The EconomistNovember 2nd 2019 Europe 452
1deeper shift, says Christian Hirte, the gov-
ernment’s special commissioner for east
Germany. One idea, floated by Angela Mer-
kel, who as chancellor is east Germany’s
best-known export, is that the east is un-
dergoing something comparable to the ex-
perience of West Germany in 1968, when
children forced their parents to account for
their activities in the Nazi period. Now, the
argument runs, young east Germans seek
explanations for what happened to their
parents in the early years of reunification.
“The long-term wounds were concealed
because people were absorbed finding a
place in the new society,” says Steffen Mau
of Humboldt University in Berlin. “Perhaps
you need 25 years to realise this.”
This summer Marie-Sophie Schiller, a
young Leipziger who hosts a podcast called
“East—A Guide”, had an “emotional” talk
with her parents about their experiences
after 1990. She was astonished to learn
about their daily hardships and humilia-
tions. Stefan Meyer, an activist who grew
up in East Berlin, remembers watching his
parents’ confidence ebb as they struggled
to find their feet in the new country.
After 1990 “the whole software of life
changed” for east Germans, says Markus
Kerber, a bigwig at the interior ministry.
Short-term pain was inevitable. Average la-
bour productivity in the east was 30% of
that in the west. Kohl’s decision to ex-
change Ostmarks at a 1:1 rate for Deutsch-
marks made swathes of firms uncompeti-
tive overnight. Those that survived
struggled with the western rules they had
to import wholesale. By one estimate, 80%
of east Germans at some point found them-
selves out of work.
Perhaps the Treuhand could have pro-
ceeded more gently, some argue today.
Maybe the unified country should have de-
veloped a new constitution rather than
simply extending the western one east-
wards. The west might have learned from
the more enlightened aspects of life in the
gdr, such as free child care and encourag-
ing women to work outside the home. Rad-
ical parties on left and right take such argu-
ments to a ludicrous extreme, arguing that
reunification was the “colonisation” of a
bewildered people by an exploitative west.Understanding required
Such views tap into a feeling among many
easterners that they have struggled to take
back control of their own destiny. Ms Köp-
ping says east Germans hold barely 4% of
elite jobs in the east. Many rent flats from
westerners, who own much of the eastern
housing stock. “Sometimes east Germans
feel that they’re ruled by others, not them-
selves,” says Klara Geywitz, a Branden-
burger running to lead Germany’s Social
Democrats. Nor have east Germans
stormed the national citadels of power. Al-
most 14 years after she took office Mrs Mer-kel—and Joachim Gauck, president from
2012-17—remain exceptions rather than a
vanguard. Rarely one to dwell on her ori-
gins, Mrs Merkel has lately begun to reflect
publicly on the mixed legacy of reunifica-
tion. “We must all...learn to understand
why for many people in east German states,
German unity is not solely a positive expe-
rience,” she said on October 3rd.
One obstacle to such understanding is
that Germans view reunification different-
ly. Half of west Germans consider the east a
success. Two-thirds of east Germans dis-
agree. Many westerners were oblivious to
the upheaval their new compatriots en-
dured. “On October 4th 1990 [the day after
reunification], after a night of partying I
carried on my life as normal,” says Mr Ker-
ber. “Not a single east German had the same
experience.” In places western stereotypes
of easterners have persisted, the Jamme-
rossi(“complaining easterner”), ungrateful
for the largesse showered on the east after
unification, or Dunkeldeutschland (“dark
Germany”), a cold-war term implying back-
wardness. More recent is the notion of the
east as a cradle of neo-Nazism, bolstered by
the strength there of the far-right Alterna-
tive for Germany (afd). Portrayals of the
east in Germany’s national (for which read
western) media have often read like dis-
patches from an exotic, troubled land,
where the far right are always marching in
the streets or thumping immigrants.
Such accounts risk ignoring the huge
strides made by east Germany since reuni-
fication. Citizens were liberated from the
humiliations of life in a surveillance state.They were allowed to choose their leaders,
express their opinions and travel, to west
Germany and beyond. Economically, de-
spite the hardships of the early years, the
east soon began to converge with the west,
and life improved drastically across a range
of measures. Today some east German re-
gions have lower unemployment rates
than western post-industrial regions like
the Saarland or the Ruhr valley. West-east
transfers of close to €2trn ($2.2trn) have re-
duced the infrastructure gap. (Today they
run at around €30bn a year, mainly in the
form of social-security payments.) Wages
in the east now stand at around 85% of the
level in the west, and the cost of living is
lower. The life-expectancy gap has closed,
the air is cleaner, the buildings smarter. Ac-
cording to Allensbach, a pollster, 53% of
east Germans are content with their perso-
nal economic situation, the same figure as
in the west. “It all worked surprisingly well,
but this story doesn’t fly in the east,” says
Werner Jann of the University of Potsdam.One of the best
Last year Andrea Boltho, Wendy Carlin and
Pasquale Scaramozzino, three economists,
contrasted east Germany’s post-reunifica-
tion performance favourably with the Mez-
zogiorno in Italy, where gdpper person re-
mains little over half that of the north.
Perhaps the most apt comparison is with
other parts of Europe that shook off
communism. East Germany’s per capita
growth has outstripped most other eastern
European countries (see chart on next
page), despite starting from a higher base.50 75 100125150-20-10 0 10 20 25 30 35 40Baden-
WürttembergBavariaMecklenburg-
WestPomeraniaNorthRhine-
WestphaliaRhineland-
Palatinate
SaarlandSchleswig-
HolsteinSaxony-
AnhaltLowerSaxonyBremen
BerlinBerlinHamburgBranden-
burgThuringiaSaxonyHesseJena LeipzigBischofferodePot sdamGörlitzMunichChemnitzDresdenFormerboundary
betweenEast&
WestGermany64-year-olds and over
% of total, 2035 forecastPopulation
%change 1995-2017“Hidden champions”
Small world-beating
firmsUnderemployment
Germany=100, 2017GermanyStill catching upSources: Berlin Institute for Population and Development; Federal Institute for
Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development; Federal Statistical
Office; Halle Institute for Economic Research; Professor Hermann Simon