On February 24, in the plenary hall of the German Bundestag, the journalist Heribert Prantl stood at the podium to deliver a memorial address. The occasion was the state funeral of Rita Süssmuth—former President of the Bundestag, long-time CDU minister, feminist inside a party that wasn’t sure it wanted one. She had died three weeks earlier, at 88. And she had personally requested Prantl as her speaker.

The hall was full of the usual dignitaries. But one face, somewhere in the audience, was harder to miss than others.

Prantl spoke with the warmth and precision of someone who had known his subject well. He called Süssmuth a Wegbereiterin - a pathfinder. He described how she had fought patriarchal structures inside the CDU with what he called “sovereign obstinacy.” And then he said it, the sentence that made the news:

Angela Merkel, sitting in the audience, heard this. And she smiled. A small, slightly surprised smile. I’ve been thinking about that smile ever since.

It was a gracious smile, to be sure. A smile of gratitude and acknowledgment. But I think there was something else in it too. Something more complicated. Because the claim Prantl was making, generous as it was, and true in one important sense, was also, in another sense, a very West German story about how Angela Merkel happened.

There is, to be fair, a concrete thread between the two women that goes beyond symbolism. In 1985, Rita Süssmuth became Federal Minister for Youth, Family and Health. The following year, her ministry was expanded to include women’s affairs, making her the first head of a dedicated women’s portfolio in West German government.

When reunification reshuffled the cabinet, that ministry was split. In January 1991, a 36-year-old physicist from the former GDR walked into the newly created Ministry for Women and Youth. It was Angela Merkel’s first cabinet post. She was, in a structural sense, stepping into institutional space that Süssmuth had carved out.

Helmut Kohl, who gave her the job, called her Kohls Mädchen - Kohl’s girl. The condescension in the nickname, intended or not, is its own small chapter in West German political culture. So yes: the thread is real. Prantl’s claim holds. And yet.

Angela Merkel did not happen because of the CDU’s slow, contested, often grudging path toward accepting women in its ranks—however real and hard that path was. Angela Merkel happened, in large part, because she came from the East.

This is not a small detail. It is, I would argue, the central one. And it opens a question worth sitting with on this particular day: was East Germany really more emancipated—for women—than the West? The research says yes. The data is compelling. And yet, as with most things that look clean from a distance, the closer you look, the more interesting - and ambiguous, too - it becomes.

Today is March 8. I don't usually mark the calendar: Beyond Berlin is not that kind of publication, and I have limited patience for one-day-a-year solidarity. But this question feels right for today, precisely because it resists the easy version. It is not a celebration. It is not a complaint. It is a look eastward, as this blog tends to do, at a history that keeps turning out to be more complicated, and more instructive, than the official story allows.

Two Germanies, two models

Let’s start with the law, because the law is the starkest place to start.

In 1948 and 1949, four women sat in the Parliamentary Council in Bonn writing the West German Basic Law among sixty-one male colleagues and fought for a sentence. The men had not planned to change much. A family law textbook published at almost exactly the same moment described the legal status quo with clinical precision: the husband determines "the nature and extent of household expenditure, the running of domestic life, the upbringing of the children, place of residence and home." He has "authority over the wife's assets." He may terminate his wife's employment "if marital interests are impaired." The wife, in the language of the time, had the Folgepflicht: the duty to follow.

The first draft of the equality clause in the Parliamentary Council wanted to leave things more or less there — proposing only that men and women have "the same civic rights and duties." Language that had already appeared in the Weimar Constitution of 1919. No advance at all.

Those four women — the Social Democrats Elisabeth Selbert and Friederike Nadig, the Centre Party's Helene Wessel, and the CDU's Helene Weber — pushed through something different. The sentence that ended up in the Basic Law was short and almost shockingly clear:

Not just civic rights: the entire legal order. Family law. Labour law. All of it.

The vote, after fierce argument, was unanimous. Prantl, in his speech for Süssmuth, called these women the Mütter des Grundgesetzes—the Mothers of the Basic Law—and Süssmuth, he said, their late fifth.

And then the West German legislature proceeded, for the next decade, to largely ignore what they had written.

The first equality law did not come into force until 1958. And even that was hedged: a woman could work, yes—but only insofar as it was "compatible with her duties in marriage and family." The husband remained, in law, the Oberhaupt der Familie. The head of the household. The last word. It took until 1977 - nineteen more years, and a social-liberal coalition - for his right to veto his wife's employment to disappear entirely. July 1, 1977: the Hausfrauenehe, the housewife marriage as legal template, was finally abolished.

In East Germany, the GDR had enshrined full professional equality for women in law in 1950.

The GDR's Article 7, written into its very first constitution in 1949, was unambiguous:

The 1968 constitution went further still, naming not just equal rights but active state obligation: to promote women's professional qualification, and to guarantee the compatibility of work and family life.

On paper, the contrast with the West could hardly be sharper. In Bonn, four women had fought to insert equality into the Basic Law — and the legislature had spent the next decade finding ways around it. In East Berlin, equality was written into the founding document and backed, at least structurally, by the machinery of the state.

The cynical reading may be that this was economics dressed up as ideology. The GDR needed every available body in the workforce. Women were not emancipated out of enlightenment, some say; they were mobilised out of necessity. Both things can be true simultaneously.

And in the GDR, the gap between constitutional promise and daily reality was, as always, considerable: the zweite Schicht, the second shift of housework and childcare, remained stubbornly female, the Politburo remained stubbornly male, and the glass ceiling above a certain altitude was as thick in Leipzig as anywhere.

But for the texture of ordinary life - the right to work, the infrastructure to make it possible, the legal standing to exist as an economic person without a husband’s permission - the difference was real, and it was not small.

The state had built a comprehensive network of nurseries and kindergartens, free and full-day. It had introduced the Babyjahr - a paid year of leave after childbirth - and even a monthly Haushaltstag, a paid day off each month specifically to manage housework. Women earned their own pensions. They did not need a husband’s permission to open a bank account, sign a contract, or keep their jobs.

Those who worked often faced a tax and childcare system that explicitly incentivized part-time arrangements. And those who chose a career while raising children risked something worse than legal obstacles: the social label Rabenmutter. The raven mother — a bad mother, in German folklore. It is not a neutral word.1

The Abortion Law and what it revealed

If the labor statistics show you the economic picture, the abortion debate shows you something rawer: what the two states really thought about women’s bodies and women’s autonomy.

In the GDR, the 1972 Fristenregelung made abortion legal on demand within the first twelve weeks, alongside free access to contraception.

It is, as a historical footnote, the only law the GDR People’s Chamber ever passed with dissenting votes—fourteen against, eight abstentions. That a law granting women autonomy over their own bodies was the most contested vote in a rubber-stamp parliament is its own kind of commentary. But it passed. And it held.

When reunification came, East German women found themselves subject to West German law. Paragraph 218 technically classified abortion as illegal—it simply exempted it from punishment under specific conditions. For women who had spent nearly twenty years with a settled right, this was not an abstraction. Anke Domscheit-Berg, who became a prominent voice in the post-reunification debate, put it plainly: "We felt transported back to the Stone Age."2

That sentence has stayed with me because it reveals a paradox Germany has never quite confronted. Reunification arrived as a promise of freedom. For East German women, in at least this one precise sense, it delivered the opposite. The liberal democracy absorbed them—and quietly revoked a right the dictatorship had granted.

The congress that went wrong

Perhaps the most revealing moment of what reunification actually meant for women came not in a parliament but in a sports hall.

In 1990, the First All-German Women’s Congress took place in East Berlin’s Dynamo-Sporthalle. It should have been a moment of solidarity—the two halves of a divided country’s women’s movement finally meeting. It was, by most accounts, a vicious dispute.

West German feminists - the Emanzen, as they were disparagingly called in the East, the man-haters, the theorizers - looked at East German women and saw what they called emancipation “from above”: granted by a dictatorial state, not fought for from below. Worse, they pointed out, correctly, that East German women still did the majority of the housework. They worked their 43-hour weeks at the factory or the office and then came home to the zweite Schicht, the second shift, because the GDR had never quite managed to automate domestic life at the pace of the West, and because equality at work had not translated into equality at home.

East German women looked back and saw something different. They saw women who were still fighting for rights they had simply always had. The right to work. The right to divorce: two-thirds of GDR divorces, notably, were initiated by women. The right to childcare that was guaranteed, not conditional on income or luck. Ulrike Helwerth, who documented the collision, summarized the mutual projections with painful accuracy: West women were “arrogant, know-it-alls.” East women were “adjusted, homely Muttis, male-fixated and not at all radical.”3

Both portraits were caricatures.
Both contained a grain of something real.

The Ostfrau between myth and reality

Here is where it gets complicated, and deserves an honest view.

The GDR’s emancipation of women was real—in the law, in the numbers, in the everyday texture of life. But it was not born from a feminist movement. It was born from economic necessity. A centrally planned economy needed every body in the workforce. Women were incorporated into the labor market not because the state was enlightened about gender equality, but because it needed them there.

This is not a reason to dismiss the outcome. Laws that begin as pragmatism often outlast their original logic and become something else—habit, identity, expectation, right. That is exactly what happened. But it does mean that the GDR’s emancipation had a specific shape: it was strong at the economic surface and weak in the interior. Women worked, and they worked fully, and they were paid independently. But they were also exhausted. The second shift was real. And where it really counted—in the upper echelons, in the leadership, in the rooms where decisions were made—men still sat.

Angela Merkel herself said it, in one of the most quietly devastating summations of the GDR’s gender record:4

She was thinking of the Politburo. She was thinking of the Kombinatsleiter—the directors of the great state-owned industrial combines. She was thinking of the party itself, which spoke constantly of equality and practiced it selectively.

The historian Annette Schuhmann, in her 2025 book Wir sind anders! Wie die DDR Frauen bis heute prägt (“We Are Different! How East Germany Still Shapes Women Today”), does something important with this complexity: she refuses both the celebration and the dismissal.

She interviewed thirteen women across generations—some born before the GDR was founded, some born after it collapsed—and found that the myth of the Ostfrau is just that: a myth. Not because the differences aren't real, but because the differences are far more varied, far more internally contradictory, than either version of the story admits.

The GDR, Schuhmann argues, was a shared Erfahrungsraum, a space of experience, but within it, women navigated that space very differently. There were the Systemträger, the women integrated into the state apparatus, whose biographies were tied to the preservation of the socialist order. And there were the Systemkritiker, who maintained private convictions while performing outward conformity. Between them, an entire spectrum of compromise and resistance. What they shared was not ideology but the daily reality of negotiating a state that watched, that rewarded, that punished, and that—on the matter of women's labor—happened to be structurally on their side.

So: the Ostfrau was more emancipated than her western counterpart in the ways that shape daily life—work, income, childcare, legal standing, the unremarkable expectation that a woman earns her own living. That is not nothing. That is, in fact, quite a lot. But she was not emancipated in the ways that lead to power. And the feminism that accompanied her was not a political movement, because political movements were not permitted. It was, as one researcher has put it, a feminism without a feminist vocabulary.

Which is perhaps why Sybille, a woman from Erfurt, said what she said, simply and completely: ”If I cannot support myself, then I am not emancipated.” Not: if I cannot vote. Not: if I cannot march. If I cannot support myself.5

It is a definition of freedom built from a specific experience—one that is harder to argue with than most of the theory produced on either side of the wall.

What reunification did

The story did not end in 1990. In some ways, it got harder.

East German women were frequently described, in the years following reunification, as the Verliererinnen der Wende: the losers of the transition. Massive deindustrialisation hit the East far harder than the West, and it hit women with particular force. Unemployment in the early 1990s ran at nearly double the rate for women compared to men in the eastern states. The childcare infrastructure, that great inheritance from the GDR, began to erode, as the financing model of a unified Germany struggled to accommodate eastern realities.

One of Schuhmann’s portraits deserves a closer look. A woman she calls Heidi—a Kulturfunktionärin, a culture administrator in the state apparatus, a convinced socialist—found herself dismissed almost overnight after the Wende. Her husband, the local mayor, lost his position too. What made the humiliation concrete was a small, absurd detail: a Western woman, impeccably dressed, mocked her coat. An ordinary light-blue coat, East German production. The mockery—what Schuhmann captures as the Siegermanier, the victor’s attitude—turned the coat into a symbol. Not just of poverty, but of worthlessness. Of being, suddenly, nothing.

Heidi’s response? Within eight weeks, she and her husband had founded their own company. The pragmatism is almost shocking in its speed. But it is also, Schuhmann suggests, entirely characteristic—the Macher-mentality, the doer reflex, that the GDR had actually trained into its women whether it intended to or not.

And yet something persisted beyond pragmatism. The Ostseele - the East soul - proved more durable than the factories. The women who had been socialized in the GDR took their professional identity with them into the new reality. Participation rates remained higher in the East than the West throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, even under conditions of scarcity.

The expectation that a woman works—not part-time, not as supplement, but as full participant—survived the system that had installed it.

A 2025 study of mid-sized German firms found that the regions with the highest share of women in management positions are still overwhelmingly in the East—Frankfurt an der Oder, Brandenburg, Saxony. The regions with the lowest are mostly in North Rhine-Westphalia. The researchers traced this not to some abstract cultural inheritance, but to three very concrete factors: female employment rates, childcare availability, and—crucially—the proportion of fathers taking parental leave. The last point is not a coincidence. The eastern states are not just more accustomed to women working. They are, incrementally, more accustomed to men doing their share of the rest.6

Today, tomorrow

I want to end somewhere personal, because this is not just a history essay.

I have lived in Berlin for years. I have friends from both sides of the old divide—from Leipzig and Dresden on one side, from Cologne and Hamburg on the other. And I notice something that I find difficult to describe without sounding reductive, so I will try to be precise.

When I talk to women who grew up in the East, especially those who are old enough to remember both, or whose mothers remember both, there is something in how they talk about work. It is not ambition in the Western, individualistic sense. It is more like bedrock. Work is not a choice being made against competing options. It is what you do, because you are a person, and persons support themselves. The alternative—financial dependency, a life organised around someone else’s income—is not just undesirable. It feels, to many of them, like a kind of disappearance.

Women from the West often take longer to arrive at that same conviction, if they arrive at it at all — and some who do eventually leave it behind. Often my generation. Often in prosperous regions like Bayern or Baden-Württemberg, where the financial case for stepping back is easy to make, and the social case even easier.

The structural incentives of West Germany's tax system, especially the Ehegattensplitting, the joint taxation arrangement that financially rewards one full earner and one part-timer, still quietly reward the old model. So does the school day, in many western parts of the country, which still ends at lunchtime and implicitly assumes there is someone at home.

What strikes me most, though, is this: neither side talks about it much. The younger generations especially—those born after 1985, who did not live through the division—often genuinely do not know this history. They do not know that their grandmothers in the East had rights their grandmothers in the West were still fighting for. They do not know about Paragraph 218, or the Hausfrauenehe, or the congress in the Dynamo-Sporthalle where two groups of women looked at each other and failed to find common ground.

The divide has been papered over. And in some quarters, there is active pressure to keep it that way.

Earlier this year, the Berlin City Senate proposed reducing the number of compulsory history semesters in secondary schools—a reform that would have allowed students to stop studying history after the National Socialist period, making the GDR, the division, and the Wende effectively optional. The outcry was immediate: historians, memorial sites, educators. The Senate backed down, partly. But the instinct had been revealed. The GDR as something you get to skip if you’re not interested. The eastern half of German history as an appendix.

It is in this context that two books matter—not just as reading recommendations, but as necessary corrections.

Schuhmann's Wir sind anders! (“We Are Different!”, 2025) insists on the biographical specificity of East German women: not the myth, not the caricature, not the demographic category, but the actual texture of thirteen actual lives. If you read German, it is essential.

And then there is Drei ostdeutsche Frauen betrinken sich und gründen den idealen Staat (“Three East German Women Get Drunk and Found the Ideal State”, 2024): a book whose title alone earns a moment of pause. Three East German women get drunk and found the ideal state.

Written by Annett Gröschner, Peggy Mädler, and Wenke Seemann, it is part collective memoir, part political provocation, part comedy born from exhaustion. The title is funny. It is also not joking. These are women who have watched their history be minimized, their experience be condescended to, their specific knowledge of how states fail and people persist be treated as quaint. So they get drunk and found one themselves.

Back in the Bundestag, on February 24, Prantl’s tribute to Süssmuth was generous and deserved. She was remarkable. She did pave paths, within the CDU and within West German political culture, that mattered. His sentence about Merkel was not wrong, exactly. It just told one part of the story.

The other part - the part where a woman born in Hamburg, raised in the Uckermark, who studied physics at Leipzig University and took her doctorate in quantum chemistry at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin, walked into the chaos of reunification politics and found it considerably less intimidating than the men around her expected - that part also deserves its telling.

Germany still has work to do on women. Everyone knows this. But Germany also has work to do on understanding itself.

On understanding that the East is not a historical footnote, a curiosity, a wound to be managed. That it produced, among other things, a specific model of female independence that the West might have more to learn from than it has been willing to admit.

The East German Woman Was More Emancipated. Wasn’t She?

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How four decades of divided history still shapes German women today — and why the conversation is overdue.

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Bibliography

Primary sources & speeches

• Prantl, H., memorial address for Rita Süssmuth, state funeral, Bundestag, February 24, 2026. bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2026/kw09-staatsakt-rede-prantl-1149382

• Domscheit-Berg, A., statement in Bundestag debate on §218/219a, February 2019

• Merkel, A., interview in Die Zeit, 2019/05. zeit.de/2019/05/angela-merkel-bundeskanzlerin-cdu-feminismus-lebensleistung/seite-2

Academic studies

• Welch, N., Ahrens, J.-P. & Block, J., “Regional labor market integration of women and the share of women in management: are family firms different?”, Review of Regional Research, February 19, 2025

• Destatis, Mikrozensus 2024, Pressemitteilung Nr. N007, January 30, 2026

Books

• Helwerth, U. & Schwarz, G., Von Muttis und Emanzen — Feministinnen in Ost- und Westdeutschland, 1995

• Schuhmann, A., Wir sind anders! Wie die DDR Frauen bis heute prägt [We Are Different! How the GDR Still Shapes Women Today], Hoffmann & Campe, 2025

• Gröschner, A., Mädler, P. & Seemann, W., Drei ostdeutsche Frauen betrinken sich und gründen den idealen Staat [Three East German Women Get Drunk and Found the Ideal State], 2024

Archives & online sources

• Digitales Deutsches Frauenarchiv, dossier “30 Jahre geteilter Feminismus”: digitales-deutsches-frauenarchiv.de/angebote/dossiers/30-jahre-geteilter-feminismus/als-frauen-aus-ost-und-west-aufeinandertrafen

• MDR Wissen, “Im Osten sind mehr Frauen in Führungspositionen als im Westen,” March 7, 2025

Yet not everyone joined in the festivities. The constitution, ratified in Bonn on 8 May 1949, was originally conceived as a temporary measure—an interim solution until the German people could eventually reunite as a single state.

Article 146 of the Grundgesetz, which remains in effect today, states: "This Basic Law, which applies to the entire German people following the achievement of German unity and freedom, shall cease to be valid on the day a constitution freely adopted by the German people comes into force."1

However, a new constitution never materialised.

In 1989–90, events outpaced politics. Free elections in the GDR favoured parties supporting immediate accession to West Germany. This accession became possible through Article 23 of the Western Constitution, which permitted new Länder to join—as had occurred with Saarland in 1957 when it chose Germany over France—thereby adopting the existing Basic Law.

This approach offered a quick solution to seize the historical moment, particularly since many nations—including Italy—were wary of a reunified Germany. On 23 August 1990, the first and only freely elected parliament of the GDR voted for accession under Article 23. Rather than a true Wiedervereinigung (reunification between equals), it resembled an Übernahme—a takeover. Some would characterise it as nearly an annexation.

Many still consider it the original sin: a provisional constitution, written in the West and then imposed on the East, later transformed into a definitive one.

From that point onward, the East German population felt excluded from political parties, businesses, universities, and the distribution of wealth. This exclusion became the foundation of a divide that still marks the country today.2

This division extends far beyond election polls or headlines about the AfD's rising popularity. It cannot be simplified to a graph. The divide runs deeper: unprocessed traumas, broken promises, and emerging fears. According to historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk3, freedom itself was a shock for many East Germans. Additionally, different cultural imprints remain influential: in the East, socialist education and ties with Soviet Russia have left lasting marks, while in the West, the cultural compass has remained Atlantic and American. This fundamental difference helps explain why, even today, attitudes toward Russia and Ukraine divide Germans more profoundly than outside observers might realize.

In less than a month, on 3 October, Germany will celebrate the 35th anniversary of reunification.

It might seem like a distant event, ready to fade into history amidst official speeches and ceremonial wreaths. But quite the opposite is true. Spirits are high, discussions heated, and symbols that should unite the nation are resurfacing—often only to reveal lingering divisions.

Since the 2006 World Cup, the German flag has become normalised in public life. Today, it's even wielded in an anti-AfD context as a symbol of 'clean' patriotism, distinguishing mainstream Germans from far-right supporters. Meanwhile in the East, you can still spot the old GDR flag with its hammer and sickle, compass and wheat ears—though it now represents folklore more than political conviction.

The anthem, however, tells a completely different story.

It's a thorny issue. On closer inspection, Germany has at least five anthems: the original from 1841 with three verses; the Nazi version reduced to a single verse and used as an ideological weapon; the "cleaned up" version adopted by the Federal Republic in the 1950s, consisting of just the least controversial verse; the GDR anthem, celebrating peace and friendship between peoples (provided they were socialist); and finally, the ghost that has haunted Germany since reunification—the anthem many would have preferred: a poem by Bertolt Brecht with simple words suitable for children yet perfect for adults.

The debate on the national anthem has resurfaced in Germany this past week. As usual, it emerges in the lead-up to every German anniversary.

“Numerous East Germans refrain from singing the national anthem for a variety of reasons.”

Bodo Ramelow said it in 2019 and has repeated it today. Until the end of 2024, he served as the beloved Minister-President of Thuringia and is now Vice-President of the Bundestag. A West German who chose to move to the East, with an Italian wife, Ramelow remains one of the most popular figures in Die Linke, Germany's left-wing party.

According to him, 'many East Germans, for various reasons, do not sing the national anthem'. He believes that an old proposal from East Berlin's civic movements is now more relevant than ever – to give reunified Germany a new anthem by reviving the Kinderhymne, or 'Children's Hymn', a poem set to music by Bertolt Brecht.

Just as six years ago, Ramelow has brought upon himself what in contemporary German parlance is called a "shitstorm." Critics have held nothing back: accusing him of overstepping his role as vice-president of the Bundestag, stirring up emotions, and applying the standard label of modern public discourse—'populist.' (And in Germany, as elsewhere, we now brand anyone we disagree with as a populist.)

But is his proposal truly so absurd?

The German anthem: a complex and controversial history.

Most national anthems emerged in the mid-19th century during the era of liberal revolutions, anti-imperial movements, and the so-called 'Spring of Nations'.

While often portrayed as a period of progress, this was in fact an ambiguous time. Every nation-building process contains the seeds of nationalism, and each nationalist movement harbours the potential for minority oppression. This fertile ground is where fascism eventually took root.

Nations are born in opposition to tyranny and imperial control. Yet they frequently transform into the very empires and tyrannies they once opposed. Their anthems travel with them, shifting in meaning as times change.

In 1841, on Helgoland, an island in the North Sea, August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben penned what would become the German national anthem. A young liberal and romantic poet in exile, he opposed the feudal-minded German princes and dreamed of a free, united, democratic Germany.

Perched on a cliff, he composed "Das Lied der Deutschen" (The Song of the Germans). Though a poet and not a musician, he paired his lyrics with his favorite melody—the one Joseph Haydn had composed for Austrian Emperor Francis II.

This created a fascinating paradox: a German national hymn set to the music of an imperial, supranational anthem. Yet history is full of such contradictions, and Haydn's composition is undeniably beautiful.

The combination of lyrics and melody quickly gained popularity, partly because the poem was intended to be sung in taverns frequented by students and intellectuals. It celebrated not only Germany, but also life itself—and women.

First part

Deutschland, Deutschland über alles…

“Germany, Germany above all: above all in the world, when for protection and defence it remains united in brotherhood, from the Meuse to the Memel, from the Etsch to the Belt – Germany, Germany above all, above all in the world!”4

Questa è la parte che è rimasta nella memoria collettiva europea. Per pessimi motivi.

Second part

Deutsche Frauen, deutsche Treue, deutscher Wein und deutscher Sang…

“German women, German loyalty, German wine and German song may retain their ancient beauty throughout the world, inspiring us to noble deeds throughout our lives - German women, German loyalty, German wine and German song!”5

A hymn to the “Made-in-Germany”, more joyful than nationalistic: women, wine, music. Different from Johann Strauss II's waltz Wein, Weib und Gesang ('Wine, Women and Song'). But that was Austrian. A different lifestyle. (And, let's face it, better wine too).

Third part

Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit…

“Unity, justice and freedom for the German fatherland! To this we must all aspire, fraternally with heart and hand! Unity, justice and freedom are the pledge of happiness - flourish in the splendour of this happiness, flourish, German fatherland!”6

Unity, justice and freedom—the pledge of happiness. A song that could have suited not just Germany, but also Italy, Poland and Greece. It captured the spirit of the times.

In 1922, the fragile yet luminous Weimar Republic adopted this song as its official anthem, including all three verses.

It embodied proud nationalism and the joy of living that people sought to reclaim after the Great War. Unity was essential in a Europe newly redesigned by the victors.

Weimar was both tragic and beautiful, remarkable for its art, creativity and social progress. Yet it ended disastrously. Even today, the word 'Weimar' evokes fear—an echo of collapse and a warning of history that might repeat itself.

The Nazis, who emerged from Munich's beer halls, truncated the song.

They removed references to women and wine, keeping only the first stanza: 'Deutschland über alles.' They transformed its meaning from 'Germany above all in our hearts' to 'Germany above all others'—a declaration of supremacy.

Haydn's melody, originally composed for an Austrian emperor, became the chilling soundtrack for SS parades. Repugnant. Consequently, that first verse has become toxic in German society—not officially prohibited, but entirely taboo.

When the Federal Republic was founded in 1949, the national symbols debate resurfaced.

The flag issue was resolved, but the anthem remained problematic. Attempts to create a new anthem failed. Konrad Adenauer, the post-war Chancellor, proposed a pragmatic solution: permanently remove the toxic first verse, discard the frivolous second verse about women, wine, and singing (inappropriate for the serious post-war climate), and retain only the third verse: 'Unity, justice and freedom'. This choice was perfect—democratic, non-threatening, and western in its values. It became the official anthem in 1950.

On the other side of the wall

The GDR seized this opportunity. While the West maintained what they considered an 'intoxicated' anthem—portraying them as continuing fascists—the East positioned itself as the only true anti-fascist state. Thus "Auferstanden aus Ruinen" (Risen from the Ruins) was born: three verses celebrating peace, reconstruction and youth.

First verses

Auferstanden aus Ruinen / und der Zukunft zugewandt…

"Risen from the ruins and facing the future, let us serve you for the good, Germany, united homeland. The old sufferings must be overcome, and we will overcome them together, because we must succeed in making the sun shine on Germany more brightly than ever before."7

"Risen from the ruins and facing the future..." This powerful and poetic rhetoric creates an admirable opening. It evokes the image of a Germany rising from the rubble and looking hopefully towards a united future.

Second verses

Alle Welt sehnt sich nach Frieden, reicht den Völkern eure Hand…

"May fortune and peace be granted to Germany, our homeland. The whole world longs for peace, reach out your hand to the peoples. When we unite in brotherhood, we defeat the enemy of the people. Let the light of peace shine, so that never again will a mother weep for her child."8

The GDR portrayed itself to the world as a 'state of peace'. The dove of peace was ubiquitous and remains visible today on many buildings in East Berlin. Behind this façade, however, lay the propaganda machinery of the Soviet bloc and, later, the GDR's role as an arms supplier to various regions of what we now call the 'Global South'. What kind of pacifism was this really?

Third verses

Laßt uns pflügen, laßt uns bauen, lernt und schafft wie nie zuvor…

“Plough, build, learn and create as never before, and trusting in your own strength, a free generation will arise. German youth, the best aspiration of our people united in you, you will become the new life of Germany. And the sun will shine on Germany more beautifully than ever before.”9

"Arbeiter, Bauern, und Intelligenz": workers, farmers, doctors, engineers... This was the fundamental concept of the GDR, where everyone would contribute with equal dignity to the reconstruction of the country. Young people would play a key role in this process—it was their task to make the sun shine on socialist Germany.

And then there is Brecht

Poet, playwright, free spirit. Brecht lives in the East out of conviction, not blind adherence. For him, neither the Western nor Eastern hymns work—too much toxicity in one, excessive rhetoric in the other.

So he creates an alternative: the Kinderhymne, the Children's Anthem.

Simple words crafted for children—because if children understand you, everyone does. The brilliance: it can be sung to Haydn's original melody. It begins like this:

Anmut sparet nicht noch Mühe / Leidenschaft nicht noch Verstand / Daß ein gutes Deutschland blühe / Wie ein andres gutes Land

"Spar neither grace nor effort, neither passion nor intellect, so that a good Germany may flourish, like any other good country."

"Grace"? In the first version of the text, Brecht wrote "Arbeit" (work). But he reconsidered: the effort of rebuilding a country—a good country—needed to be accompanied by grace. (Re)building a nation shouldn't be merely hard work and effort, but requires lightness of heart. With this lightness, beauty and goodness can flourish. And above all else, the new Germany must be good.

Daß die Völker nicht erbleichen / Wie vor einer Räuberin / Sondern ihre Hände reichen / Uns wie andern Völkern hin.

"May the peoples not turn pale as before a robber, but reach out their hands to us as they do to other peoples."

In Brecht's vision of Germany, other nations need no longer live in fear: this Germany is not an abstract concept but a people—us, 'uns', 'wir'—the Germany we collectively create. To this reimagined Germany, other nations, no longer intimidated, will extend their hands in friendship.

Und nicht über und nicht unter / Andern Völkern wolln wir sein / Von der See bis zu den Alpen / Von der Oder bis zum Rhein.

"And we want to be neither above nor below other peoples, from the sea to the Alps, from the Oder to the Rhine."

Brecht rejects "Deutschland über alles" in favor of a more equal vision: neither above nor below other nations, but alongside them. He calls for a united Germany within boundaries that would only be officially recognized in 1990—from the Rhine to the Oder, from the sea to the Alps.

Und weil wir dies Land verbessern / Lieben und beschirmen wir's / Und das liebste mag's uns scheinen / So wie andern Völkern ihrs.

"And because we improve this country, we love and protect it. It may seem dearest to us, just as other peoples' countries seem dearest to them."

Democratic patriotism distilled into four lines and twenty words: we—who are Germany—improve this country. It may never be perfect, but it can be improved. Because we make it better, we can love it—and we must protect it. Just as one loves and protects what one cherishes, as other peoples have both the right and duty to do with their own countries.

Brecht's Germans: a people among peoples who love, defend and, above all, improve their country. When JFK urged, "Ask yourself what you can do for your country," he embodied American democratic patriotism—an America worthy of love. Similarly, Brecht's vision presents a Germany that can be loved. It portrays a people who, through effort and grace, help their country flourish, as any good nation should.

Today, tomorrow, who knows?

How could anyone say no to such an anthem? Yet things turned out differently. In 1991, the third verse of West Germany's anthem became the anthem of reunified Germany. Once again, the East had to adapt.

Today, the AfD often sings the first verse at its rallies—the one that goes "..über alles." They can do this legally. It's toxic, but not prohibited.

But why not counter this with the Kinderhymne? Why not consider a second anthem alongside the first—complementary, bringing together the two Germanys in their best versions?

Why not have two anthems, similar to the national football team's shirts—one for home games, one for away games when a different colour is needed? Why choose exclusion when inclusion is possible?

We glimpsed this possibility last year during the 75th anniversary celebrations of the Constitution. Katharina Thalbach—a small-size giant of theatre and television who has traversed both Germanys with grace and tenacity—performed it to Haydn's notes. Amazing.

Plus…

Speaking of anniversaries: 9 November

Speaking of anthems: the European anthem

On the subject of “The rhetoric of peace”: Was the GDR a pacifist state?

Bertolt Brecht rulez!

The Bundesliga has started again, but so has the theatre season! At the Berliner Ensemble – Brecht's theatre – home to the legendary "Dreigroschenoper" (The Threepenny Opera) – you'll find everything we could wish for as die-hard fans and devotees of Bertolt Brecht:

"In the twenty-first century, emotions are the basic operating system of politics. Voters don't choose leaders based on detailed economic plans or military strategies. They vote for whoever appeals to their deepest emotions."
Yuval Noah Harari in "21 Lessons for the 21st Century".

This "age of sentiment" began long before the advent of social media. Since the emergence of public opinion - a concept essentially synonymous with mass media audiences - sentiment has increasingly overshadowed interest and rationality in shaping political discourse.

Sentiment fueled by fears of immigration and nostalgia for an idealized past made the 2016 Brexit happen. Now, as Britons face the consequences, the awakening is proving to be a painful process. Sentiments of anger and frustration brought Donald Trump to the White House in the same year. What sentiments will shape the next US election remains an open question.

As we await the outcome of the November 2024 elections in the United States, smaller scale but not irrelevant elections are also approaching here in Germany. Three regions of the former DDR/GDR go to the polls in a few weeks' time, likely to determine the fate of the Ampel-Coalition in Berlin: Saxony and Thuringia will vote on 1 September, followed by Brandenburg on 22 September.

These elections will also be a confrontation between sentiment and interests, perception and reality. The former East German Länder are both a proof of a European success story and the only part of Germany with a growing economy (see later in this post). But it is also a place that is still underdeveloped and in need of more respect.

Faced with the major issues of our time - such as Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, as well as the relationship with China and Israel - the former GDR regions bring their historical legacy to bear in their current attitudes: different, when not opposite, to the opinions prevailing in the West.

So what are these attitudes? What is their factual basis? What do current data tell us about East Germany? Is it lagging behind, leading the way, a land of opportunity or a "problem zone"? Let us embark on a journey between sentiments and hard facts, impressions and promises that make up the heart of Europe.

Navigating Discontent: East Germans' Perspectives on Democracy and Reunification.

As we approach the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is still a tangible sense of being left behind among a number of East Germans. You probably won't meet these people in Berlin, where there aren't many native Berliners or former East Germans anymore. But as soon as you leave the capital, visit other eastern regions and listen to the conversations around you, you will find that the enduring differences between East and West are often deeply rooted in perceptions and experiences of democracy and political engagement.

In January 2024, the University of Jena released a study highlighting a stark contrast in the feeling of being left behind between East and West Germans. According to the survey, 19 percent of East Germans said they felt left behind, compared to only 8 percent in West Germany.

The study also shows that a significant proportion of East Germans believe that politicians do not care enough about their region or do not do enough to promote its economic development.

This sense of political neglect is reflected in their satisfaction with democracy:

While almost all respondents across the entire Germany (97 per cent) agree with the idea of democracy, the practical implementation of democratic principles is viewed much less favourably in the east.

More than half of East Germans (57 per cent) are dissatisfied with the way democracy is practised. By comparison, less then four out of ten West Germans say they are dissatisfied with the way democracy works in practice.

This is a figure that explains a lot about the preference for autocrats, not only here in the former East Germany. After all, if liberal democracy does not seem to be working properly, why not go for the "strong men"?

Let's take a look at the most "problematic" German state, Saxony. A survey published in January 2024 revealed an even more worrying perspective: one in three respondents felt that Germany was more like a dictatorship than a democracy. When asked if they agreed with the statement:

the responses were:

Even German reunification is now being viewed with increasing scepticism. The positive assessment of the impact of reunification on the region where the respondents live has fallen from 70% to a bare majority of 52%. On a personal level ("benefits for me"), satisfaction with reunification has plummeted from 77% to 66% (source: Deutschland Monitor 2023).

Another survey conducted in September 2023 asked:

The answer to this question differs significantly between respondents in the West and those in the East:

These aren't just numbers; they represent a profound shift in the collective psyche of East Germans. It's a change that's hard to explain when you think of Germany in 2024: a country full of problems, but still a success story 35 years on.

What is this bad mood? Pure hallucination? A cry for attention? The result of conflicting manipulations of the truth by both politicians and the media, each oversimplifying reality? Has the collective sentiment become completely detached from the facts?

Striking differences and facts which are hard to ignore.

No collective sentiment comes from nothing, and none can be dismissed as a mere hallucination. Before the current issues - migration, wars and the fear of losing the piece of prosperity gained in recent decades - some basic, long-term data explain today's East German society well.

1. Size matters: how much does East Germany count?

Even more than three decades after reunification, a significant divide still runs through Germany. This starts with the overall contribution to Germany's GDP: the eastern German states account for only 16 per cent of the country's total GDP.

This includes Berlin, whose vibrant start-up scene, while much celebrated, is far from having a real impact on the country's economy. This means that East Germany accounts for less than 0.2 percentage points of Germany's overall growth rate.

2. Income inequality and underrepresentation: still second-class citizens?

Nearly 34 years after reunification, the income gap between East and West Germany remains wide. According to the Federal Statistical Office, full-time employees in eastern Germany earned an average of €824 less gross per month than their counterparts in western Germany last year.

In 2022, gross monthly earnings excluding special payments averaged €4,468 (ca. 4,850 USD) across Germany, with €4,578 (ca. 4,980 USD) in the West and €3,754 (ca 4,080 USD) in the East. This disparity means that salaries in the east are on average only 82% of those in the west.

East Germans remain underrepresented in elite professions. Here a few examples: there are no East German generals in the German army (34 years after reunification!), and they make up less than 5 per cent of federal judges or CEOs of Germany's top 100 companies. West Germans still lead. Yes, we had an East German Kanzlerin for 16 years, but now only two federal ministers in the Scholz government come from the East. In sport, only one champion, Toni Kroos, was part of the German national team at the European Championship.

3. Germany's population is growing, but not everywhere.

Germany's population is expected to grow to around 85.5 million by 2045, mainly as a result of immigration. However, population growth will not be uniform across the country. Economically strong cities and regions will see their populations grow, while areas with weaker economies will experience a decline.

The former East Germany, which already experienced a massive loss of population between 1991 and 2018, when more than 1.2 million people emigrated to West Germany, is expected to shrink further, with the sole exception of Berlin, Leipzig, Potsdam and a few other cities.

4. Many East Germans still move to the West to complete their university studies.

While internal economic migration has decreased, East Germans are still moving to the West for educational purposes. In 2020, one in two high school graduates in eastern Germany still left their region to study in the West, while only one in three west Germans does the same.

5. Social Perception and stereotypes.

Impossible to quantify, but more real than economics. What bothers many Easterners is the way they are portrayed in the Western media: "The East beats differently", "The problem zone East", "House of the whiners" and so on. The Eastern sentiment is also a resentment.

Three important books have recently captured and articulated this sentiment, while also revising the narrative of reunification and fostering a sense of eastern pride.

In Der Osten: eine westdeutsche Erfindung (2023, The East: a West German invention), Dirk Oschmann challenges the stereotypes and misconceptions that West Germans hold about the East, arguing that many of the East's perceived failures are constructs of a biased Western perspective. Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk's Die Übernahme (2019, The Takeover) offers a critical examination of the reunification process, highlighting the abrupt and often unequal integration of the East into the West, which many East Germans experienced as a takeover rather than a merger. Meanwhile, Katja Hoyer's Beyond the Wall (Penguin, 2023) delves into the complexities of East German identity and history, offering a nuanced account that goes beyond the simplistic dichotomy of East versus West.

But there is also a different, thriving, and splendid East Germany.

You can discover it on summer weekends by venturing both north and south of Berlin to find a landscape full of life.

In the north: The Baltic coast has reinvented itself as a tourist powerhouse. Every year brings new visitor records, erasing memories of the pandemic-induced lull. The islands of Rügen and Usedom stand out as my favorites—jewels of natural beauty that have captured my heart. The allure of the Baltic is a story in itself, worth telling in another post.

In Saxony: Dresden emerges as a city of dual identities—a blend of historic grandeur and cutting-edge industry. Its stunning architecture and vibrant arts scene drew 2.1 million visitors last year, cementing its status as a must-see destination. But Dresden's renaissance extends beyond tourism. The city has become an industrial powerhouse, particularly in microchip manufacturing. This sector, rooted in DDR-era expertise, now attracts global attention, with Taiwan's TSMC planning a state-of-the-art semiconductor factory. Another story that deserves its place.

Politico.eu: “How Dresden became Germany's Chips City”, March 26, 2024

West of Dresden: Chemnitz, European Capital of Culture 2025, is a hotspot of artistic and cultural innovation. It's rapidly moving away from its industrial image and offers much more than its iconic 7-meter-high bronze head of Karl Marx. The city buzzes with creative energy, attracting curious visitors from all over the world.

Chemnitz 2025: European Capital of Culture

Thuringia: Weimar and Erfurt, deeply rooted in German history, offer summers rich in cultural experiences. The region is home to one of Europe's most important Yiddish music festivals, which has become one of the most prominent on the continent.

Yiddish Summer Weimar 2024

These observations, through my lens as a tourist and explorer, reveal an East Germany that defies stereotypes. It's not an open-air museum frozen in time, nor a tale of decay. Instead, I see a region that is often more vibrant and forward-looking than its western counterparts.

But questions remain: What lies behind these impressive facades? How do these visible successes square with the sentiments captured by research and the hard facts of economic reality? What's the full story? Or is there another story to tell?

The New Engine of Growth: The Other Story of Contemporary East Germany.

Both data and news from recent years tell a different story and point to a possible future: East Germany is becoming an important growth engine for the nation.

According to the Ifo Economic Forecast for the summer of 2024, the East German economy is expected to grow by 1.1% this year, outpacing the 0.4% growth expected for Germany as a whole.

This trend is even more pronounced in Saxony, where growth is expected to accelerate to 1.4% in 2025. This strong performance contrasts sharply with the more sluggish national economy and highlights a regional dynamism driven by consumer-related service providers and a resilient industrial sector. Saxony: yes, the region that all national media describe as a “problem zone.”

The upward trend is not a recent phenomenon. Over the past decade, the East German economy has consistently grown faster than the West. More recently, it has been boosted by investments from global companies such as Tesla, Intel and TSMC, which are setting up some of the largest production facilities ever in the region.

For example, Tesla's Gigafactory in Brandenburg, which will open in 2022 amidst fierce debates about environmental impact and gentrification, has already created more than 12,000 jobs between the town of Grühnheide and Berlin. These developments, it must be said, are supported by substantial federal subsidies to the order of tens of billions of euros.

But the East German economy also benefits from a well-developed renewable energy infrastructure. Despite the political debates and the low support for the Greens in the East, the East has done more than the West to achieve environmental transition. Take a train from Berlin to the Baltic, or from Berlin to Saxony, and you will soon see landscapes full of windmills surrounded by fields of sunflowers. This paradox is difficult to explain, but it exists.

In addition, relatively low wages make it an attractive destination for large projects. The region's lower dependence on exports compared with the West also provides a buffer against global economic downturns, further stabilising growth.

While wages in eastern Germany still lag behind those in the west on average, as seen above, the gap is narrowing. In some cases, such as Saxony, monthly incomes have surpassed those in some western states. The higher share of wages and salaries in the east, combined with recent increases in the statutory minimum hourly wage, has boosted consumption and economic stability.

These signs suggest that Germany's eastern regions are well on their way to becoming a key driver of Germany's future growth. Despite the narratives of missed opportunities, inequality and frustration, East Germany has been one of the winners in Europe over the past 35 years.

This map, which shows the European regions with lower GDP per capita than East Germany, captures this 'other story' better than many data-heavy tables:

Future Challenges and Political Landscape.

However, the current growth trajectory is not without its challenges. Demographic change poses a significant risk, with an ageing population and labour shortages threatening long-term economic stability. Although cities such as Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden are attracting younger people, the overall trend in eastern Germany is towards an older population, which could stagnate labour market growth.

There are other hurdles to overcome:

1. Expansion of small businesses: Many successful small East German firms are reluctant to expand. While this is understandable in individual cases, it is detrimental to broader economic growth. The so-called "hidden champions" that made headlines in western Germany are a much rarer phenomenon here.

2. Sustainability of large investments: A few large subsidised investments are not sustainable in the long run. Many large factories already built or announced rely on government subsidies that are not unlimited. What if these companies downsize or close down when the subsidies end?

3. Investment in start-ups: The vibrant start-up scene, often linked to research institutions, lacks sufficient investment. Most Berlin start-ups are not focused on transformative technologies and are not research-driven, and those outside the city, often more technologically innovative, struggle to find investors.

4. Labour demand: The high demand for labour in the east threatens economic development. A welcoming culture and robust infrastructure are critical to attracting skilled workers from home and abroad.

Economists emphasise the need for substantial immigration to sustain growth, ensure prosperity and guarantee social security in the East. This need for immigration is particularly pressing in regions where there is strong opposition to increased immigration.

Reality and sentiment are at odds here: many in eastern Germany feel alienated from politics, and right-wing populist parties are on the rise. Their rise could hamper the growth and prospects of the East finally getting the prosperity and recognition it deserves.

Blossoming future or self-destructive emotions?

In 1990, Helmut Kohl famously promised East Germans "blossoming landscapes" (Blühende Landschaften, speech for the Reunification, 3.10.1990), envisioning a future of economic prosperity and parity with the West. Instead, the years that followed were marked by brutal privatisations, mass internal migration, job losses and a profound sense of lost dignity. These events sowed the seeds of a lingering sense of being left behind, as I have described here.

Yet despite these challenges, the former GDR Länder have impressive potential: you just need good eyes to see it. Having lived in this region for years, I see more promise here than in the often decadent and values-empty countries of Western Europe. The future is always open, and the East of Germany - and indeed the East of Europe - has immense potential waiting to be realised. Much will depend on how citizens respond - more to emotion or to rationality, more to optimism in their own potential or to fear of loss - on how the region sets its direction.

The upcoming regional elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg will give us an answer that is relevant for Germany and for the whole of Europe.