Still Divided By the Past
October 3, 2007
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Psychologists have had their say just in time for the German Unification Day. Their diagnosis: 17 years after unification, Germany's emotional state remains disharmonious. For, they say, many eastern Germans are ashamed of the billion-euro subsidies they have received from the West in the past 17 years.
Whether that is indeed the case is beside the point. What remains is an interesting attempt to investigate the emotional life of us eastern Germans, now among some of the best researched living beings on the planet. Educators and criminologists have looked at the consequences of a uniform upbringing. Sexologists have researched the secrets of the Easterners' especially active love lives. Reports that the Stasi secret police spies collected about East Germans have filled many a newspaper page over the years. The government's report on German unity: year after year a report about painstaking economic development in the East with the help of billions from the West.
German unity, it appears, is one-sided, with which western Germans have had only one real thing to do over the years: They occupied the leadership roles and shoveled the billions into the new eastern German states. Since the easterner Angela Merkel became chancellor, they are only left the role of financier.
This admittedly slightly exaggerated characterization outlines a dilemma this Unity Day: It's a holiday for all Germans, but the event it reflects, aside from the official celebrations, again merely concerns the Easterners.
In the East, every part of life has changed; in the West, money has just become a bit scarcer. For many, probably most, in the new eastern states, Oct. 3 is a reason to celebrate, regardless of everyday worries. No one wants to do without the freedoms gained, and the individual desire to go back to the GDR is to be taken as seriously as the desire to drive a Trabi rather than a Volkswagen.
And how is the westerner's state of mind?
Traveling from Berlin far into Germany's West, one gains some insight. There are those who with gleaming eyes recall their spontaneous trip to Berlin when the Wall fell. There are others who want to collect money for the Wall to be rebuilt, because they're fed up with the East. Sorry, it was all really just a joke! Asked how their lives have been changed by German unification, many Westerners' responses are marked by perplexed silence, shrugs of the shoulders. It's no wonder: the East has become an extension of the West. The opportunity unification offered to create something new, together, is long past.
For many, if not most, normal Westerners, Oct. 3 is a day on which, above all, they are reminded that for 17 years they have been sending money to the East, and that there's no end in sight. Even if, in the official speeches, no one says it that way.
Bernd Grässler is a journalist at Deutsche Welle (ncy)
Whether that is indeed the case is beside the point. What remains is an interesting attempt to investigate the emotional life of us eastern Germans, now among some of the best researched living beings on the planet. Educators and criminologists have looked at the consequences of a uniform upbringing. Sexologists have researched the secrets of the Easterners' especially active love lives. Reports that the Stasi secret police spies collected about East Germans have filled many a newspaper page over the years. The government's report on German unity: year after year a report about painstaking economic development in the East with the help of billions from the West.
German unity, it appears, is one-sided, with which western Germans have had only one real thing to do over the years: They occupied the leadership roles and shoveled the billions into the new eastern German states. Since the easterner Angela Merkel became chancellor, they are only left the role of financier.
This admittedly slightly exaggerated characterization outlines a dilemma this Unity Day: It's a holiday for all Germans, but the event it reflects, aside from the official celebrations, again merely concerns the Easterners.
In the East, every part of life has changed; in the West, money has just become a bit scarcer. For many, probably most, in the new eastern states, Oct. 3 is a reason to celebrate, regardless of everyday worries. No one wants to do without the freedoms gained, and the individual desire to go back to the GDR is to be taken as seriously as the desire to drive a Trabi rather than a Volkswagen.
And how is the westerner's state of mind?
Traveling from Berlin far into Germany's West, one gains some insight. There are those who with gleaming eyes recall their spontaneous trip to Berlin when the Wall fell. There are others who want to collect money for the Wall to be rebuilt, because they're fed up with the East. Sorry, it was all really just a joke! Asked how their lives have been changed by German unification, many Westerners' responses are marked by perplexed silence, shrugs of the shoulders. It's no wonder: the East has become an extension of the West. The opportunity unification offered to create something new, together, is long past.
For many, if not most, normal Westerners, Oct. 3 is a day on which, above all, they are reminded that for 17 years they have been sending money to the East, and that there's no end in sight. Even if, in the official speeches, no one says it that way.
Bernd Grässler is a journalist at Deutsche Welle (ncy)
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