Whether Muslims, Jews or Sinti and Roma: According to a new study, East Germans are more negative towards minorities than West Germans. The results of a survey published by the US research institute Pew in Washington.
36 percent of the participants in East Germany therefore expressed a negative opinion about Muslims - compared to 22 percent in the West. According to the survey, 12 percent of the respondents in the East are negative in the East, compared to 5 percent in the West. Particularly pronounced is the negative attitude towards Roma: In East Germany expressed 48 percent negative, in West Germany 34 percent.
Every tenth East German has a negative attitude toward Jews
The Pew Survey looks at public opinion in Europe three decades after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Since 1991, the proportion of those who favor Jews or Roma has increased significantly in eastern and western Germany. After Muslims 1991 was not asked.
In 1991, 59 percent of respondents in East Germany stated that they had a positive attitude toward Jews, compared with only 51 percent in West Germany. In the current survey, 81 percent of participants in East Germany expressed a positive opinion about Jews, compared with 88 percent in West Germany.
In the East, the proportion of those with a negative attitude to Jews in 1991 as in the past was 12 percent, in the West it fell from 27 to 5 percent. In 1991, 29 percent in the east and 23 percent in the west said they could not or did not want to comment on it, but today they are only 7 percent each.
Reunification is rated positively
Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, 91 percent of respondents in East Germany think reunification was good for Germany. In West Germany, the agreement is 89 percent similarly high.
However, the respondents recognize significant differences in the standard of living between East and West. Only 23 percent of East Germans believe that it can live equally well in East and West Germany, in the West, there are at least 32 percent. While the value in the west was similar in a survey ten years ago, it was only 12 percent in the East.
About the Study: The Pew Research Center is a private opinion research institute based in Washington, DC, USA. In the study "European Public Opinion Three Decades After the Fall of Communism", the institute examined how people in 16 states think about minorities, German unity and the EU.
Basis: The Pew survey was conducted by phone and in personal interviews between May 13 and August 12. Almost 19,000 people were interviewed in 14 EU countries, as well as in Russia, Ukraine and the USA. In addition to Germany, EU countries were Bulgaria, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Italy, Greece, Sweden, the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom and Spain. The number of respondents in Germany was about 2000. Also used were comparative data from a study from 1991. In addition, the Pew Research Institute has published data on how the view on minorities in East and West Germany in previous surveys differs. The results for East Germany refer to the territory of the former GDR.