It was thirty years ago today that the Berlin Wall fell, starting the inplacable forces that toppled The Evil Empire.

To those who lived through those days, please remember and say a prayer for the thousands of people killed either trying to get to freedom or defending freedom.

JAllen, your generation stemmed the communist tide, and with the help of my generation eventually made the GDCs of the GDR GTFO.

quote:

US Department of State: The Berlin Wall Falls and USSR Dissolves

The Berlin Wall Falls and USSR Dissolves

Initially, Department of State officials and Bush’s foreign policy team were reluctant to speak publicly about German “reunification” due to fear that hard-liners in both the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Soviet Union would stymie reform. Although changes in the GDR leadership and encouraging speeches by Gorbachev about nonintervention in Eastern Europe boded well for reunification, the world was taken by surprise when, during the night of November 9, 1989, crowds of Germans began dismantling the Berlin Wall—a barrier that for almost 30 years had symbolized the Cold War division of Europe. By October 1990, Germany was reunified, triggering the swift collapse of the other East European regimes.

People celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Thirteen months later, on December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dissolved. President Bush and his chief foreign policy advisers were more pro-active toward Russia and the former Soviet republics after the collapse of the Communist monolith than while it was teetering. In a series of summits during the next year with the new Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Bush pledged $4.5-billion to support economic reform in Russia, as well as additional credit guarantees and technical assistance.

The two former Cold War adversaries lifted restrictions on the numbers and movement of diplomatic, consular, and official personnel. They also agreed to continue the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty negotiations (START), begun before the collapse of the Soviet Union, which set a goal of reducing their strategic nuclear arsenals from approximately 12,000 warheads to 3,000-3,500 warheads by 2003. In January 1993, three weeks before leaving office, Bush traveled to Moscow to sign the START II Treaty that codified those nuclear reductions.

I've seen the wall section on display at the Newseum in Roslyn, VA. Ugly thing.

Hats off for Jim Allen. May he always be remembered and honored on this board.

Yes, Jim is missed.

The outcome of the events of 11/9/1989 happened because the GDR GDC running the place lost their nerve in turning their guns on the general population. And the Eastern Zone occupiers also did not step in. Very different from June 17, 1953 when Germans in the eastern zone tried to rise up. The same in Hungry 1956 and Prague 1968.

Look at HK today. Thus far, the GDC Chicom regime has not 'yet' done a Tiananmen Square June 4 1989.

2 very different outcomes in the same year by freedom loving people arising against their swamps.

I lived in Berlin as a grad student in international relations in 1965-66; I went to East Berlin many times, talked a lot with people there, and during semester break traveled with a friend through Eastern Europe and East Germany where he had relatives (his own family had escaped in 1954). Having this opportunity to find out first-hand what life was like under Communism was life-changing.
In 1990 I took my two teenage sons and we went back to Berlin and again traveled through Eastern Europe while it was still opening up, so they could get that first-hand knowledge themselves.

What continues to anger me is how the leadership in East Germany knew exactly what was going on in the West, then got up each day and concocted lies to spread to their population, who didn’t believe them.
My wife told me she heard or read interviews with people who were still nostalgic for East Germany—-you know, free child care (needed because every woman had to work) and free health care (for which the doctors were slaves of the state).

It’s sad to see that much of East Germany is almost empty, and remains significantly poorer than the western part. I’ve read that the East Germans had lost their typically German ability to work hard and show initiative. 30 years later they seem to still suffer, more for example than Poland and the Czech Republic.

Communism is death for the soul.
God-damned commies, indeed.

American Legion Magazine has an interesting article about that period of History and how its impact is still being felt today.

https://www.legion.org/magazin...7410/not-end-history


(snip)...

CLASH Political scientist Francis Fukuyama concluded that the end of the Cold War marked “the end of history ... the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” In other words, the ideological struggle between centralized political-economic systems and liberal political-economic systems was over – and free government and free markets won.

The late historian Samuel Huntington was not so optimistic, arguing that the end of the Cold War would re-awaken “a clash of civilizations” and that “the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.” Without the stabilizing – indeed, smothering – weight of the two superpowers, Huntington warned that ethnic, religious and nationalist passions would return.

For a time, Fukuyama’s prediction seemed accurate. In 1988, there were 104 autocracies and 51 democracies in the world. By 2009, there were 100 democracies and 78 autocracies. But 30 years after the fall of the Wall, Fukuyama concedes, “At the moment, it looks like Huntington is winning” the argument.

“Acceptance of democracy as the world’s dominant form of government – and of an international system built on democratic ideals – is under greater threat than at any point in the last 25 years,” Freedom House concludes, reporting 13 consecutive years of global decline in political rights and civil liberties.

Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Philippines show signs of backsliding away from liberal democracy. Venezuela, Turkey and Russia have drifted from democracy to autocracy. And although Germany remains a liberal democracy, it seems to have forgotten the lessons of Berlin – namely, that freedom must be defended.

As Huntington warned, ethno-religious and ethno-national conflicts have marred the decades since the Wall’s collapse: Serbia’s ethnic-cleansing of Bosnia; the Hutu genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda; tribalism in Somalia, Sudan and Syria; the rise and reach of al-Qaida and ISIS; the metastasizing Shia-Sunni conflict; the near-eradication of Yazidis and Christians in Iraq; Russia’s assault on Ukraine, perpetrated in the name of Novorossiya, “new Russia.” Unlike the Cold War – an ideological-political struggle – these conflicts are about race and religion, tribe and territory.

Historian Niall Ferguson observes that Nov. 9, 1989 – the day the Wall fell and the Cold War ended – represents “the real historic turning point” for Germans and most Europeans. The reason: The ninth day of November – written as “9/11” in Europe – is when most Germans and most Europeans concluded that conflict and sacrifice were relics of the past.

Nov. 9, 1989, was significant for Americans, too. After all, they waged the Cold War at great peril and price. Winning it – tearing down the Wall – was a towering achievement. But with greater responsibilities, America could not celebrate the end of conflict or the end of history. That became clear on another “9/11” – and grows more obvious as China and Russia usher in Cold War 2.0.

A heartfelt salute to JAllen and to all our fellow Veterans this weekend. I have one of the first pieces of the broken Wall on my desk, where I always intended it should be, a gift from the BND. May we never forget, and may we never need to dismantle another.

quote:

Originally posted by Sig2340:

quote:

US Department of State: The Berlin Wall Falls and USSR Dissolves

The Berlin Wall Falls and USSR Dissolves

Initially, Department of State officials and Bush’s foreign policy team were reluctant to speak publicly about German “reunification” due to fear that hard-liners in both the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Soviet Union would stymie reform. Although changes in the GDR leadership and encouraging speeches by Gorbachev about nonintervention in Eastern Europe boded well for reunification, the world was taken by surprise when, during the night of November 9, 1989, crowds of Germans began dismantling the Berlin Wall—a barrier that for almost 30 years had symbolized the Cold War division of Europe. By October 1990, Germany was reunified, triggering the swift collapse of the other East European regimes.

[...]

GHWB was instrumental for bringing German re-unification about. The British and French were more than a little reluctant to give the necessary agreement of the four main allied powers of WW II, due to traditional fears of a united Germany dominating Europe. The (then still) Soviets were going for their old idea of a united, but neutral Germany out of NATO, which would have been directly contrary to British and French security needs, not to speak of everyone else in Europe including Germany itself.

The US put its full weight behind the German government's approach, though that also caused some lingering issues. To this day, the Russians claim the subsequent expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe broke the promise of US secretary of state James Baker and his German colleague Hans-Dietrich Genscher that the alliance wouldn't expand "one inch to the East". Of course that was specifically referring to Germany, and indeed the eventual Two-plus-Four Agreement stipulates that no foreign NATO troops, nuclear systems or joint installations shall be based in East Germany. At that point, the Warsaw Pact still did exist after all, so the promise couldn't mean Poland etc.

Bush doesn't get enough popular recognition here IMO because others caught the spotlight of iconic images. Mostly of course Mikhail Gorbachev, who launched the reforms in the USSR without which it all wouldn't have happened, and cut the Soviet satellites lose. His enthusiastic welcome by cheering crowds when he visited East Germany for the 40th anniversary which turned out to be its last was an embarrassment for the orthodox GDR leadership which rejected his approach.

Then there was foreign minister Genscher being drowned out by screams of elation as he announced to the East German tourists who had taken refuge in the West German embassy in Prague that their leaving to the West had been secured. And chancellor Helmut Kohl visiting Gorbachev at his dacha in the Caucasus, where both essentially hammered out Soviet agreement to re-unification on a walk wearing knitters. But politicians have always been aware that it depended very much on US backing; so much so that current foreign minister Heiko Maas recently caught flak in parliament for mentioning only "our Western friends" in an article on the anniversary, but not the Americans specifically.

Maas fell all over himself to make up for that when he accompanied his American colleague Mike Pompeo during the latter's visit last week. Pompeo of course served as a US soldier in former West Berlin himself, so has a personal perspective on how things were back then. He also inaugurated a statue of Ronald Reagan, another US president who gets too little recognition for his contribution to the fall of the Wall locally, despite his famous 1987 "tear down this wall" speech at the Brandenburg Gate. He stood firm on countering the Soviets, but also had the courage to trust and engage with Gorbachev on nuclear disarmament etc., furthering the latter's reform approach.

The US has long wanted to put a statue of him in the spot where he held his speech, but the City of Berlin, today governed by a coalition of old Western leftists and the Left Party which is actually successor of the former East German state party, has been niggling around, pointing to a plaque already in place. Finally they put the statue on the balcony of the US embassy right next to the Brandenburg Gate (though actually on the eastern side).



Of course I've long advocated for a whole ensemble of statues around the Gate to commemorate events. As you look to the left of Reagan holding his speech in the center, towards the Reichstag and today's chancellor's office there would be Helmut Kohl watching events with his usual Buddha's look, George H. W. Bush standing squarely behind him. Next to them is Hans-Dietrich Genscher, lifting a foot like he's about to board another plane for a diplomatic mission. Off to the right of Reagan there is Margaret Thatcher furiously kicking her shoes off, and French president Francois Mitterand with a Gallic look of disdain on his face.

On the eastern side of the Gate, Mikhail Gorbachev tells East German leader Erich Honecker "dangers await only those not reacting to life". Honecker however has planted his fingers firmly in his ears, while his successor Egon Krenz prepares to slip a dagger into his back. And there's Günter Schabowski, the guy who triggered the run on the Wall by giving the confused reply "as far as I know that's effective immediately" when asked about it at the press conference where the change in procedures at the border was announced, looking at his reading card with a puzzled face like he thinks "did I do that?"

30 years on, Germany has grown together, but divisions between East and West remain. The East essentially went directly from national socialist to communist dictatorship after WW II and missed out on 40 years of modernization through the influence of Western liberal democratic values - again mostly from the US - but also plain technology advances driven by capitalism. For better or worse, upon re-unification it was stuck essentially in ca. 1930 by population, productivity and societal values. People largely wanted the freedom they had caught only glimpses of through restricted availability of Western media and mutual visits of course, but weren't quite prepared for the degree of responsibility and tolerance that required.

The cost of re-unification was then estimated at one trillion D-Mark, about half that in Euros today. The mostly government-owned East German industry was taken over by a public trust to privatize it, but much of it was so incompetitive that it could just be closed down. Unemployment, officially non-existent in the GDR, soared, and people resented their lifetime achievements, however meagre in comparison with the West, being thrown on the trash heap of history and talked down. There were accusations of Western companies picking up the fillet pieces for little money and carving them out, sometimes even justified.

The first president of the public trust, Detlev Rohwedder, was among the last victims killed by the left-wing Red Army Faction terror group in 1991. Even today there is lingering resentment between "Better-Wessis" accused of taking over the former GDR with no respect for the East German identity, and unthankful "nagging Ossis" who have a rose-tinted view of the socialist past. At times both sides have sarcastically wished for the Wall to be rebuilt. While most of the younger generation have grown beyond the divide, recent developments have shown that grudges are passed along in some families.

For a long time, the reformed Socialist Unity Party (under the successive names of Party of Democratic Socialism and The Left) remained successful in East German state elections and even leads the government in Thuringia today. By now the right-wing AfD has successfully highjacked the narrative of the East German second-class citizen; in three recent state elections there they scored about a quarter of the votes each on a platform combining nationalism and xenophobia with demands for a return of socialist anemities, a rather notorious mix in German history. That hasn't improved the opinion of Westerners, which tend to view East Germans as having essentially gone "from Stasi to Nazi".

Berlin is a bit of a microcosm of all that. Only in my new job, which includes selling ads in the official district brochures we publish for the twelve Berlin district administrations, I have realized how much the division is still present in the minds of old Berliners. There was a guy from a business in Mitte - literally the center of the city, the traffic, business, political and cultural hub - who said he definitely needed to advertize in Steglitz-Zehlendorf, a posh district in the former American sector, because to middle-aged and older folks there, he was still in the "East" where they won't usually go for purchases. Geographically, Mitte actually extends West of the center line, but it was part of East Berlin, and the long-gone Wall still seems to be a barrier in people's minds.

You can even still see the division from the most prevalent non-German nationalities by sub-district. Most evident is of course that Turkish pluralities (red) are confined to the former western part, and concentrated in areas near the former Wall which were cheap during the "guest worker" period of the 60s/70s, while Vietnamese (brown) are clustered in the former east. They were predominant among "contract workers" from socialist brother countries in the GDR, much more so than the Boat People West Germany took in after the Vietnam War.

But the former allied powers are also conspicious: Russians (light green) in the east, though also in the western borough of Charlottenburg (AKA Charlottograd) where refugees from the 1917 Revolution formed a parallel society as early as the 1920s; Americans (light blue) in the former US sector in the southwest, but also in the embassy district Unter den Linden (where they are followed by French and Italians) and north from that around Oranienburger Straße (where I suspect it's mostly American Jews in the area around the Grand Synagogue). The orange blotch is Brits around the Olympic Stadium, where the British HQ was located. Poles (grey-blue) are everywhere, of course.



Interactive version with all nationalities stated.

We had family members in the east Zone. Family residing in the west sent a lot of "CARE" packages to them. AIR, some of the package contents originated in the US Army PX and commissary, too.

We spent several days touring the east zone after the wall came down, visiting family, and just doing tourist stuff. We still own a couple of small plots of farm land there as well. Only good as farm land as they are actually too small to build anything on, even if we could get permission. None of us are interested in doing so.

We got to see what life under communism is like when we made those trips into the East Zone. Houses and other buildings run down, roads in need of drastic repair/rebuilding, etc.

Banshee, thanks for the local perspective. You mentioned Zehlendorf; that’s where I lived in the Studentendorf of the Free University as a grad student for one year. Took Bus 31 along Potsdamer Chausee IIRC.
Students at the FU were always especially Leftist as living in Berlin gave them exemption from military service back then. Rudi Dutschke took over the Mensa at the FU a year or so after I left; one of his cohorts was a Chilean Communist named Gaston whom I knew from political science classes.

Thanks for pointing out how the East-West resentment persists.

I never knew until recently that it happened the way it did completely by mistake.

Yeah, the plan was that GDR citizens would henceforth get exit visa at short notice from the appropriate authorities without having to state any particular reason, to be announced on the next day, 10 November. However, secretary for information Günter Schabowski was late for the session of the Central Committee where this was decided, and only got handed the draft with words to the effect of "here's some sensation for you to announce", without reference to a date.

Information about new regulations had already leaked to the media though, and when asked in the press conference, Schabowski promptly pulled out the draft and read it aloud. When asked when this would become effective, he turned the papers in confusion but didn't see the embargo notice, so just said "this becomes, to my knowledge ... is this immediately, without delay."

Western media reported this as "border opening", "Berlin Wall falls", etc., and people started streaming to the checkpoints. Guards were faced with growing crowds demanding to be let through, desperately asked for instructions from higher on, but didn't get any. It could have gone either way, but after initially passing a limited number to ease the pressure, stamping some ID cards invalid so that "provocateurs" would not be let back in, the commander at the checkpoint on Bornholmer Straße just opened the gates at 2330 hrs with the words "we're flooding now'. There's a recent TV movie named "Bornholmer Straße" with a humorous look at events there that night.

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
Banshee, thanks for the local perspective. You mentioned Zehlendorf; that’s where I lived in the Studentendorf of the Free University as a grad student for one year. Took Bus 31 along Potsdamer Chausee IIRC.
Students at the FU were always especially Leftist as living in Berlin gave them exemption from military service back then. Rudi Dutschke took over the Mensa at the FU a year or so after I left; one of his cohorts was a Chilean Communist named Gaston whom I knew from political science classes.

Yeah, the city's four-power status meant that residents were exempt from the West German draft, which attracted lots of folks trying to dodge it, particularly of a leftist persuasion. Events like Iranian security beating up protesters during the Shah's visit in 1967 while West Berlin police looked on, and a student being shot dead on the fringes by a police officer who only recently turned out to have been a Stasi informer (though there is no evidence that the shooting was a deliberate provocation) radicalized the local scene to the point it gave birth to the left-wing terrorism of the following decades.

More evident was the movement to occupy empty housing for "autonomous" living projects, which resulted in some pitched battles with police when eviction was attempted. Most of the remaining tenancies have since been regularized, but somewhat of a flashpoint remains on Rigaer Straße in Friedrichshain. May Day demonstrations also used to be notoriously violent in Berlin, but the city has actually gotten quite a good handle on that by "soft" means in recent years.

Gentrification is pushing out the traditional "alternative, colorful" environment from the famous inner-city districts like Kreuzberg anyway, now that they're no longer dead-ended by the Wall. In fact I live in a house built in the 90s on the clearing where it used to run between Kreuzberg and Mitte. Two subway stations from mine on the Western side is Kottbusser Tor, a notorious crime hotspot where the most-spoken languages on the street after German used to be Turkish and Arabic. Now they're competing with English, and go one block to the south and you're in what I call the hipster belt, with latte-sipping mommies, vegan pizzerias and Australian pubs serving craft beer.

Zehlendorf is largely unaffected by those post-unification changes of course. It has always been part of the upscale Berlin Southwest since the big incoporation of surrounding municipalities in 1920, and retains an American tinge from the Cold War era with US military housing and the former HQ on Clayallee, today an annex of the US embassy. The Alied Museum is just across from the latter, though planned to move to former Tempelhof Airport at some point.

Overall the Western powers hit it well with their sectors, since the Western part of the city was always better off socio-economically. Even before WW II East Berlin was poorer, with more crime, where West Berliners went only if in an adventurous mood, to enjoy the more illicit sides of night life, etc. The area were I work now in Friedrichshain was, in modern parlance, a "no-go zone" in the 20s for example, where police dared to patrol only in squad strength.

I was stationed in Germany from December 1991 till October 1995 and got a chance to drive into the former East Germany in 1993 with some German friends and while the border was gone by that point, you could still tell there were two very separate countries there just 3-4 years prior.

Driving from the West into the former East Germany (We went to Nordhausen) was like going from a prosperous, neat, clean and nice section of a town or city into a much poorer-feeling, shabby, run-down bad section of a town or city.

I got to cook in a German restaurant as part of an Army cook's exchange/apprenticeship program and worked with a East German cook named Sabine who was a few years older than me. She seemed genuinely surprised to find I was a normal, nice guy and not this nasty monster they had been taught from an early age about Americans. She spoke not a lick of English as they were forbidden to be taught it and only knew Russian as a second language in school.

At the time I was there it really seemed like many Western Germans looked down at the Eastern Germans as "lazy" and "unmotivated" but I think this was more a cultural mindset from being beaten down in a totalitarian Communist system for 50+ years and living in a world where you were told what, when, how and where to do everything and at any time some friend or neighbor could turn on you and you find yourself being taken away by the Stasi.

I would hope that has dissipated in the years since I was there?

Dissipated, but not gone. Of course it's never about the people you know, and over the last 30 years personal relationships and professional mobility have overcome divisions. Apropos of Nordhausen, that's not far from where I grew up just on the Western side of the former border; I pass it on the autobahn whenever I go home from Berlin by car. My brother #3 married a girl from just as close to the border on the other side, and my brother #5 once had a girlfriend from the same general area. Who happened to be the daughter of a Filippina which came here as the wife of her stepfather at some point after reunification. In my new job, I'm working mostly with former East Berliners/Germans. We get along just fine despite our different biographies.

At the same time I'm still succeptible to generalizations about The East Germans myself. Its no longer about work ethics, but about different takes on reunification, mutual self-depiction of victims to its effects, and the resulting outlook on society and the world in general. I see a tendency in some East Germans I've also noticed in others from former communist-ruled countries; the idea that since they grew up under a dictatorship, they're wise to the ways such regimes rule, use propaganda etc., like Westerners aren't - and as a result they denounce any government measure which was enacted in a constitutional democratic way, but they don't agree with, as dictatorial; any news report they don't like is propaganda.

Ironically, in doing so they cling to an idea promoted by dictatorial regimes and exploited by contemporary populist movements throughout the West - that there is a more-or-less monolithic Will of the People represented by a particular political party, but it is under attack by Enemies of the People foreign and domestic, by institutions not beholden to popular opinion like independent courts, etc. Politically, both parts of Germany are actually drifting further apart.

It's not so obvious if you look at a map with current projections of which party would win in the individual electoral districts across the country (note that this doesn't indicate majorities in parliament, where seats are distributed according to national popular vote results); the most conspicious things are the strongholds of the right-wing AfD in the Southeast (purple), and the post-communist Left Party still clinging to East Berlin (pink).

But look at the second map depicting the respective runners-up, and you find that the AfD has taken over the place of the Left Party in the East. While the West is turning green, the Greens being the ultimate political product of West German liberal democracy; an outgrowth of the environmentalist, pacifist, feminist etc. movements of the 70s and 80s. Though not much remains of their la-la-land pacifism, and I like to say they're the most conservative German party of all - in love with nature and regulations, as we've been as a people since the age of nationalism.

quote:

Originally posted by Jim Shugart:
Hats off for Jim Allen. May he always be remembered and honored on this board.

Exactly. I have adopted ‘GDC’ as part of my spoken and written vocabulary in his honor. Even the Jr DFs use it.

No question that Jim was a class act who will never be forgotten around here.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
I was stationed in Germany from December 1991 till October 1995...

Wow! That is really fascinating. That's really cool with the exchange program like that.

I can't imagine how tough it was for the German people to adjust to each other with such few having something in common.

BansheeOne,

Do you see a different attitude among generations regarding their take on reunification? For the younger folks who weren't alive when there was a east and west, are they taught it in school?

I remember reading about how hard it was on the west German economy for reunification. That makes me believe that some south Koreans don't want reunification because as beat down as the west Germans were, I imagine the north Koreans are beat down even worse.

Cheers to the Cold Warriors.

quote:

Originally posted by Edmond:
BansheeOne,

Do you see a different attitude among generations regarding their take on reunification? For the younger folks who weren't alive when there was a east and west, are they taught it in school?

I remember reading about how hard it was on the west German economy for reunification. That makes me believe that some south Koreans don't want reunification because as beat down as the west Germans were, I imagine the north Koreans are beat down even worse.

I sometimes have to remind myself that there is now an entire generation born after the Wall fell, for which the division of Germany is mere history. Which is taught in school, but as part of the overall complaints about the decline of education quality many hold that it's not enough. History is of course a subject that tends to be among those to be neglected in favor of others "more useful for life" when there are too few teachers, too much bureaucracy, too much choice to quit classes you struggle with or are not interested in, etc. A recent survey caused a stir when it showed that younger Germans were surprisingly ignorant even about details of the Nazi era, which for obvious reason is emphasized in German history classes. East German history can hardly fare better then.

Of course you might say that if you don't know about German division, you have no reason to feel offended about how things went either. As noted, in some families grudges appear to be passed on to the younger generation though. It's not like there are no other regional stereotypes and prejudices in Germany - Bavarians are commonly considered lederhosen-wearing conservative hicks believing in Jesus, law and order by Northerners, Swabians penny-pinching household regulation Nazis, and there is an entire category of jokes about the alleged thickness of East Frisians. But while Bavaria actually has its own conservative party which has ruled the state forever, and tends to act like the rest of the nation must serve their own interests first, no other region has experienced a recent complete rewrite of their system.

In a way, East Germany is an early and condensed example for the feeling of a loss of identity in the modern, globalized world which makes many wish for some "good old times" even in the West. A common complaint of the GDR generation was that "you left us nothing but the green arrow [a sign indicating you can turn right on a red light when there's no traffic, a GDR regulation taken over nation-wide after reunification] and the sandman [evening TV show for kids, which was always more popular in all of Germany than the Western competition]". They felt it was less a reunification rather than an annexation by the West, with everything good about East Germany thrown out with the bad - supposedly better childcare, education, various socialist anemities, etc.

At its root, reunification happened based upon Article 23 of the West German constitution, which stated that it was valid in the states which originally ratified it in 1949, but other parts of Germany could accede. This happened with the (previously French-occupied) Saarland in 1957, and with the five East German states after they were re-established in 1990 (the GDR government had replaced them with 14 centrally-administered districts between 1952 and 1958). So with the stroke of a pen, West German (federal) law applied to the East. The alternative would have been via Article 146, which states that the (West) German constitution will lose effect on the day it is replaced by another, agreed upon by free decision of the entire German people.

In 1949, the West German constitution was widely thought provisional, pending reunification; it's not even called by that name, but referred to as the "Basic Law". Of course provisional arrangements often turn out to last the longest, and drafting an all-new constitution after reunification would have taken a lot more time and effort in a critical period; and it would probably have been largely decided by the much bigger, and economically vastly more powerful, West anyway. But after the quick solution came the previously-mentioned economic repercussions, and the large-scale erasing of East German industry, which people had taken at least some pride in for being at the top of the socialist camp, if nothing else. Even if they hadn't believed the government propaganda of being world-class, the fall was sudden and deep.

There are those fringe groups who claim that re-unification had to be based upon Article 146, doing it via Article 23 was invalid, and even that the constitution has thus lost its effect. The latter is a popular opinion among the local brand of sovereign citizen types and Reichsbürger who hold that the old German Reich never ceased to exist, the Basic Law isn't a real constitution anyway and the government is illegitimate, just a private business entity acting as a front for the allied powers of WW II, Germany is still an occupied country, etc. That scene is not restricted to the East BTW and existed before reunification, though it seems to have taken a definite upswing since then.

There are other factors; the GDR generation sometimes reacts defensively to the Western look at the dictatorship they lived under, feeling like they are broad-brushed as at best unresisting subjects and possibly enablers of the system, everyone of them under suspicion of having been a Stasi informer. The semantic issue whether the GDR can be called a "state of injustice" (as opposed to the German term of Rechtsstaat, i. e. a state under the rule of law) like the Third Reich has become rather political, last in the recent Thuringia state elections when minister president Bodo Ramelow of the Left Party (actually a Westerner) refused to do so. The overall buzzword for all this is "(dis-)respecting East German biographies".

Again - this doesn't rule everyday life except for some fringenuts, and the younger generation is by and large growing out of it. Still, apparently the Saxonian accent stereotypically identified with East Germany (though actually only spoken in the southern part of it) is widely considered "unsexy", for example; people try to avoid speaking it when dating outsiders, and the latter allegedly don't want to be seen with a partner sounding like that. Can't confirm that myself though.