For Some Germans, Unity Is Still Work in Progress
ERFURT, Germany — The air here used to stink from the low-grade coal people burned for heat. That is easy to forget 20 years after East and West reunited and well more than a trillion dollars has been spent to prop up and rebuild the dilapidated region that was the German Democratic Republic....
“You could barely breathe,” said Ms. Kummer, a lifelong resident of this history-rich city, where Martin Luther studied, Napoleon met Czar Alexander and the first small step toward unification occurred when leaders of the East and the West met in 1970. “For me, it was a sign that everything would be better, when the air was clear.”
As Germany prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of reunification on Sunday, there has been a heated national post-mortem on the process, with much emphasis on the disappointments and shortcomings. One official from a struggling former East German state declared that what happened was not reunification but an anschluss, or annexation, a word that recalled the Nazi takeover of Austria before World War II.
The discussion has primarily emphasized financial disparities: wages in the east remain at 80 percent of the west’s; the unemployment rate in the east is nearly 12 percent, about double that in the west; and the average wealth of an East German family is about 40 percent lower than its West German counterpart. And of course, those in the West often complain about the $1.7 trillion paid — so far — to rebuild and prop up the east.
“For the East Germans, the process of reunification was to some extent disappointing,” said Hans Otto Bräutigam, who served as West Germany’s permanent representative to the former Communist-controlled east. “They expected to be like the West Germans quickly. This is why people are not celebrating reunification.”...
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“You could barely breathe,” said Ms. Kummer, a lifelong resident of this history-rich city, where Martin Luther studied, Napoleon met Czar Alexander and the first small step toward unification occurred when leaders of the East and the West met in 1970. “For me, it was a sign that everything would be better, when the air was clear.”
As Germany prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of reunification on Sunday, there has been a heated national post-mortem on the process, with much emphasis on the disappointments and shortcomings. One official from a struggling former East German state declared that what happened was not reunification but an anschluss, or annexation, a word that recalled the Nazi takeover of Austria before World War II.
The discussion has primarily emphasized financial disparities: wages in the east remain at 80 percent of the west’s; the unemployment rate in the east is nearly 12 percent, about double that in the west; and the average wealth of an East German family is about 40 percent lower than its West German counterpart. And of course, those in the West often complain about the $1.7 trillion paid — so far — to rebuild and prop up the east.
“For the East Germans, the process of reunification was to some extent disappointing,” said Hans Otto Bräutigam, who served as West Germany’s permanent representative to the former Communist-controlled east. “They expected to be like the West Germans quickly. This is why people are not celebrating reunification.”...