Happy Unification Day

[Andy in Germany]

Happy German Unification Day: 22 32 years ago today the former "German Democratic Republic" became a part of the German Federal Republic.

For an idea of how much the border disrupted the country, and how much it has changed in the last 30 years, here's a very well presented sideshow of then and now.

 

[Smokin Joe]

Are any of the old East Germans nostalgic for the days before the wall came down?

 

[Cycleops]

I used to work for a German company based in Hamelin (pied piper of) The sales manager Gerhard, as well as being responsible for the UK also had some responsibilities in East Germany as it was then. He always said how he dreaded going there as most of the towns and villages were so run down.

 

[Andy in Germany]

Are any of the old East Germans nostalgic for the days before the wall came down?

Some, yes; it's called "Ostalgie" although I think most people who go for that don't remember the evil that was behind the system.

Equally the change wasn't always that well executed and there was a fair bit of disaster capitalism visited on companies that were totally unprepared to deal with it, while the safety net was drastically reduced.

Of course that safety new only lasted as long as you were very, very careful not to say something out of place, and there was always someone listening.

 

[Andy in Germany]

I used to work for a German company based in Hamelin (pied piper of) The sales manager Gerhard, as well as being responsible for the UK also had some responsibilities in East Germany as it was then. He always said how he dreaded going there as most of the towns and villages were so run down.

Was he selling pipes?

It was pretty awful in the DDR towards the end, and when I went there some time after the change there were still scars in the villages and especially on the border.

 

[All uphill]

The East/ West thing only became real to me when I was working at a drilling installation on the Luneberg Heide in the West. Well fed W Germans working safely then went home in shiny new cars.

About 1/2 km away beyond the barbed wire there was a steam-powered wooden drilling rig fuelled by coal, blowing out clouds of sulphurous smoke. The workers went to their accommodation block on foot.

I found it very persuasive.

 

[chriswoody]

Happy unification day as well Andy, I've had a nice relaxing bank holiday today, just steeling myself to go back to work tomorrow.

The old border is not too far to the east of me, my father in law actually grew up in a village only a kilometre or so from the border, he tells of every night hearing the dogs being fed on the eastern side of the fence.

Evidence of the old east/west border is receding, but it's still to be seen here and there. In the Harz mountains the old border ran right through the middle, when I rode there a couple of years ago my ride took me over the old Panzerplatten that the East germans used to patrol the border in vehicles.

 

[Baldy]

I spend some time on the Inner German Border back in the 80's.

this was taken whilst skiing, we shouldn't really have been this close. You can just make out the Goon tower in the mist.

 

[robjh]

Happy German Unification Day: 22 years ago today the former "German Democratic Republic" became a part of the German Federal Republic.

For an idea of how much the border disrupted the country, and how much it has changed in the last 20 years, here's a very well presented sideshow of then and now.

32 years Andy, not 22, but yes I remember it well. The collapse of the Soviet empire and the reconfiguration of our continent seemed such a historic, epoch-changing shift to me and I was surprised that my colleagues in the IT department barely registered that anything had happened.

 

[Smokin Joe]

Some, yes; it's called "Ostalgie" although I think most people who go for that don't remember the evil that was behind the system.

Equally the change wasn't always that well executed and there was a fair bit of disaster capitalism visited on companies that were totally unprepared to deal with it, while the safety net was drastically reduced.

Of course that safety new only lasted as long as you were very, very careful not to say something out of place, and there was always someone listening.

Pretty much the same in Russia, where a large percentage of the population would rather have gone back to a totalitarian communist state once the novelty of capitalism wore off. Many people simply couldn't cope with it, they had been brought up in a state where you didn't have to do any more than go through the motions in whatever job you had and you were still guaranteed to be looked after from cradle to grave, no worry about housing or having to qualify for welfare benefits, the state took care of everything. Even though the standard of living was little more than third world and freedom was severely restricted people had been conditioned to the system and struggled to get by when they suddenly had to take responsibility for themselves.

 

[Cycleops]

Was he selling pipes?

No. The name of the company was Vorwerk, who you might of heard of, they are well known in Germany for their carpet cleaning systems.
They also have a carpet manufacturing division which he and I worked for, mainly for commercial premises.

 

[presta]

I've never been to Berlin, or Germany for that matter, it's interesting to see how things have changed. In 1984 when most of those photos were taken I had a holiday in Corfu, where the closest point to the mainland is Albania, not Greece. Since Albania was still a communist state in those days, that's about as close as I've been to the iron curtain. It's only about a mile across the strait, and I recall being warned against hiring a boat to cross over, with lurid tales of tourists being shot on the beach.

 

[Chislenko]

Some years back Andy we went to watch Wales play Czech Republic (we lost again but that was normal) in a place called Teplice just over the border from Dresden. In the bar we met a lot of East Germans (after the wall had fallen) but despite Germany playing that night they stated that they couldn't support a united Germany so chose to come to support the Czechs.

The people we met that night were definitely not in favour of reunification.

Yes they may have been in a minority but I think they are still out there.

 

[Bollo]

Quite a few years ago I worked with an ex Army officer who was the senior officer in charge for the British sector when the wall started to come down. It took them completely by surprise. He told me that they didn’t know what was coming over the wall so started to activate the plans for dealing with a Soviet invasion.

He was a very large, very scary, very assured gentleman but you could tell by the way he told the story that the event had rattled him.

 

[DRM]

One thing that struck me on a caravan site in Potsdam, 2008 was that visitors from Western European Countries would at least say good morning, good evening and stop for a chat, the permanent sited caravans of the locals was where they would sit outside in family groups, but there was absolutely no interaction with their neighbours at all, which must stem from decades of not knowing who was a Stasi nark or not, so they still didn’t trust anyone else at all.