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East Germans Feel Life Better under Communism; ...
Topic Started: Jul 13 2009, 04:44 AM (295 Views)
Greece (TheOne)
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Majority of Eastern Germans Feel Life Better under Communism

By Julia Bonstein

Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an "illegitimate state." In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.

The life of Birger, a native of the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania in northeastern Germany, could read as an all-German success story. The Berlin Wall came down when he was 10. After graduating from high school, he studied economics and business administration in Hamburg, lived in India and South Africa, and eventually got a job with a company in the western German city of Duisburg. Today Birger, 30, is planning a sailing trip in the Mediterranean. He isn't using his real name for this story, because he doesn't want it to be associated with the former East Germany, which he sees as "a label with negative connotations."

And yet Birger is sitting in a Hamburg cafe, defending the former communist country. "Most East German citizens had a nice life," he says. "I certainly don't think that it's better here." By "here," he means reunified Germany, which he subjects to questionable comparisons. "In the past there was the Stasi, and today (German Interior Minister Wolfgang) Schäuble -- or the GEZ (the fee collection center of Germany's public broadcasting institutions) -- are collecting information about us." In Birger's opinion, there is no fundamental difference between dictatorship and freedom. "The people who live on the poverty line today also lack the freedom to travel."

Birger is by no means an uneducated young man. He is aware of the spying and repression that went on in the former East Germany, and, as he says, it was "not a good thing that people couldn't leave the country and many were oppressed." He is no fan of what he characterizes as contemptible nostalgia for the former East Germany. "I haven't erected a shrine to Spreewald pickles in my house," he says, referring to a snack that was part of a the East German identity. Nevertheless, he is quick to argue with those who would criticize the place his parents called home: "You can't say that the GDR was an illegitimate state, and that everything is fine today."

As an apologist for the former East German dictatorship, the young Mecklenburg native shares a majority view of people from eastern Germany. Today, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, 57 percent, or an absolute majority, of eastern Germans defend the former East Germany. "The GDR had more good sides than bad sides. There were some problems, but life was good there," say 49 percent of those polled. Eight percent of eastern Germans flatly oppose all criticism of their former home and agree with the statement: "The GDR had, for the most part, good sides. Life there was happier and better than in reunified Germany today."

These poll results, released last Friday in Berlin, reveal that glorification of the former East Germany has reached the center of society. Today, it is no longer merely the eternally nostalgic who mourn the loss of the GDR. "A new form of Ostalgie (nostalgia for the former GDR) has taken shape," says historian Stefan Wolle. "The yearning for the ideal world of the dictatorship goes well beyond former government officials." Even young people who had almost no experiences with the GDR are idealizing it today. "The value of their own history is at stake," says Wolle.

People are whitewashing the dictatorship, as if reproaching the state meant calling their own past into question. "Many eastern Germans perceive all criticism of the system as a personal attack," says political scientist Klaus Schroeder, 59, director of an institute at Berlin's Free University that studies the former communist state. He warns against efforts to downplay the SED dictatorship by young people whose knowledge about the GDR is derived mainly from family conversations, and not as much from what they have learned in school. "Not even half of young people in eastern Germany describe the GDR as a dictatorship, and a majority believe the Stasi was a normal intelligence service," Schroeder concluded in a 2008 study of school students. "These young people cannot, and in fact have no desire to, recognize the dark sides of the GDR."

"Driven Out of Paradise"

Schroeder has made enemies with statements like these. He received more than 4,000 letters, some of them furious, in reaction to reporting on his study. The 30-year-old Birger also sent an e-mail to Schroeder. The political scientist has now compiled a selection of typical letters to document the climate of opinion in which the GDR and unified Germany are discussed in eastern Germany. Some of the material gives a shocking insight into the thoughts of disappointed and angry citizens. "From today's perspective, I believe that we were driven out of paradise when the Wall came down," one person writes, and a 38-year-old man "thanks God" that he was able to experience living in the GDR, noting that it wasn't until after German reunification that he witnessed people who feared for their existence, beggars and homeless people.

Today's Germany is described as a "slave state" and a "dictatorship of capital," and some letter writers reject Germany for being, in their opinion, too capitalist or dictatorial, and certainly not democratic. Schroeder finds such statements alarming. "I am afraid that a majority of eastern Germans do not identify with the current sociopolitical system."

Many of the letter writers are either people who did not benefit from German reunification or those who prefer to live in the past. But they also include people like Thorsten Schön.

After 1989 Schön, a master craftsman from Stralsund, a city on the Baltic Sea, initially racked up one success after the next. Although he no longer owns the Porsche he bought after reunification, the lion skin rug he bought on a vacation trip to South Africa -- one of many overseas trips he has made in the past 20 years -- is still lying on his living room floor. "There's no doubt it: I've been fortunate," says the 51-year-old today. A major contract he scored during the period following reunification made it easier for Schön to start his own business. Today he has a clear view of the Strelasund sound from the window of his terraced house.

Part 2: 'People Lie and Cheat Everywhere Today'

Wall decorations from Bali decorate his living room, and a miniature version of the Statue of Liberty stands next to the DVD player. All the same, Schön sits on his sofa and rhapsodizes about the good old days in East Germany. "In the past, a campground was a place where people enjoyed their freedom together," he says. What he misses most today is "that feeling of companionship and solidarity." The economy of scarcity, complete with barter transactions, was "more like a hobby." Does he have a Stasi file? "I'm not interested in that," says Schön. "Besides, it would be too disappointing."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/german...,634122,00.html



So...um...lets split Germany in two again? :D
Dax/Recon...shouldn't the CIA be exploiting these feelings for another colour revolution?
Cipher...wheres the FSB in all this?
:ph43r:
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He's dead Jim...
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I didn't bother reading that because its too long and i'm lazy, but, EAST GERMANY FTW ! 8D
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zzJJ
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Heh that would be awesome splitting them again.
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zzdusty
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Long live GDR (DDR in German). Death to the Capitalists. :P
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zznorcalpunk
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Well, as implied in the article, the majority of people who support East Germany are, well, young, and I doubt any of them have actually lived under the communist regime there.
P/S: I wouldn't count spending the first 10 years of your life as "living".
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Zactarn Prime
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What the fuck?

"YOUR NOT ALIVE UNTIL YOU'RE 11"
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Recon
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It’s hardly a shock. A lot of people felt safe in the GDR. The regime lavished them with benefits. You had job security, you had a sense of community you had perhaps a less challenging world. In the GDR you could go to University even if you were poor and the universities were better then the current German crop which are poor by international standards.

In a time of recession, people obviously dislike capitalism and add that to the massively high expectations after the wall came down it would be hard to see must support for the West. It’s remarkable how many people who would give up conventional democracy for job security and the sense of community that the GDR provided.

Some of it is nostalgia, but some of it is true. In East Germany, the average person didn’t get hauled down to the Stasi, most knew of them but never met one. There were many benefits of living in the GDR especially refugee from some of the darker sides of capitalism.

I remember my History teacher once telling me of his trip to the East Germany in 1988 (I wish I could have visited before the wall went down), He travelled on the underground system between East and West Berlin, it was full of Western Tourists, on the way back the train was full of elderly people from the GDR. They had no qualms about letting them to defect to the West, probably to save on pensions and healthcare costs. He visited the streets and he found a public obsessed by the West. People noticed he was a Westerner and pestered him for any Western Media or music records he had on him (His newspaper was taken away by the GDR guards.) He also noted the shops were bare of consumer items.

The truth is, in 1989 people risked their lives and in some cases died for freedom. The GDR or Communist Poland or the USSR was not exclusively terrible. Party members and poorer people in some cases felt they had a better life under the GDR, you had a job for life, you had benefits, you had the chance of a University Education you even had a greater sense of community through all the Communist party mechanisms.

Unfortunately there is nothing to provoke, in Schwers Germany communism is not even on the agenda. That's not a slur it’s a fact. There are Germans who wish to go back to Communism as are those Russians who hark back to Soviet times, Eventually those generations will die out however, we cannot forget the Stasi, the executions, the repression, the terrible economic problems the state faced by racking up debts trying to sell substandard products and most importantly that thousands upon thousands of people who risked their lives and in some cases died to escape. Hell in about 50 years if North Korea has collapsed and only a new unified Democratic Korea remains you will find people who wished they could be back in the DPRK.
[align=center]Head of State (President): Moncef Marzouki (Congress for the Republic)
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Schwerpunkt
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Der Spiegel is a left-leaning paper. They even blatantly mock the kids, saying they're 'hungry for a dictatorship.' If there was any truth in the claims, Die Linke -- the result of a merger between East Germany's communists and some die hard socialists from the SPD -- would be faring much better than they are in the polls. They're a fringe group, nothing more. They're also about to break in half, but that's neither here nor there.

But Recon's more or less right in that people long for certain elements of the past. The DDR is white-washed ("Not even half of young people in eastern Germany describe the GDR as a dictatorship, and a majority believe the Stasi was a normal intelligence service," Schroeder concluded in a 2008 study of school students. "These young people cannot, and in fact have no desire to, recognize the dark sides of the GDR."). More than what Recon said, Hans-Werner Sinn ('is Deutschland noch zu retten?') comments on how East Germans traveled to West Germany to purchase... bananas. They wouldn't surrender what they have in return for nothing.

Communism in Germany, Russia, and the rest of the Warsaw Pact won't truly die until everyone who lived under it has died. Belarus seems intent to hold on to it, though.
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United States [Sel]
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Союз Навсегда
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zzcalaveraslol
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<<<< Calls East Germany if it splits
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Government: Juche Communist State
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He's dead Jim...
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Israel [Sel Appa
 
,13 Jul 2009 19.39.14] Ñîþç Íàâñåãäà

I dont understand Russian but it's red and er.. in Russian so I agree !

XD CURSE THAT LANGUAGE !
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Dax
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Might make an interesting RP opportunity for Schwer, though: reconstruction of the Berlin Wall.
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Stoklomolvi
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Bosnia-Herzegovina [Jackmeister
 
,13 Jul 2009 13.19.00]
Israel [Sel Appa
 
,13 Jul 2009 19.39.14] Ñîþç Íàâñåãäà

I dont understand Russian but it's red and er.. in Russian so I agree !

XD CURSE THAT LANGUAGE !

I'm not sure how you knew it was Russian since to you it was gibberish...

Long live the Union!
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Long live the People's Republic!
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zzdusty
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Belgium needs some action so if Germany splits I'm sending in my Kapitalist Kommandos. :P
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He's dead Jim...
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China [Stoklomolvi
 
,14 Jul 2009 00.41.10]
Bosnia-Herzegovina [Jackmeister
 
,13 Jul 2009 13.19.00]
Israel [Sel Appa
 
,13 Jul 2009 19.39.14] Ñîþç Íàâñåãäà

I dont understand Russian but it's red and er.. in Russian so I agree !

XD CURSE THAT LANGUAGE !

I'm not sure how you knew it was Russian since to you it was gibberish...

Long live the Union!

I can read Sel's but because I quoted it and I dont have the language pack or whatever, it messed up for me. <_<

Maybe this is more fitting ?

Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt Euch !

East Germany is so much better. ;)
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Schwerpunkt
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,13 Jul 2009 19.37.28] Might make an interesting RP opportunity for Schwer, though: reconstruction of the Berlin Wall.

Except it's unrealistic. Belgium splitting in half is more likely, as is a civil war in Ukraine.
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zzdusty
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I'm thinking of a Belgian Civil War. The right winged Flanders against the Socialist south.
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He's dead Jim...
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Belgium [Dust Bunnies
 
,14 Jul 2009 19.37.28] I'm thinking of a Belgian Civil War. The right winged Flanders against the Socialist south.

Seen it done before. :P
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zzJJ
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What if a country split into 3 parts??? Always the world see's two parts but now what if there was a North, South and then North-East or whatever...hmmm? hmmm?
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He's dead Jim...
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Mauritania [JJ
 
,14 Jul 2009 20.46.22] What if a country split into 3 parts??? Always the world see's two parts but now what if there was a North, South and then North-East or whatever...hmmm? hmmm?

Lol... Dont tell Korea that.. :rolleyes:

North Korea - Communist
South Korea - Capitalist
West Korea - Nationalist
East Korea - Theocracy

and on and on.. :lol:
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