Back to the Wall
October 3, 2007
Everyone has a habit of romanticizing the past, and Germans are no exception. Even so, a surprising number of people seem to have a selective memory of the country's 40-year division.
As Germany celebrates 17 years of unity on Wednesday, Oct. 3, 19 percent of the 1,000 people questioned in a survey commissioned by private broadcaster N24 said they'd like the Berlin Wall back.
Some 21 percent of the country's easterners polled admitted to feeling nostalgic about the concrete and barbed wire that separated them from the capitalist West, even though the border was patrolled by armed guards with shoot-to-kill orders.
But the repression, censorship and restricted personal freedom that were part of the German Democratic Republic are not such distant memories for the 75 percent of Germans who said they were glad the Wall was brought down.
Political dissatisfaction
The survey also asked eastern Germans who they'd vote for, were there an election this week.
Back in December 1990, when Germany elected its first chancellor as a reunited country, some 44 percent of the electorate voted for the Christian Democrats headed by Helmut Kohl. Only 2.4 percent stood by the Party of Democratic Socialism, the successor to the East German Communist party.
Reflecting their disillusionment, 31 percent now say they would give their vote to the Left Party, which partially consists of the PDS as well as some left-leaning former members of the Social Democratic Party.
The poll conducted by independent opinion research firm Emnid found that 74 percent of easterners had felt like second-class citizens since Germany reunited on Oct. 3, 1990.
People on the other side of the country had exactly the opposite opinion. Some 73 percent of westerners said their countrymen to the East were no longer at a disadvantage in unified Germany.
Wall come tumbling down
Constructed in 1961, the Berlin Wall was the communist dictatorship's last-ditch attempt to stem the flood of refugees to the West and became the definitive symbol of the Cold War.
After mass demonstrations against the government in the fall of 1989, the politburo led by Egon Krenz decided on Nov. 9 to allow East Germans to exit directly through crossing points between East Germany and West Germany, including in West Berlin.
The Wall came down in a peaceful revolution, paving the way to national unification 11 months later.
But the optimism of what become known as the Wende, which translates to "change" or "turn," was soon replaced by disappointment for many. The former communist East continues to lag behind economically, despite the billions of euros in aid paid each year.
In the West, meanwhile, many resent having to contribute to Solidarity Pact funds, which are paid for with taxpayers' money and planned to last until at least 2019.
But while people in the West complain about their poor eastern relations, even today, salaries in the East remain 25 percent lower than in the West, according to the Institute for Labor Market and Career Research in Nuremberg.
Unemployment hovers at about 15 percent in the eastern states compared to half that in the West.
The economic gap between eastern and western Germany, however, is not a indicator that reunification has failed, according to Wolfgang Thierse, a Social Democrat and the German parliament's vice president.
"You cannot say that unity has failed," he said, according to the daily Tagesspiegel newspaper. "You have to say that we are far from finished."