Deutsche Einheit Next Week

For those unaware.....next Wednesday is a holiday in Germany (national holiday)....Deutsche Einheit (Reunification Day Germany).   It's the day that folks say that East and West Germany unified in 1990.

If you watch German public TV, you see a good bit commentary and analysis over the reunification and folks (primarily intellectuals and politicians) discussing the present situation.  If you ask working-class people on the day, and their impression....it's just a day off and a chance to get caught up on yard-work.  Frankly, no one cares.  If you tried to compare it to the American Fourth-of-July...it'd be a dismal failure in terms of comparison.

What typically occurs?  There's some German city chosen by the Bundestag to get significant funding, and they will mount a series of shows and orchestra music, with a fireworks display as it gets dark, and some wonderful commentary by the Chancellor and President.  The public TV networks will run a show or two....discussing the unification and how everything 'fits so well' today.

So you move onto the primary question....is there a difference between western and eastern Germany?  You can basically say that Germany today....is about the size of California (more or less).  The northern third of California (the bent-angle part)?  That's about the size of old DDR (East Germany).

Since 1990 (this part is always in dispute)....there's been roughly 1.3 trillion Euro spent on bringing East Germany to West Germany standards (that's about 2 trillion US dollars).  The yearly amount?  It's in the ballpark of 70 to 80 billion Euro a year.  This pours into roads, bridges, street signs, city parks, stadiums, schools, universities, airports, railway stations, etc.  Go and imagine putting 2 trillion dollars into the northern third of California and how it'd change over twenty years. 

I've crossed the imaginary border of DDR on a number of occasions.  What you can generally say is that there is no visible difference in terms of roads, bridges, or railway travel.  What you notice is that when you leave a built-up urban area in eastern Germany, and you go 10 miles outside of the town.....rural villages tend to look like 1945, and the image is visibly different from what you'd see in the western side of Germany.

Politics?  That's an odd factor as well.  If you look at the five east German states....the typical west German parties (the CDU, the SPD)....don't attract that much attention (the Linke Party and the AfD typically make up 40-percent of most voting, with the exception of the Berlin area). 

Germans under the age of forty....don't really have any memory of the division, so it's not a big deal for them.  Germans over forty, particularly those nearing 60....can remember all of the details and the big differences (respect, secret-police, commerce, etc).  If you hooked up with some older 'westies' over a beer.....they might slip up and admit that life was better in the old West Germany days, and that bringing down the wall was a negative experience.  You might even have a second beer, with some 'Ossie' (the East German slang) and they might admit that their life was better under the communist regime. 

The odds of this holiday lasting for decades?  I have my doubts.