Sociologists speak of a generation in connection with a formative phase – the year 1968 was, without a doubt, such a phase. The years 1989/90 – the fall of the Wall, the democratization of the GDR, and then reunification – gave an entire people the opportunity (and compelled them) to make new arrangements. In a single stroke the GDR was gone, and with it the SED Central Committee, the polytechnic secondary schools and services Kombinate, the waiting in line for a couple of green oranges from Cuba. From one day to the next there were twenty kinds of laundry soap instead of two, private television and complicated ticket machines on city busses, kiwis and avocados. And of course one shouldn’t forget free elections and – the employment office. With enormous flexibility, East Germans made the best of the situation. Many were undone by the upheavals. But the young East Germans, who were in their last years of school in 1989, were given an opportunity to take their lives into their own hands – immediately beforehand, the GDR, with its centralized allocation of university places and jobs, would have programmed their biographies irreversibly.
Many of today’s fifty- to sixty-year-olds have lost social status. They often associate the loss of the GDR with personal defeat. And they feel this even though hardly anyone is worse off, at least in material terms. Many people around age 40 have created new livelihoods for themselves. They have opened stores, moved from the prefabricated housing blocks to green pastures. In the end, most of them succeeded in some way or another. But they have wrestled with their fate. The GDR is in their bones and thus often in their thinking and their mindset as well. Those who are around 25, however, had the best starting conditions: their life in the GDR was long enough for them to have gotten to know the state, but short enough for them to find their way quickly in the new system.
The most recent Shell Youth Study shows that the young generation in East Germany is more optimistic about the future than the young generation in the West. The “new youth in the East” is more mobile and readier to accomplish something, they learn more quickly and finish their university studies faster. The women stand out in particular: they are more driven and success-oriented. And they are determined to juggle work and family. According to the Shell study, 63 percent of young women in the East would move within Germany for a job (women in the West: 45 percent). Young people in the East are readier to make the leap to independence (53 percent; West: 46 percent).
At the same time, young East Germans are skeptical toward their country and the new society. Their trust in the state and parties, in associations and organizations is markedly lower than that of their Western counterparts. Interest in politics has declined rapidly over the last few years. No wonder: when the GDR collapsed, they felt the powerlessness of politics. Why, then, waste time and attention on it? In this sense, the 89ers are more modern than some would like: more modern because they are adjusting to the New Economy and no longer count on Father State.
Still, it is not ultra-liberalism that has broken out in East Germany, for at the same time one finds a strong appreciation for all things social. East Germans – especially also the young – rely more strongly on friends and family. And in case of need, higher demands are also made of the government. Evidently, (economically) liberal and social attitudes come together here – that would make the young East Germans precisely the sort of people that economists and politicians are always looking for: ready to work hard, independent, mobile, and with a social conscience.
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