Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was pretty shocked when I read about the results of a study of the Free University of Berlin in die WELT.
They had asked more than 5000 young Germans in East and West Germany questions about the former communist East Germany. Here are some of the results:
Who built the Wall?
The Americans: 1,9 % (1,6 % West, 2,2 % East)
The Allied Forces: 13,6 % (12,4 % West, 14,3 % East)
The Soviet Union: 46 % (47,2 % West, 44,8 % East)
The Federal Republic of Germany: 4,5 % (3,9 %West, 5,3 % East)
The German Democratic Republic: 34,9 % (34,9 % West, 33,4 % East)*
The Stasi (Staatssicherheit = State Security) was a secret service like any other:
Yes: 31,1 % (24,4 % West, 38,8 % East)
The GDR was no dictatorship – people simply had to conform like everywhere:
Yes: 24,6 % (21,1% West, 28,1 % East)
The East German planned economy was neither better nor worse than the West German market economy:
Yes: 20,1 % (13,9 % West, 26,7 % East)
It was a good thing that in former GDR the state took care of its citizens, even if this meant that the individual had less freedom.
Yes: 26,4 % (17,2 % West, 36,3 % East)
Hilarious also the 13,5 % that considered Helmut Kohl was an East German, and the 8,2 % that considered Erich Honecker was a West German.
„Amerika hat die Mauer gebaut, Kohl ist ein Ossi“ von Ulrich Clauss, Die WELT, 10. November 2007
These results are shocking and resemble the ones of a recent Spiegel study:
“Germany Still Divided 18 Years After the Fall of the Wall”, SPIEGEL ONLINE, November 9, 2007
To mark the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, SPIEGEL polled over 1,000 Germans who had grown up on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The disturbing conclusion is that, 18 years after the Wall came down, Germany remains as divided as ever.
(…) Many younger eastern Germans see the reunited country as a place where their parents are having trouble finding their way. And although they for the most part never experienced life under socialism, their thinking appears to have been partly molded by their parents’ situations and the stories they have shared with them about life in East Germany.
Indeed, eastern German youth view the former East Germany in a friendlier light than their compatriots in the west. In some areas, they even view the now-vanished country with higher regard than their parents — like when it comes to the standard of living in East Germany. It’s a view through rose-colored glasses that sees an East Germany with employment for everyone, daycare for all families and a cradle-to-grave social welfare system. Of course, that generation was not exposed to the negative aspects of life under communist rule — like long food lines or harrassment by the police state.
Still, positive sentiment towards certain aspects of the former East German remains high. A full 60 percent of eastern German youth surveyed said they felt it was “bad that nothing has remained of the things one could be proud of in East Germany.”
How come?
It seems like Andrea Seibel puts it in her comment in die WELT (“Im Tal der Ahnungslosen”, 10. November 2007) as if 18 years after the fall of the Wall the former GDR was still spreading its poison.
* There must be a little mistake in numbers here according to my knowledge of maths, but this is what die WELT reports and the study is not yet (?) online