• Home
• /
• Opinion

Germany is still discovering the cost of unity

The physical barrier is gone, but a divide remains in Germany.

Germans termed it Circle Day, the date when the Berlin Wall had been gone for as long as it was up. On February 5, the city went full circle with the wall down precisely 10,315 days, the same period of time it loomed over the Cold War.
The physical barrier is gone, but a divide remains in Germany, a disparity between east and west in jobs, business, political advancement and possibly even romance.
"People in the east earn about 27 per cent less than those in the west," says Hope M Harrison, associate professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University in Washington, DC. "And they are employed less. Unemployment as of January was 5.3 per cent in the west and 7.7 per cent in the east. In addition, still none of the top German companies are headquartered in the east."
Known for its thumping economy and world-class engineering, the Germany of today is a post-WWII miracle. Yet it was also an epicentre in the Cold War, a time of intrigue that continues to cast a shadow.
One in a political quandary is Gregor Gysi, a former member of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party. Though helpful in the reunification process, he continues to face allegations he was involved with the notorious East German secret police. Now a key politician in Die Linke, the country's fifth-largest party, he remains far from the major levers of power.
"In the latest coalition agreement of the German government, none of the ministers in the new government other than Chancellor Angela Merkel is from the east," says Harrison.
With the east lagging, the pull of the west is inevitable for many. More than a million people have moved from east to west since the Wall came down. "If you don't count Berlin, which is located in the east but not exactly considered the east, there are still more people moving each year from east to west," notes Harrison. "In 2016, not counting Berlin, 158,000 people moved from west to east and 404,000 moved from east to west. When people do move from west to east, they mostly move to the cities of Berlin and Leipzig."
And those left behind in the east can be a fertile ground for discontent and even extremist parties. "There are definitely some rather ghost-like small towns and villages in the east where the young people, especially young women, have moved to the west for more opportunities, leaving old people and some angry young men," says the professor.
German publications with stories on Circle Day quoted men in the east frustrated with the lack of potential dating or marriage prospects. "If you go to a nightclub, you find four men for every woman," said one.
The discontent can be expressed at the ballot box. Ironically, the former social state is now a stronghold for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
"The September 2017 federal elections led to a dramatic breakthrough by the AfD," says Harrison. "It won 12.6 per cent of the total vote, but won 21.9 per cent in the east and only 10.7 per cent in the west. And 27 per cent of the men in the east voted for the AfD."
Even though now firmly integrated into one of the bastions of capitalism, some in the east long for the old communist way. "This is called Ostalgie in German - nostalgia for the east. But it gets less and less each year. Now that it has been more than 28 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the population who lived in the east with the Wall is becoming smaller since at the older end people are no longer alive and the population who have never known the division is growing. But there is still a minority of die-hard old communists who want to go back to the 'good old days' instead of the problems of capitalism."
While the east remains isolated in some ways, reunified Germany is funding modernisation of its infrastructure. "The total cost of bringing the east up to western standards has so far been about 1.6 billion euros," notes Harrison.
In fact, some in the west complain that the east has been given better facilities. "There are places in the east where the infrastructure including internet is better than in the west since it's newer," says Harrison. "The cities of Dresden and Leipzig, for example, have received a lot of funding for renovating and modernising all sorts of things. So there are some places in the west that lag behind, including cities that are now demanding not just the east should get help in renovating."
Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin now a museum rather than a potential flashpoint in the Cold War as residents in east and west are still coming to terms with reunification. Yet the biggest achievement could still be that the Wall fell without a shot. It went down because of peaceful revolution.
"We calculated for everything, except burning candles and prayers. They disarmed us," said Horst Sindermann, a representative of East Germany's communist SED party.
Jon Van Housen and Mariella Radaelli are editors at the Luminosity Italia news agency in Milan