Berlin remains "poor but sexy", 33 years after reunification
THAT. The federal states that were once part of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) are depopulated, impoverished and aging.
BECAUSE. Although the East and West of the country have been united longer than Berlin was divided by the Wall, almost half of East Germans feel like “second-class citizens” due to the economic and social inequalities with respect to West Germany. .
German reunification is now 33 years old. East and West have been united longer than Berlin was divided by the Wall, but every year around this time and on the occasion of National Day, October 3, reports on the state of the union are published. The results are almost always the same: there is still much to do.
The annual report of the Federal Government Commissioner for East Germany, Carsten Schneider (SPD), states that the structural differences between East and West Germany have been reduced or disappeared, but the truth is that in East Germany 40% of the population explicitly identify as “East Germans” and only 52% as “Germans”. In West Germany, on the other hand, 76% consider themselves “German” and only 18% “West German”. Almost half of East Germans feel like “second-class citizens.”
The same is because an average household in West Germany has a net worth of 127,900 euros and in East Germany only 43,400 euros, according to data from the Bundesbank.. Or because the average old-age pension paid after 40 or more years of insurance in the eastern states of Germany at the end of 2022 was 1,329 euros per month and in the western states it was 1,499 euros. Or because some four million East Germans were forced in the last ten years to emigrate to the former federal territory, to seek better opportunities, while 2.8 million moved in the opposite direction.. Or because the proportion of people over 65 years of age is 22% in the cities of eastern Germany and 27% in rural regions, while the proportion of people of working age is 62% in cities in the west and the 57% in rural areas.
Yes, the federal states that were once part of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) are depopulated, impoverished and aging. They have Berlin left, but the governments that have shared power all these years have been so inefficient that they even boast that the capital is “poor but sexy”, or that it appears in headlines as the “capital of botched jobs”, of the “absolute failure of their administrations”, the “redoubt of the analogue era”.
In Berlin, digitization is like buying books by the meter to decorate the bookshelf. Fax still works in municipal district offices. There are currently 5,333 devices in service, and thank goodness because the computer programs that should replace them either do not work or do not talk to each other.
There remains, yes, the Berlin sarcasm. In 2015, the municipal bus company launched a campaign under the title “I don't care” and verses of the song There is nothing to regret (Es gibt nicht zu bedauern), a hit from the sixties, when the Wall was still standing and the American President John F.. In a speech in front of the town hall in Schöneberg in 1963, Kennedy made what is undoubtedly his most famous quote: Ich bin ein berliner. Grammatically the phrase is incorrect, because if he meant to say “I am a Berliner” to tell the Berliners that they were not alone, what he actually said is “I am a donut without a hole filled with jam”, which is what they are called in Germany to those cakes. The Berliners listening to Kennedy laughed and applauded, but the president must have understood it as a show of support and said it three more times.