Even 30 years after reunification, (former) East Germany is clearly lagging behind the West economically. Pierluigi Mennitti’s analysis of Eastsidereport.info
Thirty years after German reunification, a new study and research center will think about developing economic and social strategies to accompany the development of the eastern German regions. It will be called with some emphasis Zukunftszentrum fur europaische Transformation und Deutsche Einheit, Future Center for European Transformation and German Unity, and could have its headquarters in Frankfurt on the Oder, a city on the border with Poland that already hosts the University. Viadrina, an academy engaged in European integration policies with an eye to the East. It is one of the proposals adopted by the government and presented by the person in charge of the German unification process
Marco Wanderwitz, who presented the annual report on the state of reunification on Wednesday 7 July. This year’s round anniversary therefore brings with it a study center, a sign that the question remains open even thirty years later.
The numbers presented by Wanderwitz are in fact condensed into one sentence: even 30 years after reunification, the eastern regions are clearly lagging behind from an economic point of view compared to the western ones. The legacy of the Communist forty years and the difficulties of transition still weigh heavily today, despite the financial efforts made. In reality, to remember the starting point of the Lander that were part of the GDR and to look at the figures more closely, the result could be tempting to many backward areas of Europe. The eastern regions have today reached 77.9% of the economic level of the old western Lander, and this after a decade and a passing of strong economic growth of the entire country, naturally driven by the West. The city of Berlin is expelled from the account due to calculation difficulties,
To revive the pessimism with which these data have now been accepted in recent years, there is also the confirmation of the trend that has been going on for thirty years: the distance between the two goals of Germany continues to narrow, even if the times are slower than expected. At the base of the pessimism there is also an interpretation that continues to distort the perception: if some specific areas of the East had been wealthy in the past, historically the West of Germany has always been richer than the East. The competition between two political-economic systems at the time of the Cold War accentuated inequalities, but the economic supremacy of the western regions is a pre-existing condition for the division after the Second World War. As well as the fact that some centers of the East – Leipzig, Dresden,
In fact, many analysts doubt that the Eastern Lander will ever reach the economic level of the Western ones, since it had not happened in the past either. The objective is unrealistic, a pure political definition that has little to do with the economic reality, today as it was yesterday.
It is therefore better to focus on the processes underway within the eastern economy, where the differences are accentuated. Berlin is increasingly assuming its leadership role, a metropolis capable of attracting investment and human capital and acting as an engine for the surrounding area: not only for the directly bordering Brandenburg, but also for those pieces of other Lander capable of connecting to its economic and social ecosystem.
For the capital, the run-up is over: in the last five years, its GDP has reached 100% of the average for the whole of Germany. The pre-war times of national supremacy remain distant (and perhaps unattainable), when all the largest industries in the country had their headquarters there, but its magnetic force is back, internationally and considered the true center of Europe, sturtup and centers of services (including innovation) arise everywhere in the last available urban spaces.
For the rest, the centers of Dresden, Lispia and Potsdam shine as always (the latter thanks also to its symbiosis with Berlin), while in the rest of the Lander the already known brake factors remain: few innovative indigenous companies, demographic imbalances (in partly inherited from the strong emigration of the nineties, partly from the aging process and the lack of attractiveness towards young foreigners)
To weigh more than the economic and political factors. It is here that the difference between the two German goals is most evident: in the new Lander skepticism, distance and criticism of politics are so widespread that electoral behavior tends to reward anti-system perhaps. It is a permanent fact, if we exclude the first few years following reunification. First the ballot boxes rewarded the former Communist Party heir to the single party at the time of the GDR (PDS, then Linke). Today the votes go en masse to the far right of Alternative fur Deutschland, which in all eastern regions exceeds 20% and in Saxony reached a record of 27.5 two years ago.
The government report also lists the reasons for the difficult relationship of Eastern citizens with democracy: dross of totalitarianism in the GDR years, negative experiences in the transition phase, feelings of discrimination (second class citizens), but also widespread racism and anti-Semitism : “Many simply feel disappointed in democracy”.
