M-26-7
21st September 2010, 18:51
This is a great piece on the practical results of East-West German reunification by a citizen of the former East Germany.
Daniela Dahn was sort of a dissident journalist in the DDR before the wall fell, a "dissident" insofar as she resigned from her job as a journalist on state-run television so that she could speak her own mind more freely. However, since the wall fell, she has also become a dissident of sorts against reunification, pointing out and decrying the vast inequity of wealth and power that exists in modern Germany along the very same lines as the border was once drawn.
I find it interesting how she gives evidence that the East Germans at the time of the fall of the wall, much like the Czechs in 1968, had no thoughts of restoring full-blown Western capitalism. Nor did they want a system which forbade people to leave and shot them if they tried to jump the wall to the other side. What they wanted was a democratic, humanistic socialism..."socialism with a human face". She provides convincing evidence that this is still what the people of the former East Germany want.
This story--of a forced, rapid, and inequitable East-West reunification, shaped in large measure by the IMF, World Bank, and West German private interests--is also an excellent example of what Naomi Klein has dubbed the "Shock Doctrine".
Even though this is history, I'm posting it in OI to open it up to comments from everyone (here's looking at you, Bud Struggle. ;)). By the way, it is really worth reading the whole thing. It gets most interesting towards the end.
The Legacy of Democratic Awakening - 20 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Lecture at the American Institute For Contemporary German Studies in Washington, April 2010
Before I begin describing the situation in Germany 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I’ll try to imagine what you already know about the event. You have probably seen the overwhelming photos of all the happy people dancing on the Wall, of East and West Berliners embracing. I was there and can confirm that it was such an unexpected surprise that we could hardly believe our eyes. We couldn’t get over our amazement.
How I experienced the Fall of the Wall
In retrospect, it is clear that the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 was also a product of the media. First, there was the televised press conference held by the politburo member Schabowski, during which he uneasily stuttered that new travel regulations had led to the immediate suspension of the current travel restrictions for East Germans. As a result, hundreds of people headed for various locations along the Wall. At 10 pm, the news anchor Hajo Friedrichs announced on the West German public television channel ZDF that the Wall had fallen. Although this wasn’t true, it led many thousands of people to rush to the Wall and demand that it be opened. And finally, at 11:30 pm, the first border officer called “We’re flooding” and he lifted barrier. A camera team was present.
That night, thousands of people wandered without passports or visas through the Wall that had been so abruptly opened after 28 years. They told the border guards that they just wanted to have a look at the part of the city that had previously been inaccessible to most of them. They promised to be back in the East in time for work the next morning. After a night of celebration, many kept their promises. From this day on, everything went very quickly.
I assume that you believe that everyone in East and West Germany wanted to be reunited as soon as possible. And that a period of happiness, harmony, and prosperity on both sides began with the victory over Eastern dictatorial constraints. For those few strong people who were able to assert themselves, this was also true. For many others, however, it was somewhat more complicated. It is difficult to explain, but for people like me, the day that the Wall fell was one of mixed feelings. We felt joy, of course, but it was mixed with concern.
For me and many other politically active citizens, ‘Die Wende’, or the turning point in East Germany’s history, began long before the Wall fell. Some writers had been writing factual books for years and so contributing to a subversive way of thinking. On my initiative, the writer’s association formed a commission in 1989 that designed a new, liberal press law. I was also vice chairwoman of the first independent GDR inquiry committee, which investigated the illegal behavior of police and state security towards demonstrators. As citizens, we suddenly had great powers. I even interviewed the discharged Minister of State Security, Mielke, in jail.
On October 1, I was a founding member of “Demokratischer Aufbruch”, or “democratic awakening”, one of the new civil movements. Our name was our agenda. “Democratic Awakening is part of the political opposition in the GDR. …Its members refute the allegation, however, that they intend to reform the GDR back into a capitalist society. They are committed to the transformation of intolerable conditions in order to establish credibility in politics. …We wish to relearn what socialism can mean for us.” (I am aware that this term has a negative ring to it in the US. In Europe or South America, however, this is different. Despite the damage done to this term by the repressive practices of the so-called real socialist countries of the Eastern Bloc, the term “democratic socialism” has claimed its place in many social democratic and leftist parties.) As I grew up in the GDR, I always longed to live in a democracy. But not in capitalism. I had no illusions about its tendency to economic and financial crises, its power to create a social divide between the rich and the poor, and its inclination to military solutions.
The revolutionary sentiment towards the leaders of the official state party was expressed by a protest demonstration on November 4th in the center of East Berlin. The event was organized by theater and creative artists and attended by almost a million people, who participated not only peacefully but also put forth wonderfully humorous slogans. This was the first time that the state GDR television broadcasted anti-government protests. We actually began to learn to be subjects of history. For me, this was the most beautiful day of this autumn. … Five days later, the Wall was open and we learned something much different, namely that all our wonderful draft laws and democratization programs would be in vain. The process would now experience a chaotic acceleration that would be nearly impossible to control. One in which only the most powerful would be able to assert their interests.
The very next day, on November 10th, top-ranking West German politicians gathered for a rally in West Berlin. They set the course by striking up the German national anthem: unity for the German fatherland. It was not only the politicians’ off-key singing into the microphones that set off a deafening chorus of whistles in the crowd. It was all going too fast after all. Shortly thereafter, the then Chancellor Kohl called Gorbachev in Moscow and was told that the GDR now needed time for its extensive program of conversion to freedom and democracy. Many other European governments were of the same opinion. Particularly France and Great Britain were not pressing for Germany unification, and Israel was firmly against it as it feared a 4th Reich.
Nonetheless, Kohl announced on November 11th, two days after the Wall had fallen, that he had no doubt that the Germans wanted the nation to be reunified. This was contradicted on November 19th by Lothar de Maizière, a fellow member of Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union party who went on to become the Prime Minister of the GDR following the first free elections. In a newspaper interview, he stated: “I consider socialism to be one of the most wonderful visions of human thought. If you believe that the demand for democracy simultaneously implies the demand to abolish socialism, then you must be aware that our points of view differ.”
Many people thought this way at the time, myself included. In an opinion poll at the end of November 1989, 86 % of the GDR’s citizens still wanted to take “the path to a better, reformed socialism”; only 5 % preferred the “capitalist path”, and 9 % a “different path”.
But other interests were forming behind the scenes. A plan for currency reform was presented at a meeting of the German Central Bank Council only thirteen days after the Wall had fallen. The powerful West German Mark was, of course, a tempting promise for the East Germans. Their weak currency had been one factor that had contributed to their status of second-class German citizens throughout the years. In addition, Western politicians spread messages claiming that the GDR was on the brink of insolvency. Even West German bankers spoke of transparent bankruptcy rumors. People were nevertheless unsettled, confused as to what these rumors meant, and afraid that they would stop receiving their paychecks.
Many people took advantage of the open Wall to leave the GDR, especially young people. West Germany lured them with generous welcome payments and preferential treatment in their search for apartments and jobs. Kohl’s advisor Teltschik wrote in his journal: “We realize that once the election is over, the migrants will have to be treated as normal citizens who have simply changed residences”. Without privileges, in other words. For the time being, however, any efforts to destabilize the GDR were welcome.
On November 23, West Berlin’s daily newspaper the taz wrote: “Kohl is fiercely relying on the failure of the GDR government. This government is certainly not worth shedding tears over, but Kohl’s policy is destroying the time margin desperately needed by the GDR’s citizens and its many various oppositional groups to be able to practice that which we refer to as self-determination.”
In this atmosphere, many people threw out their original plans and came to see quick unification as their only salvation. They were not told that the rushed introduction of the strong D-mark would immediately paralyze the weaker GDR economy.
Time was running out, however, because the pressure of democratization in the East was beginning to spread to the West. The peaceful autumn revolution guaranteed the decriminalization of peaceful protest and subjected even the police and intelligence service to democratic control and discussion. In contrast, West Germany’s governing politicians continued to reject initial steps towards direct democracy and control from below. The then oppositional SPD, however, suggested that a round table discussion also take place in the West German capital, Bonn. Students at the West German University of Tübingen passed a resolution stating: “it is time for a fundamental critique of capitalism”. And the East German civil movements consolidated as “Alliance 90” were even calling for a referendum on public property. Time was running out for those in West Germany interested in maintaining the dominant conditions.
What was the meaning of the beginning of the German division, and what was the meaning of its end?
It is a well-known fact that the division of Germany was a result of World War II. The victorious allied forces intended for this division to prevent the fascist Third Reich from ever [attempting] to reconstitute it self. During the Cold War, which began soon afterwards, the occupation zones became increasingly dependent on their occupying forces. The western half was privileged from the start by the support it received from the prosperous USA. It got the Marshall Plan, while the smaller and industrially weaker eastern half had to pay high reparations to the Soviet Union and Polen, which had been extensively damaged in the war. The gap between the living standards of the two sides began early.
By the time the Wall was built in 1961, 2.6 million people had left the GDR, for very different reasons. The first to flee were the high-ranking Nazis and war criminals. These included industrialists and large-scale landowners who would have been expropriated and convicted in the GDR. At the same time, many young or already famous artists, such as Bertolt Brecht and his entire theater entourage, deliberately moved from West to East Germany. They sought to participate in an alternative to the capitalist society that had fallen in World War II. They felt that the producers of wealth should also possess the land and factories, and that common welfare should result from common property. In this respect, many people still argue today that the GDR experiment was a historically legitimate one. In 1949, my parents also moved from West to East Berlin with great expectations.
A short time later, however, many began to leave the GDR as a result of all kinds of emerging Stalinist repressions: trials against members of the opposition, imprisonment, obstructed careers, difficulties being admitted to universities, restrictions in the freedom of speech, forced agricultural collectivization. Many also left because the prosperity was greater in West Germany, or because they had relatives there. The continuous outflow of qualified workers dealt a hard blow to the GDR.
After the Wall was built, doctors, academics, and engineers were no longer able to leave. The economy stabilized itself and was able to achieve incredible results during the start-up phase. The two systems became competitors that aimed to outperform one another in the area of social benefits, for example. Both sides were neighboring display windows for their systems, and were living beyond their means.
I experienced the atmosphere at the end of the GDR as follows: The GDR had the highest living standard in the Eastern Bloc. But that wasn’t enough – real innovation did not come about as a result of the dogmatism of the dominant ideology. The suppression of nearly all alternatives and creative approaches, the persecution of dissidents, and general domination and patronization led to an impairment of the available potential that was so perceptible that people became fed up with the constant lack of goods and credibility.
It was not for nothing that I decided to give up my profession as television journalist nine years before unification. At least the leeway for personal opinions was clearly greater in books and radio plays that were usually released simultaneously in West Germany. Nonetheless, it has become increasingly apparent that the GDR, along with the entire Soviet sphere of influence, crumbled due to a lack of democracy. The economic situation was not as dramatic as it was subsequently portrayed to have been.
But of course everyone wanted Western prosperity. Everyone hoped for Western freedoms, the freedom of speech, the freedom of press, and above all the freedom to travel. Many believed, however, that they could keep the Eastern social benefits: a country without unemployment, with free educational and health systems, and with emancipation for women, almost all of whom worked while raising their children. This was made possible in the East by a free network of day care centers and nursery schools.
But in the GDR, extensive social equality in the form of financial security had long since ceased to be a sufficient consolation. Too many hopes had been destroyed. Such a GDR with its provinciality and constrictions could not be the final station. Nevertheless, it was part of a dimension that was certainly intriguing – Eastern Europe, the large-scale attempt at an alternative answer to the social question. “Socialism and capitalism, the two brilliantly wayward children of the Enlightenment”, as the German Nobel laureate for literature Günther Grass recently called them, were the binding forces for my generation on both sides. They were brilliant because they both managed to largely ensure at least one of the main ideals of the Enlightenment – the one equality, and the other freedom. They are wayward because both refused or refuse to believe that one loses its value if the other is lacking.
Many in the oppositional civil movements would have been grateful for more time to consider how the advantages of both sides could be retained. How the dictatorship could be overcome without subjecting the defenseless population to the rough climate of the market economy. How a humane balance between the market and the planned economies could be achieved. How the GDR’s defects could be corrected by the strength of its own grassroots democracy. How both sides could approach one another on equal footing in the context of the European unification process.
One such program for this approach was the draft constitution commis-sioned by the East Berlin round table discussion that was attended by all parliamentary parties and the new civic movements. It was presented in April 1990. Prominent West German constitutional experts also participated in its composition. It was a very modern constitution, which guaranteed the classic civil rights and liberties as well as the modern social human rights as formulated in the UN charter from 1949. Accordingly, it provided for a guaranteed right to employment or employment promotion, worker participation in businesses, the prohibition of monopolistic cartels or businesses and private large-scale estates, an extension of democracy by way of referenda, or ecological norms, such as liability for damage caused to the environment. However, history did not allow the civil movement the time that it required.
As their Eastern European competitors collapsed, West Germany also began to alter its policies. This was represented by the Washington Consensus in 1990: a conference called for by economists associated with the IMF and World Bank that informally marked the birth of neoliberal market fundamentalism. Here, the program of shock therapy was designed: the opening of markets in poorer countries to foreign capital, the privatization of public enterprises, deregulation, and exchange rate fluctuation. In East Germany, the rate of privatization was also not allowed to lag behind the rate of disillusionment. Even before unification in October 1990, the laws regarding economic and currency union and the privatization of national assets had already been agreed upon.
How the East and West collided
A unification process has never been carried out that can be considered fair. The fusion of two partners of varying strength is always the hour of the lobbyists. In 1865, after the American Civil War, the wealthy and victorious northern states decided to build up the poorer south. During the following decade, the prosperity of the north increased further by 50 percent while the living standard in the south sunk further by 60 percent. Such is money.
When a warm liquid flows together with a cold liquid, the warmer liquid becomes colder and the colder one warmer. Such is nature. When rich and poor merge, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Such are people. This could have been known beforehand.
The privatization of public property provided the chance for an enormous outflow of assets from East to West Germany. 95 % of the nationally owned economic assets were transferred into Western hands. The East Germans have since become “the population in Europe that owns the least amount of the territory on which it resides”. The SPD politician Egon Bahr, who was known for his policy of détente, pointed out that feudal, early medieval ownership structures had been created in East Germany that had even been overcome in Africa and the Orient two generations ago.
This was portrayed by the West German playwright Rolf Hochhuth in the much-discussed play “Wessis in Weimar”, in which a dialog takes place between the president of the so-called trust agency in charge of privatization and a social democratic professor of law. The following is the professor’s response to the president’s view that the GDR’s economy can only be saved by being sold off to foreigners:
“An unparalleled act of violence, Mr. President, to sell off prime real estate to foreigners without even giving the local inhabitants the chance to participate in the bidding process during the sale of their own country’s assets! A total novelty in world history, a variant of colonialism that has never before been practiced against people of the same nation! Mr. President, you differ only from the immigrants in America who robbed the redskins of their land and herds, in that you are not exterminating your “Indians”!
President: You speak of prime real estate, I speak of worthless industrial facilities... How do you intend to build up run-down businesses without the investment that the local inhabitants will never be able to provide?
Professor: By giving the real estate to local residents instead of to foreigners, as only real estate leads to credibility, anywhere in the world.”
As this did not take place, the social inequality between East and West Germany will most likely persist for generations to come. 70 % of the GDR’s industry collapsed following the takeover by West German proprietors. (This was greater than during the aftermath of World War II, when Germany’s economic output declined by 60 %). In that time in the East 4 million jobs were eliminated, while 2 million jobs were created in the West. This had been predicted by all the experts. If one were to introduce the dollar overnight in South America, for example, these countries would be immediately bankrupt. The Guardian’s economic columnist Will Hutton stated: “The impact of the currency union according to Chancellor Kohl’s conditions was comparable to an economic atom bomb” (April 1991).
In certain areas, the economic division was deepened by Germany’s political unification. In 1990, the Federal Council, a kind of lower chamber in the German parliament, assumed that its resolution on the currency union would be followed by a new round of negotiations “as soon as it becomes clear that the GDR is in danger of permanently becoming an economically distressed area”. Instead of renegotiations, however, the East continues to receive annual transfer payments of 100 billion Euros from the federal budget, without which it really would become a distressed area incapable of supporting itself.
The degree of initial existential insecurity is reflected by a reduction in the birthrate in East Germany’s by more than half between 1990 and 1994. This had not occurred since the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century.
The material dispossessions were accompanied by the extensive devaluation of lifetime achievements in the East. A large percentage of the East Germans were subjected to humiliation that carried significant consequences. The blame for the failure of the “Reconstruction East” project had to be pushed off on somebody. The fundamental misunderstanding between East and West lies in the fact that one side thinks it has given everything it has, while the other believes that everything had has been taken from it.
Many believe that the current differences between East and West were caused
by 40 years of living in separated and fundamentally different social
systems. By the different influences these systems had in the political,
professional, and private spheres. There is some truth to this, of course.
But it does not explain why many from the East and West who dealt with one
another professionally, acquaintances, friends, and family members got a-long
better before unification than afterwards. Günter Gaus, who was once the
chief editor of *Der Spiegel* as well as the Federal Republic’s first
permanent representative to the GDR from 1974-1981, found a plausible
explanation for this phenomenon in 1999: “A foreignness is developing
between East and West that does not originate in the separation, but in the
encounter.”
In representation of Western arrogance, the historian and journalist Arnulf Baring stated in 1991: “The current situation in the former GDR is completely different from our situation in 1945. For nearly half a century, the regime dwarfed its people and botched up their upbringing and education. Everyone was supposed to be a brainless cog in the machine, an assistant without a will of his own. It makes absolutely no difference if they today refer to themselves as lawyers, economists, educators, psychologists, sociologists, or even doctors or engineers … They simply haven’t learned anything that they could contribute to the free market economy.”
According to this point of view, the GDR left worse scars than National Socialism. Not all West Germans think this way, of course. Many have honored the East Germans’ mature political commitment, the democratic awakening that led to the GDR’s downfall. In the meantime, it has been recognized that professional training in the East was often more thorough and of higher quality, that there are areas in which the West should have learned from the East, such as education, health care and social legislation, transportation, employment legislation, and cultural institutions.
The civil rights activists have demanded that the dogmatists, the bureaucrats, and the incompetent be discharged from their positions. They did not consider it possible, however, that around a million people would be affected by the replacement of the Eastern elite.
In its report from December 4, 1998, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights noted “with alarm” that only 12 % of the academics, scientists, teachers, and other professionals employed in the GDR had been re-employed following unification. The rest had been dismissed without appropriate compensation “for political rather than for professional or economic reasons”.
Frequently, the way in which this process took place was also shocking. For example GDR radio and television were phased out, although the GDR- political programs were undoubtedly one-sided, they produced presentable programs in the areas of entertainment, the arts, film adaptations of classical literature, classical music, sports, and children’s programming. And after unification, they broadcasted highly interesting, uncensored programming.
Mr. Mühlfenzl, a former Wehrmacht officer from Bavaria , was chosen by the “Treuhand”, the Trust Agency, to do this job. He dismissed many employees without justification, even from non-political departments. The rest were given the chance to apply again for their old position. To receive the responses to their applications, the candidates were instructed to gather together before a room and wait to be called up individually. Once their names was called, they entered a hallway that led to an empty room, in the middle of which stood a table, and on it a telephone. The receiver lay beside it. The candidate had to pick up the receiver and say his or her name. The voice on the other end was supposedly that of Mr. Mühlfenzl. But perhaps it was that of God or fate. He didn’t introduce himself. They knew that the voice would only say one sentence, either “you have been taken over” or “you have not been taken over”. The candidate was then to leave the room and the next one was called in.
In light of such demeaning practices experienced by people in nearly all areas of their lives, it is not surprising that writers who had already been critical of the GDR or those who had emigrated again found cutting words. Wolfgang Hilbig was agitated about the pressure to conform and the repeated loss of personal opinion. Jurek Becker diagnosed a certain xenophobia between East and West, and Heiner Müller found that the unification led to a decline in the cultural niveau on both sides.
Many traditional publishing houses were sold for a symbolic sum of one Mark to their Western competitors. Of the former 78 GDR publishers, only 12 still exist today. 5,500 of the 6,100 jobs were lost in the literature industry. My publishing house also went down, but I was lucky. I found a new harbor at the renowned West German Rowohlt publishing house. The collaboration with the new editor is very friendly, we notice nothing of the East-West problematic. Mutual knowledge gaps are used productively.
This experience can be generalized: East and West usually get along quite well when they have equal rights and pursue common interests. There are, of course, countless examples of this, especially in the younger generations.
What came out of all this, 20 years later?
On a clear day, it is still possible today to tell from the airplane if one is flying over East or West Germany. Do you know why? In the East, the agricultural farms and their fields are on average ten times larger. A large percentage of the land that used to belong to the East German agricultural collectives, or LPGs, is still being operated collectively. This production model has proven to be quite a competitive strategy. Nevertheless, the structure of smaller family farms has usually been maintained in the West. The separate, often contrasting characters that developed during the years of separation have remained surprisingly stable.
In his novel “Späte Reise”, Joochen Laabs describes the East Germans as fish. Impassable dams and gates have separated them from the seas, but not from knowledge of the world’s oceans with their fascinatingly endless expanses and corral reefs. As the dam breaks, the powerful water world floods into their body of water at great pressure. The fish are overcome by a substance previously unknown to them: salt. They had been living in freshwater. And the other one – is the opposition of fresh nonfresh?
The nostalgia of many East Germans is not directed at the GDR that rightly collapsed, but at the picture of the West that has not been realized. That darkened as soon as they entered the room. Many West Germans also find the attractiveness of Western society to have decreased over the past 20 years, as its prosperity, tolerance, and civil rights have declined. The corral reefs are not what they used to be. And both sides are fighting about which side is at fault. Often, the differences of opinion do not even run along the East-West dividing line, but rather north-south, right-left, etc.
One of the most controversial issues of the past 20 years is the question as to what the GDR actually was. A historically legitimate attempt rooted in an emancipatory idea that was realized incorrectly? Or a totalitarian dicta-torship, an illegitimate state from the start? That is the point of view for everybody, who wants to disqualify a socialist alternative for ever. In a representative survey in June of 2009, more than half of the East Germans assessed the GDR positively. 57 % found that the GDR had more positive than negative sides and that one was able to live well there. Whereas only 8 % of the East Germans agreed with the assumption that the GDR had “very predominantly negative sides”, 78 % of the West Germans held this view. Apparently they know exactly how we lived and suffered. One hears about it daily in the media, after all, the majority of which presents an undifferentiated picture. According to a Chinese saying, there are three truths: my truth, your truth, and the truth.
Let me demonstrate this with an example.
The Economic Balance of the Unification
The authority of the West was ultimately undermined by its failure in the area that was supposed to be its core competence. In twenty years, the market economy has not been able to prove its superiority and help the ailing East towards sustainable recovery. Instead, it has been faltering itself. Since the newest financial crisis, its opponents have begun to outnumber its supporters in Germany – this has never been the case before. The unification definitely worked like a well-oiled machine for a lobby of industrialists, bankers, politicians, arms dealers, lawyers, and public officials. It is no coincidence that the number of income millionaires increased by nearly 40 percent in the former West Germany between 1989 and 1992. It is also no coincidence that 1990 was the Deutsche Bank’s best fiscal year in its one hundred year history.
The West-German Henning Voscherau, Hamburg’s governing mayor at the time, stated: “The truth is that five years of “Reconstruction East” were the greatest enrichment program ever for West Germans” (12.04.1996 in Die Welt). For West Germans, he said, not for all West Germans. For a few, I would think. A very few. The act of throwing a planned economy onto the market for a greedy mob to devour was steered by private interests. It was reckless and ultimately self-destructive. Before the winners could come to their senses, the spoils had been divided. And not amongst the people.
The people saw its former prosperity dwindling away. Forsa opinion poll found in 2004 that every fourth West German wanted the Wall back. Only half as many felt this way in the East. Despite all social misery, the personal material situation of most of the new members of the Federal Republic had improved in comparison to their previous situations, thanks to the enormous financial transfers from 100 billion Euro annually. Measured according to this standard (and this is the only valid standard according to the West’s self-conception), more East than West Germans can consider themselves to be the winners of the unification. 39 percent of the East Germans feel this way, after all, in comparison to only 18 percent of the West Germans. Significantly more West than East Germans consider themselves to be the losers. Only those directly responsible continue to dispute the fact that dilemma, disaster, and drama have long since become the zeitgeist of the economic unification.
In order to gloss over this, the major media likes to show a growth curve that portrays the annual average growth rate during the past 18 years for the so-called ‘new federal states’. (Figure 1). This does indeed show an impressive increase in the gross value added from East Germany’s manufacturing industry. The statistical trick is to simply leave out the period before 1991, with its dramatic decline in industrial production. Objective calculations produce a different curve. (Figure 2). If 1989 is taken as the starting point, the average annual growth over the past 20 years reaches a total of 0.3 %. Such a dry spell never occurred in the GDR.
This is less than half the growth rate of Croatia, Hungary, or the Czech Republic, and barely one third of that of Slovenia, Poland, and Slovakia. Especially given the fact that an effective, modern structure was in place, this performance gap in comparison to the Eastern European countries is rather embarrassing.
And now for the other part of the truth. If we concentrate on the part of the curve that is actually ascending, one may tell the economic balance also as a success story. This is mainly thanks to the construction boom of the early years. Cities and municipalities were not only saved from the deterioration that was already escalating before unification, but were also able to boast new developments and decorated facades. Several cities were transformed into real showcases, and are now on the UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites. Modern infrastructure, new streets, and new telecommunication have allowed us to dock into the global circuitry. Individual businesses have accomplished enormous reconstruction projects. The environment sighed with relief. Supply shortages are a thing of the past. Those who have work are earning more, living in greater comfort, driving fancier cars, and enthusiastically making use of the new travel opportunities. It is wonderful, how many young people are carrying out internships, studying, or working in development assistance throughout the world. Their life chances have certainly become more colorful. Many retirees are also better off and are able to claim their piece of the pie. What more could one want?
These successes should not be played down, but there are always two sides to the truth. Since the fall of the Wall, over a million people have left East Germany. Especially young, well-educated people, especially women. Unemployment is twice as high in the East and the salaries are lower. Research and development opportunities in businesses have been significantly reduced by the Western proprietors. It is therefore no wonder that 15 percent of the apartments are empty. Shutters clatter in the wind, a sound similar to that heard in downtown Detroit. The new infrastructure had been based on production and resident figures that were far from current. Its cost is therefore considered by many to have been too high. The environment had a chance to recover, once the smokestacks stopped smoking. Supply shortages shifted from the stores to health care, education, and the arts. Many worry whether their living standards are sustainable or not. Even today, more people live from transfers and unemployment com-pensation, than from work. If you take a look at the poverty atlas published by the German government, the boundaries of the former GDR are clearly visible. (Figure 3).
The East German economy is being supported like a child born out of wedlock. An alignment – even a gradual alignment – of the economic and social conditions in the East and West as prescribed in the German constitution seems to be impossible for the time being. Are the projections of the Deutsche Bank too pessimistic? They assume that Germany’s Eastern states will not only fail to catch up to the West in the next decades, but that they will fall further behind. In 2050, the gap is predicted to be as wide as it was in 1989.
If the extent to which people still feel forced to leave the East for professional reasons remains the same, demographic calculations have found that two thirds of East Germany’s inhabitants will be retirees in 2020. I don’t dare to imagine the consequences that this will have, along for the attitude towards life. Irony or agony?
The greatest threat to the East is the draining of youth, creativity, optimism, and enjoyment of life.
The Legacy of Democratic Awakening
In the anarchistic weeks and months surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a distinct “Yes, we can” euphoria. Bosses were deposed, laws were written and constitutions were drafted, freedom of the press was practiced, independent investigation commissions were deployed, civil movements were founded, and the army was commanded by a pastor. No more than half a year later, the largest West German parties had taken the scepter out of the hands of the civil movements and proceeded to announce their messianic “Yes, we can save you”. Federal Chancellor Kohl promised to make “flourisching landscapes” out of the poorer East, and that everyone would be better off. Promises that are not kept are soon followed by disillusionment – as you know.
The democratic awakening was worthwhile. The dogmatic GDR system and that of the entire Eastern Bloc has been overcome. But it has stopped half way. The socially destructive path has not been abandoned.
Two years ago (1.2.2008), the upper middle class Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote: “Many people are only now becoming aware of the degree to which capitalism was restrained by its competition with communism, so long as it existed. Democracy and the market economy are by nature just as vulnerable to self-destruction as dictatorial systems.” For the time being, we are in the crisis together. The West is in danger of becoming the loser of unification.
The gains in freedom are appreciated by the overwhelming majority of the population. Today, everyone is allowed to say his or her opinion. In politics, in any event. Those who speak their minds to their boss must be able to bear his or her reaction. The high unemployment rate is creating an enormous pressure to conform. ‘No work, no freedom’ is a typical East-solution that has meanwhile reached the West. The freedom to travel is dependent upon income. And the freedom of the press as well. “The freedom of the press is the freedom of 200 rich people to propagate their opinions”, stated the Co-founder of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Paul Sethe years ago.
I remember the expectations that many GDR citizens had of democracy well. One of the most important demands of the time was the right to free elections. During the local elections in Sachsen-Anhalt 2006, voter turnout reached only 45 percent. This is almost an American outcome. Today, participation in federal elections is also lower in the East. The self-disempowerment of politicians necessary leads to the self-disempowerment of voters. They have the feeling that elections are decided by money and lobbyists, or that politicians don’t hold their promises anyway. For two thirds of the East German population, hopes of political influence have not materialized.
One can also recognize the old boundaries of the GDR on a map of electoral behavior. Today, the East still ticks more to the left. The LINKE, a party that is critical of capitalism, is a major party. (Figure 4).
Today 80 % of east Germans think that too little from the GDR was incorporated into the united Federal Republic. Two thirds want neither the GDR back, nor the Federal Republik like it is.
In a truly democratic society, the interests of the majority must prevail, not those of the minority. This is the case worldwide. Formal political democracy on one hand, and economic absolutism on the other cannot work. Democracy must include the economy, otherwise it is not democracy. This does not imply that policies should be against the economy, but rather that the economy should be for the common good.
In Germany, 42 percent of all private wealth is accounted for by 10 per-cent of the households. At the same time, the bottom half of all households must share 4.5 percent of the assets. How much longer is this lower half going to keep putting up with this?
And how long are we going to keep chasing after the phantom of the growth of material goods as a substitute for meaning in our lives at an ever-increasing pace, while simultaneously ruining our planet? The question as to whether a different economic system is necessary or possible has been asked more often and more clearly by writers from the GDR than from their Western colleagues. Christa Wolf: “We are living in a thoroughly false world: forced into economic thought and in accordance with the dictation of profit maximization, we are designing the instruments of our own destruc-tion.”
Complete democratic awakening would also include putting an end to the poverty and indignity in the developing world, which continues to breed terrorism. Terrorism is a cry that wants to be heard. Conflict prevention is the most sensible investment. The recognition of the condemnation of war according to international law must be the civilizing project of modernity. The global abolition of nuclear weapons would be a convincing start. I recently attended a meeting at the American Academy in Berlin between Henry Kissinger, George P. Schulz, the former Chancellor Schmidt and former President Weizsäcker, all of whom support Obama in this endeavor.
Democratic awakening? We can or we can’t – that is the question here.
Source (http://www.danieladahn.de/index.php?section=texte&func=detail&pid=130&seite=0&lang=en).
Daniela Dahn was sort of a dissident journalist in the DDR before the wall fell, a "dissident" insofar as she resigned from her job as a journalist on state-run television so that she could speak her own mind more freely. However, since the wall fell, she has also become a dissident of sorts against reunification, pointing out and decrying the vast inequity of wealth and power that exists in modern Germany along the very same lines as the border was once drawn.
I find it interesting how she gives evidence that the East Germans at the time of the fall of the wall, much like the Czechs in 1968, had no thoughts of restoring full-blown Western capitalism. Nor did they want a system which forbade people to leave and shot them if they tried to jump the wall to the other side. What they wanted was a democratic, humanistic socialism..."socialism with a human face". She provides convincing evidence that this is still what the people of the former East Germany want.
This story--of a forced, rapid, and inequitable East-West reunification, shaped in large measure by the IMF, World Bank, and West German private interests--is also an excellent example of what Naomi Klein has dubbed the "Shock Doctrine".
Even though this is history, I'm posting it in OI to open it up to comments from everyone (here's looking at you, Bud Struggle. ;)). By the way, it is really worth reading the whole thing. It gets most interesting towards the end.
The Legacy of Democratic Awakening - 20 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Lecture at the American Institute For Contemporary German Studies in Washington, April 2010
Before I begin describing the situation in Germany 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I’ll try to imagine what you already know about the event. You have probably seen the overwhelming photos of all the happy people dancing on the Wall, of East and West Berliners embracing. I was there and can confirm that it was such an unexpected surprise that we could hardly believe our eyes. We couldn’t get over our amazement.
How I experienced the Fall of the Wall
In retrospect, it is clear that the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 was also a product of the media. First, there was the televised press conference held by the politburo member Schabowski, during which he uneasily stuttered that new travel regulations had led to the immediate suspension of the current travel restrictions for East Germans. As a result, hundreds of people headed for various locations along the Wall. At 10 pm, the news anchor Hajo Friedrichs announced on the West German public television channel ZDF that the Wall had fallen. Although this wasn’t true, it led many thousands of people to rush to the Wall and demand that it be opened. And finally, at 11:30 pm, the first border officer called “We’re flooding” and he lifted barrier. A camera team was present.
That night, thousands of people wandered without passports or visas through the Wall that had been so abruptly opened after 28 years. They told the border guards that they just wanted to have a look at the part of the city that had previously been inaccessible to most of them. They promised to be back in the East in time for work the next morning. After a night of celebration, many kept their promises. From this day on, everything went very quickly.
I assume that you believe that everyone in East and West Germany wanted to be reunited as soon as possible. And that a period of happiness, harmony, and prosperity on both sides began with the victory over Eastern dictatorial constraints. For those few strong people who were able to assert themselves, this was also true. For many others, however, it was somewhat more complicated. It is difficult to explain, but for people like me, the day that the Wall fell was one of mixed feelings. We felt joy, of course, but it was mixed with concern.
For me and many other politically active citizens, ‘Die Wende’, or the turning point in East Germany’s history, began long before the Wall fell. Some writers had been writing factual books for years and so contributing to a subversive way of thinking. On my initiative, the writer’s association formed a commission in 1989 that designed a new, liberal press law. I was also vice chairwoman of the first independent GDR inquiry committee, which investigated the illegal behavior of police and state security towards demonstrators. As citizens, we suddenly had great powers. I even interviewed the discharged Minister of State Security, Mielke, in jail.
On October 1, I was a founding member of “Demokratischer Aufbruch”, or “democratic awakening”, one of the new civil movements. Our name was our agenda. “Democratic Awakening is part of the political opposition in the GDR. …Its members refute the allegation, however, that they intend to reform the GDR back into a capitalist society. They are committed to the transformation of intolerable conditions in order to establish credibility in politics. …We wish to relearn what socialism can mean for us.” (I am aware that this term has a negative ring to it in the US. In Europe or South America, however, this is different. Despite the damage done to this term by the repressive practices of the so-called real socialist countries of the Eastern Bloc, the term “democratic socialism” has claimed its place in many social democratic and leftist parties.) As I grew up in the GDR, I always longed to live in a democracy. But not in capitalism. I had no illusions about its tendency to economic and financial crises, its power to create a social divide between the rich and the poor, and its inclination to military solutions.
The revolutionary sentiment towards the leaders of the official state party was expressed by a protest demonstration on November 4th in the center of East Berlin. The event was organized by theater and creative artists and attended by almost a million people, who participated not only peacefully but also put forth wonderfully humorous slogans. This was the first time that the state GDR television broadcasted anti-government protests. We actually began to learn to be subjects of history. For me, this was the most beautiful day of this autumn. … Five days later, the Wall was open and we learned something much different, namely that all our wonderful draft laws and democratization programs would be in vain. The process would now experience a chaotic acceleration that would be nearly impossible to control. One in which only the most powerful would be able to assert their interests.
The very next day, on November 10th, top-ranking West German politicians gathered for a rally in West Berlin. They set the course by striking up the German national anthem: unity for the German fatherland. It was not only the politicians’ off-key singing into the microphones that set off a deafening chorus of whistles in the crowd. It was all going too fast after all. Shortly thereafter, the then Chancellor Kohl called Gorbachev in Moscow and was told that the GDR now needed time for its extensive program of conversion to freedom and democracy. Many other European governments were of the same opinion. Particularly France and Great Britain were not pressing for Germany unification, and Israel was firmly against it as it feared a 4th Reich.
Nonetheless, Kohl announced on November 11th, two days after the Wall had fallen, that he had no doubt that the Germans wanted the nation to be reunified. This was contradicted on November 19th by Lothar de Maizière, a fellow member of Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union party who went on to become the Prime Minister of the GDR following the first free elections. In a newspaper interview, he stated: “I consider socialism to be one of the most wonderful visions of human thought. If you believe that the demand for democracy simultaneously implies the demand to abolish socialism, then you must be aware that our points of view differ.”
Many people thought this way at the time, myself included. In an opinion poll at the end of November 1989, 86 % of the GDR’s citizens still wanted to take “the path to a better, reformed socialism”; only 5 % preferred the “capitalist path”, and 9 % a “different path”.
But other interests were forming behind the scenes. A plan for currency reform was presented at a meeting of the German Central Bank Council only thirteen days after the Wall had fallen. The powerful West German Mark was, of course, a tempting promise for the East Germans. Their weak currency had been one factor that had contributed to their status of second-class German citizens throughout the years. In addition, Western politicians spread messages claiming that the GDR was on the brink of insolvency. Even West German bankers spoke of transparent bankruptcy rumors. People were nevertheless unsettled, confused as to what these rumors meant, and afraid that they would stop receiving their paychecks.
Many people took advantage of the open Wall to leave the GDR, especially young people. West Germany lured them with generous welcome payments and preferential treatment in their search for apartments and jobs. Kohl’s advisor Teltschik wrote in his journal: “We realize that once the election is over, the migrants will have to be treated as normal citizens who have simply changed residences”. Without privileges, in other words. For the time being, however, any efforts to destabilize the GDR were welcome.
On November 23, West Berlin’s daily newspaper the taz wrote: “Kohl is fiercely relying on the failure of the GDR government. This government is certainly not worth shedding tears over, but Kohl’s policy is destroying the time margin desperately needed by the GDR’s citizens and its many various oppositional groups to be able to practice that which we refer to as self-determination.”
In this atmosphere, many people threw out their original plans and came to see quick unification as their only salvation. They were not told that the rushed introduction of the strong D-mark would immediately paralyze the weaker GDR economy.
Time was running out, however, because the pressure of democratization in the East was beginning to spread to the West. The peaceful autumn revolution guaranteed the decriminalization of peaceful protest and subjected even the police and intelligence service to democratic control and discussion. In contrast, West Germany’s governing politicians continued to reject initial steps towards direct democracy and control from below. The then oppositional SPD, however, suggested that a round table discussion also take place in the West German capital, Bonn. Students at the West German University of Tübingen passed a resolution stating: “it is time for a fundamental critique of capitalism”. And the East German civil movements consolidated as “Alliance 90” were even calling for a referendum on public property. Time was running out for those in West Germany interested in maintaining the dominant conditions.
What was the meaning of the beginning of the German division, and what was the meaning of its end?
It is a well-known fact that the division of Germany was a result of World War II. The victorious allied forces intended for this division to prevent the fascist Third Reich from ever [attempting] to reconstitute it self. During the Cold War, which began soon afterwards, the occupation zones became increasingly dependent on their occupying forces. The western half was privileged from the start by the support it received from the prosperous USA. It got the Marshall Plan, while the smaller and industrially weaker eastern half had to pay high reparations to the Soviet Union and Polen, which had been extensively damaged in the war. The gap between the living standards of the two sides began early.
By the time the Wall was built in 1961, 2.6 million people had left the GDR, for very different reasons. The first to flee were the high-ranking Nazis and war criminals. These included industrialists and large-scale landowners who would have been expropriated and convicted in the GDR. At the same time, many young or already famous artists, such as Bertolt Brecht and his entire theater entourage, deliberately moved from West to East Germany. They sought to participate in an alternative to the capitalist society that had fallen in World War II. They felt that the producers of wealth should also possess the land and factories, and that common welfare should result from common property. In this respect, many people still argue today that the GDR experiment was a historically legitimate one. In 1949, my parents also moved from West to East Berlin with great expectations.
A short time later, however, many began to leave the GDR as a result of all kinds of emerging Stalinist repressions: trials against members of the opposition, imprisonment, obstructed careers, difficulties being admitted to universities, restrictions in the freedom of speech, forced agricultural collectivization. Many also left because the prosperity was greater in West Germany, or because they had relatives there. The continuous outflow of qualified workers dealt a hard blow to the GDR.
After the Wall was built, doctors, academics, and engineers were no longer able to leave. The economy stabilized itself and was able to achieve incredible results during the start-up phase. The two systems became competitors that aimed to outperform one another in the area of social benefits, for example. Both sides were neighboring display windows for their systems, and were living beyond their means.
I experienced the atmosphere at the end of the GDR as follows: The GDR had the highest living standard in the Eastern Bloc. But that wasn’t enough – real innovation did not come about as a result of the dogmatism of the dominant ideology. The suppression of nearly all alternatives and creative approaches, the persecution of dissidents, and general domination and patronization led to an impairment of the available potential that was so perceptible that people became fed up with the constant lack of goods and credibility.
It was not for nothing that I decided to give up my profession as television journalist nine years before unification. At least the leeway for personal opinions was clearly greater in books and radio plays that were usually released simultaneously in West Germany. Nonetheless, it has become increasingly apparent that the GDR, along with the entire Soviet sphere of influence, crumbled due to a lack of democracy. The economic situation was not as dramatic as it was subsequently portrayed to have been.
But of course everyone wanted Western prosperity. Everyone hoped for Western freedoms, the freedom of speech, the freedom of press, and above all the freedom to travel. Many believed, however, that they could keep the Eastern social benefits: a country without unemployment, with free educational and health systems, and with emancipation for women, almost all of whom worked while raising their children. This was made possible in the East by a free network of day care centers and nursery schools.
But in the GDR, extensive social equality in the form of financial security had long since ceased to be a sufficient consolation. Too many hopes had been destroyed. Such a GDR with its provinciality and constrictions could not be the final station. Nevertheless, it was part of a dimension that was certainly intriguing – Eastern Europe, the large-scale attempt at an alternative answer to the social question. “Socialism and capitalism, the two brilliantly wayward children of the Enlightenment”, as the German Nobel laureate for literature Günther Grass recently called them, were the binding forces for my generation on both sides. They were brilliant because they both managed to largely ensure at least one of the main ideals of the Enlightenment – the one equality, and the other freedom. They are wayward because both refused or refuse to believe that one loses its value if the other is lacking.
Many in the oppositional civil movements would have been grateful for more time to consider how the advantages of both sides could be retained. How the dictatorship could be overcome without subjecting the defenseless population to the rough climate of the market economy. How a humane balance between the market and the planned economies could be achieved. How the GDR’s defects could be corrected by the strength of its own grassroots democracy. How both sides could approach one another on equal footing in the context of the European unification process.
One such program for this approach was the draft constitution commis-sioned by the East Berlin round table discussion that was attended by all parliamentary parties and the new civic movements. It was presented in April 1990. Prominent West German constitutional experts also participated in its composition. It was a very modern constitution, which guaranteed the classic civil rights and liberties as well as the modern social human rights as formulated in the UN charter from 1949. Accordingly, it provided for a guaranteed right to employment or employment promotion, worker participation in businesses, the prohibition of monopolistic cartels or businesses and private large-scale estates, an extension of democracy by way of referenda, or ecological norms, such as liability for damage caused to the environment. However, history did not allow the civil movement the time that it required.
As their Eastern European competitors collapsed, West Germany also began to alter its policies. This was represented by the Washington Consensus in 1990: a conference called for by economists associated with the IMF and World Bank that informally marked the birth of neoliberal market fundamentalism. Here, the program of shock therapy was designed: the opening of markets in poorer countries to foreign capital, the privatization of public enterprises, deregulation, and exchange rate fluctuation. In East Germany, the rate of privatization was also not allowed to lag behind the rate of disillusionment. Even before unification in October 1990, the laws regarding economic and currency union and the privatization of national assets had already been agreed upon.
How the East and West collided
A unification process has never been carried out that can be considered fair. The fusion of two partners of varying strength is always the hour of the lobbyists. In 1865, after the American Civil War, the wealthy and victorious northern states decided to build up the poorer south. During the following decade, the prosperity of the north increased further by 50 percent while the living standard in the south sunk further by 60 percent. Such is money.
When a warm liquid flows together with a cold liquid, the warmer liquid becomes colder and the colder one warmer. Such is nature. When rich and poor merge, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Such are people. This could have been known beforehand.
The privatization of public property provided the chance for an enormous outflow of assets from East to West Germany. 95 % of the nationally owned economic assets were transferred into Western hands. The East Germans have since become “the population in Europe that owns the least amount of the territory on which it resides”. The SPD politician Egon Bahr, who was known for his policy of détente, pointed out that feudal, early medieval ownership structures had been created in East Germany that had even been overcome in Africa and the Orient two generations ago.
This was portrayed by the West German playwright Rolf Hochhuth in the much-discussed play “Wessis in Weimar”, in which a dialog takes place between the president of the so-called trust agency in charge of privatization and a social democratic professor of law. The following is the professor’s response to the president’s view that the GDR’s economy can only be saved by being sold off to foreigners:
“An unparalleled act of violence, Mr. President, to sell off prime real estate to foreigners without even giving the local inhabitants the chance to participate in the bidding process during the sale of their own country’s assets! A total novelty in world history, a variant of colonialism that has never before been practiced against people of the same nation! Mr. President, you differ only from the immigrants in America who robbed the redskins of their land and herds, in that you are not exterminating your “Indians”!
President: You speak of prime real estate, I speak of worthless industrial facilities... How do you intend to build up run-down businesses without the investment that the local inhabitants will never be able to provide?
Professor: By giving the real estate to local residents instead of to foreigners, as only real estate leads to credibility, anywhere in the world.”
As this did not take place, the social inequality between East and West Germany will most likely persist for generations to come. 70 % of the GDR’s industry collapsed following the takeover by West German proprietors. (This was greater than during the aftermath of World War II, when Germany’s economic output declined by 60 %). In that time in the East 4 million jobs were eliminated, while 2 million jobs were created in the West. This had been predicted by all the experts. If one were to introduce the dollar overnight in South America, for example, these countries would be immediately bankrupt. The Guardian’s economic columnist Will Hutton stated: “The impact of the currency union according to Chancellor Kohl’s conditions was comparable to an economic atom bomb” (April 1991).
In certain areas, the economic division was deepened by Germany’s political unification. In 1990, the Federal Council, a kind of lower chamber in the German parliament, assumed that its resolution on the currency union would be followed by a new round of negotiations “as soon as it becomes clear that the GDR is in danger of permanently becoming an economically distressed area”. Instead of renegotiations, however, the East continues to receive annual transfer payments of 100 billion Euros from the federal budget, without which it really would become a distressed area incapable of supporting itself.
The degree of initial existential insecurity is reflected by a reduction in the birthrate in East Germany’s by more than half between 1990 and 1994. This had not occurred since the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century.
The material dispossessions were accompanied by the extensive devaluation of lifetime achievements in the East. A large percentage of the East Germans were subjected to humiliation that carried significant consequences. The blame for the failure of the “Reconstruction East” project had to be pushed off on somebody. The fundamental misunderstanding between East and West lies in the fact that one side thinks it has given everything it has, while the other believes that everything had has been taken from it.
Many believe that the current differences between East and West were caused
by 40 years of living in separated and fundamentally different social
systems. By the different influences these systems had in the political,
professional, and private spheres. There is some truth to this, of course.
But it does not explain why many from the East and West who dealt with one
another professionally, acquaintances, friends, and family members got a-long
better before unification than afterwards. Günter Gaus, who was once the
chief editor of *Der Spiegel* as well as the Federal Republic’s first
permanent representative to the GDR from 1974-1981, found a plausible
explanation for this phenomenon in 1999: “A foreignness is developing
between East and West that does not originate in the separation, but in the
encounter.”
In representation of Western arrogance, the historian and journalist Arnulf Baring stated in 1991: “The current situation in the former GDR is completely different from our situation in 1945. For nearly half a century, the regime dwarfed its people and botched up their upbringing and education. Everyone was supposed to be a brainless cog in the machine, an assistant without a will of his own. It makes absolutely no difference if they today refer to themselves as lawyers, economists, educators, psychologists, sociologists, or even doctors or engineers … They simply haven’t learned anything that they could contribute to the free market economy.”
According to this point of view, the GDR left worse scars than National Socialism. Not all West Germans think this way, of course. Many have honored the East Germans’ mature political commitment, the democratic awakening that led to the GDR’s downfall. In the meantime, it has been recognized that professional training in the East was often more thorough and of higher quality, that there are areas in which the West should have learned from the East, such as education, health care and social legislation, transportation, employment legislation, and cultural institutions.
The civil rights activists have demanded that the dogmatists, the bureaucrats, and the incompetent be discharged from their positions. They did not consider it possible, however, that around a million people would be affected by the replacement of the Eastern elite.
In its report from December 4, 1998, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights noted “with alarm” that only 12 % of the academics, scientists, teachers, and other professionals employed in the GDR had been re-employed following unification. The rest had been dismissed without appropriate compensation “for political rather than for professional or economic reasons”.
Frequently, the way in which this process took place was also shocking. For example GDR radio and television were phased out, although the GDR- political programs were undoubtedly one-sided, they produced presentable programs in the areas of entertainment, the arts, film adaptations of classical literature, classical music, sports, and children’s programming. And after unification, they broadcasted highly interesting, uncensored programming.
Mr. Mühlfenzl, a former Wehrmacht officer from Bavaria , was chosen by the “Treuhand”, the Trust Agency, to do this job. He dismissed many employees without justification, even from non-political departments. The rest were given the chance to apply again for their old position. To receive the responses to their applications, the candidates were instructed to gather together before a room and wait to be called up individually. Once their names was called, they entered a hallway that led to an empty room, in the middle of which stood a table, and on it a telephone. The receiver lay beside it. The candidate had to pick up the receiver and say his or her name. The voice on the other end was supposedly that of Mr. Mühlfenzl. But perhaps it was that of God or fate. He didn’t introduce himself. They knew that the voice would only say one sentence, either “you have been taken over” or “you have not been taken over”. The candidate was then to leave the room and the next one was called in.
In light of such demeaning practices experienced by people in nearly all areas of their lives, it is not surprising that writers who had already been critical of the GDR or those who had emigrated again found cutting words. Wolfgang Hilbig was agitated about the pressure to conform and the repeated loss of personal opinion. Jurek Becker diagnosed a certain xenophobia between East and West, and Heiner Müller found that the unification led to a decline in the cultural niveau on both sides.
Many traditional publishing houses were sold for a symbolic sum of one Mark to their Western competitors. Of the former 78 GDR publishers, only 12 still exist today. 5,500 of the 6,100 jobs were lost in the literature industry. My publishing house also went down, but I was lucky. I found a new harbor at the renowned West German Rowohlt publishing house. The collaboration with the new editor is very friendly, we notice nothing of the East-West problematic. Mutual knowledge gaps are used productively.
This experience can be generalized: East and West usually get along quite well when they have equal rights and pursue common interests. There are, of course, countless examples of this, especially in the younger generations.
What came out of all this, 20 years later?
On a clear day, it is still possible today to tell from the airplane if one is flying over East or West Germany. Do you know why? In the East, the agricultural farms and their fields are on average ten times larger. A large percentage of the land that used to belong to the East German agricultural collectives, or LPGs, is still being operated collectively. This production model has proven to be quite a competitive strategy. Nevertheless, the structure of smaller family farms has usually been maintained in the West. The separate, often contrasting characters that developed during the years of separation have remained surprisingly stable.
In his novel “Späte Reise”, Joochen Laabs describes the East Germans as fish. Impassable dams and gates have separated them from the seas, but not from knowledge of the world’s oceans with their fascinatingly endless expanses and corral reefs. As the dam breaks, the powerful water world floods into their body of water at great pressure. The fish are overcome by a substance previously unknown to them: salt. They had been living in freshwater. And the other one – is the opposition of fresh nonfresh?
The nostalgia of many East Germans is not directed at the GDR that rightly collapsed, but at the picture of the West that has not been realized. That darkened as soon as they entered the room. Many West Germans also find the attractiveness of Western society to have decreased over the past 20 years, as its prosperity, tolerance, and civil rights have declined. The corral reefs are not what they used to be. And both sides are fighting about which side is at fault. Often, the differences of opinion do not even run along the East-West dividing line, but rather north-south, right-left, etc.
One of the most controversial issues of the past 20 years is the question as to what the GDR actually was. A historically legitimate attempt rooted in an emancipatory idea that was realized incorrectly? Or a totalitarian dicta-torship, an illegitimate state from the start? That is the point of view for everybody, who wants to disqualify a socialist alternative for ever. In a representative survey in June of 2009, more than half of the East Germans assessed the GDR positively. 57 % found that the GDR had more positive than negative sides and that one was able to live well there. Whereas only 8 % of the East Germans agreed with the assumption that the GDR had “very predominantly negative sides”, 78 % of the West Germans held this view. Apparently they know exactly how we lived and suffered. One hears about it daily in the media, after all, the majority of which presents an undifferentiated picture. According to a Chinese saying, there are three truths: my truth, your truth, and the truth.
Let me demonstrate this with an example.
The Economic Balance of the Unification
The authority of the West was ultimately undermined by its failure in the area that was supposed to be its core competence. In twenty years, the market economy has not been able to prove its superiority and help the ailing East towards sustainable recovery. Instead, it has been faltering itself. Since the newest financial crisis, its opponents have begun to outnumber its supporters in Germany – this has never been the case before. The unification definitely worked like a well-oiled machine for a lobby of industrialists, bankers, politicians, arms dealers, lawyers, and public officials. It is no coincidence that the number of income millionaires increased by nearly 40 percent in the former West Germany between 1989 and 1992. It is also no coincidence that 1990 was the Deutsche Bank’s best fiscal year in its one hundred year history.
The West-German Henning Voscherau, Hamburg’s governing mayor at the time, stated: “The truth is that five years of “Reconstruction East” were the greatest enrichment program ever for West Germans” (12.04.1996 in Die Welt). For West Germans, he said, not for all West Germans. For a few, I would think. A very few. The act of throwing a planned economy onto the market for a greedy mob to devour was steered by private interests. It was reckless and ultimately self-destructive. Before the winners could come to their senses, the spoils had been divided. And not amongst the people.
The people saw its former prosperity dwindling away. Forsa opinion poll found in 2004 that every fourth West German wanted the Wall back. Only half as many felt this way in the East. Despite all social misery, the personal material situation of most of the new members of the Federal Republic had improved in comparison to their previous situations, thanks to the enormous financial transfers from 100 billion Euro annually. Measured according to this standard (and this is the only valid standard according to the West’s self-conception), more East than West Germans can consider themselves to be the winners of the unification. 39 percent of the East Germans feel this way, after all, in comparison to only 18 percent of the West Germans. Significantly more West than East Germans consider themselves to be the losers. Only those directly responsible continue to dispute the fact that dilemma, disaster, and drama have long since become the zeitgeist of the economic unification.
In order to gloss over this, the major media likes to show a growth curve that portrays the annual average growth rate during the past 18 years for the so-called ‘new federal states’. (Figure 1). This does indeed show an impressive increase in the gross value added from East Germany’s manufacturing industry. The statistical trick is to simply leave out the period before 1991, with its dramatic decline in industrial production. Objective calculations produce a different curve. (Figure 2). If 1989 is taken as the starting point, the average annual growth over the past 20 years reaches a total of 0.3 %. Such a dry spell never occurred in the GDR.
This is less than half the growth rate of Croatia, Hungary, or the Czech Republic, and barely one third of that of Slovenia, Poland, and Slovakia. Especially given the fact that an effective, modern structure was in place, this performance gap in comparison to the Eastern European countries is rather embarrassing.
And now for the other part of the truth. If we concentrate on the part of the curve that is actually ascending, one may tell the economic balance also as a success story. This is mainly thanks to the construction boom of the early years. Cities and municipalities were not only saved from the deterioration that was already escalating before unification, but were also able to boast new developments and decorated facades. Several cities were transformed into real showcases, and are now on the UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites. Modern infrastructure, new streets, and new telecommunication have allowed us to dock into the global circuitry. Individual businesses have accomplished enormous reconstruction projects. The environment sighed with relief. Supply shortages are a thing of the past. Those who have work are earning more, living in greater comfort, driving fancier cars, and enthusiastically making use of the new travel opportunities. It is wonderful, how many young people are carrying out internships, studying, or working in development assistance throughout the world. Their life chances have certainly become more colorful. Many retirees are also better off and are able to claim their piece of the pie. What more could one want?
These successes should not be played down, but there are always two sides to the truth. Since the fall of the Wall, over a million people have left East Germany. Especially young, well-educated people, especially women. Unemployment is twice as high in the East and the salaries are lower. Research and development opportunities in businesses have been significantly reduced by the Western proprietors. It is therefore no wonder that 15 percent of the apartments are empty. Shutters clatter in the wind, a sound similar to that heard in downtown Detroit. The new infrastructure had been based on production and resident figures that were far from current. Its cost is therefore considered by many to have been too high. The environment had a chance to recover, once the smokestacks stopped smoking. Supply shortages shifted from the stores to health care, education, and the arts. Many worry whether their living standards are sustainable or not. Even today, more people live from transfers and unemployment com-pensation, than from work. If you take a look at the poverty atlas published by the German government, the boundaries of the former GDR are clearly visible. (Figure 3).
The East German economy is being supported like a child born out of wedlock. An alignment – even a gradual alignment – of the economic and social conditions in the East and West as prescribed in the German constitution seems to be impossible for the time being. Are the projections of the Deutsche Bank too pessimistic? They assume that Germany’s Eastern states will not only fail to catch up to the West in the next decades, but that they will fall further behind. In 2050, the gap is predicted to be as wide as it was in 1989.
If the extent to which people still feel forced to leave the East for professional reasons remains the same, demographic calculations have found that two thirds of East Germany’s inhabitants will be retirees in 2020. I don’t dare to imagine the consequences that this will have, along for the attitude towards life. Irony or agony?
The greatest threat to the East is the draining of youth, creativity, optimism, and enjoyment of life.
The Legacy of Democratic Awakening
In the anarchistic weeks and months surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a distinct “Yes, we can” euphoria. Bosses were deposed, laws were written and constitutions were drafted, freedom of the press was practiced, independent investigation commissions were deployed, civil movements were founded, and the army was commanded by a pastor. No more than half a year later, the largest West German parties had taken the scepter out of the hands of the civil movements and proceeded to announce their messianic “Yes, we can save you”. Federal Chancellor Kohl promised to make “flourisching landscapes” out of the poorer East, and that everyone would be better off. Promises that are not kept are soon followed by disillusionment – as you know.
The democratic awakening was worthwhile. The dogmatic GDR system and that of the entire Eastern Bloc has been overcome. But it has stopped half way. The socially destructive path has not been abandoned.
Two years ago (1.2.2008), the upper middle class Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote: “Many people are only now becoming aware of the degree to which capitalism was restrained by its competition with communism, so long as it existed. Democracy and the market economy are by nature just as vulnerable to self-destruction as dictatorial systems.” For the time being, we are in the crisis together. The West is in danger of becoming the loser of unification.
The gains in freedom are appreciated by the overwhelming majority of the population. Today, everyone is allowed to say his or her opinion. In politics, in any event. Those who speak their minds to their boss must be able to bear his or her reaction. The high unemployment rate is creating an enormous pressure to conform. ‘No work, no freedom’ is a typical East-solution that has meanwhile reached the West. The freedom to travel is dependent upon income. And the freedom of the press as well. “The freedom of the press is the freedom of 200 rich people to propagate their opinions”, stated the Co-founder of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Paul Sethe years ago.
I remember the expectations that many GDR citizens had of democracy well. One of the most important demands of the time was the right to free elections. During the local elections in Sachsen-Anhalt 2006, voter turnout reached only 45 percent. This is almost an American outcome. Today, participation in federal elections is also lower in the East. The self-disempowerment of politicians necessary leads to the self-disempowerment of voters. They have the feeling that elections are decided by money and lobbyists, or that politicians don’t hold their promises anyway. For two thirds of the East German population, hopes of political influence have not materialized.
One can also recognize the old boundaries of the GDR on a map of electoral behavior. Today, the East still ticks more to the left. The LINKE, a party that is critical of capitalism, is a major party. (Figure 4).
Today 80 % of east Germans think that too little from the GDR was incorporated into the united Federal Republic. Two thirds want neither the GDR back, nor the Federal Republik like it is.
In a truly democratic society, the interests of the majority must prevail, not those of the minority. This is the case worldwide. Formal political democracy on one hand, and economic absolutism on the other cannot work. Democracy must include the economy, otherwise it is not democracy. This does not imply that policies should be against the economy, but rather that the economy should be for the common good.
In Germany, 42 percent of all private wealth is accounted for by 10 per-cent of the households. At the same time, the bottom half of all households must share 4.5 percent of the assets. How much longer is this lower half going to keep putting up with this?
And how long are we going to keep chasing after the phantom of the growth of material goods as a substitute for meaning in our lives at an ever-increasing pace, while simultaneously ruining our planet? The question as to whether a different economic system is necessary or possible has been asked more often and more clearly by writers from the GDR than from their Western colleagues. Christa Wolf: “We are living in a thoroughly false world: forced into economic thought and in accordance with the dictation of profit maximization, we are designing the instruments of our own destruc-tion.”
Complete democratic awakening would also include putting an end to the poverty and indignity in the developing world, which continues to breed terrorism. Terrorism is a cry that wants to be heard. Conflict prevention is the most sensible investment. The recognition of the condemnation of war according to international law must be the civilizing project of modernity. The global abolition of nuclear weapons would be a convincing start. I recently attended a meeting at the American Academy in Berlin between Henry Kissinger, George P. Schulz, the former Chancellor Schmidt and former President Weizsäcker, all of whom support Obama in this endeavor.
Democratic awakening? We can or we can’t – that is the question here.
Source (http://www.danieladahn.de/index.php?section=texte&func=detail&pid=130&seite=0&lang=en).