Germany - "Ossis" and "Wessis"
The realities of German reunification pose major problems for Germany and, ultimately, all of Europe. Social, cultural, and economic differences between eastern and western Germany in conjunction with the economic dominance of the former FRG bedeviled the nation and delayed true integration of the two societies.
There are fewer "Ossis" and "Wessis" in Germany these days. Former West Germany was four times as large as former East Germany. A quarter of a century after reunification, a feeling of unity dominates prevails, in particular among under 30-year-olds, according to an infratest dimap survrey. Terms like "Ossi" for East Germans and "Wessi" for West Germans aren't heard as often anymore.
Upon reunification in 1990, many Germans experienced new freedoms, including the chance to travel and purchase items that had not been available in the GDR. Gone was the clothing that had come to define the GDR: light-grey shoes, plastic jackets, or jogging suits made of parachute silk. Hairstyles changed too - from the old air-dried perm to a more "modern" haircut. Soon the "Ossis," as East Germans were called back then, didn't look any different from the "Wessis," the West Germans. But deep down, some of the differences remained - and prejudices persisted.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said 30 September 2017 that pointing the finger at people in eastern Germany for the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) was not helpful and far too simplistic. The far-right populist party's success, which saw it claim 12.6 percent of the vote and 94 seats in the federal parliament, was the result of a sense of insecurity felt not only by people in the east but also in the west, Merkel said. The AfD emerged as the third-largest political force nationwide in last Sunday's election, but in some eastern states it performed much better. In Saxony, for example, it placed first with 27 percent of the vote, just barely ahead of Merkel's Christian Democrats.
"Eastern Germans often say that western Germans are arrogant, materialistic, more bureaucratic and superficial," Thomas Petersen of the Allensbach Istitute, an opinion research center, told DW 03 October 2013. The center's survey from 2012 shows that eastern Germans also hold many more prejudices against western Germans than the other way around. And the Forsa Institute for Social Research and Statistical Analysis found that eastern and western Germans still don't feel like they belong to one nation.
East German or "Ossi" bashing is not a new narrative. Those in the East are different. And being different is bad, because you have to be like those in the West, or "Wessis." Those in the East said to be are mentally and morally retarded, stupid or evil, or both. Democracy is an alien concept to these racist, xenophobic slaves to authority. According to surveys conducted by leading opinion research centers, western Germans think Eastern Germans are sour, mistrustful and anxious. On the other hand, only 43 percent of western Germans considered eastern Germans "motivated" and "flexible."
Since people in the East always assumed that they were being misinformed by politics and the media, they got information in a different way: Neighbors, friends, friends of friends. People in the East talk to each other about what happens to people they know much more than in the West, and they draw conclusions about reality.
Westerners, on the other hand, see the world through the ideals taught to them by teachers, politicians and the media. It is not about reality, but about "values" as a belated consequence of the 1968 movement, which had a lasting impact on the West's world of ideas. All people are equal. Misgivings about people from other countries is called racism. Religion is a problem. Pride and love for one's own country is nationalism. People in the East are interested in reality, those in the West want to adapt reality to their "values".
Eastern German firms lost their ability to compete on the free market once and for all following unification. In early 1991, unions and employers based in the west began negotiating eastern German wage levels. In so doing, they imposed western German pay scales, from a country that had enjoyed 40 years of growth and ever-increasing productivity - on the remnants of a collapsed command economy. The result was rapid wage increases - followed by bankruptcies and unemployment. "Wages were advancing faster than productivity levels," said Gerhard Heimpold from Germany's Halle Institute for Economic Research. "That meant companies couldn't afford them." This massive deindustrialization process cost more than 1 million jobs. Unemployment in the eastern states climed to 17.7 percent by 1997. Many young and well-educated eastern Germans headed west. In 2005, joblessness in the east reached a peak of 18.8 percent. In 2013, the unemployment rate hit its lowest level since 1991 at 10.3 percent. The difference between east and west became increasingly blurred.
The eastern states never really recovered from the harsh deindustrialization in that early phase. Mid-sized companies form the backbone. With t companies with 100 to 250 employees and then compare this class of company between east and west, they are roughly equal economically,. Even so, eastern German productivity has only reached three-quarters of that in the west by 2017. The export rate in western Germany is 50 percent - in the east it is a bit over 30 percent. Big companies typically invest more in research and development, and are thus more innovative and competitive. In the west, the private sector is responsible for about 70 percent of the amount spent on research and development - in the east it's only 40 percent.
Between 1990 and 2012, the number of working people decreased from 11.2 million to 10.1 million. In western Germany, that number remained roughly stable. By 2030, the number of people in work is expected to drop by millions.
It's estimated that since the Fall of the Wall, around 1.7 million people left the former East Germany. The sheer dimensions of the migration that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall on 09 November 1989 were staggering. Four hundred thousand people had crossed over from East to West by the time Germany reunified just under a year later. It was a real exodus from the former Communist German Democratic Republic.
A government report submitted to cabinet ministers in Berlin on 06 September 2017 warned of widely negative demographic trends in the eastern part of reunited Germany. It reported that a rapidly aging population in all of the non-city states in the former East (Berlin is the exception) is going hand in hand with a lack of industrial diversity, structural as well as infrastructure problems and increasing financial woes at community level. With lots of younger people turning their backs on homes particularly in eastern Germany's rural areas, the increasing share of elderly people has proven to be a major burden on social services, the report emphasizes. Between 1990 and 2015, the population of the five non-city states in eastern Germany shrank by 15 percent, from 14.8 million right after reunification in 1990 to 12.6 million inhabitants 15 years later.
The state of Saxony-Anhalt recorded the biggest decline of 22 percent, while the population in western Germany increased by 7 percent over the same period. The state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in the former East Germany has the lowest population density in unified Germany (69 inhabitants per square kilometer).
Despite the recent influx of migrants, current demographic trends are unlikely to change any time soon, the report notes. On the contrary, it expects the population in the former East to drop by another 800,000 people by 2030, which would mark a 7 percent decline from today's level. By contrast, western Germany will most likely see its population grow by 1 million by 2030, a 9 percent rise.
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