By Peter Anderson
Richard and Toby Weibe live in San Francisco but over the years they have spent some time in Germany, studying at the University of Münster in 1959 and visiting Berlin in 1987. Last year they went back to see what changes had occurred in Berlin since the fall of the wall. What follows is an account of some of their impressions.
Instead of "How are you doing", an old Chinese greeting is "Have you eaten?". In the former East Germany today, the greeting is commonly "Are you working?". Those in jobs may now have a formerly unavailable choice of goods, or may even have bought on credit a new car to replace the noisy little Trabant, symbol of the GDR.
Even so, not everyone is happy, like one east Berlin couple in their early fifties. She had been a physician in a clinic and looked forward to early retirement, but was forced to start a private practice. Formerly an engineer, he now travels one and a half hours each way every day to work for a small company not in his profession.
About 45% of east Germans are unemployed, underemployed, forced into early retirement or in temporary jobs, a total of 3.4 million people, most living at or below the poverty level.
The east German "Ossies" suffer discrimination, earning wages about 60% the level of "Wessies" in comparable jobs. In many cases, Wessies have taken over top positions in the east, as in the universities and in the legal system where a certain bias against Ossies has been evident.
In the former GDR rents were set at 5% of income, and there was little incentive for home ownership. Following reunification, rents escalated, evictions were rampant, and Wessies who had owned land and property there before 1945 claimed it back. A gigantic government trust created to administer the new system was plagued by scandals. And Ossies with few resources lost out again in the property market.
By and large, the former education system has remained intact, according to the assistant director of one preschool. However, while the cost for preschool was nominal before, now it is up to the equivalent of $36 a month, and the pupil-teacher ratio is up. Where there had previously been 86 preschools in this section of east Berlin, now there are 76, and more could disappear.
Police brutality and killings in the US occur at a much higher rate than ever could have been the case with the Stasi, East Germany's secret police. But people still rightly felt oppressed in the former GDR. In a population of 17 million there were 200,000 Stasi agents and about 600,000 informers, many of who were coerced into giving information. The extent of the Stasi files was huge beyond belief.
Ironically, while the Stasi are regularly denounced for their duplicity, when secret files are needed to discredit politicians they suddenly acquire unassailable reliability. Former Stasi are among the day are wealthy.
Much infrastructure — sewers, water mains, electric cables, streets, bridges and buildings — is being repaired throughout the east, though reports that nothing was done for 40 years are obviously exaggerated.
Women are now a majority of the unemployed in east Germany and have lost various rights and benefits. Women over 50 are commonly told bluntly they are too old to get a job, and many of them are unemployed for the first time in their lives.
Whether Ossies are in a mood to fight back against these adverse changes is a much disputed question, though most think not. Bitter resentment and disappointment are evident among educated and professional people though few think much can be done. Elections in Berlin last May, which gave the Chancellor Kohl's CDU 13%, the Party of Democratic Socialism 30% and the Social Democratic Party 31%, revealed the level of dissatisfaction.