214 WINFRIED SÜß
although it must be said that the level of luxury enjoyed by the elite was
still very modest according to Western standards. Its welfare state equiv-
alent consisted of a complicated system of special and extra retirement
pensions for individual professional groups and several diff erent special
health care systems that existed alongside the offi cial egalitarian old age
and health care provisions for privileged professional groups.^55
Owning cash in foreign currency was yet another way to achieve a
higher standard of living because it allowed people to take advantage of
what was off ered within the shadow economy; whoever had this kind of
cash could buy luxury consumer goods or services that were otherwise
in short supply. To some extent, the patterns of privilege typical of the
SED also governed access to foreign currency. Yet, in this case, access
was also regulated in other ways, creating a unique kind of inequality that
escaped the control of the SED leadership. The people who profi ted most
from being able to acquire extra consumer goods were those professional
groups with contacts to the West (including some with little social pres-
tige, such as the waitstaff in international hotels) who were able to earn
extra informal payment for services that were in short supply, and fami-
lies who had access to Western products and Western currency thanks to
contact with relatives in the West.
The Path to the Present: Social Security and
Social Stratifi cation after the Collapse of State Socialism
Drained but Reinforced: The Transformation and Restructuring
of the Welfare State since the 1990sGerman Reunifi cation shifted the priorities of social policy over the short
term as well as at a more fundamental level. The enormous urgency with
which the political actors had to negotiate the reunifi cation process in
early 1990 created a preference for consistent solutions, which aff ected
a number of the basic decisions that shaped the sociopolitical framework
for a unifi ed Germany at an early stage.^56 First, a cross-party coalition of
West German social politicians and GDR representatives pushed through
the idea that the economic and currency union of the two countries
should also be accompanied by a “social union.” This was a decision in
favor of a welfare-state approach to dealing with the consequences of
the East German dictatorship, which had proven to be a successful tac-
tic after World War II. Second, the political actors involved determined
that this social union would consist of transposing West German institu-
tions into the former East Germany, which was broken down into the new
federal states. The reforms that had been planned in the West were not