![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Thomas-Klikauer.jpg\")
Source: private photo of author with East German army belt (3rd September 2025)<\/p>\nSource: private photo of author with East German army belt (3rd September 2025)<\/p>\n
Plenty has been written about East- and West-Germany<\/a> and about Wessies or West-Germans and Ossies or East-Germans. Much of this focuses on similarities and how to make East-Germany resembling West-Germany.<\/p>\n Historically, a lot of these writings emerged in the wake of Germany\u2019s re-unification<\/a> in 1990. Much of it is \u2013 rather copiously \u2013 repeated on every \u2013 10th, 20th, 30th, etc. \u2013 anniversaries.<\/p>\n Yet, there are \u2013 even after 35 years<\/a> of one unified Germany \u2013 substantial notable differences between East- and West-Germany.<\/p>\n Perhaps, the East is indeed (and also will) \u2013 remain different from the West. In virtually all of this, the West sets the standard against which East-Germany, and worse, East-Germans, are measured \u2013 by West-Germans, to add insult to injury.<\/p>\n Interestingly, West-Germany\u2019s population<\/a> grew by 10% between 1990 and 2022 while East-Germany\u2019s declined by 15%.<\/p>\n One might see this as a \u201cdemographic bleeding of East-Germany\u201d and a brain drain<\/a>. As a consequence, some areas in East-Germany are back to the population density of the year 1905.<\/p>\n Today, about 68 million (81.5%) are living in the West and 12.6 million in East-Germany (18.5%). In other words, East-Germany\u2019s population<\/a> is slightly less than that of Bavaria\u2019s. Worse, the city of Istanbul has more people than all of East-Germany.<\/p>\n Some of the East-West differences exist not just demographically, but also due to historical reasons. For one, Allied Forces converted West-Germany into a democracy in the years following the victory over Hitler\u2019s Nazis.<\/p>\n Meanwhile in East-Germany, a Stalinist<\/a> cover up created a kind of a one-party-dictatorship that was set up as a \u201cfa\u00e7ade democracy\u201d \u2013 with frequent but inconsequential elections, nevertheless.<\/p>\n In both cases, democracy came from above, and this is the key difference, West-Germans learned to live with democracy while East-Germans had no such luck.<\/p>\n In this context, many speak of an East-German \u201cdouble dictatorship\u201d \u2013 Nazism first and Stalinism later. Under both, East-Germans suffered. Formally, that ended in 1990, but traces of an anti-democratic tradition can still be detected in East-Germany today.<\/p>\n This has, at least partially, shaped the outlook of East-Germans and West-Germans. In the arrogant imagination of the Wessies<\/a>, Ossies<\/a> are depicted as \u201ceither communists or fascists\u201d, as \u201cbackward\u201d and \u201cnot ready for democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n Significantly, the key institution that converted East-Germany<\/a> into a marvellous lighthouse of capitalism with blooming<\/a> industrial landscapes (Kohl<\/a>) was the \u201cTreuhand<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n The Treuhand is seen by East-Germans as a \u201creckless destroyer of East-Germany\u201d while West-Germans still see it as a necessary force for good.<\/p>\n It was not only the Treuhand\u2019s mistreatment of East-Germans that implanted a feeling of being \u201csecond class citizens<\/a>\u201d. Recent surveys still found that 2\/3 of all East-Germans think they are \u201csecond class citizens\u201d.<\/p>\n It is made worse by the fact that almost 30% of East-Germans have been pushed into the precariat. This is much different from chancellor Kohl (CDU) promising \u201cblooming industrial landscapes\u201d \u2013 a lie<\/a> that got him, like his illegal dark money<\/a>, elected.<\/p>\n Beyond that, it appears as if the wall that once separated East and West, is now replaced by an inner-German \u201cfinancial wall\u201d \u2013 the wealthy here and the poor over there.<\/p>\n To add to all this, East-Germany has \u2013 most likely very deliberately during the western takeover \u2013 been denied the opportunity to create its own financial, managerial, administrative, cultural, and political elite<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even the de facto F\u00fchrer of the neo-fascist Ost-AfD is a Wessie or west-import: Bj\u00f6rn H\u00f6cke<\/a>. In short, the western elite moved eastward but the eastern elite hardly ever moved westward.<\/p>\n Worse, it took the better part of 30 years until the first Ossie<\/a> was assigned to Germany\u2019s supreme court \u2013 the Bundesverfassungsgericht<\/a>. The West had shut the door against their East-German cousins.<\/p>\n Worryingly, there was, and is, an overlaying of the East-German elite by West-Germany\u2019s elite<\/a> imported to the East to run businesses, factories, state administration, etc.<\/p>\n These Wessies, often in all their arrogance, are \u201ctransfer elites<\/a>\u201d. This too, aids the not all too wrong impression that East-Germans are second class citizens.<\/p>\n It does not get better when even top managers in companies in remote regions like Saxony maintain their prime place of residence in cosmopolitan Berlin. These travelling managers do not contribute to local life in Saxony. They are merely FIFO<\/a>s: fly in, fly out.<\/p>\n To make matters worse, the large westward move of East-Germany\u2019s non-elite population during the last 30 years left a very specific cohort of people behind.<\/p>\n The remaining population consists of the \u201cleft-behinders\u201d, the obsolete, Hilary Clinton\u2019s \u201cdeplorables<\/a>\u201d, the old, the less-educated, the white, and the male<\/a>. In some areas in East-Germany, 100 women face 115 men in the age group 20 to 29 years old.<\/p>\n Worse, in Thuringia\u2019s \u201cIlm county\u201d, for example, the imbalance<\/a> is 140-to-100. This is the \u201cdemographic masculinisation\u201d of East-Germany.<\/p>\n Intriguingly, this not only aides those who voted for the AfD but in the men-dominated AfD\u2019s East-German division, less then 20% are women.<\/p>\n The AfD is a party of reactionary, insecure, old, and frustrated men. These are concentrated in those regions labelled \u201cregions of frustration\u201d [Frustregionen<\/a>].<\/p>\n Not only for those trapped in such Frustregionen, but the issue of re-unification has also not ended. Meanwhile, West-Germans see it completely different. To them, German reunification is done.<\/p>\n Most illuminating is the fact that students from East-Germany who study at universities in West-Germany hold more positive attitudes towards migrants and refugees compared to students from East-Germany who study at East-Germans universities.<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, Merkel\u2019s 2015<\/a> intake of Syrian refugees has only deepened the East-vs.-West division. Linked to that is the fact that East-Germans are by far less fearful of the neo-fascist AfD compared to West-Germans.<\/p>\n In fact, East-Germans are strong supporters of the AfD while being fearful of the environmental Green party<\/a>. In the West, the exact opposite is the case.<\/p>\n All in all, it appears as if East-Germany is more than a geographical location<\/a>. It is historically, culturally, demographically, and politically very different from West-Germany \u2013 not just in terms of location.<\/p>\n Its social structure, demography, politics, and culture are different. Worse, there is a solidification \u2013 a Verkn\u00f6cherung<\/a> \u2013 in East-Germany. These structures are hardening. They become more and more inflexible.<\/p>\n Such a Verkn\u00f6cherung indicates that a freezing, congealing, and hardening can be seen since reunification. The West sees unification (West) or takeover<\/a> (East) as an improvement of East-Germany. Meanwhile, the East sees it as a takeover. The takeover generated feelings of powerlessness and impotence \u2013 a Verohnm\u00e4chtigung.<\/p>\n Much of this reaches back to the 1950s (West) and 1990s<\/a> (East). As for the West, the introduction of democracy in West-Germany was flanked by economic growth while something else emerged when democracy was introduced in East-Germany.<\/p>\n During the 1990s, the introduction of democracy in the East was flanked by massive job losses, economic insecurity, recession, de-industrialisation<\/a>, and a devaluation of life experiences, skills, and traditional professions. In short, democracy left a good mark in the West but a bad mark in the East.<\/p>\n Not unconnected to this is the fact that democratic political parties never really took root in East-Germany during the 1990s anywhere close to what had occurred in West-Germany during the 1950s. This, in turn, can be linked to a rather weak existence of what we know to be a civic society \u2013 defined by a free marketplace of ideas.<\/p>\n During the 1990s, this opened a non-democratic or even anti-democratic space which was, subsequently, filled by East-Germany\u2019s far right and adjacent Neo-Nazis. In many cases, this led to right-wing extremist and Neo-Nazi violence<\/a>.<\/p>\n Today, this period is known as the \u201cbaseball bat years<\/a>\u201d \u2013 violent and brutal skinheads, far right hooligans, and Neo-Nazis armed with baseball bats.<\/p>\n Some have even argued that the \u201cbaseball bat years<\/a>\u201d and the subsequent rise of the neo-fascist AfD represent a kind of East German revenge against a top-down political order imposed primarily from the West.<\/p>\n In other words, there has been a kind of defiance and recalcitrance against West-German elites. It runs under the slogan, \u201cwe will not have our country being destroyed by you\u201d.<\/p>\n Defending East-Germany against a perceived enemy aided a falling back onto familiar structures and old ways of thinking. It did not contribute to a political openness \u2013 something which is, to a significant degree, still lacking in East-Germany. Perhaps it is lacking ever since the 1990s.<\/p>\n What made all this even more problematic is the fact that East-Germany has virtually no \u201ccountry\u201d-wide quality newspaper<\/a> or news magazine. All of these \u2013 Frankfurter Rundschau, Tageszeitung, Handelsblatt, S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung, FAZ, Spiegel, Stern, Die Zeit, etc. \u2013 are located in the West.<\/p>\n Their headquarters are almost exclusively either in Frankfurt (Main), Munich, and Hamburg with the possible exception of cosmopolitan Berlin.<\/p>\n Worse, only between 2.5% to 4% of the readership of Germany\u2019s most important new publications, such as for example, the S\u00fcddeutsche, FAZ, and Spiegel are located in East-Germany<\/a>. As a consequence, East-Germans tend to rely on online platforms and, worse, right-wing filter bubbles for their \u201cnews\u201d.<\/p>\n This, as well as personal biographies through an upbringing in East-Germany virtually assured that many East-Germans still tend to not associate Hilter\u2019s Nazism with the Holocaust<\/a>, military attacks and the invasion of European neighbours, and Gestapo-style state terror.<\/p>\n Much of this aided a specific East-German<\/a> identity that remains different from West-Germany. What has made it worse is that, since the 1990s, such an Eastern identity was shaped by western domination and Eastern submission.<\/p>\n As a consequence, many East-Germans mix a certain nostalgia with an overtly romantic image of East-Germany. This unique phenomenon became known as \u201cOstalgia<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n Such feelings are supported by a widespread conviction to have suffered a \u201ccollective fate<\/a>\u201d after 1990 \u2013 a fate defined by feelings of a devaluation of East-German\u2019s life, of a de-recognition of one\u2019s experiences, the constant negativity, slander, discretisation, and defamation.<\/p>\n This has been made worse, by the derogative term \u201cOssie<\/a>\u201d steaming from the West, businesses preferring to hire Wessies as well as on Western media. All of this has created a specific East-German identity based on:<\/p>\n In any case, such an Ossie identity<\/a> can hardly exist without a mirroring Wessie-identity. However, the reference point and key norm setting element in that is the West \u2013 not the East.<\/p>\n Yet, 40% of all Ossies still see themselves as \u201cEast-Germans<\/a>\u201d rather than as \u201cGermans\u201d. such a distinct Ossie identity is based on, at least, four underlining elements:<\/p>\n Since reunification reaches back 35 years, it is not at all surprising to find that young East-Germans<\/a> have established an Ossie identity<\/a> disconnected to the former regime of state-socialism (1945-1990). Simultaneously, the proverbial \u201cwall in the mind\u201d [die Mauer im Kopf] that divides the East from the West is shrinking.<\/p>\n Predictably, the \u201cOssie-vs.-Wessie\u201d conflict is recognised by 61% of people in the West but only by 16% of East-Germans<\/a>. Worse, for Ossie, the West remains present and important. In turn, for Wessie, the East is largely irrelevant.<\/p>\n This also means that the \u201cEast-vs.-West<\/a>\u201d dichotomy is significant for Ossies<\/a> but not for Wessies. Plenty of people in the East see themselves as being the opposite to the progressive, enlightened, open, modern, forward-looking West.<\/p>\n In the mind of many Ossies<\/a>, the West is weak, lacks German virtues, is overly concerned with environmentalism. This sparked an intense dislike of Germany\u2019s Green party. Finally, the West is seen as being filled with migrants and refugees.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Wessies do not see the East in that way. Instead, the East is largely immaterial to a Wessie identity. As for an Ossie identity<\/a>, one of most important ideas is that,<\/p>\n \u201cthe West is how we <\/strong>[Ossies] do not want to be\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n Paradoxically, such attitudes are often represented by the neo-fascist AfD that regularly claims to represent \u201cthe East<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n This propaganda coup is done despite the fact, that the AfD\u2019s de facto boss and self-appointed leader of the AfD\u2019s East-German division \u2013 Bj\u00f6rn H\u00f6cke<\/a> \u2013 is a Wessie.<\/p>\n This seems to be inapt just as it was irrelevant that Adolf Hitler<\/a> was Austrian by birth and military rank, not German. Far right propaganda, then and today, can make such contradictions go away.<\/p>\n What also does not matter is that, during an AfD<\/a> rally in October 2022, an AfD apparatchik squawked \u201cEast! East! East-Germany!\u201d into a megaphone enticing the crowd to join in. The AfD apparatchik wasn\u2019t from East-Germany.<\/p>\n Instead, he was a party official from the West-German state of Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg. In all three cases, Hitler, H\u00f6cke, and the AfD-apparatchik from Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg, good far right populist propaganda can \u2013 usually \u2013 camouflage such contradictions.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, AfD propaganda<\/a> has also been successful in trumping up resentment through repeatedly alluding to the all to often issued slurs and insults against Ossie broadcasted by Wessies and turbo-charged by the hegemonic media power of West-Germany.<\/p>\n Unlike in the West, the AfD<\/a> has been vastly more successful in East-Germany. Worse, its East-German platoons are far more right-wing extremist.<\/p>\n All too often, this is spiced up by Nazi-styled language that uses, for example, the AfD\u2019s beloved \u201cv\u00f6lkische\u201d. This is the coded language for Aryan to AfD followers, right-wing extremists, and adjacent Neo-Nazis, Meanwhile, it simply is the \u201cVolk<\/a>\u201d \u2013 as in people \u2013 for everyone else.<\/p>\n The AfD\u2019s membership in East-Germany reflects as much. While keeping in mind that Bavaria has more people than people living in East-Germany and that the AfD\u2019s overall membership has increased from 16,000 in 2015 to over 34,000 today, roughly half of all AfD members live in East-Germany. In other words, the AfD<\/a> is grossly overrepresented in East-Germany.<\/p>\n It might not come as a surprise that many strongholds of the neo-fascist AfD mirror the same geographical areas in which Hitler\u2019s Nazis<\/a> during the 1930s had already generated strong support.<\/p>\n Expectedly and not unlike Hitler\u2019s Nazis, support for the AfD<\/a> also shows a strong city-vs.-county divide. The AfD is strong in remote rural areas. In East-Germany, this is made worse by two factors: the westward move of the young and skilled and demography (an aging society). Put simply, these are geographical areas filled with old and frustrated men.<\/p>\n On the upswing, without East-German cities like Leipzig, Potsdam, Jena, Rostock, Magdeburg, Dresden, Halle, etc. Germany\u2019s environmentalist \u201cthe Greens<\/a>\u201d party would have been unlikely to ever enter a state parliament in East-Germany.<\/p>\n Less in East-German<\/a> cities but more in its regional areas, there seems to be a reluctance to the continuous demand for change. Some people simply grew tired of the many transformations demanded from them.<\/p>\n More than the West ever before, East-Germany<\/a> had to change rather fundamentally post-1990 and this, quite often on at an extremely rapid speed.<\/p>\n As a result, many East-Germans grew tired of the changes that came, for example, with new and unfamiliar people like migrants and refugees and new environmental demands. The former is exploited by the AfD while the latter works against the Greens<\/a>.<\/p>\n What was also exploited by the AfD was the fact that these demands not just came from above but also from the much-disliked West and still worse: the western elite. What emerged was a feeling of powerlessness<\/a> against the despised west and its elite.<\/p>\n Virtually all of this facilitated the ascent of the AfD in East-Germany<\/a> where, unlike in the West, democratic political parties had neither a long history nor were part of East-Germany\u2019s civic society.<\/p>\n As a result, elections are still marked not by returning customers but by voters looking for a quick bargain \u2013 those with the loudest (i.e. right-wing populist) megaphone.<\/p>\n This advantaged the neo-fascist AfD and disadvantaged Germany\u2019s democratic political parties. It also undeniably masked that the actual policies proposed by the AfD would disadvantage those who vote for the AfD.<\/p>\n Even the powerful and pro-business economic research institute, the DIW<\/a>, noted this in a report entitled, \u201cThe AfD Paradox: The main victims of AfD politics would be their own voters\u201d [Das AfD-Paradox: Die Hauptleidtragenden der AfD-Politik w\u00e4ren ihre eigenen W\u00e4hler<\/a>].<\/p>\n Strangely, and this is unlike Italy\u2019s Berlusconi, Hungary\u2019s Orban, India\u2019s Modi, Brazil\u2019s Bolsonaro, and, of course, Donald Trump, Germany\u2019s AfD has no charismatic leader<\/a>. Instead:<\/p>\n Despite this, the AfD still holds a monopoly on far-right mobilisation when it coms to anti-refugee riots (Hoyerswerda<\/a>, etc.) to PEGIDA (run by petty-criminal and right-wing fanatic Lutz Bachmann<\/a>), to anti-COVID-19 rallies (organised by anti-Vaxxers and conspiracy fantasts<\/a>), to today\u2019s AfD rallies.<\/p>\n Yet, the massive anti-AfD rallies that occurred, even in East-Germany, in early 2024 and in the wake of a secretive AfD-plus-Neo-Nazis meeting on remigration<\/a> [the code for ethnic cleansing], showed that this monopoly is not unassailable.<\/p>\n On the downside, what the AfD has achieved is a process of de-civilisation of political and social debates and conflicts in Germany. Germany\u2019s political culture has changed as arguments have been replaced by shouting matches, insults, assaults, and threats directed against democratic politicians.<\/p>\n The impact of this is worse in East-Germany. It still does not have a robust social-moral as well as the social-cultural sophistication found in modern democratic societies.<\/p>\n This benefits the AfD. Perhaps, it does so more in Saxony \u2013 the geographical home of Dunkeldeutschland<\/a> \u2013 than other East-German states. In 2023, Saxony\u2019s main public polling institution, the \u201cSachsen Monitor<\/a>\u201d, reported that:<\/p>\n Not only based on these number and not only in Saxony, but East-Germany has created a political (un)culture that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n Worse, many of Germany\u2019s long established democratic political parties \u2013 the social-democratic SPD, the neoliberal FDP, and the environmentalist Greens party \u2013 play an ever-diminished role in rural East-Germany<\/a>. In many rural and remote areas, these parties have shrunk to the status of being inconsequential miniature parties.<\/p>\n In the end, democracy is severely challenged in East-Germany. Worse, what has emerged during the last 35 years and what might be called an \u201cOssie identity<\/a>\u201d does not seem to be encouraging for democracy.<\/p>\n Yet not all is lost in East-Germany<\/a>. For one, the anti-AfD mass rallies in early 2024 have shown that the propagandistic victories of the AfD can be contested \u2013 even in East-Germany<\/a>.<\/p>\n Subscribe to Our Newsletter<\/p>\n Get the latest CounterCurrents updates delivered straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n Thomas Klikauer<\/strong>\u00a0has over 800 publications (including 12 books) and writes regularly for BraveNewEurope (Western Europe), the Barricades (Eastern Europe), Buzzflash (USA), Counterpunch (USA), Countercurrents (India), Tikkun (USA), and ZNet (USA). One of his books is on Managerialism (2013).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Source: private photo of author with East German army belt (3rd September 2025) Plenty has been written about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-399462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115150663389113327","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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