As a citizen of the FRG, I was around when these events occurred and this video served as a refresher on the events, both from my view as a child back when it happened - and when, in my late teens, my history teacher decided to "break tradition" and taught a bit of more contemporary history.
I did read that the teaching of history with regard to the GDR after unification was a bit one sided. Sounds like you had a bit of a different experience.
@@TheUnemployedHistorian kind of. Then again, it was pretty much just a few years after reunification. After all, it was around 1996 to 1999 when we had that topic in class, meaning it was pretty fresh on most people's minds as the Treuhand was still finishing the sale/disassembly of previously prospering GDR companies.
Actually the GDRs economy until the end was decent. They had a GNP per capita of USD 9,600(1989), adjusted to inflation (2021) 17k-20k. This is without accounting for 2%~ GNP growth per year. The GDR still had a higher gdp per capita than modern day Hungary, Poland, Chile, and Russia
Yea but you have to keep in mind that this was in East German marks , which as we learned after reunification were in reality nearly worthless b/c their shelves were only slightly less empty than those in USSR . So that wasn’t the real GDR GDP per capita , b/c that $ couldn’t buy anywhere near as much as an actual $9000 could
It was doing well compared to other communist nations, but not so much compared to wealthier western nations. Things had been in massive decline throughout the 1980’s.
Which is notable because the East did not get rebuilding funds, also they had to pay reparations to the Soviets for WWII. The East German economy was quite a bit better than it was given credit for.
The real measure should be PPP..... purchasing power parity. What is 40,000 a year in the West really worth if you pay 60,000 for your education, 20,000 a year for rent or for mortgage, 120,000 for a big medical expense, and then you are out of work for 3 years out of 10, hey? You might as well be a slave working for nothing...... and then still owing them more. All the above requisite necessities of life however came by default in the GDR, including the right to housing and the right to employment, so there you go.
This is such a good video! I'm really so glad to see a video on this topic which puts East Germans at the centre of the narrative. Too often now it feels like the narrative of unification is told from a West Germany perspective, or even just a general Western European perspective, flattening out all the nuance which your video restores!
I'm pretty sure I've never seen ANYTHING were the main-focus was on, how it was for West-Germans. It's always the poor Ossis and how hard it was for them.
The same can be said about my country Romania. People were very naive before the fall of communism. They thought that nothing will change with the exception that we will also have western products. In a strange twist of fate, in his last speech our leader Ceausescu asked the crowd that shouted against him if they wanted to be unemployed in capitalism. The problem was that people at the time didnt know how it was to be unemployed anymore,because everybody worked. Only people in their 70s and 80s knew about unemployment because they were young in 1920s and 1930s.
Very, very, very nice video! It's a refreshing view on the German reunification told from an Eastern perspective, rather than the Western one that's usually told. This video really conneded with me. I myself am child of the reunified Germany who was born, raised and still lives in the former East. I was born in 2000 to (at that point) relatively old parents (mid to late 30s) who were both born and raised and spent their young adult life in the GDR. If I'm asked on how I would identify myself I would in the first place say I'm a Thuringian, in a layer above that I would say I'm an East German and only then I'd say I'm German, even though I was born 10 years after reunification. The expirences my parents had in the time after the reunification and the things I remembered from my earliest childhood really shaped me to who I am today. I often wonder how our lifes could have been if the reunification would have been a more gradual and slow process in which the East Germans would have shaped their own path towards reunification rather than being annexed by the west. My dad got lucky and the LPG (collectivized farm) he worked at successfully transitioned into a capitalist co-op in which he has some stakes in and he still works there after almost 45 years now. My mom got really unlucky though. She completed an apprenticeship as a industrial technician in East Germany and assembled typewriters for a few years. Her company was forced to close, she was unemployed for a long time and only had "mini-jobs" or jobs with a temporary contract of 1 or 2 years in between. She later was accepted into a retraining program, but afterwards she still struggled to find a job, even though she was trying really hard. Eventually she found a job as an office employee at our municipal administration where she's paid a good wage that she still has to this day. Back then didn't realize it (I was a little kid after all), but when I think back to it we really struggled. My dad was the only one who brough in a stable, but rather small income, my mom got an even smaller income from shit jobs she wasn't able to hold or from the pretty much as bad unemployment "benefits" that made her fell like a societal outcast. And with that little money they had, they had to provide for two kids. When I asked my mom a few years ago she told me that money was always tight and that they sometimes even asked my grandparents for money which made my parents feel really ashamed. Today we live much more comfortably though as my moms job that I mentioned before pays rather well, my much older brother started his own family over a decade ago and is long out of the house now and I'm also working now with a rather good pay in the local cities administration and I'm planning on moving out too. But you can still feel the divide in the country. One of my uncles left for the West shortly after reunification for job purposes and recently one of my cousins followed suit. One of my best friends that I knew since Kindergarten also moved the the west as he came out as Gay and lets just say that rural Thuringia isn't the most tolerant place in the world... The Ostalgie also transcended generations it seems as I myself also really like the few surviving East German products more than their Western counterparts even tough I never could have never known them from back then. My favorite cola is Vita Cola, I prefer Nudossi over Nutella, I love East German sweets like Knusperflocken, Brockensplitter and Hallorenkugeln, East German Jägerschnitzel is one of my favorite meals, my favorite fruits are (with the exception of Bananas) apples, cherries and raspberries (like a good East German kid ;P), I own and ride an old Simson moped and I'm thinking about getting my hand on a Trabant in the future. My dad also still has his old 1960s East German 125cc motorcycle standing around collecting dust and rust and I really want to rebuild it with him some day. While I think a lot of old vehicles from all over the world are pretty cool, the East German ones just hit different for me.
What i heard from the older generation and from reading, West-Germany made sure that East-Germany could not be competitive in any shape or form. Industry, sport or culture.
Yeah, sure. It's definitely a west German conspiracy to keep east Germany down and not the fact that east Germany produced sh&&t and was backwards in all possible ways. Just look at the traband, what competition are you talking about?
@@TheUnemployedHistorian homosexuality was decriminalized in gdr, but never heard about gay marriages being a thing. And abortion legislation is a very questionable thing depending on you political views. So on one side there are homosexuality issues and abortions and on the other side is totalitarian stasi hellhole with backwards economy, that produced useless crap that couldn't compete with capitalist products. Yes, it is still a backwards hellhole in all possible ways. Good thing it doesn't exist. It's still crap that old farts pollute society with their nostalgia. We have the same problem in my country, but gladly their number shrinks all the time.
You're correct I meant homosexuality. If you take the time to engage with what writers and people who once lived in the GDR will say about the state - it's far more nuanced. There is a habit of looking at East Germany a place where, for 40 years, the population were frozen in place unable to live their lives freely and was liberated in 1989. Which, to say there weren't oppressive elements of the SED regime would be wrong. But it was also a society full of people actively trying to shape their own lives and grow within the lived existence they had. It is, as Mary Fullbrook asserts, incorrect to look at the GDR as a wholly top-down state. There was a lot more going on at the individual level and plenty of people were content to live in the GDR - and many ultimately missed elements of the GDR when it was gone (cheap holidays, childcare, education, guaranteed work, the work based social and sporting activities). People did live happily in the GDR. People grew up in the GDR. They're allowed to have a fondness for the life they used to have. It's a very singular view to look at the GDR and think of it simply as a repressive communist hellhole - when it was a place many people lived happily within the confines of while others didn't have the same experience. Multiple positions can exist in one space. It's bad history to just say otherwise.
Life was better in the DDR than now, in many respects, work conditions, public healthcare, non unemployment, affordable housing etc. Many people are nostalgic of the DDR and they're right.
A very interesting video. While watching it suddenly became clear to me that what happened to the former GDR in a very short span of time is also happening all over the Western world but in a much slower pace.
It's interesting, because even though Australia has always had a market economy, we had high Tariffs (Taxes) on imports that enabled our high wage manufacturing sector able to compete with imports. These Tariffs were gradually reduced from the 70s onwards, and were just about gone by the 1990s. Once we made just about everything, clothing, cars, buses, building products, home appliances, just about everything was made here. Almost our entire manufacturing industry was gone by the 90s, resulting in high levels of youth unemployment. Our car industry held out a little longer than other industries, largely because of large government subsidises. When the government decided to stop paying these subsidises, the industry was gone within a few years. Last cars made here were in 2017.
That was very well explained to a non German, me, I'd always thought that the re unification was one of the greatest things that could happen to a country that had been forcibly divided. But part of it that was led down a totally different path, then crashed back together decades later, of course it was going to cause major problems, I hope you can work things out, I really do.
Compared to the other Eastern Europeans the East Germans had a soft landing. A soft landing into the West German welfare state. Ok, things were not easy for them either, but nobody had to starve to death. In the other former COMECON countries the state went completely bankrupt, couldn't pay pensions and other social benefits at all. There it went to complete "survival of the fittest" in the 1990ies. But there the fittest did survive and after 2000 thing slowly started to get better. Now the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary are in some aspects better off than East Germany. They learned capitalism the hard way and now they master it.
There is, I think, an article in my bilblography for this video essay that touches on this (it's been over a year, I can't recall exactly). At the very least I remember reading specifically on the effects of privatization and how other states (like the Czech Republic) managed to get right what was done badly in former East Germany post Wende.
@@TheUnemployedHistorian there is one difference nobody talks about: when everything was privatized in a hurry, it was the once in a lifetime opportunity for some to get really rich, really quick. In East Germany this didn't happen, because state owned companies were usually not sold to friends and cronies, but mostly to West German companies who were in roughly the same business. The employees of the Treuhand were mostly civil servants from West Germany and they didn't have cronies in the East. That's why there are no East German oligarchs. I think that some of the complaints are fueled by jealousy. Some people feel betrayed of the chance to do the same as their former party comrades did from Poland to Bulgaria, from the Czech Republic to Kazakhstan, to plunder the state owned companies, devide the booty with your cronies and get filthy rich.
As a foreigner living in East Germany, this video has helped me so much to understand the people around me. There is so much resentment and anger, and rightfully so. I now know a lot more about where my neighbours' and in-laws perspectives originate. My mother in law definitely went through the "Ich werde nicht mehr gebraucht" grief process. Thank you for this excellent video; it deserves so much more exposure.
Interesting video. Nonetheless, there are some facts that, although not strictly necessary to know, give some different light to the topic: - If you see statistics from both the UN and the IMF, the GDR had a higher economic growth per capita, not lower. From the 60's onward, the GDR saw a good economic performance. "The Triumph of Evil" by Austin Murphy is good at explaining this. - The USSR didn't reject the Marshall Plan and took reparations from the GDR because simply it wanted to. The allies promised the USSR huge reparations from the damages of war (27 million people may I reming you) in Postdam. Nevertheless, they didn't fulfill their promise and the USSR saw no other choice than to get paid by East Germany. Even so, they stopped demanding reparations because they saw that the GDR was lagging behind. Finally, the Marshall Plan wasn't exactly free, it demanded political concessions. You can see that both in France and Italy, where both of their huge communist parties were quite harassed by the State. "Stasi State or Socialist Paradise?: The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It" by John Green and Bruni de la Motte gives more details. Despite all this, the GDR managed to had a slightly higher rate of economic growth throughout its existence - Actually, more east germans migrated towards the West after reunification than before. - It's a little dishonest not to talk about the campaign of West Germany to lay siege towards the GDR, like sending spies and attract young professionals offering them money, a home and immediate citizenship. You can read William Blum for more info. - The GDR wasn't democratic in a liberal sense, but it had, with all its flaws, a good chunk of public participations into politics which most of us from capitalist countries could only dream. They, for example, had a big process with a decent level of participation in orden to make a new constitution. That didn't happen in West Germany. - Although the Stasi comited several excesses, don't forget the BND in West Germany. It descended from the Gestapo and their methods were quite similar from those of the nazis. The Stasi denazified to the core, as all its State did. West Germany, on the contrary, protected lots of ex nazis and war criminals. - A don't know how democratic a State is when it literally protected several nazi war criminals. Also, you can see what they did to the Red Army Faction, how they violated every rule of an adequate due process. Democracy isn't simply being capitalist
6:16 The Allies did the same. The few functioning factories and plants in West Germany were also dismantled and transported to the victorious countries of the world war. Some factory infrastructure from West Germany even ended up in the USSR. And another point, which is a common misconception, is that Germany gained a lot from the Marshall plan.... Germany was the smallest receiver of funds from the Marshall plan in Europe and the total amount of 1.4 billion dollars is a drop in the ocean when you put into perspective that every city in Germany was either completely flattened or partly destroyed and Germany's complete infrastructure was also in ruins...
I'll be very blunt and to the point. The reason people from the East have GDR nostalgia, have difficulty integrating, etc etc is because now they have to work and pay for things that prior to the fall of the Berlin wall, was taken care of by the GDR government.
Great video , I thoroughly enjoyed your description of this part of germanys history. I was working in a german shipyard in bremerhaven when the wall fell...I am British so was a guest worker, I was just 20 years old and I didn't realise the consequences of the start of the end of the era which was the cold war. I wish I had travelled to the east to see it before the wall fell. I understand that helmut kohl wanted the former area that was Prussia to be included in the reunification process but was rebuffed by the Russians. I have watched and read about the DDR a lot over the years and can have a lot of empathy with the people, especially when it comes to periods of unemployment. I am an engineering tradesman and I have worked and lived abroad several times, i currently live in the North east of England and have been made redundant plenty of times for various reasons, strong pound, closure of the steel plant, production moving to China etc, etc, etc, so life for the average person in the DDR at least had structure. My channel is a military collecting and history based one, I've read about the 'grenztruppen' who were sacked and lost all their pension rights after reunification, although I believe they were recompensed later on, the armed forces were taken apart with few service personnel transferred over to the new german defence set up, and most of their tanks and equipment was obsolete. I have heard that large areas of the former DDR are derelict and have still not recovered and that in certain Eastern areas wolves have moved back into regions never seen before, so much so that a tourism industry has grown up around this!.I have quite a bit of DDR military equipment in my collection, uniforms, DDR binoculars,(ziess jena), headgear etc, I've even got a DDR fuel syphon!!. I find the whole period fascinating and can understand why people look back with fondness for the old days...yes it was a totalitarian regime that even sent military advisors to some of the proxy wars that happened during the cold war, also you weren't free to travel, I did hear that if you were of pensionable age the authorities couldn't care less if you left for the west as your pension stopped?, but you had a job and security. The west truly won the outcome with their companies profiting and once again the people who suffer is the average person. It would of been a good thing if the new Germany had adopted the good bits of the DDR but maybe that wouldn't of sat well with capitalism 🤔. Thanks for putting up this video again I'd just like yo say I really enjoyed it....all the best and hello from UK 🇬🇧. .....I will also subscribe to your channel 😀 👍
Really liked this video and it was very informative. As a communist who visited the GDR/DDR twice I kind of miss it but the day will come again when capitalism will fall in a few decades! Predicted by Marx that it would destroy itself!
Interesting way to analyze the misery the GDR caused on its own citizenry and blaming the FRG for unfulfilled promises, without ever once mentioning the prolonged, widespread and profound role of their own political class in the atrophy of almost all spheres of human activity and endeavor in their society. The main reason that “Ostalgia” exists is that the GDR political class was never held responsible for their acts.
This video *is* primarily about the effects of unification on the people of the former East Germany. This would of course lead to a greater focus on the FRG. I quote extensively from Mary Fullbrook at the start of the video purposely to alert the viewer that the GDR had many issues of its own. I will reproduce the tail end of that quote below; "This is not to suggest that everything was wonderful in the GDR, about which both many jokes and far more savage critiques were made at the time and since; but it is to suggest that the experiences of East Germans were highly varied, with some suffering far more than others, and some a great deal more enthusiastic and willing than others" This videos script referenced the experiences of East Germans as much as possible. While acknowledging that varying experiences of living in the GDR existed. As would be the same with any state.
Thank you for your kind reply. Even so, I shudder to think of their fate, were they still under their socialist regime. No chance to voice your opinions openly, lest you incur the wrath of the state with all the negative consequences it may carry, even if you were part of the political class. Economic stagnation and few choices due to lack of incentives; and a long etc. that should have been taken into consideration before leaving the viewer with the impression that, with the demise of the GDR, their citizens had lost “Paradise on Earth” forever.
I don't think you're reading of my video is accurate. If you'll note in my conclusion I reference an anecdote from Milena Veenis's book Material Fantasies where an elderly East German man, speaking post-Wende, told her "this is the third time we have been betrayed" (referring to National Socialism, Communism and Free Market Capitalism). Between that and the Fullbrook quote I mentioned above, I am signalling to the audience that I do not believe the GDR was a paradise on Earth. That does not mean that, to refer back to Fullbrook, some people didn't enjoy their lives there - or that nothing was lost when the state ceased to exist. What this video does say is that some people did enjoy life in the GDR, that some people found benefits to living in the GDR, and that German unification hit people quite hard. This was my intention with the video because primarily in the English-speaking world (which my primarily US, UK-based audience is) this kind of thing isn't really talked about. You may not agree but I do appreciate the fact you have been very reasonable and respectful in your comments. That's always appreciated!
I like the German series Kleo about an East German female agent. It takes place in the period of the late 80s and early 90s. She was betrayed and sold out, so after reunification she's hunting down her former superiors.
this is the new generation now history Germany is now united but the scar and pain in rough idea still in their remain but its a wishful thinking of 89 but its now is one
4:43 to be fair no German "feels" German. We are a federation of dozens of different people and even here in the very western part we see ourselves as German as we see ourselves as European (outside of national football games). Our point of self identification and patriotism is much more regional. I am a European, I am a German, I am a proud Rheinländer
Pretty much the anti-thesis to Deutschland, Deutschland über alles. I guess two world wars sucked nationalism out like a vacuum. Interesting to see Germany revert back to pre-1871 sentiments. France approves.
Cool, what a nice title to give yourself " unemployed historian", what are those on your shelf? Male Russian dolls? It looks like Donald Trump. I have a jumper like yours, it is my favourite, I paid $6 at K-Mart, love your honesty, it is refreshing ☺️ PS: it is not sarcasm, I mean it.
While i did not agree at all with the GDR's form of communism, subjugation of its population, banning travel, and religion, these are personsl things that should have been allowed, therefore, their state would have survived much longer. Everybody gets nostalgic, i do, i was fascinated by the DDR, they actually achieved a lot, despite its repressive form of communism, there are many different types of communism you know, not just one. They had one of the best trained and most formidable armies in the world. They sent satellites and people into space, and they often came second or third in olympic medal tables, yes there was state drug taking programmes, but most country's athletes were on some form of drugs from time to time. Their unemployment levels were among, if not the lowest, in the world. There was virtually no crime at all in the DDR. One of the biggest sporting programmes in the world encompassing its national population existed in the DDR. They were generally speaking, fairly self-sufficient in product manufacturing. They had the highest ratio of women in the workplace in the world, and state persecution aside, thats a pretty amazing list of achievements.
What always strikes me is how much political activity there was to have a better, democratic, but sovereign DDR. All that was crushed by Helmut Kohl's push to a 50% +1 majority for reunification and the "Western System"
@@TheUnemployedHistorian That is basically every economic system. You have a better chance of success in Capitalism. Of course most "capitalistic" countries are not really capitalistic in the first place. The government picks the winners and losers (i.e. whoever dumps enough money in their pocket). Human nature is what really sucks at the end of the day.
apropos of nothing, a google search for the definition of capitalism gives the following description: "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit." Which sounds almost exactly like what you've described and called "not capitalistic". "Success" is a fairly broad term. I think it's actually one of the issues former citizens of the GDR ran into post-unification. The idea of success as being the accumulation and attainment of things, according to some of the sources I cited in this video, ultimately proved hollow for many. Success, in my eyes, would be the basic needs of every citizen being met before we go into talking about how the accumulation of stuff or whatever individual success means to anyone.
All well and good until they need to get food , clothe, or house the children they're the mothers of. Post-Unification East German women suffered a loss of employment and the end of free childcare (as well as a loss of educational opportunities). If someone has no job and they can't get money to help care of their children. If someone has no access to affordable childcare they can't take up work to get money to take care of their children.
As a citizen of the FRG, I was around when these events occurred and this video served as a refresher on the events, both from my view as a child back when it happened - and when, in my late teens, my history teacher decided to "break tradition" and taught a bit of more contemporary history.
I did read that the teaching of history with regard to the GDR after unification was a bit one sided. Sounds like you had a bit of a different experience.
@@TheUnemployedHistorian kind of. Then again, it was pretty much just a few years after reunification. After all, it was around 1996 to 1999 when we had that topic in class, meaning it was pretty fresh on most people's minds as the Treuhand was still finishing the sale/disassembly of previously prospering GDR companies.
@@TheUnemployedHistorian It seems like some of these issues would be applicable to Korea. Could you make a video on Korea & Eurasian Intergration?
possibly? I'm not nearly as familiar with Korea as I am Germany.
@@TheUnemployedHistorianThis Eurasian intergration might be helpful, especially as we are in a multipolar world & with a declining US Empire.
Actually the GDRs economy until the end was decent. They had a GNP per capita of USD 9,600(1989), adjusted to inflation (2021) 17k-20k. This is without accounting for 2%~ GNP growth per year. The GDR still had a higher gdp per capita than modern day Hungary, Poland, Chile, and Russia
Yea but you have to keep in mind that this was in East German marks , which as we learned after reunification were in reality nearly worthless b/c their shelves were only slightly less empty than those in USSR . So that wasn’t the real GDR GDP per capita , b/c that $ couldn’t buy anywhere near as much as an actual $9000 could
@@bigmedge Source: I made it up.
It was doing well compared to other communist nations, but not so much compared to wealthier western nations. Things had been in massive decline throughout the 1980’s.
Which is notable because the East did not get rebuilding funds, also they had to pay reparations to the Soviets for WWII. The East German economy was quite a bit better than it was given credit for.
The real measure should be PPP..... purchasing power parity.
What is 40,000 a year in the West really worth if you pay 60,000 for your education, 20,000 a year for rent or for mortgage, 120,000 for a big medical expense, and then you are out of work for 3 years out of 10, hey? You might as well be a slave working for nothing...... and then still owing them more.
All the above requisite necessities of life however came by default in the GDR, including the right to housing and the right to employment, so there you go.
This is such a good video! I'm really so glad to see a video on this topic which puts East Germans at the centre of the narrative. Too often now it feels like the narrative of unification is told from a West Germany perspective, or even just a general Western European perspective, flattening out all the nuance which your video restores!
Exactly
I'm pretty sure I've never seen ANYTHING were the main-focus was on,
how it was for West-Germans. It's always the poor Ossis
and how hard it was for them.
The same can be said about my country Romania. People were very naive before the fall of communism. They thought that nothing will change with the exception that we will also have western products. In a strange twist of fate, in his last speech our leader Ceausescu asked the crowd that shouted against him if they wanted to be unemployed in capitalism. The problem was that people at the time didnt know how it was to be unemployed anymore,because everybody worked. Only people in their 70s and 80s knew about unemployment because they were young in 1920s and 1930s.
Very, very, very nice video! It's a refreshing view on the German reunification told from an Eastern perspective, rather than the Western one that's usually told. This video really conneded with me.
I myself am child of the reunified Germany who was born, raised and still lives in the former East. I was born in 2000 to (at that point) relatively old parents (mid to late 30s) who were both born and raised and spent their young adult life in the GDR. If I'm asked on how I would identify myself I would in the first place say I'm a Thuringian, in a layer above that I would say I'm an East German and only then I'd say I'm German, even though I was born 10 years after reunification.
The expirences my parents had in the time after the reunification and the things I remembered from my earliest childhood really shaped me to who I am today. I often wonder how our lifes could have been if the reunification would have been a more gradual and slow process in which the East Germans would have shaped their own path towards reunification rather than being annexed by the west.
My dad got lucky and the LPG (collectivized farm) he worked at successfully transitioned into a capitalist co-op in which he has some stakes in and he still works there after almost 45 years now. My mom got really unlucky though. She completed an apprenticeship as a industrial technician in East Germany and assembled typewriters for a few years. Her company was forced to close, she was unemployed for a long time and only had "mini-jobs" or jobs with a temporary contract of 1 or 2 years in between. She later was accepted into a retraining program, but afterwards she still struggled to find a job, even though she was trying really hard. Eventually she found a job as an office employee at our municipal administration where she's paid a good wage that she still has to this day.
Back then didn't realize it (I was a little kid after all), but when I think back to it we really struggled. My dad was the only one who brough in a stable, but rather small income, my mom got an even smaller income from shit jobs she wasn't able to hold or from the pretty much as bad unemployment "benefits" that made her fell like a societal outcast. And with that little money they had, they had to provide for two kids. When I asked my mom a few years ago she told me that money was always tight and that they sometimes even asked my grandparents for money which made my parents feel really ashamed.
Today we live much more comfortably though as my moms job that I mentioned before pays rather well, my much older brother started his own family over a decade ago and is long out of the house now and I'm also working now with a rather good pay in the local cities administration and I'm planning on moving out too. But you can still feel the divide in the country. One of my uncles left for the West shortly after reunification for job purposes and recently one of my cousins followed suit. One of my best friends that I knew since Kindergarten also moved the the west as he came out as Gay and lets just say that rural Thuringia isn't the most tolerant place in the world...
The Ostalgie also transcended generations it seems as I myself also really like the few surviving East German products more than their Western counterparts even tough I never could have never known them from back then. My favorite cola is Vita Cola, I prefer Nudossi over Nutella, I love East German sweets like Knusperflocken, Brockensplitter and Hallorenkugeln, East German Jägerschnitzel is one of my favorite meals, my favorite fruits are (with the exception of Bananas) apples, cherries and raspberries (like a good East German kid ;P), I own and ride an old Simson moped and I'm thinking about getting my hand on a Trabant in the future. My dad also still has his old 1960s East German 125cc motorcycle standing around collecting dust and rust and I really want to rebuild it with him some day. While I think a lot of old vehicles from all over the world are pretty cool, the East German ones just hit different for me.
Well, this was informative and saddening. Thanks!
I'm glad you found it informative. Thanks for coming into the live chat!
What i heard from the older generation and from reading, West-Germany made sure that East-Germany could not be competitive in any shape or form. Industry, sport or culture.
Yeah, sure. It's definitely a west German conspiracy to keep east Germany down and not the fact that east Germany produced sh&&t and was backwards in all possible ways. Just look at the traband, what competition are you talking about?
"in all possible ways"
The GDR legalized gay marriage before the West Germany did and it's abortion legislation was far ahead of unified Germany.
@@TheUnemployedHistorian homosexuality was decriminalized in gdr, but never heard about gay marriages being a thing.
And abortion legislation is a very questionable thing depending on you political views.
So on one side there are homosexuality issues and abortions and on the other side is totalitarian stasi hellhole with backwards economy, that produced useless crap that couldn't compete with capitalist products.
Yes, it is still a backwards hellhole in all possible ways. Good thing it doesn't exist. It's still crap that old farts pollute society with their nostalgia. We have the same problem in my country, but gladly their number shrinks all the time.
You're correct I meant homosexuality.
If you take the time to engage with what writers and people who once lived in the GDR will say about the state - it's far more nuanced. There is a habit of looking at East Germany a place where, for 40 years, the population were frozen in place unable to live their lives freely and was liberated in 1989. Which, to say there weren't oppressive elements of the SED regime would be wrong. But it was also a society full of people actively trying to shape their own lives and grow within the lived existence they had. It is, as Mary Fullbrook asserts, incorrect to look at the GDR as a wholly top-down state. There was a lot more going on at the individual level and plenty of people were content to live in the GDR - and many ultimately missed elements of the GDR when it was gone (cheap holidays, childcare, education, guaranteed work, the work based social and sporting activities).
People did live happily in the GDR. People grew up in the GDR. They're allowed to have a fondness for the life they used to have. It's a very singular view to look at the GDR and think of it simply as a repressive communist hellhole - when it was a place many people lived happily within the confines of while others didn't have the same experience. Multiple positions can exist in one space. It's bad history to just say otherwise.
Great report, thank you very much.
Also, a small thing, but I love all the German references you've packed into this video, it was an extra good touch!
Another very enjoyable and interesting video!
Thanks!
Life was better in the DDR than now, in many respects, work conditions, public healthcare, non unemployment, affordable housing etc. Many people are nostalgic of the DDR and they're right.
A very interesting video. While watching it suddenly became clear to me that what happened to the former GDR in a very short span of time is also happening all over the Western world but in a much slower pace.
Brilliant video, excellent analysis. Thank you!
It's interesting, because even though Australia has always had a market economy, we had high Tariffs (Taxes) on imports that enabled our high wage manufacturing sector able to compete with imports. These Tariffs were gradually reduced from the 70s onwards, and were just about gone by the 1990s.
Once we made just about everything, clothing, cars, buses, building products, home appliances, just about everything was made here. Almost our entire manufacturing industry was gone by the 90s, resulting in high levels of youth unemployment.
Our car industry held out a little longer than other industries, largely because of large government subsidises. When the government decided to stop paying these subsidises, the industry was gone within a few years. Last cars made here were in 2017.
That was very well explained to a non German, me, I'd always thought that the re unification was one of the greatest things that could happen to a country that had been forcibly divided. But part of it that was led down a totally different path, then crashed back together decades later, of course it was going to cause major problems, I hope you can work things out, I really do.
love your channel. I'm 52 so I remember the DDR though I never visited it. D.A., J.D. NYC
Excellent video
Compared to the other Eastern Europeans the East Germans had a soft landing. A soft landing into the West German welfare state. Ok, things were not easy for them either, but nobody had to starve to death. In the other former COMECON countries the state went completely bankrupt, couldn't pay pensions and other social benefits at all. There it went to complete "survival of the fittest" in the 1990ies. But there the fittest did survive and after 2000 thing slowly started to get better. Now the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary are in some aspects better off than East Germany. They learned capitalism the hard way and now they master it.
There is, I think, an article in my bilblography for this video essay that touches on this (it's been over a year, I can't recall exactly). At the very least I remember reading specifically on the effects of privatization and how other states (like the Czech Republic) managed to get right what was done badly in former East Germany post Wende.
@@TheUnemployedHistorian there is one difference nobody talks about: when everything was privatized in a hurry, it was the once in a lifetime opportunity for some to get really rich, really quick. In East Germany this didn't happen, because state owned companies were usually not sold to friends and cronies, but mostly to West German companies who were in roughly the same business. The employees of the Treuhand were mostly civil servants from West Germany and they didn't have cronies in the East. That's why there are no East German oligarchs. I think that some of the complaints are fueled by jealousy. Some people feel betrayed of the chance to do the same as their former party comrades did from Poland to Bulgaria, from the Czech Republic to Kazakhstan, to plunder the state owned companies, devide the booty with your cronies and get filthy rich.
As a foreigner living in East Germany, this video has helped me so much to understand the people around me. There is so much resentment and anger, and rightfully so. I now know a lot more about where my neighbours' and in-laws perspectives originate. My mother in law definitely went through the "Ich werde nicht mehr gebraucht" grief process. Thank you for this excellent video; it deserves so much more exposure.
Interesting video. Nonetheless, there are some facts that, although not strictly necessary to know, give some different light to the topic:
- If you see statistics from both the UN and the IMF, the GDR had a higher economic growth per capita, not lower. From the 60's onward, the GDR saw a good economic performance. "The Triumph of Evil" by Austin Murphy is good at explaining this.
- The USSR didn't reject the Marshall Plan and took reparations from the GDR because simply it wanted to. The allies promised the USSR huge reparations from the damages of war (27 million people may I reming you) in Postdam. Nevertheless, they didn't fulfill their promise and the USSR saw no other choice than to get paid by East Germany. Even so, they stopped demanding reparations because they saw that the GDR was lagging behind. Finally, the Marshall Plan wasn't exactly free, it demanded political concessions. You can see that both in France and Italy, where both of their huge communist parties were quite harassed by the State. "Stasi State or Socialist Paradise?: The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It" by John Green and Bruni de la Motte gives more details. Despite all this, the GDR managed to had a slightly higher rate of economic growth throughout its existence
- Actually, more east germans migrated towards the West after reunification than before.
- It's a little dishonest not to talk about the campaign of West Germany to lay siege towards the GDR, like sending spies and attract young professionals offering them money, a home and immediate citizenship. You can read William Blum for more info.
- The GDR wasn't democratic in a liberal sense, but it had, with all its flaws, a good chunk of public participations into politics which most of us from capitalist countries could only dream. They, for example, had a big process with a decent level of participation in orden to make a new constitution. That didn't happen in West Germany.
- Although the Stasi comited several excesses, don't forget the BND in West Germany. It descended from the Gestapo and their methods were quite similar from those of the nazis. The Stasi denazified to the core, as all its State did. West Germany, on the contrary, protected lots of ex nazis and war criminals.
- A don't know how democratic a State is when it literally protected several nazi war criminals. Also, you can see what they did to the Red Army Faction, how they violated every rule of an adequate due process. Democracy isn't simply being capitalist
Good comment
6:16
The Allies did the same. The few functioning factories and plants in West Germany were also dismantled and transported to the victorious countries of the world war. Some factory infrastructure from West Germany even ended up in the USSR. And another point, which is a common misconception, is that Germany gained a lot from the Marshall plan.... Germany was the smallest receiver of funds from the Marshall plan in Europe and the total amount of 1.4 billion dollars is a drop in the ocean when you put into perspective that every city in Germany was either completely flattened or partly destroyed and Germany's complete infrastructure was also in ruins...
Iceland received the least amount of Marshal Aid ($43 million).
I'll be very blunt and to the point. The reason people from the East have GDR nostalgia, have difficulty integrating, etc etc is because now they have to work and pay for things that prior to the fall of the Berlin wall, was taken care of by the GDR government.
i think we'd all struggle if, almost over night, the way of life we were used to no longer existed and our workplace had been shut and sold.
Great video , I thoroughly enjoyed your description of this part of germanys history. I was working in a german shipyard in bremerhaven when the wall fell...I am British so was a guest worker, I was just 20 years old and I didn't realise the consequences of the start of the end of the era which was the cold war. I wish I had travelled to the east to see it before the wall fell. I understand that helmut kohl wanted the former area that was Prussia to be included in the reunification process but was rebuffed by the Russians. I have watched and read about the DDR a lot over the years and can have a lot of empathy with the people, especially when it comes to periods of unemployment. I am an engineering tradesman and I have worked and lived abroad several times, i currently live in the North east of England and have been made redundant plenty of times for various reasons, strong pound, closure of the steel plant, production moving to China etc, etc, etc, so life for the average person in the DDR at least had structure. My channel is a military collecting and history based one, I've read about the 'grenztruppen' who were sacked and lost all their pension rights after reunification, although I believe they were recompensed later on, the armed forces were taken apart with few service personnel transferred over to the new german defence set up, and most of their tanks and equipment was obsolete. I have heard that large areas of the former DDR are derelict and have still not recovered and that in certain Eastern areas wolves have moved back into regions never seen before, so much so that a tourism industry has grown up around this!.I have quite a bit of DDR military equipment in my collection, uniforms, DDR binoculars,(ziess jena), headgear etc, I've even got a DDR fuel syphon!!. I find the whole period fascinating and can understand why people look back with fondness for the old days...yes it was a totalitarian regime that even sent military advisors to some of the proxy wars that happened during the cold war, also you weren't free to travel, I did hear that if you were of pensionable age the authorities couldn't care less if you left for the west as your pension stopped?, but you had a job and security. The west truly won the outcome with their companies profiting and once again the people who suffer is the average person. It would of been a good thing if the new Germany had adopted the good bits of the DDR but maybe that wouldn't of sat well with capitalism 🤔. Thanks for putting up this video again I'd just like yo say I really enjoyed it....all the best and hello from UK 🇬🇧. .....I will also subscribe to your channel 😀 👍
Thanks for your very interesting reply!
@@TheUnemployedHistorian 👍👍👍
17:00 Boy I was confused until I saw the text that said his voice changed. xD
Smart.people do vocal exercises and stuff. But me? Nah.
9pm!?
edit: "SET REMINDER"
Really liked this video and it was very informative. As a communist who visited the GDR/DDR twice I kind of miss it but the day will come again when capitalism will fall in a few decades! Predicted by Marx that it would destroy itself!
This is a very good documentary.
Interesting way to analyze the misery the GDR caused on its own citizenry and blaming the FRG for unfulfilled promises, without ever once mentioning the prolonged, widespread and profound role of their own political class in the atrophy of almost all spheres of human activity and endeavor in their society. The main reason that “Ostalgia” exists is that the GDR political class was never held responsible for their acts.
This video *is* primarily about the effects of unification on the people of the former East Germany. This would of course lead to a greater focus on the FRG.
I quote extensively from Mary Fullbrook at the start of the video purposely to alert the viewer that the GDR had many issues of its own. I will reproduce the tail end of that quote below;
"This is not to suggest that everything was wonderful in the GDR, about which both many jokes and far more savage critiques were made at the time and since; but it is to suggest that the experiences of East Germans were highly varied, with some suffering far more than others, and some a great deal more enthusiastic and willing than others"
This videos script referenced the experiences of East Germans as much as possible. While acknowledging that varying experiences of living in the GDR existed. As would be the same with any state.
Thank you for your kind reply. Even so, I shudder to think of their fate, were they still under their socialist regime. No chance to voice your opinions openly, lest you incur the wrath of the state with all the negative consequences it may carry, even if you were part of the political class. Economic stagnation and few choices due to lack of incentives; and a long etc. that should have been taken into consideration before leaving the viewer with the impression that, with the demise of the GDR, their citizens had lost “Paradise on Earth” forever.
I don't think you're reading of my video is accurate. If you'll note in my conclusion I reference an anecdote from Milena Veenis's book Material Fantasies where an elderly East German man, speaking post-Wende, told her "this is the third time we have been betrayed" (referring to National Socialism, Communism and Free Market Capitalism). Between that and the Fullbrook quote I mentioned above, I am signalling to the audience that I do not believe the GDR was a paradise on Earth. That does not mean that, to refer back to Fullbrook, some people didn't enjoy their lives there - or that nothing was lost when the state ceased to exist.
What this video does say is that some people did enjoy life in the GDR, that some people found benefits to living in the GDR, and that German unification hit people quite hard. This was my intention with the video because primarily in the English-speaking world (which my primarily US, UK-based audience is) this kind of thing isn't really talked about.
You may not agree but I do appreciate the fact you have been very reasonable and respectful in your comments. That's always appreciated!
One of the best videos on the experience of the average east Germany during reunification
I like the German series Kleo about an East German female agent. It takes place in the period of the late 80s and early 90s. She was betrayed and sold out, so after reunification she's hunting down her former superiors.
this is the new generation now history Germany is now united but the scar and pain in rough idea still in their remain but its a wishful thinking of 89 but its now is one
4:43 to be fair no German "feels" German. We are a federation of dozens of different people and even here in the very western part we see ourselves as German as we see ourselves as European (outside of national football games). Our point of self identification and patriotism is much more regional. I am a European, I am a German, I am a proud Rheinländer
Pretty much the anti-thesis to Deutschland, Deutschland über alles. I guess two world wars sucked nationalism out like a vacuum. Interesting to see Germany revert back to pre-1871 sentiments.
France approves.
Cool, what a nice title to give yourself " unemployed historian", what are those on your shelf? Male Russian dolls? It looks like Donald Trump. I have a jumper like yours, it is my favourite, I paid $6 at K-Mart, love your honesty, it is refreshing ☺️ PS: it is not sarcasm, I mean it.
They are leaders of the Soviet Union. I bought them in the TV tower in Berlin in 2004 or 05.
While i did not agree at all with the GDR's form of communism, subjugation of its population, banning travel, and religion, these are personsl things that should have been allowed, therefore, their state would have survived much longer. Everybody gets nostalgic, i do, i was fascinated by the DDR, they actually achieved a lot, despite its repressive form of communism, there are many different types of communism you know, not just one. They had one of the best trained and most formidable armies in the world. They sent satellites and people into space, and they often came second or third in olympic medal tables, yes there was state drug taking programmes, but most country's athletes were on some form of drugs from time to time. Their unemployment levels were among, if not the lowest, in the world. There was virtually no crime at all in the DDR. One of the biggest sporting programmes in the world encompassing its national population existed in the DDR. They were generally speaking, fairly self-sufficient in product manufacturing. They had the highest ratio of women in the workplace in the world, and state persecution aside, thats a pretty amazing list of achievements.
Great stuff 🇮🇪
What always strikes me is how much political activity there was to have a better, democratic, but sovereign DDR. All that was crushed by Helmut Kohl's push to a 50% +1 majority for reunification and the "Western System"
Also, SED and MfS officials had already moved themselves into leading positions economically
Capitalism does not “suck”
sure it doesn't suck, if you benefit from it.
It does.
@@TheUnemployedHistorian That is basically every economic system. You have a better chance of success in Capitalism. Of course most "capitalistic" countries are not really capitalistic in the first place. The government picks the winners and losers (i.e. whoever dumps enough money in their pocket). Human nature is what really sucks at the end of the day.
apropos of nothing, a google search for the definition of capitalism gives the following description: "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit." Which sounds almost exactly like what you've described and called "not capitalistic".
"Success" is a fairly broad term. I think it's actually one of the issues former citizens of the GDR ran into post-unification. The idea of success as being the accumulation and attainment of things, according to some of the sources I cited in this video, ultimately proved hollow for many.
Success, in my eyes, would be the basic needs of every citizen being met before we go into talking about how the accumulation of stuff or whatever individual success means to anyone.
It sucks big time!
Ease up on whatever meds you're on, bro.
no
30:20-30:24 hmmmm ever heard of an occupation called MOTHER
The most important job on the PLANET
All well and good until they need to get food , clothe, or house the children they're the mothers of. Post-Unification East German women suffered a loss of employment and the end of free childcare (as well as a loss of educational opportunities). If someone has no job and they can't get money to help care of their children. If someone has no access to affordable childcare they can't take up work to get money to take care of their children.