Those who remained Protestant or Catholic in the GDR resisted manifold efforts by the state and the party to pressure them into turning away from their faith. Now it is the bishops – both Protestant and Catholic – who have undertaken to further reduce the number of Christians in the East.
They guaranteed the introduction of a church tax in the unification treaty, thereby prompting a wave of people to leave the church. Many who had voluntarily paid lots of GDR marks [to the church] for decades are unwilling to have extra Deutschmarks forcibly deducted from their wages or salaries.
Sooner or later, the East German bishops will follow the bad example of their West German counterparts in another respect, too: They want to have religious instruction introduced into public schools. This mission with state aid, and at state expense, is intended to warm children and adolescents to the faith that would presumably leave them cold as adults. As the Emnid poll shows, however, their plans will not fail on account of popular resistance. When interviewees were asked for their thoughts on the introduction of religious instruction, the most common response was “I don’t care” (42 percent; 29 percent were in favor and 26 percent opposed).
Almost any comparison with their compatriots in the West should actually fill the former citizens of the GDR with envy and impatience. But the Spiegel survey offers evidence not for, but against this presumption. East Germany is not a valley of moaners and complainers.
The Leipzig Institute provided the clearest demonstration of this. Its interviewers asked people with friends or relatives in the West to compare their own standard of living with that of the Westerners. The vast majority described their own standard of living as lower.
When these respondents were asked in a follow-up question if “this difference burdened them,” the answers were definitive; seventy-three percent did not feel burdened by their lesser situation.
When asked whether they were satisfied with their residence, 79 percent of West Germans, but also 72 percent of East Germans, said yes. It is no secret that apartments in the West are generally larger and better furnished and that they are also kept in better condition by their private owners than apartments in the ex-GDR, which are maintained by local governments.
In order to understand the East Germans’ contentment with less, one has to recall how gray and hopeless both the present and the future seemed for the GDR population in the middle of last year, before the people took to the streets and the Wall came down. Two long-term repercussions of the dismalness of GDR life emerged clearly in the results of the poll.
First, to a great extent, East Germans feel inferior to their Western compatriots when it comes to the traits they need in their new lives.
Second, there is a strong, virtually explosive reaction to the fact that many SED bigwigs are in the process of establishing themselves as the men of the future.
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