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Pre/Post Reunification of Germany | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3910 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 1 of 39 31 August 2014 at 3:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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This isn't exactly about language, more history, and I wasn't exactly sure where to post this so I apologize if this is in the wrong spot.
I've noticed both in my Hugo German Advanced book and from one of the Deutsche Welle: Warum Nicht lessons that they'll make statements such as "things were better before the reunification" and "the economy was much better before the reunification" (not exactly those words, but something along those lines). I'm not a native German and I was only 5 when Germany reunited, but everything I've read and native Germans themselves have told me that it was pretty much hell before the reunification (for the East) and events seemed to have proved that to be so. Why would Hugo and DW have statements suggesting that things were better before the reunification? Edited by soclydeza85 on 31 August 2014 at 3:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5012 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 2 of 39 31 August 2014 at 4:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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Where is the "story" located?
If people from former Western Germany are speaking, it makes sense that such an issue is debated. While reunification brought a lot to the whole country, the western part had to share more with the eastern one. You can see some differences even now, 25 years after the reunification. It surely wasn't easy to rebuild after decades of destruction and the Germans did well. But success never comes without a cost and sacrifice. It is actually quite brave of the course makers to put there such a topic, in my opinion. Well, I think the Germans have little to complain about when it comes to economy but there are surely some areas where people would differ. And don't forget people often judge their economical situation based on comparison with others. So, while Germany is the economical tiger of Europe, many countries are no longer mice but have become at least foxes, so the comparison between a German and a eu-non-german of similar social sphere is much less striking than before the reunification or even the situation ten or fifteen years ago. Which Warum Nicht lesson is it? I'm looking forward to the course more and more :-) Edited by Cavesa on 31 August 2014 at 4:40am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4237 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 3 of 39 31 August 2014 at 5:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh, I guess it's the standard situation when this happens. There are two ways of looking at things, and Warum nicht? actually expresses it quite well when Andreas is asking citizens of Berlin about the reunification and sometimes in part four.
Some people like it, some don't. Same history here (if we're comparing with the DDR). 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3910 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 4 of 39 31 August 2014 at 5:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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There is the part where Andreas (in part 4) is talking to all the different people, but the part that I was specifically referring to is one of the lessons shortly after; he is talking to an old farmer or something.
I just find it surprising that there is still that much support for the DDR perspective that Hugo and DW (and maybe other courses) felt they should bring that up. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4237 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 5 of 39 31 August 2014 at 6:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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I guess this isn't about the politics, but the culture. You wouldn't want to praise reunification in front of someone who has lost everything because of it. So Hugo and DW are showing that there still are different approaches.
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| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5323 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 6 of 39 31 August 2014 at 10:53am | IP Logged | |||||
There's actually even a portmanteau word for this kind of sentiment: Ostalgie (= Osten + Nostalgie). IMHO, this kind of sentiment is not limited to Germany, for example, if you asked senior citizens about their life, you might also often hear them say that everything was much better in the "good old days." A line from Buzz Luhrmann's song "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" comes to mind:
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| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5563 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 7 of 39 31 August 2014 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It is a sentiment you hear quite often, and I personally have never heard a German say
it was "hell" in the East. For most, life seems to have been perfectly normal, no worse than the sort of frustration that many western teenagers would feel growing up in some soulless suburb, with the disadvantage that in adulthood they continued to have restrictions imposed on them, and ultimately it seems to be the frustration at the inability to travel that brought it to boiling point. East Germany was the most successful of the former East Bloc countries, so relatively speaking, life must have felt reasonably good. "Die Linke" is the successor political party to the former ruling party in East Germany, and they continue to receive over 20% of the vote in the eastern Länder Obviously there was a relatively small number of activists and dissidents who suffered greatly. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4847 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 8 of 39 01 September 2014 at 12:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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Schoenewaelder got it right. Obviously, the DDR was a dictatorship where the freedom of the individual was ignored in favour of communist ideology, however, a lot of people sort of glorify it because they think life for the common man was better there.
The main criteria are unemployment and community spirit. Taking into account that the economy of the DDR wasn't capitalistic but planned, there was no unemployment. In fact, if I remember correctly, there even was a right to get a job. Of course, this led to firms being uneconomic and profitless, but everybody had a job and earned money. After the reunification, the East German economy was capitalized in a brutal take-over maneuver by West German industrials and bankers, who took advantage of the East Germans' lack of economical experience. Also, a lot of state-owned businesses were privatized, sold, or shut down, which led to massive unemployment in the East. Moreover, because people didn't have a lot of money, the DDR was a very egalitarian society. Ordinary people could afford to go to places which are first class hotels today (e.g. on the islands of Rügen and Usedom). Because nobody had "too much", there was little envy and a lot of community spirit. This also changed after the reunification. Some people profited from the new economy, others were fired. Some could afford expensive Western cars and clothes, others couldn't, so people started to get envious and dissatisfied. On top of that, a lot of immigrants came into the country, which wasn't the case before, so xenophobia started to rear its ugly head. Neo-Nazi parties are especially strong in rural areas of the ex-DDR today. So, "little" people, who used to swim with the stream and didn't suffer from political persecution in the DDR, only see what was good then. They totally ignore the lack of personal freedom, which was a fact. People weren't allowed to travel, to go to university, or even to say what they thought without the consent of the Socialist Party, but, yes, everybody had a job and people were nicer and less superficial. So, for average people, life surely was not "hell" in the DDR. I might add that this kind of sentiment isn't restricted to the DDR. 20 years ago, elderly people would insist that everything wasn't bad under Hitler ("Okay, he started a world war and killed 6 million Jews, but hey! he built the Autobahn and community spirit was great!") and before that, people would call the Empire of Kaiser Wilhelm "die gute alte Zeit". I think it's just as Doitsujin said: People will always glorify the past and condemn change, especially if change hasn't treated them nicely. And, maybe, for some people it really was easier to live in a society which gave them little freedom and made the decisions for them. That way people weren't forced to take responsibility for their own lives. They could simply swim with the stream and do as they were told. The world can be a hostile place if you're responsible for yourself, so some people who grew up in the DDR may feel lost in the modern individualistic world. On the other hand, people in the West used to complain that they had to pay for the modernization of the East. Even today, West German citizens pay a special kind of tax ("Solidaritätszuschlag") whose purpose is to support the East German federal states. So, some of them might argue the reunification has damaged the economy and the West is paying for the development of the East. I think all these sentiments have diminished over the last years and, hopefully, one day they will be totally gone, but one can't deny there is still a great structural difference between West and East Germany. While the West is the industrial and financial motor of the country, the East is dominated by agriculture. A lot of young people are still leaving the rural areas of Mecklenburg and Brandenburg, because they don't find any jobs there. So, yes, the reunification is a difficult story. It's not as if Germany was reunited in 1990 and lived happily ever after. Edited by Josquin on 01 September 2014 at 12:52am 8 persons have voted this message useful |
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