Day of German Unity: With placebos against continued division

The Federal Government's Eastern Representative Elisabeth Kaiser (SPD) begins her annual report on the status of German unity with unusual empathy. It's about very average needs and life concerns such as infrastructure, income and pensions, about opportunities for advancement and building a reasonably secure existence. The indirectly acknowledged need to catch up in the East is intended to be alleviated by eager dialogues, “You are not alone” initiatives and stimulating competitions such as “make”. The first third of the 122-page report therefore records discussions about equal opportunities and the still noticeable characteristics of East Germans.

The first is a dialogue between celebrities, the medal-winning boxer Axel Schulz (57) and “Tatort” actor Martin Brambach (58). They reach a sentence that Elisabeth Kaiser avoids wordily in her long introduction. Brambach describes the years of upheaval after 1990 as an “extremely bitter lesson in capitalism”. The East Commissioner, who was born three years before the fall of communism, could not have perceived such a situation.

And which SPD member still has Marxist-analytical knowledge? Back then, everyone knew the basic law of capitalism, even without a socialist school: “The devil always shits on the biggest pile!” Biblical scholars more elegantly quoted the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25: "For to him who has, it will be given to him, and he will have abundance; but to him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away."

But you have to give Comrade Kaiser some idea of ​​this. “It's about improving the conditions so that people can do something more for themselves,” is how she describes her task. This would have enabled her to get Brecht as a co-author. “But the conditions are not like that!” says the Threepenny Opera. Anyone who kept their ears open during the recent election campaigns could often hear criticism of capitalism from citizens.

The extensive Germany Monitor reads like a proof of justification for such feelings of deprivation and material deprivation as the most informative part of the Eastern report. Even after 36 years of formal state unity, the statistically recorded differences in wealth remain serious. The average total net assets of a household in western Germany are “only” twice as high as in the east at 257,100 euros.

The differences are somewhat smaller when it comes to capital market ownership and capital life insurance, and somewhat larger when it comes to real estate assets. In the average East German household that is 97,800 euros. While the individual “Ossi” inherits or receives a gift of 400 euros on average per year, a West German receives four times as much.

It was clear from the start that, given extremely different starting conditions in 1990, the creation of an economic basis for value creation and thus an equalization of material living conditions would only be possible through state redistribution. This was taken into account with the two solidarity pacts, which will continue to decline until 2019. To this day the legend persists that it was a matter of West German mercy.

But the first Saxon Prime Minister Kurt Biedenkopf, the economics professor Ulrich Blum (and also taz research) proved that German unity was roughly a zero-sum game: the reinforcement of the West by around 1.2 million emigrated GDR citizens with a simultaneous enormous increase in the market for Western products, insurance transfers or the profits at the companies and corporations' headquarters, which were mostly located in the West, compensated for the state transfers to the East.

Another merit of the monitor is that it not only asks about earnings, but also about mental advancement and status desires. These are not so pronounced in the East; the “desire for a balanced life” also counts equally. The extent to which capitulation to the promise of promotion that has not been fulfilled remains an open question. Because only two thirds of those surveyed in the East believe in the importance of performance and hard work, significantly more in the role of wealth, relationships and social background.

The Eastern Commissioner avoided addressing the “Future Center for German Unity” planned in Halle. The perceived need in the East for such a placebo is kept within narrow limits, while the expected costs are exploding. In parallel to the standard report, the Taxpayers' Association criticized the amount, which had temporarily increased to 277 million euros. “Keep moving” is how Elisabeth Kaiser titles her report in an unintentionally ironic way. The directional arrow on the title page points to the right.