Sylvie Lemasson, Sciences Po Grenoble, CESICE

The title of one of the last books by Christa Wolf, a famous writer from the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), continues to leave its mark on the minds of East Germans. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, her famous Ce qui reste (What Remains) continues to question the daily lives of a population, of all generations, in need of a political inventory.

While a little over two-thirds of Germans today recognize an undeniable gain in individual freedoms, just as many are negative about the process of German unification, which they see as having resulted in the outright absorption of their country into West Germany (FRG). Even then, the East German intelligentsia and the majority of demonstrators against the ruling SED party were calling not for the GDR to disappear, but for a change of regime in the wake of the transitions underway in Central and Eastern Europe.

However, as soon as the Berlin Wall opened on November 9, 1989, the Bonn government, following an incredible blunder on the part of the SED's head of communications, who got the day wrong (it was actually November 10), rushed into the first gaps. By losing control of the information, and consequently of the organization of border controls, the East German authorities immediately found themselves disqualified from finding a way out, while the representatives of civil society were just as quickly marginalized for lack of a miraculous solution capable of competing with the golden bridge deployed by Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

The influx of the East German population into West Berlin in the space of a few hours was tantamount to a plebiscite for the Western system, with the assurance of a higher standard of living. The announcement of free movement electrified East Germans, whose families had been torn apart by the division of the world into two antagonistic blocs. On the evening of November 9, no one could imagine turning back the clock. In other words, a return to an authoritarian regime in which the denunciation of one's fellow citizens and the surveillance of each individual are ironclad rules.

Reconstruction policy under debate

Thirty years on, there are no regrets about the earthquake that engulfed every floor of the East German house, but it's the policy of reconstruction that is the subject of debate. In the five eastern Länder (of the sixteen that make up reunified Germany), people like to recall the reforms envisaged by the Round Table participants. Modelled on Poland, this cenacle brought together the driving forces of the GDR's opposition and civic movements. Its mission was to work out the contours of a contractual community between East and West Germany. In short, to think about a confederal whole that would enable the former GDR to safeguard some of its social gains.

But this project for an innovative society, stripped of all avatar of the SED, quickly collapsed under the weight of West German proposals. The alternatives to a merger orchestrated by Chancellor Helmut Kohl paled in comparison to the economic firepower of West Germany. By deciding to act quickly on the domestic front, the authorities in Bonn are swamping trade. The recognition of a strict parity between the two currencies, by de facto overvaluing East German savings, irreversibly steered the unification train towards monetary - and hence political - unity.

On the international stage, the exit from the Yalta order also depended on the West German side, which had a firm grip on diplomatic affairs. Within the framework of the "2 + 4" treaty, concluded de jure between the two German states on the one hand, and the USA, France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union on the other, Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher ignored his East German counterpart, already speaking in the name of a single entity. Discussions on the recognition of the eastern border of "Greater" Germany (vis-à-vis Poland), on the integration of East German territory into NATO (vis-à-vis the USSR) or on the format of the "new" German army (vis-à-vis France) are all thorny issues that the Bonn government decides directly with its foreign partners. Considering the GDR to be devoid of all legitimacy, since its ideological basis no longer had any raison d'être, the FRG established itself as the only credible interlocutor. The Perestroika advocated by Mikhail Gorbachev, moreover, was not encumbered by any locks, least of all by a GDR symbolizing the bygone era of the Cold War.

Why so much bitterness?

So why did a majority of East Germans express so much bitterness, and sometimes resentment, about a unification process that was doubly successful? Firstly, thanks to two slogans that challenged, then rejected, the SED regime. By shifting from "We are THE people" (signifying the will to decide in place of the SED) to "We are ONE people" (expressing the wish for pan-German unity), the demonstrators signed the brain death of a system overtaken by events. Finally, through democratic elections that resulted in a landslide victory for the East German CDU, Helmut Kohl's sister party.  

In retrospect, this unification is seen by many as a veritable annexation (some even see it as "structural colonization"), reflected in social and even cultural downgrading. The famous shock therapy has left millions of people out in the cold. Companies that did not conform to Western production methods closed down in droves, if they were not sold off by the body responsible for privatizing the former GDR industrial areas. Remember that 40% of employees lost their jobs overnight when conglomerates closed.

The transition from a planned to a market economy has resulted in a precarious social fabric - particularly affecting women, who had previously been very involved in East German society. Deprived of company crèches and frameworks conducive to new jobs, they paid a heavy price for the collapse of whole swathes of the GDR. The demographic decline of the eastern Länder is partly the result of these radical changes. And the succession of managers who arrived from the West in 1990 is still a long way off.

So what remains of a country for which the fall of the Berlin Wall was to be transformed into "flourishing landscapes", in the words of the Chancellor who brought the young Angela Merkel from the East into his government team? Has the unification machine turned into an identity crusher? The German constitution makes no allowance for the East German heritage, whether in health care or housing. The right to abortion in force in the GDR, less restrictive than in the FRG, could, for example, have mitigated the feeling of ignorance, if not indifference, on the part of a FRG "above it all". The Round Table had also suggested a referendum on the new constitution, which in the end adopted the so-called West German Basic Law.

Today, critical analysis of the unification process is reflected in a different relationship to Europe and German history. Those who emphasize the dominance of the former FRG and the lack of a social elevator in the former GDR, with unemployment twice as high and wages 20% lower on average, are also those who cultivate a strong regional and national identity. What's even more remarkable is that the reference to East German ancestry is playing an increasingly important role among the generation that did not experience the GDR. The ideal of a united and egalitarian society serves as an outlet.

But the search for a singular path also trivializes the political margins. Namely, the Communist party(die Linke) and the far-right party(AfD). Although the essence of the two parties should not be confused, it is clear that they are achieving their best results in the eastern Länder, with the AfD even representing the second largest political group since the last regional elections in 2019. The "Other Germany" is still being scrutinized in the former GDR - even if, with 16% of the German population, its demographic weight remains minor.