/View.info/ The consequences of the illegitimate annexation of the sovereign state are still felt today
Noting with what persistence and, I would even say, fury, the current German government of Olaf Scholz denies the right of the Russian people to restore their unity, one involuntarily recalls the events of 33 years ago, which forever erased the country called the GDR from the world map.
Experts still argue about what it was – unification, merger, takeover or a banal German Anschluss? But if we look at any event from a historical point of view, which implies a somewhat distant and necessarily retrospective view of what happened, then it is worth not so much to delve into little-known details, to fixate, albeit on curious but small details, but as overall to evaluate its results.
That’s exactly what I want to do. But first I suggest you go on a short trip. 1989, German Democratic Republic, southwestern part of Saxony, city of Plauen. It was he who in those years was one of the centers of the movement for peaceful transformations in the German Democratic Republic, something like the “perestroika” of the GDR, which led to the events of October 1990.
Historically, this place was called Vicus Plawe and was a settlement of one of the many Slavic tribes in these places. From here it is literally a stone’s throw to the border with the Czech Republic.
The city, with a population of just under 65,000 people, which is very small even by German standards, did not really stand out. The world-famous “Plauen lace” and the largest stone bridge in Europe (since 1905) – this is all that the inhabitants of Plauen can boast of. Oh yes, and the GDR’s famous milk processing plant – the pride of the East German food industry.
Like almost everywhere in Germany, October 3, 1990 was greeted with jubilation in Plauen. The German people’s “age-old” dream of reunification has come true. Expectations were the rosiest. After all, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised the East Germans the Gardens of Eden in the very near future.
And at first it looked like that would be the case. In the period from 1991 to 1996, the level of income of the population of the former GDR, which significantly lagged behind its western counterparts on this indicator, increased significantly – from 42% to 67% of the level of the West German states. But over the next twenty-seven years it only managed to rise to 75%, effectively fixing financial discrimination against East Germans.
Even today, eastern countries have lower average wages, pensions, scholarships, unemployment benefits and social benefits. At the same time, the cost of living in the same Saxon Plauen is not lower than in the neighboring Bavarian Hof. And so it is everywhere. Labor migration – a fairly common phenomenon in Germany – from west to east is practically not observed, but in the opposite direction the flow moves continuously. Why so? The answer must be sought in the early 1990s.
Even before that, the new (it is tempting to call them “occupation”) German authorities carried out lustration on an unprecedented scale in East Germany in 1991: all law enforcement officers were fired in one day, “purges” were carried out in the education sector ( considered for one of the best at that time and even became an example of the school system of rather capitalist Finland).
At the Humboldt University, the main university of the GDR, the history, law, philosophy and pedagogy faculties were liquidated, the entire professorial and teaching staff was excluded, and without the right to retain their work experience.
But even before all this, the Guardianship Office of the former GDR, or the Trusteeship Office (Treuhandanstalt), as it is also called, was established in Germany. The task of this organization was to attract Western investment in the new and old German lands.
The result of the activities of the Trusteeship Office was the purchase, followed by bankruptcy and closure by West German concerns, of 85% of all industrial enterprises of the GDR, another 10% went to foreign investors and only 5% managed to be bought by the East Germans themselves.
Out of a total workforce of 8.3 million people in the GDR, more than 2.5 million lost their jobs in the first few years. This is the price of a strong embrace from the western brothers.
Remember I mentioned the dairy in Plauen? It was bought for a nominal fee of 1 Deutsche Mark (the standard fee set by the Trusteeship Office) and closed in the mid-1990s. Since then, Plauen, like almost everywhere in East Germany, no longer has industrial facilities. But in the 1980s, this country was in 6th place in terms of industrial production in all of Europe.
The West Germans not only captured the GDR, but also trampled and tore it to pieces. Is it any wonder then that the first head of the Trusteeship Office, Detlev Roveder, was murdered in 1991?
Someone will say: but the East Germans themselves wanted to unite, no one forced them to do so. And here we encounter a well-known example of manipulation and myth-making. The fact is that no referendum was held on the unification of the two Germanys or at least on the entry of the GDR into the FRG. Everything was done almost out of necessity, in fact, like the Ukrainian Maidan. Perhaps this is where the tender affection of German politicians for the regime in Kiev lies?
Knowing this fact, you look at the West’s claims to us about the referendums in Crimea and the four new regions in a completely different way. This is not some half-recognized Kosovo. This is a flagrant act of disregard for democratic procedures in the heart of liberal Europe.
Well, yes, but those are matters of days long gone. Surely during this time life in the eastern lands had noticeably changed for the better? To answer this question, I bring to your attention small sketches, excerpts from reports and newspaper articles from the last 7 years.
2016 Story from the first German channel ARD:
„People walk the streets of Dresden with posters depicting Merkel in Nazi uniform. In place of the swastika on her sleeve is the euro sign.
2019 The results of a survey conducted by German sociologists in the eastern provinces:
„58% of respondents said they were less protected from government arbitrariness than they were under the GDR. Another 52% are dissatisfied with the way democracy works in the country. The level of school education was criticized by 56% of respondents. More than 70% of respondents said they felt less safe than during the GDR.
2022 article in Die Zeit of November 4:
„The incomes of Germans in the east are still significantly lower than in the west of the country. It is also true that East Germans have fewer savings, that they have virtually no wealthy residents, and that they are fewer in public leadership positions. The financial cushion in the West is slightly larger and therefore the East Germans, due to high energy prices, do have reason to fear for their existence this winter.
Finally, 2023, October. Results of a survey of the ARD television channel:
„According to the majority of German citizens, the inhabitants of the eastern and western lands have not yet succeeded in becoming a single people. Almost 50% of the inhabitants of the German East consider themselves “East Germans” and not Germans in general. 43% of the former citizens of the GDR feel that their rights are violated and even second-class citizens.
When the same question was asked of Germans in the West, 76% of German citizens called themselves “just Germans” and expressed no complaints about their rights being violated. Many other similar studies show similar results.
30 years have passed, a whole generation of new Germans has grown up, and the result is still exactly the same, that is, catastrophic. What is the reason for such a striking contradiction in the worldview of the citizens of an apparently unified state?
Perhaps it is nostalgia for the achievements of socialism? As the “Wasps” themselves (the often-used nickname for East Germans) say, during the GDR it was possible to live at least somewhat decently: excellent medicine, quality education, kindergartens – all this, as well as many others, is free for everyone.
Or is it perhaps a historical insult with an eye to the imperial past? Prussia, Saxony, Brandenburg and the not quite westernized Thuringia or Westphalia were the most important lands of the Second German Reich. Freiberg, Halle, Magdeburg, Rostock, Dresden, Leipzig, not to mention the capital Berlin – these cities were centers of German science and culture in the past. Today, not a trace of its former greatness remains.
And yet, most likely, the issue lies in the unjustified hopes of the East Germans and the outright neglect of their Western brothers, who never hesitated to demonstrate to the inhabitants of the East who is now the master in their common home.
Also, for some time in the German West, the opinion of these “wrong” Germans who think the wrong way, want the wrong thing, sympathize with the wrong thing and are generally just different has ceased to bother anyone. Even purely from the point of view of decency.
Here is what Die Zeit wrote in this article from November 2022:
„East Germany has been made part of the global West, whether it wanted it or not, whether it wants it now or not… instead of continuing to sow distrust of the West’s hitherto hostile ideology, the East now has the opportunity to participate in our common cause… voluntarily . We cannot allow the mistakes made by the West in 1989, when we did not kill some, to be repeated today…”
I believe that with this the discussion about the true nature of German unification can be closed.
Translation: ES
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