What was life like in East Germany in the immediate aftermath of the reunification/fall of the Berlin Wall?

This has been moved from Cafe society.

Especially in Berlin. What did ordinary people in East Germany think about the reunification, how did the transition go over, what was everyday life like, what were the crime rates like, any neo-Stalinist groups/communist supporters causing trouble after the fall of the Berlin Wall? Any good essays, books, articles, documentaries etc. on the subject? Thank you in advance.

Unfortunately all my books deal with the before, but from my recollection, there was no real old guard rearguard resistance. Essentially, as in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, the old guard party leadership more or less dissolved itself and brought in reformist party leaders within the existing rules. They in turn set about a rapid opening up of free democratic processes - helped in East Germany’s case by the fact they had nominal “front” parties more or less labelled like the West German parties, who stepped in to help them transition to 'real" parties fighting real elections but still within the East German constitution. At the same time, the West German government pushed hard towards reunification, starting with currency unification.

Don’t forget that the combination of major street demonstrations and masses of people simply fleeing west via Hungary and Czechoslovakia had shifted the pressure from reform of East Germany to full reunification.

I believe there were some voices in the leadership were arguing for repression, but Gorbachev had made it clear they needed to make their own peace with the opposition and the people, and wouldn’t get support from the Russians. After the Wall was opened, somewhat chaotically, from the leadership’s p.o.v, events - and people - ran away from them. There simply doesn’t appear to have been the support for physical repression.

There were lots of complaints about the detailed changes, and about the way plenty of bigwigs in the East German system managed to wangle good jobs in the new world, while people who’d been out of favour still found themselves passed over. But the democratic election results were overwhelmingly for reunification.

I spoke too soon. Anne McElvoy’s The Saddled Cow does have a few final chapters outlining the transition and adaptation process.

All my information comes from one tour guide in Berlin, but at least from what she said some East Germans felt the reunification process was more like a West German takeover of East Germany, rather than a true unification. The replacement of the old East German style pedestrian signals with West German ones became sort of symbolic of this, which is why you will still occasionally see the old East German Ampelmann around Berlin – the East Germans campaigned to save their version of Ampelmann.

In 2018, during a tour of Bertolt Brecht House in Berlin, the tour guide, perhaps in her 40s, got into a very heated exchange with some Americans who were going on about how much better her life must have been once the wall came down. She was pretty adamant that for many in the East, life got worse quickly and dramatically–unemployment rose, those who had jobs found the “free market” was pretty expensive, etc. It was interesting.

Some friends moved back to Berlin after the wall fell, and bought a place in the former East Berlin, just over the wall. When I visited them a few years later the wall had been removed but the neighborhood was still populated by the same folks who lived there before. They were mostly party loyalists (the only ones allowed to live that close the wall) and they weren’t particularly happy with the situation nor with the westerners who moved in.

There was a running joke that East Germans were eating green bananas. For East Germans, bananas were something of an exotic treat that was suddenly because easily available after reunification.

Were the green bananas cucumber?

We had a friend who had emigrated to England from Berlin. She made regular trips back to visit relatives.

Her initial reaction was one of resentment about all the “Ossie” beggars and vagrants. Reunification was also hugely expensive for the former West Germany. Later she came to sympathise with the people who had grown up in relative poverty (compared with the “Wessies”) but with job security and enough to live on. Now the factories were closing and they had no idea whether the new government would carry on supporting them.

That was the impression I got when on a visit to various universities in 1991 or so (to explain various aspects of British university life). A lot of East German loyalist academics (and some who hadn’t been in favour with the old regime) were resentful at being pushed aside to bring in “flying professors” who came in from the west part-time, returning to their usual (perceived as much more lucrative and comfortable home and work) environment every few days. And I seem to remember there were arguments about how western technical/quality standards seemed to magically rule out various popular East German products - varieties of apples for one, IIRC.

On which point, I was in Berlin for a few days almost exactly a year before the Wall came down, and decided on the Sunday to visit the museums in the East, as a foreigner could, quite easily if expensively. It was a cold and rainy day, and I noticed that, while the display cabinets outside Western department stores had luxury products like perfume and watches, the single East German equivalent just had a pair of children’s rubber boots. And I struggled to find somewhere open for lunch: in the end I found a sort of fast food place that looked as though it hadn’t been decorated since the 1970s, where all they were offering was a “galetta” (presumably they couldn’t call it a hamburger) in a bread roll with some tomato salsa, from a chipped enamel bowl, thrust at you, rather than served, through a hatch. BUT - the meat, bread and tomatoes really tasted as they should, rather than like factory-processed generics. Likewise, the beer came in chipped and cloudy glasses - but it was miles more flavourful than the usual chain stuff you’d get in the west.

Also, IIRC, a lot of women felt short-changed over things like access to childcare and abortion, which in turn affected their working conditions.

But the hope of trying to find an untainted but distinctively East German identity, or re-defining the Federal Republic to recognise and make room for it, died with the election results, which favoured the rapid absorption into the existing FRD so heavily pushed by the Christian Democrats. Those who did want to hang on to some aspects of the east either became part of the Left party (Die Linke) or Alliance90, which became more or less in permanent alliance with the Greens - and as such remain minorities.

Some fictional treatments of these issues that might be worth looking for:

The Lives of Others
Goodbye Lenin
Deutschland89

The transition from communism/totalitarianism to a free market economy and democracy hasn’t been the dreamy salvation that most westerners imagine. In addition to your example, I’ll mention the Bald and Bankrupt guy who visited the former Soviet state of Moldova in this video:

After the USSR collapsed, Moldova was left to fend for itself. Their economy and infrastructure crumbled, and they went through a series of elected officials who absconded with huge amounts of wealth from the Moldovan economy. In that video, he talks with some old folks who insist that life in Moldova was better before the collapse - and I believe them.

Good Bye, Lenin!, mentioned by PatrickLondon, is definitely worth a look - a whimsical, rueful look at what East Germans lost after the Berlin Wall fell. They gained their freedom and the opportunity for prosperity, yes, but they also had to let go of a way of life that, for all its flaws, also had some things to commend it.

See also: Ostalgie - Wikipedia

I really love The Lives of Others, but I’d say it was only tangentially related to the wall coming down. You see why it did, but 90% or more of the movie is in the East. You only see the reunified country in the last segment. Great movie, though.

The (West) German satire magazin Titanic made that joke already in December 1989:

The caption reads: “Zone-Gaby (17) is happy (FRG): My first banana”

“Die Zone” is an old-fashioned West German word for the GDR, from the post-war term “soviet-occupied zone”.

ETA: here’s another legendary Titanic cover from 1992, capturing the zeitgeist after much disillusionment with the reunification on both sides of the torn-down wall:

Caption: “Reunification void: Kohl was doped!” The “Gott sei Dank!” in that little arrow means “Thank God!”

There’s a restaurant in San Francisco catering to those nostalgic for East German food.

Enthusiasts have also founded multiple Trabant car clubs around the world.

Go figure.

An issue which I have always wondered about is: how did the East Germans adjust to the new concept of freedom of speech.?
Specifically–what happened with all those informers?

Under the communists, there was one resident in every apartment building who had been hired (coerced?) to spy on all his neighbors, and report on their loyalty to the regime. So everybody remained fearful and suspicious of all their neighbors.
So how did the E Germans adjust to the new freedom? Did the informers ever admit to their neighbors what they had done?
Or was it not an important issue, because most peopel were too worried about their new financial problems?

In the aftermath of the fall of the Wall, Stasi members tried to destroy files on a grand scale but were prevented by courageous citizens in January 1990.

https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=2982

So most files were rescued, and after reunification a special federal office was established to protect, preserve and archive the files:

Every former citizen of the GDR, as well those of the BDR, has the right to access their personal Stasi file. Many have done so, and many relationships and friendships were destroyed when people discovered that close friends or even family had spied on them for years.

As a citizen myself, I should know that it’s the BRD :man_facepalming:. The BDR is the “Bund deutscher Radfahrer”, Germany’s bicyclist’s union…

There’s a very nice book about East German cuisine, called der Geschmack des Ostens, by Jutta Voigt. Grilletta, Kettwurst, and all the other classics are described, along with a history of Eastern Germany. Really fun read. Not sure if it’s been translated though, I read it in German.

:rofl:
I’ve been to the Stasi museum in the Normannenstraße in Berlin. My husband, who studied history at the time, has also seen the archives (Gauck Behörde). Very impressive. The fall of der Mauer was a defining moment in my youth, I was twelve. Left me with an endless fascination for Eastern Europe and communism.