Reunification Blues
October 3, 2002
The photos at the time went around the world.
Jubilant Germans standing atop a man-made wall being systematically destroyed by both East and West, Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate glowing in the background. The shocking scene, the November 9, 1989 destruction of the Berlin Wall after 28 years of separation, prompted the diplomatic moves by both communist East Germany and West Germany that brought the two halves officially together on Oct. 3, 1990.
On Thursday, Germans will celebrate 12 years as a reunified country with a slew of festivities around the city’s newly-renovated Brandenburg Gate. The gate, shrouded for the past 20 months while work was being done, will be unveiled in dramatic fashion by ski filmmaker and designer Willy Bogner. German opera diva Montserrat Caballé will bring the festivities to a close.
The feel-good day is a public holiday in Germany, a time for newspaper editorial boards to pen deep and thought-provoking reflection on 12 years of a whole and complete Germany. Politicians, including Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, will attend church services and give speeches. Former US President Bill Clinton is even due in town, and will address the crowds in front of the Brandenburg Gate Thursday after receiving a piece of sandstone left over from the recent renovation work.
After the "first love," a sobering reality
For ordinary Germans, especially those in the East, celebrating a reunified Germany has been harder and harder as each year has passed. The initial euphora has been replaced with the cold, hard reality of a slumping economy, an overburdened social welfare system and high unemployment rates.
Reunification, such a great idea following the wall’s collapse, has been questioned more and more as the years have gone by.
“The reunification, as an adventure is only a memory of a euphoric feeling, like the first love,” wrote an editorialist in the “Berliner Zeitung” on Wednesday.
The years since have become a monotous and exasperating existence for both sides, marked by ever-depressing statistics.
Eastern flood into the West
On Tuesday, Germany’s statistics office announced that the number of East Germans moving West has increased again for the first time since 1991. Around 98,000 moved from the economically-depressed, 17.5 percent unemployment rate of the former East to ecnomically better-off states in the west of the country in 2001. From 1991 to 2001, 600,000 more people moved from East to West, than the other way around, according to the Federal Statistics Office.
The outlook looks grim: only 16 percent of East Germans see their future turning around for the better in the coming five years according to a recent survey. The news has become obvious political fodder, with many of the country’s top officials reflecting on the serious problems ahead of the reunification fesitvities.
“When we celebrate this occasion we must also remember that we have a lot of work to do,” Klaus Wowereit, Berlin’s Mayor said on Wednesday.
The spokesman for parliamentarians from former East German states, Günter Nooke said that East and West Germans need to wipe away preconceptions they have of one another.
“Today, it’s more important than ever for people from the East and the West to take up contact and work towards eliminating prejudices,” Nooke said.
Easier said than done in a country, where an “wall of the mind” has lived on long after the last pieces of wall concrete were sold to the city's eager tourists.