddenly to stop dropping into the council's begging bowls does not bear thinking about. That is probably why all thoughts are turning not towards the bleak future, but the sinister past.

Last night the post-Communists gathered for an emergency meeting in an attempt to set the record straight. Not about budgets, corruption scandals or any other city business, from which they had been kept well away by the governing coalition. They were trying to decide whether building the Wall had been a good idea. Unlike most other former and reformed Communists in Eastern Europe, the East German successor party has yet to repudiate the nastiest aspects of its former rule. Now on the brink of power, (West) Germany's political establishment demands that the PDS purge its conscience. Or else.

The history revision got off to a bad start. The building of the Wall, said Peter Porsch, the deputy chairman of the PDS, had been "historically understandable and legitimate". A correction soon followed from Petra Pau, the leader of the Berlin party organisation and minister-in-waiting in the regional government. "Nothing can justify the deaths at the Wall, or the fact that people were robbed of their right to freedom," she said.

Ms Pau was born in 1963, two years after the Wall went up. Too young to have been tainted by anything her Communist forebears had done, she is reluctant to issue a blanket apology. Many of her older comrades, are refusing even to acknowledge that the Wall, guards dogs and the minefields had been wrong. The prospect of people such as these should now get a say in the running of the capital has provoked outrage through Germany, east and west.

But there is no alternative. The polls show that most Berliners want the corrupt and inept Christian Democrats out of city hall. Without them, the arithmetic dictates that the only viable majority is the one in which the votes of the PDS are counted.

After today's vote, they will initially be silent partners until new elections in the autumn. In other words, the PDS will support the Social Democrat-led city administration, without taking up any posts. But if the trains are still running in September, the PDS, already the biggest party in some eastern districts, might reap rich rewards for its constructive behaviour.

Voters are likely to be especially generous if the popular Gregor Gysi, a former dissident lawyer regarded as one of the best brains in German politics, comes back from retirement to take charge of his party in Berlin.

That would set the stage for an emotion-charged duel between the 53-year old Mr Gysi, who has been accused of past Stasi links, and the Social Democrats' new champion, Klaus Wowereit. The dapper 47-year old lawyer opened his challenge by publicly announcing that he was gay. In such a contest, the colourless Mr Diepgen would barely be noticed, and he was widely expected last night to withdraw.