Mr. Brechtken, before the state elections the mood between East and West Germans is worse than it has been for a long time. Many East Germans feel patronized by the West; Many West Germans consider the East Germans to be ungrateful and lost to the AfD. Where are we, 36 years after reunification?
Many West Germans are now fed up with the constant complaints from the East - and also with the costs. They have their own worries and remember how successfully the old Federal Republic functioned. When people in East Germany refer to a special Eastern identity that is different, it sounds to many like a complex, a refuge identity that does not exist in the West. I'm a Sauerlander, and of course you construct a different identity in Westphalia than in the Rhineland or Bavaria. But I don't see such a demarcating identity as in East Germany.
As a historian, you give many lectures on this topic. Where does that come from?
The reasons why the East is “different” from the West of Germany are often not viewed rationally in the East, but rather emotionally. Many differences between West and East can be derived and described analytically, on the political, economic, historical and power structure levels. These analyzes are often sobering, and many political statements and election results reflect this. But in my opinion, this form of rational self-analysis does not take place enough in East Germany.
And is that different in West Germany?
Even in the West, the historical-structural differences between East and West are rarely discussed openly. Especially on official occasions, people often act as if East Germans have to be praised, protected or treated with particular consideration. Nevertheless, in my opinion, the discourse in the West is more sober, more distant and more economical than in the East.
Really? In the West there are just as crude clichés about the East as vice versa.
Certainly there is regional competition and mockery. Rhinelanders make fun of Westphalia and vice versa, Franconians feel patronized by Upper Bavaria and the like. But there's a lot of folklore in that. In contrast to East/West, this is largely resolved in everyday discourse. Above all, regional self-confidence is not reflected in the election of right-wing extremist parties. When you look at the maps for the federal and European elections, which show the strongest party in each constituency, you can see: The East is almost entirely blue and the West is almost entirely black. These are exactly the borders of the Federal Republic and the former GDR. This shows that even if the symptoms of the crisis in the Ruhr area or Flensburg are perhaps similar to those in Magdeburg or Dresden, people in the West are still looking for other solutions.
However, the decoupling from politics is also increasing in the West - and the AfD is becoming stronger there too.
Yes, but on a different level and against its own historical background. In the history of the old Federal Republic there have always been extremist, radical and also anti-Semitic parties and groups - from the Socialist Reich Party to the NPD, the DVU and the Republicans to the KPD and DKP. On the right it was always around 15 percent, on the extreme left perhaps five percent, i.e. around 20 percent in the total of the extreme edges. But there has never been a real danger in any western federal state that an extremist party will nominate a prime minister. Things are different in East Germany. These differences must be clearly stated.
But many East Germans quickly feel attacked. The former Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, believes that the AfD is primarily a western party and calls for more talk about what went wrong in West Germany.
In West Germany we're always talking about what's going wrong! This is normal political process. In the 75 years of its history, the Federal Republic has gone through enormous processes of change in its crisis management. Today, from climate change to infrastructure to over-bureaucratization and wealth inequality, there are fundamental challenges every day that require compromises to solve. This often seems slow and tough, it's annoying and takes energy. This has been tried and tested for a long time in the West, but in the new federal states the search for a solution appears to be authoritative.
Do you think many East Germans long for a strong man?
That sounds very striking. But a line of tradition can be identified historically in East Germany that we have to talk about: before 1990 there was authoritarian communist rule, before 1945 there was the National Socialist dictatorship, before 1933 there were strong anti-democratic majorities in the Weimar Republic, before 1918 there were monarchical structures. For centuries, the state and authorities in the German states have stood for security and supply “from above” and against the demand for political participation and personal responsibility of the individual. This also applied to West Germany until 1945. Then the experiences diverged. We have to discuss this traditional longing for solutions through the state and authority when we talk about the voters in the new federal states.
West Germans who point out these differences have the feeling that they will quickly be branded as “Wessis” in the East and that their view will be considered illegitimate. As if only East Germans were allowed to talk about the East.
Why should we accept that? That's the problem with many celebratory speeches: When Federal President Steinmeier speaks on October 3rd, we continue to hear feel-good rhetoric. It would be equally necessary to remind people who feel misunderstood or are searching for their identity of some historical facts.
To which one?
To those who many don't like to hear, for example: The GDR was not ended by the peaceful revolution of the East Germans, but because Mikhail Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze released it. That is the military and foreign policy side. The economic point is: If East Germans complain today that there is nothing to inherit in the countries of the former GDR and that the people are poorer than in the West, then it is not because the West Germans took something away from them, but because the GDR lived on substance for 40 years and was not in a position to build up economic assets comparable to those in the West. The GDR was bankrupt in 1989; an economically consumed country destroyed from within. In the 37 years that East Germany has received transfer investments since then, we have seen how much development is possible - but also that it is not possible to make up for previously lost decades of wealth building in 37 years. But this is not due to the behavior of the paternalistic West Germans, but rather to the history of the GDR.
Has the debate about the hardships that reunification and democracy and the market economy can have ever been conducted honestly in these 37 years? That democracy is slow and compromise can be frustrating?
It is an illusion to believe that all differences can be equalized within three and a half decades, especially under the conditions of a global competitive economy. This wasn't talked about openly enough. Democracy means that citizens' individual commitment is required and they must be prepared to change. Democracy does not mean that “the state” solves all problems for you. In my opinion, many people in the East have this attitude, at least more than in the West. And the politicians don't say it to East Germans' faces.
There has been a certain strangeness between East and West since reunification, but recently it has increased significantly, also because the populists from the AfD, Left and BSW are still cultivating what divides them. When did the mood change?
I think that strangeness has never really gone away. In 1990, the dominant idea in the West was that all you had to do was send enough money to the East, fix the roads, houses and infrastructure, and then the East would be “Westernized”. That was an illusion because the differences were much greater than expected. The fact that we still have to discuss with many East Germans today whether the GDR was an unjust regime is so absurd that I lack any understanding of it.
This also applies to the image of Russia. People in the GDR suffered from their big brother for decades, and yet many still protect Russia even now that it has invaded Ukraine and is threatening Europe.
When I discuss things in the new federal states, I am often shocked by how they talk about international relations and the history of foreign and military policy before 1990 - and how forgetful of history the German-Soviet realities are glorified. For years, Putin's policy has tried to use all means to restore what was lost with the collapse of the USSR - in his eyes, fatally and unnecessarily. Let's look at what he says about Soviet-Russian history. Let's go through what it means for the former GDR! If Putin had been commander of the Soviet armed forces in 1989, he would have rolled out the tanks in the GDR to secure the empire's established hegemony. Even today, there are more than three hundred thousand Russian soldiers under Putin's command in the new federal states. But many people in East Germany don't want to hear that.
They consider East Germans to be more authoritative than West Germans. At the same time, many people there view the state much more critically than in the West.
I think it has to do with how the state is perceived in the West. Since 1949, the majority in the West has learned with difficulty that they can be an effective part of the state. A fundamental trust has grown that constitutional structures function, develop, that one can make a difference, and that living conditions can be improved despite all the challenges. At the same time, you know that you have to make a contribution if you don't like something. That it is worth getting involved in a citizens' initiative, in a club, in a party. You're not always welcome and you run into headwinds, but you have to live with that. That was the DNA of the Federal Republic until 1989 and is still the same afterwards: that democracy is a permanent negotiation process in which you have your own possibilities and effectiveness, but which require your own commitment.
And is that different in the East?
Obviously, many people have the perception that “the state” is now continuing the paternalism from GDR times, for example the corona pandemic rules, in a new guise. There is a fundamental mistrust. “The state” should take care of the people, provide public transport to the three-house village, but it should not interfere in individual designs. In the East there is a different self-constitution as a citizen than in the West.
Many in the East complain that they are still disadvantaged; in pensions, in management positions. Is this felt or real?
The pensions have now been equalized, this disadvantage is only felt. In terms of management positions, “East German” managers are probably underrepresented in DAX and M-DAX companies. But what does that mean? Companies want to produce products and survive in global competition. They will sensibly look for the best people to make this happen. Where they come from is of secondary importance. The big global players of our time were only founded in the 1990s, and there are also some success stories in the new federal states. Why not anymore? Everyone is free to create a better Amazon.
The AfD right-wing extremist Björn Höcke might now say: This is proof that there are no longer any Germans in the West, only German-speaking Americans. He says the real Germans are those in the new federal states.
Is Björn Höcke a real German? He obviously has little knowledge of German history. A central result of German history is that we have learned to self-critically analyze and rationally examine what has proven successful for our coexistence, for the development of the rule of law, economy and prosperity. That's why we are now the third largest economy in the world and still a leader in many areas of business, science and technology. Höcke's ethnic fantasies, these ideological mythical worlds, thrive on historical ignorance and refusal to learn; they are as self-destructive as National Socialism and the SED rule were. That's not German, that's stupid.
What can politicians do to reduce people's dissatisfaction?
We should not only ask about “politics”, but also: What can we do ourselves? There is increasing habitual dissatisfaction, not only in the new federal states. This mood is also visibly increasing in the West. We are at a point where it seems to be a priority for people in the West to look after their own needs. We are talking about more than sixty million people in the West compared to twelve million in the East. The message to the East is striking: If you are dissatisfied, then leave it alone, but please not at our expense! If outraged reactions come, people in the West will live with them.
Some East Germans will say: You “better Wessis” can carry on with your paternalism! And if you demand personal responsibility from us, then let's just vote for the AfD and stop with the firewall!
You already vote for the AfD! If you want to understand this as personal responsibility, well, I would prefer the rational analysis of economic and political challenges. In the West this cannot and will not simply be accepted. If the AfD were to govern in a federal state and people who believe in ethnic racism and conspiracy stories or who think Putin is a harmless person are responsible for the secret services, then the constitutional state must take precautions and society must defend itself. Pointing out security policy dangers, economic self-endangerment and an even greater division in society under an ethnic-identitarian political leadership is not paternalism, but a necessary contribution to the public debate.
