260 RÜDIGER HACHTMANN
ber countries). Although considerable investment funds had been made
available to the Carl Zeiss Jena Kombinat since the end of the 1970s,
the results of this increased funding for one of the key players in the
research and production of microchips in the East were not very impres-
sive.^48 In addition, the so-called “data processing centers” with “com-
puter stations” that were set up in many of the GDR’s large factories were
apparently never used to their full capacity, or they proved to be prone
to problems. The same applied to CNC (computerized numerical control)
machines as well as CAD (computer-aided design) and CAM (computer-
aided manufacturing) systems. They were put to use in a number of fac-
tories, but they still played only a peripheral role.
Sobering Experiences with the Market EconomyUntil 1989, hardly anything had changed on the job for the great majority
of East Germans. As a result, many were hit by a shock as the country
joined the West. Up to this point, it was only through West German televi-
sion that they had experienced mass unemployment and the fear of being
fi red. The idea that their jobs could be at risk during the transitional phase
in 1990 never actually entered the minds of countless East Germans. Ac-
cording to one report, “it wasn’t even possible for many of them to realize
that everything was over so quickly.” At fi rst, a lot of them “who were still
euphoric about unifi cation” thought “that this could not really happen...
then, after the fi rst lay-off s, their faces fell and their smiles turned into
frowns.”^49
Even today, unemployment fi gures still diff er clearly between the old
and the new German federal states. They dropped from 14.8 percent
(1994) to 10.3 percent (2013) in the East, but from 8.1 percent to 6.0 per-
cent in the West during the same time period. Correspondingly, the diff er-
ences in income between both parts of Germany decreased in the 1990s,
but they by no means disappeared.^50 With time, the shock experienced
by the East Germans turned into fatalism and resignation, described by a
worker here: “A certain kind of sadness set in over the fact that things had
to end the way they did.” Our social world, as one coworker put it, was
split between those who still had jobs and those “who found themselves
on the streets” and had to “take the other road.” The latter, he continued,
“did not want to keep in touch [with their former colleagues who were
still employed] anymore, because they felt like they had been pushed
to the margins” and they had become bitter about it. Colleagues also
reported that those who had kept their jobs complained that the atmo-
sphere at work had become “colder.” Not surprisingly, this ripped apart
many of the tightly woven networks among colleagues and neighbors
that had existed until 1989. Since the Wende, one worker noted, his col-