After the Fall of the Wall, is Berlin United?
BY KATHERINE SURKO
This November marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Today, decades later, is Berlin actually united?
At first glance, it is hard to tell the distinctions between East and West Berlin. However, while the German government has spent vast sums reintegrating the two regions, distinct markers continue to separate East and West today. East Berlin has a larger amount of prewar buildings and streets, and the structures that were destroyed during the war were rebuilt using a distinctive Stalinist architecture. If the architecture is not enough of a hint, then the names of streets and other public spaces should be a huge indicator of past Soviet influence. In East Berlin, there is Karl-Marx-Straße (a metro stop), and squares like Rosa Luxemburg Platz, in addition to the occasional plaque of Lenin adorning the sides of buildings. There are GDR-era murals still scattered around, depicting smiling advocates of socialism. The pedestrian traffic lights common in East Berlin, the “Ampelmännchen,” (a little hatted man either walking or with arms outstretched) is also distinctive of the Soviet era, and is actually making a comeback throughout all of Berlin.
Some of the aesthetic differences between the two regions can be explained simply by the differing poverty levels. In East Germany, the unemployment rate is almost 10 percent, compared to six percent in the West. While these statistics appear drastic because of the inclusion of particularly poor states like Bavaria in East Germany, they still represent the continued differences between the economies of the two regions. The economic stratification stems from East Germany being unprepared for the sudden switch to capitalism when the wall was torn down. Their new businesses floundered and failed in comparison to the already established western economy, and have never entirely caught up.
Along with differences in the economy, voting polls show a dramatic difference in party support in the different regions. According to BBC, East Berlin votes more left wing, supporting parties like Die Linke, which is descended from the old communist party. In the West, however, people tend to vote for either the Social Democrats or the Christian Democrats, both of which are derived from parties that originated in West Berlin.
Looking at the migration statistics of the two regions, this voting behavior makes sense. According to a study done by the daily Bild, a German newspaper, one West German in five has never been to the East, and one in ten of Eastern Germans has never been to the West. The massive migration to the West that occurred right after the fall has finally evened out, with almost the same number of people leaving East Berlin as those entering. Many of those who lived in the East during the communist rule have chosen to stay there, exacerbating the subtle differences between the regions in the next generation.
Nowadays, according to The Guardian, three-quarters of the population think there are different mentalities between the east and the west, and one third of people from the West would not consider marrying someone from the East.
The statistics surrounding the poverty levels and negative stereotypes of East Berlin makes the new wave of “Ostalgie,” or nostalgia as it relates to the old communist times, surprising. Such Ostalgie is beginning to change some of the aesthetics of Berlin, such as with the increasing number of Ampelmännchen throughout the city. During Berlin’s anniversary weekend, many hotels capitalized on this Ostalgie sentiment. The Kempinski Hotel, for example, had a special package that allowed guests to drive a Trabant, the two-stroke car popular back in East Berlin. Other hotels offered traditional East German food, like Solyanka, a soup that originated in the Soviet Union.
The communist regime is far enough in the past that people are able to romanticize the times of the wall. It is by no means representative of a desire to return to the communist past, but is still indicative of the persistent divide in mentalities between East and West Berlin, and the distance between the generations actually struggling through the times of the wall and the new millennials.
Despite the differences between East and West, there are still moments when the old divide disappears to make room for something more important. When Germany won the World Cup, there was complete chaos on the streets. Everyone was celebrating together, regardless of one’s origins; everyone was simply German. People proudly brandished German flags, a show of nationalistic spirit rarely seen in Germany since World War II. People were partying in old warehouses and alleys scattered along where the wall once stood; for a moment, there was no way to discern the still omnipresent divisions between East and West Berlin.