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Olaf Scholz in Neuruppin (on August 17): Loud disruptors who conform to the cliché
Photo:
Christian Ender / IMAGO
It is often said that East Germans should finally "arrive" in reunified Germany.
But when I read some of the texts or follow conversations, I ask myself whether one shouldn't ask the other way round – in a similar general way: When will the West Germans arrive in reunified Germany?
When will the East Germans no longer be perceived only as backward, ungrateful victims of the dictatorship who disturb coexistence with their whining?
Just an example.
Recently, my columnist Nikolaus Blome wrote about an event in Neuruppin where a small group of people protested loudly at a performance by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, while the majority of people argued harshly, perhaps not always in Deutschlandfunk interviewer's tones.
Blome turned this into a “predominantly East German conspiracy milieu”.
These people aren't worried, they're "stupid," he added.
He is not willing to let a minority dictate which overall social mode we switch to.
Who is dictating what?
The national reports from Neuruppin focused on the loud disruptors because they corresponded to the cliché: the East German, the riot.
The week before Vice-Chancellor Habeck was booed in Bayreuth, I'm still waiting for the texts about the "southwest German" conspiracy milieu.
Denying people participation in discourse by labeling them "stupid" or "stupid" is a classic.
Or because they use the wrong language.
Or because they dare to use the word "Monday Demo".
terms change.
A maverick was once an original mind, not a potentially dangerous disruptor.
East was also a point of the compass - and not an adjective for anything backward or curious ("ostig").
And regardless of whether protests are held on Mondays or Tuesdays, what was characteristic in the GDR was that the demos were not organized from above, by parties, but as an unorganized revolt from below, which was far less targeted than that is conveyed in the media today.
You could already know so much history
It is also interesting how people always talk about “the East Germans” or a specific East German milieu.
For weeks, journalists and politicians have been warning of possible "popular uprisings" in the fall.
Sometimes it almost sounds like they should be talked into it.
A decidedly anti-Eastern and classical tone often resonates.
The word “popular uprising” – used by Foreign Minister Baerbock – is primarily associated with June 17, 1953, when workers in East Berlin resisted the norms imposed from above.
The Federal Republic even celebrated the protests, even if most German citizens probably had no idea why they had June 17 off.
The malice poured out on the 16 master craftsmen from Saxony-Anhalt who dared to have their own opinion about the sanctions against Russia and even complain about it is also typical of West German bourgeoisie.
One could conclude from this that the sanctions might need to be better explained.
The net made "Putintrolle" out of the craftsmen.
You can also see the social importance of craftsmen today.
No wonder nobody wants to learn the trade anymore.
The sentence from the letter that people fear for their prosperity was ridiculed, probably because many people still don't understand how big the fractures, or fractures, as sociologist Steffen Mau calls it, are in East Germany.
East Germans had a worse starting position in 1990 because they were poorer and faced a middle-class society.
In the past decades, they experienced not one, but two breaks: the post-reunification period and neoliberal globalization.
To this day, on average, they receive less wages for the same work, a lower pension, and have fewer assets.
Of course, they are more afraid of the consequences of the war than tend to be in the West.
But you can't make such a blanket statement either, because what is currently being construed as a possible East-West conflict
There is a new book that asks why West Germans are still so scornful and condescending towards East Germans after 30 years.
In many areas, new voices are heard, disadvantages are addressed, but it is still West German mainstream to laugh at East Germans.
And for a change, a West German author, Nicole Zepter, born in 1976, writes about it. Her book is called: "Who's still laughing about Zonen-Gaby?".
She analyzes that her generation has never dealt with and reflected on their own influences as West Germans.
To explain the West German view, she goes back to the 1950s and the Cold War, which shaped a black and white perception of "them" and "us".
She describes how, for example, there was general talk about the Eastern bloc,
as if there weren't big cultural, historical differences between Poles, Hungarians, Germans.
Like today from »the East Germans«.
At this point, one could also recall that it was the West Germans after 1945 who preferred a tie with the West to German unity.
There is a beautiful quote from Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer: "What lies to the east of the Elbe and Werra are Germany's unredeemed provinces.
Therefore the task is not reunification, but liberation.
The word reunification should finally disappear, it has already caused too much damage.« (July 20, 1952, »Rheinische Merkur«).
Germany's unredeemed provinces!
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Sabine Rennefanz
Finally, women and children: How crises challenge social justice
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At that time, the West Germans did not want German unity and even in 1990 the interest in the "brothers and sisters" was only briefly present.
Zepter writes how for most in the west the reunion meant nothing emotionally, life went on in 1990.
»You saw 'Wetten, dass...', went to raves, grew up, Berlin became a promising place of freedom, but the country outside the city limits was ignored.
The escapism and cynicism of the 1990s seems like a capitulation today.
West German reflection?
None!«
In her book, Zepter apologizes, but that's not necessary, not on such an individual level.
But it is a start to reflect on your own prejudices.
She has that ahead of others.