Many politicians seem more concerned about a “radicalization” of the new Länder. In East Germany, warns Thuringia’s Minister President Dieter Althaus, “doubts about the effectiveness of democracy” have grown. Others report a “feeling of second-class citizenship” in the new Länder, one that is supposedly being reinforced by the reforms of the welfare system. How else should citizens assess a law whose implementation involves luring former postal workers from the West to Halle or Gera with the promise of hardship payments?
But there are also contrary voices: “One must tell the people in East Germany that freedom, democracy, and a market economy demand even more courage and individual responsibility in difficult times,” says Klaus von Dohnanyi, who heads the federal government’s Gesprächskreis Ost [Roundtable East].* “If one exaggerates the protests, at some point it will lead once again to where the GDR came from.”
Pollsters have long since categorized the upcoming Landtag elections in Brandenburg and Saxony on September 19 [2004] as a protest vote. The winners of the crisis are the parties on the right and left fringes. They can count on large electoral gains. The governing party in Berlin definitely seems like it’s out of the game. In Saxony, the most recent polls predict no more than ten to twelve percent for the SPD. In Brandenburg, the SPD is in danger of losing its majority for the first time since reunification. The PDS could for the first time become the strongest party in a federal state with 30 percent of the votes. The successor party to the SED is making the most skillful use of the discontent, for example, with the poster: “Hartz IV = Legislated Poverty”
The extreme right wing, like the DVU [Deutsche Volkspartei; German People’s Party] and the NPD [Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands; National Democratic Party of Germany], is also getting involved in the demonstrations. Hand-painted banners with clumsy rhymes call for the overthrow of the government. But even some functionaries are now losing all sense of proportion. For example, the head of the DGB [Deutscher Gerwerkschaftsbund; Confederation of German Trade Unions] in Thuringia, Frank Spieth, compared the Hartz reform to the labor service of the National Socialists: “Here, and I am really putting this bluntly, the Reich Labor Service is being introduced in a new guise,” he declared on the radio Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk.**
There is one thing the demonstrators in Gera, Cottbus, and Schwerin have already achieved. Market liberals, too, are pointing to the harshness of the reforms. For example, Bert Rürup, advisor to the government, speaks of the “toughest social reform ever.” Additional incentives for the unemployed to take new jobs are not helpful, he argues, if there are no jobs to be had. This problem exists above all in the East.
Because fourteen years after reunification, the new Länder still lag behind. Their economic output has been dwindling since 2001. The per capita income is far below the level in the West. Thuringia’s CDU Minister President Althaus muses that the collapse of entire branches of the economy after reunification and high unemployment have left many people simply “without hope.”
In fact, many lack not only hope for the future, but also a piece of the past, a piece of identity. For fourteen years, East Germans have barely played a role in the Federal Republic. The beginning of the new millennium saw only a brief retro-wave that started in movie theaters. Films like “Sonnenallee” and “Good Bye, Lenin!” elevated the liquidated GDR into a lifestyle. Step by step, nostalgia became Ostalgia [nostalgia for the East].
* See Document 11.
** The Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk [Central German Broadcasting] is a regional television and radio station that focuses in coverage on Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia – eds.
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