The Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, but Germany is still divided

I&#x27;m a little concerned with the lack of any absolute numbers in the data visualisations in this article. The &#x27;more&#x2F;less&#x27; and &#x27;higher&#x2F;lower&#x27; bars could be very misleading on some of these stats. I can understand that adding numbers can make these visualisations a little more intimidating but is it too much to expect the high&#x2F;low ranges to have an absolute number on them?<p>For example in the disposal income visualisation what kind of magnitude of a difference is there. Is the average 2 thousand euro a year lower or 10 thousand euro a year?<p>What concerns me is that some of these stats can be massaged with the right visuals into producing a difference between East and West that isn&#x27;t as big a difference as the graph makes it out to be.

Had a small twitter discussion with the editor of the article yesterday, that for example the data on trash is not comparable (different metrics in different municipalities, for example counting collected foliage or not), especially that it doesn&#x27;t allow the conclusion for a national divide, based on some vague stereotypes. At least this fact got amended into the paragraph.<p>The bigger picture is that the eastern part of Germany got deindustrialized twice. The first time post-WW2 from both sides. In part by the US-forces who had seized the western parts, like Thuringia, but had to hand them over to the Soviets in time, so they seized anything they could easily move out to the western zones; <i>We take the brain</i>[1].<p>On the other hand the Soviets, who were way more strict in getting their reparations than their western counterparts, took apart a lot of factories and railways and shipped them eastwards. Every bigger company that could, moved their HQ and center of operations to the western zones — where they stay until today — on their own as well. With them went up to 3000 mostly well educated people per day, in total more than 3 million (of 17M total) in the 16 years before the wall was built in &#x27;61. The motivation of building the wall was therefore economic in nature, since the GDR couldn&#x27;t survive this ongoing brain drain with the mythical <i>Wirtschaftwunder</i> going on next door.<p>30 years later in the early 1990s after the fall of the Wall and the reunification the <i>Treuhand</i>, a state owned-holding, who&#x27;s sole purpose it was to sell-off the former GDR state owned businesses to potential investors, kind of more or less knowingly finished off the rest of what was left of the industry. Since not a few of the western investors were solely interested in buying up potential rival enterprises, so they could dismantle them shortly after. This left the east in a highly disadvantageous position with the west of Germany, since there were practically zero industry clusters left and since then state subsidies had could only do so much in creating the organic growth that was needed.[2 includes some good maps]<p>[1] <a href="http://www.pentaconsix.com/01gerhis.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pentaconsix.com&#x2F;01gerhis.htm</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.dw.de/mapping-differences-in-two-german-economies/a-17734799" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dw.de&#x2F;mapping-differences-in-two-german-economies...</a>

Reading this, I couldn&#x27;t help thinking of an observation P.J. O&#x27;Rourke made after visiting the DDR (&quot;East Germany&quot;): &quot;It takes a special kind of economic system to turn a nation full of Germans into a third-world country&quot;.

25 years is a very short time to expect some of the longer term economic and cultural changes to take place. Just like the street light bulbs, they&#x27;ll get replaced as the old ones die off.<p>On a related note, I&#x27;ve never understood how you could live in West Berlin and yet travel freely to the rest of west Germany, because the city itself was deep in East Germany. I know the city was supplied by airlift during the blockade, but that eventually stopped. So how did someone from West Berlin travel to, say, Frankfurt by car? What was to stop someone from East Germany doing the same thing? The wall only went through the city, right?<p>I have travelled in East Germany and I found it to be a pleasant place, with very friendly people. Though they tended to have bizarre fashion sense and much more limited English compared to west Germany.

I&#x27;m always annoyed that while pointing out that the right-wing extremist parties are stronger in the east than in the west of Germany, they really don&#x27;t matter at all. Look at their numbers[1]. However, the left-wing extremist party &quot;Die Linke&quot; is a direct successor of the SED, which was the communist party of the DDR, is surprisingly strong [2]. Clearly, it shows the disappointment of the reunion of quite some people in eastern Germany. The disturbing fact here is:<p>The difficulties these regions face are a direct consequence of the exploitation done by the communist dictation (the SED). It took billions of euros to alone fix the environmental damage, e.g. in Bitterfeld [3](unfortunately in German). Also, the industry there was not on level to compete in the world market, how should it? State-directed economy might have theoretically advantages when applied worldwide by humans without human flaws, but in our real world it has been proven wrong again and again.<p>The damage done to a region by 40 years socialism can&#x27;t be fixed within 25 years with 0.95 ... 2 trillion (!) [4] euros. But people still vote for the party who has done all the damage. (And I haven&#x27;t talked about the personal damage that has been done by prosecution, murder and torture by the Stasi (the secret forces of the DDR).<p>[1] <a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationaldemokratische_Partei_Deutschlands" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;de.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Nationaldemokratische_Partei_De...</a> [2] <a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Linke" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;de.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Die_Linke</a> [3] <a href="http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/20-jahre-umweltunion-milliarden-fuer-die-umweltsanierung-im-osten-11054313.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.faz.net&#x2F;aktuell&#x2F;wirtschaft&#x2F;20-jahre-umweltunion-m...</a> [4] <a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosten_der_deutschen_Einheit" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;de.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kosten_der_deutschen_Einheit</a>

<i>&quot;Offa&#x27;s Dyke fell 750 years ago, but, the United Kingdom is still divided&quot;</i><p>I am not sure about flu jabs and childcare or even who does their recycling, however I am sure that most of the comparisons can be said about England and Wales. It would be funny if pollsters did surveys and found 50% of English people didn&#x27;t think the union with Wales had worked out as well as the king had told them it would.

The light color difference in Berlin is awesome, didn&#x27;t know that.<p>Another difference: the Ampelmann West: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/krew59f" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tinyurl.com&#x2F;krew59f</a> East: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/k6nk8dx" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tinyurl.com&#x2F;k6nk8dx</a>

This led me down a few rabbit holes online. I had never heard the Kennedy or Reagan speeches from Berlin, but they&#x27;re embedded on the wiki:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Berlin_Wall</a><p>Those both stood out against the backdrop of dry political speeches. You have a leading statesman, sure, of a country with plenty of its own flaws, but calling out a system that is completely absurd, immoral, and against the course of history. Speaking partly from national interest, no doubt, but still calling something out, calling it like it is.<p>Leaders seem to get a lot of extra points in their legacy column when they&#x27;re able to pull this off.<p>If the sitting President were to make such a speech today, I wonder what and where it would be.

I&#x27;m from Germany (born shortly before the fall) , and I <i>always</i> found it super weird that this &quot;us vs. them&quot; mentality existed. Compared to the enormous timespan east and west Germany was considered the same nation, those 40 years seem to pale in comparison. Besides that, there wasn&#x27;t a civil war or anything that divided the population intrinsically, but it was forced upon us. On the other hand, Germans are known for doing or thinking what they&#x27;re told and in German media and the German mindset, the wall still exists.

Besides the still visible difference between eastern and western Germany you should not forget that we are really well off in comparison with other countries. And not everything in eastern Germany is worse, for example daycare availability as a leftover from the GDR or infrastructure like roads and the fiber network due to the heavy investments after the reunion. When DSL became common it was hard to get it in eastern Germany because there were no copper cables.

&gt;&gt;Here is one possible explanation: Having dealt with constant food shortages until 1989, eastern Germans learned to economize and buy only those items they deemed necessary<p>There are two sides to this. After the fall of communism in Poland in 1989 people would buy EVERYTHING they could put their hands on. We had 3 washing machines in our basement - when I asked my father why, he replied that during communist times you had to apply to the government for a permit to buy one, so after 1989, when you suddenly could just walk into a store and buy one with no restrictions, it made perfect sense to buy 3 at once! You never know if you won&#x27;t need more! And the same principle applied to everything. In fact, my father made a very successful business importing stuff from the West, since (as he put it) you could bring back a truck full of any junk you could find, and people would buy it - they were so eager to breathe in this new capitalist freedom where anyone could buy anything, that they were buying old TVs and motorcycles by a dozen.

I think, one of the reasons, many in Eastern Germany turn to right wing parties or groups, is that they see it as alternative to the capitalistic system, which is represented by the other parties. The other alternative, the left wing side was made unpopular by the fall of the so called &quot;communistic system&quot; and the saying, that Communism has lost, sticks to the people. So they turn right wing. Of course, the right wing parties are no real alternative to capitalism, but that is difficult to comprehend.<p>Even Hitler himself presented the NSDAP as alternative to the US capitalism in the 30s. On the surface, it was, but when you looked deeper it was some kind of &quot;undercover capitalism&quot; under the hood of a movement that claimed to be social and unite the people -- but in reality it united some people, by tearing the whole apart, by finding some new foes, the rest of the people should feel as one. But this was an illusion from beginning.<p>I think, the right wing parties and groups do the same today again. They find the problems, the people have with capitalism -- and capitalism did not treat the eastern people well after the fall of the wall -- and use it as cheese in their big mouse trap.<p>Yes, Germany is still divided in my opinion today, because the rulers did not understand that the people need more than only bananas and some money in their pockets to go shopping.<p>Many women -- it is said -- even had an abortion in Eastern Germany after the fall of the wall, because unemployment was pressing so hard and in spite of German laws, some employers pressured them to do so. With unemployment still high and wages still lower than in the western parts, it is understandable, that many people don&#x27;t feel to comfortable with a system that gives money, but once again no hope to those people. In the old system, they lacked bananas, but they had peace of mind and did not have the pressure to beat their neighbors. I heard many times, that people where much more friendly and helpful with each other in the old system, than they are today.

25 years isn&#x27;t that long, really. My dad grew up in Berlin during and right after the war, my mom&#x27;s family fed to the West after losing their factory and property in the East to the Russians and were denied education due to their bourgeois status. Their world view is still shaped by those events so how could 25 years wipe out the stark divisions between the two Germanies.<p>It&#x27;s hard to describe what it was like traveling as a tourist to East Berlin. Stepping out of the S Bahn station into the East was like emerging into a movie set of the immediate post war era, it even seemed like being in a black and white movie. Trying to spend the 25 Marks they forced you to exchange into Ostmarks was nearly impossible, there was just nothing you wanted to buy there except for Russion literature, maybe.

It&#x27;s amazing how little it takes to create divisions and how long it takes to reunite. I assume that the Koreas are looking at Germany&#x27;s reunification long and hard, and I imagine they are scared shitless.

wow I never expected Berlin to be on East Germany.

Why is this on Hacker News? Is this site going to use its popularity to preach about social issues now, like so many other tech sites have? That&#x27;s a huge turn off for me.