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Pre/Post Reunification of Germany

  Tags: Germany | Textbooks | German
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39 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 
Chung
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 Message 33 of 39
10 October 2014 at 5:35pm | IP Logged 
Based on my experience with travelling and staying with friends in the ex-Warsaw Pact countries, I believe that overall the worst part of the old days was a combination of economic dreariness (i.e. under communism most people were equal - that is they contended with subsidies, the vagaries of irregular supplies, and if they had relatives in the West a certain realization that their material possessions weren't of the same quality) and blatant state control of thought (e.g. one of my Slovak friends comes from a devout Catholic family with the result that his parents were denied entrance to university and a chance for anything other than menial work) and movement (depending on the mood of the government and which country you lived in you could've even needed to fill in paperwork to visit a different city of the same country let alone travel to another country - communist and capitalist alike). See here for some interesting experiences about travelling in Europe during the Cold War.

I think that most people could put up with the economic dreariness better than the constant uneasiness that you could be reported and hauled off to a labor camp at 3AM because you were caught expressing something that the government didn't like. The Stasi wasn't something that I fully understood until long after I had finished my German language courses.
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Chung
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 Message 34 of 39
20 October 2014 at 10:29pm | IP Logged 
Stumbling on and then reading this account by a British student who lived in East Germany reminded me of this thread.

It complements what Josquin and patrickwilken posted on how gray rather than black-and-white the topic of East German life was. Outright nastiness (e.g. Stasi, bureaucratic/sullen customer service) was counteracted to a certain degree by community spirit and making do with what one had.
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patrickwilken
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 Message 35 of 39
20 October 2014 at 10:52pm | IP Logged 
The newspaper die Zeit, has been running a series of stories relating the Wende in the run up to the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Wall in November.

There are some great maps here showing how still divided the two Germanys are 25 years after reunification: http://www.zeit.de/feature/mauerfall-das-geteilte-land.

I love how Ronny is a totally East German name. More seriously, it's obvious from the maps that the average of income of East Germans remains the poorest in Germany, apart from some parts of the Ruhr Valley. The collapse in birth rate in East Germany immediately after 1989 is amazing.

Edited by patrickwilken on 20 October 2014 at 10:54pm
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schoenewaelder
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 Message 36 of 39
21 October 2014 at 5:53pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
Stumbling on and then reading this account by a British student who lived in East Germany reminded me of this thread.


Quote:

While nearly all East Germans I got to know socially and professionally were warm and welcoming, an encounter with people in their official capacities was often stressful. Most shop assistants, waiters, post office clerks, ticket desk staff and even doctors’ receptionists often seemed to go out of their way to convey their low opinion of you and their resentment at having to engage with you. “Customer service” seemed an unknown concept, and to go shopping or to the local post office was to face an almost certain lecture on the many ways you had failed to live up to expectations. You would be scolded for not having wrapped your parcel properly, for not standing at the right place in the queue, for not stepping up to the counter quickly enough when it was your turn, for not having your ID ready to show, for not having the right change, for giving them too much small change, for speaking too quietly and, of course, for speaking too loudly.


That just all sounds so foreign!
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schoenewaelder
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 Message 37 of 39
21 October 2014 at 5:59pm | IP Logged 
patrickwilken wrote:

I love how Ronny is a totally East German name.


In honour of Ronnie Biggs? Ronald Reagen? Ronald McDonald?
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patrickwilken
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 Message 38 of 39
21 October 2014 at 5:59pm | IP Logged 
schoenewaelder wrote:
Chung wrote:
Stumbling on and then reading this account by a British student who lived in East Germany reminded me of this thread.


Quote:

While nearly all East Germans I got to know socially and professionally were warm and welcoming, an encounter with people in their official capacities was often stressful. Most shop assistants, waiters, post office clerks, ticket desk staff and even doctors’ receptionists often seemed to go out of their way to convey their low opinion of you and their resentment at having to engage with you. “Customer service” seemed an unknown concept, and to go shopping or to the local post office was to face an almost certain lecture on the many ways you had failed to live up to expectations. You would be scolded for not having wrapped your parcel properly, for not standing at the right place in the queue, for not stepping up to the counter quickly enough when it was your turn, for not having your ID ready to show, for not having the right change, for giving them too much small change, for speaking too quietly and, of course, for speaking too loudly.


That just all sounds so foreign!


But you should try to ask for information from the BVG (Berlin public transport) information desk at Tegel airport.

I always find it amusing that the guy behind the counter is the public face for tourists first entering the city.
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patrickwilken
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Germany
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 Message 39 of 39
21 October 2014 at 6:08pm | IP Logged 
schoenewaelder wrote:
patrickwilken wrote:

I love how Ronny is a totally East German name.


In honour of Ronnie Biggs? Ronald Reagen? Ronald McDonald?


No idea, but I was told when I lived in Magdeburg that East Germans often chose foreign sounding names. Perhaps because they couldn't travel to the West.


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