Considerations of German unity increasingly admit that mistakes were made along the way, including serious ones. However, this admission is usually reflexively relativized with the assertion that given the opening of the wall, mass emigration, economic decline and the desire for the D-Mark, there were no alternatives. This can be countered: Anyone who has never even tried alternatives can subsequently make it difficult to believe that there were none.
This also applies to the introduction of the D-Mark as a means of payment in the GDR. What happened?
After meeting on February 6, 1990 with GDR state bank president Horst Kaminsky and his minister of economics Christa Luft, Bundesbank president Karl Otto Pöhl issued a press statement: Plans for a currency union were premature. Federal Economics Minister Helmut Haussmann added: The GDR would gradually convert its currency and be strongly supported by the West. An expert opinion from the Council of Experts also confirmed this approach.
However, just a day later, Chancellor Kohl publicly offered monetary union out of his hollow belly after consulting with his finance minister Theo Waigel. The Bundesbank has not been consulted, as Pöhl repeatedly complained. The D-Mark was the tough election promise. Because the surveys of the Eastern CDU for the People’s Chamber elections on March 18 (11 percent) were just as unpleasant as the personal ones of the Chancellor in the West. Kohl’s excellent instinct for power was rewarded with the huge victory of 48 percent for the alliance he forged for Germany.
Photo: imago/Holger John
The upcoming Westgeld aroused great desire on the one hand, but also uncertainty about which course it would go well. The draft contract remained under wraps, but excerpts leaked through indiscretion in mid-April. Now it became clear what price was being charged so that no money could be played with the fine money: the GDR had to consent to the restriction of its sovereignty. The most important GDR constitutional principles had to be abolished, in particular the socialist legal order, in order to guarantee the acquisition of private property on land and means of production. The right to termination without notice was introduced for the first time. Anyone who gives up their sovereignty over currencies is no longer a serious contractual partner.
Anticipation mixed with disillusionment and fear of existence: In companies there were warning strikes. The PDS stuck thousands of posters: If the D-Mark comes too early, reason comes too late. But the cameras only stuck to the opposite slogans. The municipal elections in the GDR on May 6, just seven weeks after the Volkskammer elections, showed the loss of confidence with one million voters. The CDU lost 800,000 votes, small parties such as Greens, civil rights activists and others who were in a hurry against Germany, the fatherland, rose together from 20 to 30 percent. However, this tendency was bought up with the D-Mark and also stopped with the trusteeship law, which was released at the same time and released public property for privatization.
The people gave up their property and let themselves be given freedom.
Volker Braun, writer
The most important act of the first and last freely elected People’s Chamber, wooed by Western advisors, was the expropriation of the people. The SPD politician Rudolf Dreßler spoke of a “bad omission”: “After the state unity, there was a clear, historically unique chance to convert formal national wealth into widely dispersed property in productive capital, to make the East Germans co-owners of reorganized companies.” Volker Braun summed up the “opaque business”: The people gave up their property and let themselves be given freedom.
The GDR citizens exchanged their aluminum chips for hard D-marks and found the western goods splendor in their stores on the morning of July 1st. I experienced it in our village consumption. It is not true that Eastern goods were no longer bought there, but they were completely gone. No usual toothpaste, no more tomatoes from the farmer’s shop, the new ones a little pale, but at least from Holland. The newspaper rack was also unrecognizable – besides the picture and the world, Goldmann paperbacks. And first the car dealerships in the city! The promise of consumption has been fulfilled to general enthusiasm. In addition, the most important points of the contract have never been observed.
Chapter II, Art. 10 (2)
The contracting parties choose conversion modalities that (…) strengthen the competitiveness of companies in the GDR.
Result: 70 percent of the GDR industry collapsed according to the changeover arrangements chosen.
Art. 10 (6)
After taking stock of state-owned assets (…), the GDR will, where possible, provide that savers can be granted a securitized right to share in state-owned assets for the amount reduced by the 2: 1 changeover.
Result: A securitized right to share debts, debts and again debts – the final balance sheet of the trust.
Kapitel III, Art. 11
The measures are taken in such a way that they (…) contribute to a high level of employment and to an external balance with steady and appropriate economic growth.
The result: almost four million jobs will be lost in the east and two million created in the west. The foreign trade equilibrium breaks down in the GDR with a steady and appropriate economic downturn.
Art. 13
The existing contractual obligations towards the countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Aid enjoy the protection of legitimate expectations. They are (…) expanded taking market principles into account.
The result: trade sales with the CMEA countries drop to a tenth of their volume – entirely in the protection of trust.
If the much stronger dollar had been introduced overnight in the Federal Republic, the economy would have been ruined in one fell swoop.
Bundesbank President Karl Otto Pöhl
“Is this nonsense really in there?” Two years later, the once unasked Bundesbank President Karl Otto Pöhl wondered after I had read these passages out to him. “I didn’t read that at the time, I was so upset, I already knew that I would resign.” It was a decision against the economy. If the much stronger dollar had been introduced in the Federal Republic overnight, he explained to me, the economy would have been ruined in one fell swoop. The Guardian economic columnist has described the impact of monetary union as an “economic atomic bomb”.
What followed were fading landscapes. After 95 percent of the national property had passed into western hands, a dry spell of 18 years began, until even the economic output of the GDR was reached again. According to representative surveys by sociologist Yana Milev, between 1990 and 1994 three million people demonstrated against layoffs and unequal treatment – twice as many as during the “peaceful revolution” – but they were ignored. In parallel to de-industrialization, the birth rate also fell by 70 percent, a reliable mood barometer.
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The big series
In the 30th year of reunification, we are experiencing another upheaval in society triggered by the Corona crisis. The Berliner Zeitung accompanies this time with essays, analyzes, interviews. We have debates and ask what we can learn from yesterday for a better tomorrow. www.berliner-zeitung.de/zeitenwende
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The number of emigrants to the west continued to rise. In the East, people were often ordered into senseless job creation measures and had to apply for social assistance. The fact that there is a social network at all is highly recognized, but it also has to do with the upturn in the West that unity brought. 1990 was Deutsche Bank’s best financial year in its hundred-year history. And not just this company. This made it affordable to demote East Germans to permanent alms recipients. “Pampers” is said in line with the market and makes no secret of the humiliating undertone.
Against all this, the economic corona lockdown is child’s play. Even today, the not so new federal states can by no means completely produce their own consumption themselves. Nevertheless, the introduction of the D-Mark and finally the euro have been reconciled in Germany. According to the annual government report of 2019, two thirds of East Germans state that their personal situation has improved significantly since 1990. They were finally able to travel wherever they wanted and upgrade their living conditions, found smaller businesses and use them almost as badly for the climate as their fellow countrymen, formerly known as brothers and sisters.
If such a majority is doing well, then everything is fine, according to the beneficiaries. Or not anymore? As early as 1994, the then Minister of Social Affairs, Regine Hildebrandt, had complained that the socially egalitarian East had aligned itself with the West with a two-thirds society. And it stayed that way.
According to the “Glücksatlas”, almost half of East Germans are concerned about the cohesion of society. Rich Germany today is a country that tolerates new poverty, drives an underclass through Hartz IV, marginalized groups, keeps asylum seekers short, where health costs and educational opportunities are hereditary. All of these are also late consequences of this insane monetary union, which ultimately led to the net cost of German unity being a good two trillion euros. They did not come from the postage cash register, but were largely financed through loans that were far from being paid off. According to the Federal Audit Office, the federal debt is four times as high as 30 years ago. The main items are German unity and only then the bank rescue packages after 2008. This burden is not only passed on to the next generations, but has given East and West the black zero for years, under whose degreasing umbrella public care for climate protection, health, education, transport or digitization is emaciated.
A report from the management consultant Roland Berger predicted the four million unemployed. But the expertise ended up in the safe.
Daniela Dahn
Where market optimization sporadically and solidarity comes at a price, where young people become emotionally homeless with the demolition of living spaces, violence, xenophobia and right-wing intellectualism thrive. No alternative?
Would a gradual introduction of the D-Mark, not quite as hesitant as it used to be in Saarland, really not be possible? The West Germans were not asked at all, but their experts knew the expected consequences of the rash introduction of the D-Mark. A report from management consultant Roland Berger predicted the four million unemployed and the entire disaster described here. But the expertise ended up in the safe.
Why was it kept secret? The only explanation is the fear that knowing people could make a different decision. Had it been published in good time, it is still not clear today whether the parties who praised this destructive roller as a tempting offer in favor of maintaining its power would really have been elected. If nevertheless, all critics would have to fall silent today in view of the then transparent democracy. But this contract, which was never met in his economic promises, was the continuation of the “organized irresponsibility” that Rudolf Bahro once attested to the GDR economy.
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