36 Time November 11, 2019“It was special to even touch this money,” he recalls. “It felt
solid. The East German mark was thinner, flimsier.” As a boy
growing up in East Germany, he was sometimes sent West
German currency by his grandparents on the other side of
the border, be it as a birthday gift or a reward for good school
grades. Keup pored obsessively over the notes, minted with the
mysterious- sounding titles and images of unknown cities and
historical figures. “Names from behind the Iron Curtain, an
invisible world,” he reflects. Their worth to him was far more
than simply financial.
In any case, there was only so much the 16 million citizens
of the communist German Democratic Republic (G.D.R.) could
buy in a sealed-off country of scarcity, shortages and joyless
austerity. Tantalizing tastes of Western consumer goods could
be obtained on the black market and at state-run “Intershops,”
which only accepted hard currency, like dollars or deutsche
marks (DM). Cigarettes, coffee, chocolate and pop records were
on offer to those who could afford them. Others had to find their
pleasures where they could. “I loved the smell of Persil and
Ariel detergent in the clothes,” reminisces Nicole Hartmann,
of receiving packages of hand-me-downs from relatives in the
West as a young girl. “I always wanted to keep them unwashed.”When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, followed
by the inner German border that ran from Czechoslovakia to
the Baltic Sea, the gates to the West were opened to all, as well
as the bounties and temptations that lay beyond. By foot and
by row upon row of Trabant and Wartburg cars, the “Ossis” (as
East Germans were known) began to pour across what had been
one of the most secure borders in the world. Were that not all
reason enough to feel euphoric, there was more awaiting them
on the other side: free money.
Since 1970, East Germans arriving to the Federal Republic of
Germany by whatever means were paid a grant, initially of 30 DM
twice a year, later rising to 100 DM once a year, under a programknown as Begrüßungsgeld
or “welcome money.” Under
Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ost-
politik policy of peaceful rap-
prochement, the measure was
intended to help the few peo-
ple who did manage to depart
the G.D.R., legally or other-
wise, to pay for food or travel.
The amount is equivalent to
about $100 in today’s money.
After the abrupt and en-
tirely unforeseen rupture of
the Berlin Wall, demand for
welcome money surged—
and the West German author-
ities stuck to their promise.
As word spread like wildfire
among arriving Ossis, long
queues began to form out-
side banks and building so-
cieties. The state-sanctioned
handout triggered a colossal
spending spree across Berlin’s
River Spree. It was a commer-
cial revolution, and a moment
of mass transactional transfer-
ence from socialism into capi-
talism and the material world.
Considered a gift by some and
a bribe by others, it helped set
the tone for full and swift re-
unification by October 1990,
firmly on West German terms.
No official statistics exist
as to exactly how much was
claimed in all, but by the time
payments were halted on
Dec. 29, 1989, replaced by a
foreign currency fund that both German states contributed to,
it’s estimated that at least 4 billion DM had been paid out in a
matter of just seven weeks. “I think over 95% [of East Germans]
got this money,” speculates Sören Marotz, historian at the DDR
Museum of East Germany’s history. “Some people found ways
to claim the money more than once.”
On West Berlin’s glittering technicolor shopping boulevard,
the Kurfürstendamm, the famous KaDeWe department store
was a first port of call for many—to spend or simply to stare
in awe at its luxurious abundance. In supermarkets in the bor-
derlands of West Germany, witnesses remember seeing shelves
stripped bare. Almost everyone claimed their 100 DM, from the
current Chancellor Angela Merkel, then a 35-year-old physicist
living in East Berlin, to sports stars, doctors, artists, political
dissidents, musicians, families, pensioners and Stasi agents.
Even babies were eligible for a payout.
Cash injections to the former G.D.R. have in some ways never
ceased. Since 1991, Germans have paid a so-called solidarityPeter Keup can
still remember
how it felt to hold
deutsche marks
in his hand.
World