30 years after the wall came down, Germany is dividing again

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East Germans were thrown from communism to capitalism overnight; decades later, the far-right is tearing at the fabric of a unified Germany

Many in the east of Berlin feel their government is too quick to help out foreigners or the rich while they are being left behindPeople stand in front of a projection on the East Side Gallery, the largest remaining part of the former Berlin Wall during a week of events celebrating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 7 2019 in Berlin, Germany.

“In the West, there’s too little understanding for what the transformation meant for the lives of people in the East,” she says, walking past the socialist tower block in Jena where she grew up in the precarious years after reunification. Unemployment has gradually converged with the West — in October, it was 6.1% compared to 4.6%. But wages are still about 20% lower than they are in the West and the post-reunification exodus has left behind a rapidly ageing society that’s suspicious of being caught on the wrong side of history all over again.

In last months’s state election in Thuringia, the far-right Alternative for Germany , won 23%, doubling its share of the vote to leave the legislature gridlocked. Lehman’s Social Democrat Party trailed in fourth place with just 8%. For the past 15 years, easterners have had Angela Merkel, the communist-trained physicist who became chancellor of all Germany, as a symbol that their views are represented at the highest level. But that chapter is drawing to a close.

“We were just as hard-working as people in the West, and we also had smart people,” says her mother, Angelika Spirk, who eventually landed a stable job managing operating-room supplies in a hospital. “I’m happy with how things turned out, but I don’t want anyone to cut off my past.”

 

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Anything can happen, should we worry ourselves about such, in the face of social ills and miseries in our society?

The grandkids of Nazi wanna resurrect Adolf Hitler. Saw this coming a long time ago!

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