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Differences between East and West (November 12, 1990)

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Only 34 percent of respondents consider the ex-GDR citizens “self-assured,” but 91 percent associate this trait with the West Germans.

The Honeckers, Mielkes, and comrades have destroyed the belief in one’s own strength. When East Germans were asked about the past, it is apparent that they lay great blame on the system and its functionaries for their weaknesses and the difficulties they are now experiencing.

The bigwigs’ slogan – that their Workers’ and Farmers’ State everyone could provide work for everyone “according to his abilities” – was viewed by most as pure cynicism. When asked about the decisive criteria for “professional success” in the former GDR, the East Germans most often answered “political activity” and “connections,” whereas they felt that success in the Federal Republic depended more on “performance” and “education.” Only 22 percent of the GDR’s former subjects believe that things in the SED and Stasi state “were just on the whole,” even though interviewees were asked to disregard “the relations and wrongdoings of the SED leadership for the moment.”

The term “communism” was disliked by the vast majority, and they decried “socialism” along with it. “Comrade” met with even more aversion than “planned economy.” In the workers’ movement, this form of address was never limited to communists and it is still used today in the SPD (West), but it has become an insult in East Germany.

Mixed in with the anger over the past, there is also lots of outrage at the attempts of many old die-hards to save their positions and sinecures.

When Emnid presented a list of seven occupational fields that were more connected with the SED system than others, a large majority felt that “as few as possible should retain their positions.”

The aversion to “heads of larger companies” and to persons “in charge of trade and supplies” was even greater than the antipathy toward judges and officers of the People’s Army and the People’s Police – presumably because the respondents had direct experience with, and had suffered from, the improper actions of many loyal functionaries in the companies and the stores, and thus mistrust them all the more.

There was no trust in the turncoats who “used to hold important offices and now declare their support for democratic renewal.” When asked how many of these people “might be sincere,” only 1 percent of respondents said “almost all of them;” 11 percent said “many;” 43 percent said “some,” and 36 percent said “hardly any.”

Whenever the questions of the Bielefeld and Leipzig institutes sounded like the discussion about the past could be brought to a close, a majority objected.

Seventy-three percent of the East Germans were opposed to “closing the chapter on these forty years now that the GDR no longer exists.” They demand that it must first be determined “who carried some blame.”

Even 80 percent were opposed to the destruction of the Stasi files.

Two thirds of ex-GDR citizens assume that they themselves were spied on and that their names appear in the files; 27 percent were “certain,” 39 percent thought it was “likely.”



Source: “Den Neuen fehlt Selbstvertrauen” [“The Newcomers Lack Self-Confidence”], Der Spiegel, November 12, 1990, pp. 115-28.

Translation: Allison Brown

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