From G & M:
"Divisions persist 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall"
Bettina Malter’s only memory of the historic events of Nov. 9, 1989, consists of being stuck in a traffic jam. The day after the Berlin Wall fell, her parents piled her into a car for the trip to West Berlin, their first in almost 30 years, convinced the border would not remain open for long. That day also happened to be her fifth birthday – and she remembers feeling irked at the delay in returning home for a family celebration. The years that followed were disorienting ones for her parents. Her mother went from designing breweries to selling insurance. Her father, an engineer, had to start all over again at the bottom rung of his profession. For Ms. Malter, now 29, the unease came later, during her time at graduate school in Western Germany. When her classmates mourned the death of a cherished children’s book author, Ms. Malter had no idea who he was. When she asked about a certain public holiday, she got blank looks. Many of the parents of her friends had participated in the protests that swept Western Europe in 1968; Ms. Malter had to learn about them in a book. The collective memory in reunified Germany, she realized, was a West German one, with no place for experiences like hers. Meanwhile, her friends insisted that the differences between East and West Germany were in the past. One confessed to Ms. Malter that she was annoyed with her for bringing them up. “She said, ‘It’s finished, we’re done, we’re all the same,’” recalled Ms. Malter, a freelance writer. Sitting in a café in Berlin, Ms. Malter allowed herself a small smile. “I don’t want the Wall back,” she said. “But we have a problem and we have to talk about it.” On Sunday, a quarter-century will have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the defining symbol of the Cold War and a barrier that imprisoned millions of Germans. Today the physical boundary is gone, sometimes to the point that it’s hard to find where exactly it was. In its place is a flourishing city where moving from one part to the other is seamless. Yet 25 years later, differences persist across the line that once divided Germany. Much of the attention has focused on socio-economic disparities. But there are also tenacious divisions in attitudes and behaviour, a phenomenon that is sometimes described as a “Mauer im Kopf” – a wall in the head. “Many East Germans still feel alien in the reunified Germany, which has taken over the institutions and values of the old Federal Republic,” said Klaus Schroeder, a political scientist and sociologist at the Free University in Berlin. “Even if only a small minority of about 10 per cent to 12 per cent of the East German population wants to have the GDR back, a large majority feels strange in a united Germany.” Prejudices have proven hard to shake. Among westerners, there is a stereotype of easterners as “anxious, suspicious and dissatisfied,” while easterners sometimes typecast westerners as “arrogant, superficial and greedy,” Prof. Schroeder said.
In recent years, younger eastern Germans like Ms. Malter have grown more vocal about articulating the impact of this psychological divide. There’s even a new group – Third Generation East – whose aim is to highlight the experience of young people born in the years before the Wall fell, an experience they say has been forgotten. The group’s exploration of the past and what it meant to them wasn’t a hit with their parents. Many were sick of talking about life in East Germany or didn’t want to dredge up difficult topics, said Mr. Staemmler, now a senior researcher at Stifterverband, a Berlin think tank. Germany was divided for 45 years, notes Prof. Schroeder. During that era, people lived in “different and even contradictory systems.” It will probably take the same amount of time for the two sides to grow toward each other, he surmised. Then, the differences between East and West will be more similar to regional differences, such as those between northern and southern Germany today.
^ It seems that many Germans employ the old view of trying to forget the past (even their own past.) It happened overnight in May 1945 and again in November 1989. I know many Germans (both ones that lived in the East and those that lived in the West.) You can see and hear the differences even as a non-German. Some were really great East German Communists who were allowed to travel to the "Worker's Paradise" of the Soviet Union (even to Yaroslavl - which is something only the most-praised Communists got to do.) Others were West German Capitalists who always went to the US. I think the reason these differences and divides are still here is because Germany, in general, brushes it's past under the carpet and hopes to hide their "demons" rather than fully admit them. It has been almost 70 years since World War 2 ended and many Germans (even ones that weren't born in the war) continue to hide their family's past so of course the same thing will happen 25 years after the Berlin Wall fell. Every country has it's good and bad past. The sing of a great country praises and good and admits the bad. ^
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/divisions-persist-25-years-after-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall/article21489971/
"Divisions persist 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall"
Bettina Malter’s only memory of the historic events of Nov. 9, 1989, consists of being stuck in a traffic jam. The day after the Berlin Wall fell, her parents piled her into a car for the trip to West Berlin, their first in almost 30 years, convinced the border would not remain open for long. That day also happened to be her fifth birthday – and she remembers feeling irked at the delay in returning home for a family celebration. The years that followed were disorienting ones for her parents. Her mother went from designing breweries to selling insurance. Her father, an engineer, had to start all over again at the bottom rung of his profession. For Ms. Malter, now 29, the unease came later, during her time at graduate school in Western Germany. When her classmates mourned the death of a cherished children’s book author, Ms. Malter had no idea who he was. When she asked about a certain public holiday, she got blank looks. Many of the parents of her friends had participated in the protests that swept Western Europe in 1968; Ms. Malter had to learn about them in a book. The collective memory in reunified Germany, she realized, was a West German one, with no place for experiences like hers. Meanwhile, her friends insisted that the differences between East and West Germany were in the past. One confessed to Ms. Malter that she was annoyed with her for bringing them up. “She said, ‘It’s finished, we’re done, we’re all the same,’” recalled Ms. Malter, a freelance writer. Sitting in a café in Berlin, Ms. Malter allowed herself a small smile. “I don’t want the Wall back,” she said. “But we have a problem and we have to talk about it.” On Sunday, a quarter-century will have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the defining symbol of the Cold War and a barrier that imprisoned millions of Germans. Today the physical boundary is gone, sometimes to the point that it’s hard to find where exactly it was. In its place is a flourishing city where moving from one part to the other is seamless. Yet 25 years later, differences persist across the line that once divided Germany. Much of the attention has focused on socio-economic disparities. But there are also tenacious divisions in attitudes and behaviour, a phenomenon that is sometimes described as a “Mauer im Kopf” – a wall in the head. “Many East Germans still feel alien in the reunified Germany, which has taken over the institutions and values of the old Federal Republic,” said Klaus Schroeder, a political scientist and sociologist at the Free University in Berlin. “Even if only a small minority of about 10 per cent to 12 per cent of the East German population wants to have the GDR back, a large majority feels strange in a united Germany.” Prejudices have proven hard to shake. Among westerners, there is a stereotype of easterners as “anxious, suspicious and dissatisfied,” while easterners sometimes typecast westerners as “arrogant, superficial and greedy,” Prof. Schroeder said.
In recent years, younger eastern Germans like Ms. Malter have grown more vocal about articulating the impact of this psychological divide. There’s even a new group – Third Generation East – whose aim is to highlight the experience of young people born in the years before the Wall fell, an experience they say has been forgotten. The group’s exploration of the past and what it meant to them wasn’t a hit with their parents. Many were sick of talking about life in East Germany or didn’t want to dredge up difficult topics, said Mr. Staemmler, now a senior researcher at Stifterverband, a Berlin think tank. Germany was divided for 45 years, notes Prof. Schroeder. During that era, people lived in “different and even contradictory systems.” It will probably take the same amount of time for the two sides to grow toward each other, he surmised. Then, the differences between East and West will be more similar to regional differences, such as those between northern and southern Germany today.
^ It seems that many Germans employ the old view of trying to forget the past (even their own past.) It happened overnight in May 1945 and again in November 1989. I know many Germans (both ones that lived in the East and those that lived in the West.) You can see and hear the differences even as a non-German. Some were really great East German Communists who were allowed to travel to the "Worker's Paradise" of the Soviet Union (even to Yaroslavl - which is something only the most-praised Communists got to do.) Others were West German Capitalists who always went to the US. I think the reason these differences and divides are still here is because Germany, in general, brushes it's past under the carpet and hopes to hide their "demons" rather than fully admit them. It has been almost 70 years since World War 2 ended and many Germans (even ones that weren't born in the war) continue to hide their family's past so of course the same thing will happen 25 years after the Berlin Wall fell. Every country has it's good and bad past. The sing of a great country praises and good and admits the bad. ^
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/divisions-persist-25-years-after-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall/article21489971/
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