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30 years of German reunification, a path of joy and disappointment

Berlin (Germany), Oct 2 (EFE), (Camera: Rodrigo Zuleta).- In the 30 years since German reunification, which is being commemorated this Saturday, have been a path of joy, but also of disappointment for the promoters of a peaceful revolution in the former German Democratic Republic (DDR). The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, the high point of that revolution, remain forever in the collective memory.FOOTAGE OF STATEMENTS BY HISTORIAN HANNO HOCHMUTH, FROM THE LEIPZIG CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY HISTORYTRANSLATIONS:It is not easy as a historian to assess these things without falling into the trap of trying to determine as if they could have done things better. As a historian, you have to analyze why things happened the way they did, and I think that German unity was a completely special challenge for the two states and that in many respects it worked out very well, especially in terms of the social security of the people in the GDR. But in terms of cultural participation, social representation, especially among the elites, there were things that went wrong. And the result is that many East Germans do not feel represented in the united Germany.For many people, the disappointment began as early as 1990. When the monetary union was introduced in June 1990, products produced in the GDR lost interest overnight. They were no longer in demand, they could no longer be produced cheaply in the GDR. This led to the first waves of layoffs and rising unemployment even before reunification in the summer of 1990. That was the first thing that led to disappointments. The people who had taken to the streets in March 1989 and who had asked for German unity could not foresee these consequences.These disappointments grew in the 1990s and were articulated first and foremost by the PDS, the successor party to the SED, and were also brought into the parliamentary system in the Federal Republic of Germany. Today this unease about the process of transformation is expressed in a variety of ways. In the extra-parliamentary sphere with Pegida and Coronaprotesten, but also in the parliamentary sphere with the success of Afd, which in the new Länder achieved particularly high voting rates. But also through The Left, which managed to integrate the interests of the Germans in the East into the parliamentary system, in contrast to what the right-wing populists do.