Germany still 'divided' 27 years after reunification
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Tuesday marks the 27th anniversary of German reunification. Despite rapid development in the former eastern region and the fact that a girl who grew up in East Germany – Angela Merkel – has been the chancellor of the unified country for twelve years, there are still clear divisions between Germany's East and West.
Nearly two-thirds of Germans see persistent divisions between people in the two parts of the country, a sort of "Berlin Wall in the head," a new poll for Bild newspaper showed on Monday. Conducted by pollster INSA, the survey showed 64.6 percent of those polled believed Germans saw such divisions, compared to 22.9 percent who felt they had been overcome.
The poll showed that 74 percent of Germans in the former East saw the "invisible barrier," compared to just 62.3 percent of those who lived in the former West Germany.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel (C, front) attends German Unity Day celebrations in Mainz, Germany, October 3, 2017. /Reuters Photo
German Chancellor Angela Merkel (C, front) attends German Unity Day celebrations in Mainz, Germany, October 3, 2017. /Reuters Photo
AfD rise in eastern Germany
The lingering divisions became evident in the German national election on September 24, in which voters dealt mainstream political parties their biggest defeats in the post-war era, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won 12.6 of the vote and moved into parliament for the first time.
Support for the AfD and its "take your country back" platform was particularly strong in eastern Germany, fueled by anger about Merkel's decision to open the doors to a million mostly Muslim migrants in 2015.
In states that used to be East Germany, the AfD won 20.5 percent of the vote, coming in second after Merkel's center-right Christian Democrats. The far-right party only got 10.7 percent in western Germany.
An election campaign poster of anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the local candidate of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Altenberg, eastern Germany, September 27, 2017. /Reuters Photo
An election campaign poster of anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the local candidate of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Altenberg, eastern Germany, September 27, 2017. /Reuters Photo
Malu Dreyer, the Social Democratic premier of the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, said the election results were a "wake-up call" for the big political parties about the continuing unmet concerns of East Germans.
"We under-estimated how much transformation pressure the East Germans had, and how much they had to accomplish to make reunification a reality," she told broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk on Monday.
"Reunification didn't impact the daily lives of most West Germans."
However, many West Germans are emotional and angry about the outcome, with some calling their eastern neighbors "the lousiest, most moronic people on earth" on social media, Handelsblatt Global reported.
"I just think it is sad," a Berliner said. "Sad that they feel so left out that they would vote for the AfD."
Anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) members get together for their first parliamentary meeting in Berlin, Germany, September 26, 2017. /Reuters Photo
Anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) members get together for their first parliamentary meeting in Berlin, Germany, September 26, 2017. /Reuters Photo
Eastern German youth still heading west
Iris Gleicke, the German government's commissioner for eastern German affairs, said unemployment was down and average income had increased sharply in the former East since reunification, but population decline remained a problem.
A Deutsche Welle report said young people in eastern Germany are still heading to the western region for better job opportunities. The unemployment rate in eastern Germany is currently 11.5 percent, nearly twice as high as in western Germany.
In 1990, around 88,000 people lived in Frankfurt (Oder) – located on the German-Polish border in eastern Germany, not the country's financial capital Frankfurt. Twenty-seven years after reunification, nearly 30,000 have moved away.
Tourists walk along East Side Gallery, the largest remaining part of the former Berlin Wall in Berlin, Germany, August 6, 2011. /Xinhua Photo
Tourists walk along East Side Gallery, the largest remaining part of the former Berlin Wall in Berlin, Germany, August 6, 2011. /Xinhua Photo
Gleicke said demographic changes had strengthened regional trends, with per capita gross domestic product in the former East falling behind that of the West by 27 percent, and industrial productivity lagging by 20 percent.
She called for more efforts to ensure essential services in the East and to guard against the rise of far-right extremism.
"Where the government is not present anymore, gaps are necessarily filled by those who are up to no good," she said.
People attend German Unity Day celebrations in Mainz, Germany, October 3, 2017. /Reuters Photo
People attend German Unity Day celebrations in Mainz, Germany, October 3, 2017. /Reuters Photo
In light of the prevailing gap between the East and West, regional balancing mechanisms such as subsidies therefore continued to be necessary as a contribution to German social cohesion. The goal of the Federal Government was to ultimately achieve "equal life [living] conditions" in all of Germany.
"Germany as a whole and the European Union have a responsibility to promote the East's developmental prospects and hasten the convergence process with the West," Reiner Haseloff, governor of the Eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, demanded more financial support to the former Communist parts of Germany.