On 18 November 1989, more than a week after the fall of the Berlin Wall, German cartoonist Dithard von Rabenau paints an ironic picture of the reunion between the RDA (Egon Krenz, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party) and the FRG (Helmut Kohl, Federal Chancellor). The question of reunification is not simply a domestic matter in Germany. The status of Germany and Berlin can only be changed with the agreement of the four victorious powers of 1945. They are concerned at the formation of a state with 80 million citizens at the heart of Europe, whose political, economic and financial clout threatens to upset the balance and disrupt the stability that the division of Germany had helped to create. The cartoon shows the leaders of the four powers — Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; George Bush, US President; Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister; and French President François Mitterrand — seemingly rather shaken by the speed of events and the newfound emancipation of the two Germanies.