I remember a person from the old West Germany saying to me that they'd like that wall back twice as high and the same depth underground because of all reunification cost and the entitled attitude of 'osties'
Having been bombarded with arguments against reunification for decades by at least one half of the spectrum, will have shaped the views of many. A lot of people felt unease about an American president pushing so visibly for it, as Reagan did.
For the German Easterners it must be said, they were the only "revolutionaries", the only Germans who risked anything and showed courage and actually fought for freedom. Yet, there is almost no official commemoration of it. Partly because many Easterners were part of the system. Partly because the West-German left hated to be reminded of their own amorality.
Thus, "reunification costs" are only a translucent argument. As if the redistribution policies already existing in West-Germany weren't the real culprit why the West-German worker was left so little of his wage and why the job market was stagnating at best for years.
What amorality are you talking about?
Which is why the SPD (with a few exceptions) and the Greens have never set foot in the East as did the conservative CDU.
[1] that remarkable story of course includes the whole of Eastern Europe and that human progress may only be equated to the rise of China (although not politically).
While I doubt, that anything else than a single Germany would have happened after all - how the reunification came to be could have certainly be different.
But looking at the options that are usually brought up when speaking about "the lost chances" of remaining an independent but free East Germany, the implications are usually so undesirable and unrealistic, that a) those still complaining about it come across as melancholic revanchists and b) the reunification as it happened seems to have been inevitable.
I don't think you can dismiss Ostalgie (nostalgia for East Germany/democratic socialism) either. There are quite a few people who miss those days, as incredible as it might seem to us who come from countries which don't shoot you if you want to leave. I know some folks who grew up in another Communist country, and they mention that everyone seemed bound up together. They'll admit that materially things are much better now, and sometimes they'll admit that everyone was in bondage together — but most of the time they really do miss what we would consider a repressive state (so bad that they weren't even allowed to speak their native language at home, and had to hide religious artefacts from the secret police).
And to me it looked pretty spot on. I imagine it's pretty hard to find the exact same position after twenty years.
> I remember a person from the old West Germany saying to me that they'd like that wall back twice as high and the same depth underground because of all reunification cost and the entitled attitude of 'osties'
That sounds like a very selfish person. Freedom for our east german brothers and sisters, unless I have to contribute...
There are digital cameras and laptops. There's really no excuse for not comparing directly and seeing if you got it at least kind of right.
>That sounds like a very selfish person. Freedom for our east german brothers and sisters, unless I have to contribute...
It's not like people were completely opposed to it. But now after so much time has passed we're still paying an extra tax that exclusively benefits the eastern states. And if you read the local newspapers in Eastern Germany you still hear a lot of complaints about "Wessies" (Western Germans). It kind of breeds resentment if you put your hands in someone elses pockets for 28 years, and still complain you're not getting enough. What we need to do is wean the East off of these extra taxes. There are large parts of Western Germany which have just as many unemployment problems, and didn't get any of the infrastructure investments.
Which tax would that be? If you mean the Solidaritätszuschlag: It isn't actually bound to any task and is used for more or less everything the government wants, not to help East Germany (just like any other tax). It is also payed by people in both West and East Germany.
Just one of the many stupid myths people tell themselves on both sides that breeds sentiment.
Also it may not be possible to stand in the same place due to new construction in the position of the old shot.
Edit: or should I rather put it this way:
They have lived in the GDR, and have years of firsthand life experience of what it was like. And they also live in the reunited Germany. And they also have years of firsthand life experience of what that is like.
Why would they prefer the worse option? (hint, they won't) And why would they think the worse option was better, if they have personally experienced both in detail? Who are you to say that what they think is wrong?
It took 2 years to coin a term that described a feeling people had already felt. Not 2 decades.
So I don't agree with your theory at all.
It's a similar sentiment to brexiteers, who have a vision of some old England that wasn't actually good.
EDIT: To clarify, I'm not endorsing these viewpoints, I just want to point out that the people who hold them aren't stupid or mistaken about the "good old times", they just have a different definition of "good". So from their perspective, revisionism is perfectly justified.
There is no doubt that substantial political and social upheavals, even those which we acknowledge as highly positive in the aggregate, will have some negative effects for some people.
Society develops meticulous legal and social processes for political change to ensure that these balances have been well-considered, despite being forced to acknowledge that we don't have a magic wand that will make the world a place of unanimous equity and unlimited cotton candy.
We dismiss the concerns and sentiments of others at our own peril. Concern and sentiment generally arise from legitimate issues. We can't solve every problem or fix every complaint, but smugly discounting the counter-discourse as the ramblings of idiots and yokels generates a massive liability which always come back to bite. "Those morons are too dumb to not vote against their own best interests" is no different than "those morons are just too dumb to learn the right way to use my program."
If some people believe that their personal balance of plusses and minuses was better under the old order, who are we to tell them that they're just too stupid or naive to understand their own generalized quality of life?
The east/west cultural conflict was a thing in the 90s. But today, nobody cares anymore. Berlin, and one or two other large cities in the east have become vibrant centres of culture, attractive to young people from all over Europe. The former east still lags economically. But by and large, the investments helped to catch up, and the economy has been doing well everywhere, making people less anxious about their taxes going to "undeserving" people.
But, of course, history never ends: now we have xenophobes protesting against their taxes helping refugees from Syria. Especially in the former east (go figure). The same dynamic is also playing out in Poland and Hungary: two countries massively profiting from EU membership, with large parts of the population turning their backs on the EU, and the values it stands for.
The recent rise of AfD has been fueled by the resentment of the former East [0]. The vote share of the AfD has strong correlations to the east-west divide. It might be worthwhile to understand the reasons behind this pattern.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/28/is-germanys-el...
Since you live in Berlin, I suggest you take a daytrip to the villages around Berlin, or maybe down to the Lausitz (Cottbus, Hoyerswerda, Bautzen, etc.). You'll find plenty of people who care.
The GDR was an oppressive regime towards its critics, but if you managed to keep your head down, you could live a very stable life there. Upon starting work at 15, you had reasonable confidence that you could work at the same place until retirement if you wanted to. Until, of course, the reunification happened, and large parts of the East-German economy were flushed down the toilet for not many good reasons. Now you have a huge number of people who suddenly have to change jobs every few years to keep themselves afloat, and those (and their children!) are the ones voting for the AfD.
Source: I know some of those people.
based on what? on belief that the wise communist party conquered the laws of economics, history and nature?
Maybe disintegration with plunging into poverty is inevitable and natural end for the "oppressive regimes". Then at least East Germans got it easier than their neighbors to the East thanks to reunification.