O8 OTHEGLOBEANDMAIL | SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2019
Thirty years later, what stands out
is not just how vividly people re-
member that first breaching of
Germany’s “internal border,” but
the extraordinary extent to which
that former border – not just the
ring that encircled West Berlin,
but the far longer barricade
meant to keep 17 million people
from fleeing – still shapes the psy-
chological, economic and espe-
cially the political lives of the peo-
ple who remain on the eastern
side.
The Berlin Wall has now been
down longer than it was ever up –
it existed for 28 years, from 1961 to
- The GDR itself only ever ex-
isted for 41 years, although that
was preceded by a decade of bru-
tal war and Nazi savagery.
Since 1990, Germany has spent
close to €2-trillion (almost $3-tril-
lion) absorbing the old GDR into a
single federal country. Every Ger-
man adult still pays an annual
“solidarity tax,” equivalent to 5.5
per cent of their income tax, to
subsidize the construction of an
equal society that still, in impor-
tant ways, remains elusive.
In Rostock, a city that was a
thriving shipbuilding hub under
the closed economy of the War-
saw Pact, the decade following re-
unification was tough, and the
city became a grim-looking place
of abandoned factories and more
than 20-per-cent unemployment,
known in the media for race riots.
Today, that’s hard to see. Ros-
tock is an attractive place, its his-
toric square beautifully restored,
its old factories turned into high-
tech business, cultural and shop-
ping centres, its population final-
ly growing again. The reunifica-
tion spending means that the ci-
ties of eastern Germany often
look more modern, attractive and
orderly than those in the west, at
least in their centres.
“We’ve had economic develop-
ment, but only to a certain point,”
says Sylvia Grimm, a Rostock na-
tive who is a senior official in the
state government here in Meck-
lenburg-Western Pomerania, the
most rural of the eastern states.
Thirty years ago, she felt a sense of
liberation that never left – but for
many around her, the optimism
fell away. “I was 16 in 1989, and I
suddenly had the world at my feet- but it was different for my par-
ents’ generation.”
Ms. Grimm speaks proudly of
her state’s progress: Unemploy-
ment has fallen to 6.5 per cent,
comparable to some of the
wealthier states of the west, and in
fact there are now labour shortag-
es, and the brain drain of educat-
ed people to the west has finally
stopped.
But people in the eastern states
still earn 20 per cent less than the
national average for the same job.
None of the largest companies
listed on Germany’s stock ex-
change has moved its headquar-
ters to the east, and when easter-
ners start businesses, it’s usually
after they’ve moved to the west.
Within eastern Germany, only a
fifth of the people who hold exec-
utive positions were born in the
east, according to one study. Even
police chiefs, city planners and
mayors are frequently “wessis”
who moved east in the 1990s and
2000s (many from the east seen
as capable of filling those jobs,
paradoxically, had fled west in the
great postreunification exodus).
The flight from the east finally
seems to have stopped. Between
1990 and today, at least 3.6 million
people – most of them female and
educated – moved from the east
to the west, in a series ofwaves,
leaving the former GDR with 15
per cent fewer people than it had
three decades ago and many cities
alarmingly depopulated. Starting
this decade, however, that trend
reversed: There are now more
people moving from west to east,
taking advantage of lower hous-
ing costs and employment oppor-
tunities.
The physical, employment and
income differences between the
two former countries have gradu-
ally lessened – driving from Ham-
burg to Rostock, or from Hanover
to Leipzig, you can no longer tell
when you’ve entered the east. In
Berlin, the districts that were once
on the east side of the wall are no-
ticeably more polished, chic and
technologically advanced than
many in the west.
But as economies and liveli-
hoods have converged, the politi-
cal differences between east and
west have sharpened, to a pro-
found and alarming degree.
If you look at an electoral map
of Germany from the 2017 nation-
al election or any of the state elec-
tions that have occurred since
then, you are looking at a starkly
visible dividing line between two
very different countries.
On the left side, in the states ofthe old West Germany, there are
now essentially two major par-
ties: Chancellor (and East Ger-
man) Angela Merkel’s moderate-
ly conservative Christian Demo-
cratic Union, and the Greens – the
ecological party that is now part
of thegovernment in 10 of Germa-
ny’s 16 states, and is widely ex-
pected to overtake the Social
Democrats as the second largest
national party in next year’s elec-
tion.
The right side of the map has al-
so recently become a two-party
system. The two major eastern
parties, which now dominate
most state legislatures across the
region and represent the most
federal MPs sent from the east, are
the Left Party – a direct descend-
ent of the communist regime that
ruled the GDR – and the Alterna-
tive for Germany (AfD), an ultra-
nationalist movement that be-
came a major party in the east af-
ter 2015 by adopting harshly anti-
immigrant policies and outspo-
ken climate-change denial. Those
views have made it a favourite of
angry men in less urban areas
where immigrants are rarely seen
(it had a moment of success in
some western states, as a protest
vote, but has largely fizzled out-
side the east).
In Rostock, I met with federal
MPs from both of these parties,
and I was struck by their similar-
ity. The extreme-left parliamen-
tarian deplored the racism of his
right-wing counterpart and had a
more polished tone (and did not
hide his pre-1989 role in the com-
munist hierarchy), while even the
supposedly moderate AfD parlia-Germany:TheWallfundamentallyaffectedthepoliticsofmultiplegenerations
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differentcountries.In the city of Rostock, the decade following Germany’s reunification was tough, but today, it is a thriving, attractive place.GORDONWELTERS
EUROPE