I was born in the GDR in 1978 and found my childhood to be beautiful. We had relatives in West Germany and often received packages from the West (so-called “Westpakete”). That was always nice. When the Wall came down I was 11 years old and it was a beautiful and exciting time, especially if you were a child back then. I have wonderful memories of this time.
I happened to grow up in West Germany and have vivid memories of the pictures in the tv news. First all the protesters in the East, and then all of a sudden the wall was down. I was a civil protection volunteer and we manned our stations the day after. However, only one charming couple with two kids arrived and needed a place to sleep, which they were provided with. And a gorgeous breakfast before they returned to the East. A once in a lifetime experience. But I even saw a huge number of unemployed in a queue in Dresden ten years later, so I understand that some of them thought they had been better off before the reunification.
@@andreasfischer9158 Maybe I need to clarify something. I know it is difficult for many who grew up in a western democracy to understand. I've experienced this many times, it's expected that we complain about how bad things were for us in the GDR and many people dismiss it as nostalgia when I say that I had a nice childhood, or some people recommend that I live in North Korea if I don't I like how things are going today and I compare it with my experiences back then. What these people don't understand is that no human being (as long as you're mentally healthy) can be permanently unhappy. No matter where you live you create beautiful moments for yourself, you fall in love, or celebrate successes, or simply get drunk with friends and then go swimming naked on a warm summer night (just as examples) you create little islands of happiness for yourself (that's by the way also the thing that doesn't make you go crazy when things go bad) and you carry that in your heart because we are human, we have our lives to live, no matter what... the fakt that they expect me to I was unhappy all the time in my life in the GDR, I hide or deny that I experienced happiness, it's as if I had no life at all, ... but it is a part of me and always will be .... that good and bad experiences.
@andreamuller9009 I was afraid of this misunderstanding as it is common. I dislike the condescending attitude many westerners had and have. It is perfectly normal to arrange your life best as you can and then be genuinely satisfied with what you have achieved. That doesn’t mean things couldn’t be better. There is a huge potential for improvement even in Western societies. When I was younger, I was a part-time politician in my Scandinavian home country because I wanted to contribute to improving things. But then, Americans wonder how one can be happy in ”socialist” Scandinavia. Compared to Western standards, many companies in the GDR were poorly run, but that doesn’t imply that East Germans in general were lazy, incompetent, inferior or thoroughly unhappy. I have told this unnumerable times …
@@andreamuller9009I understand that, especially for children, but I think the older the more problematic. Teenagers and twens may have had more problems. You want to go far away, listen to music, go to concerts, etc. I went with school to the GDR in 1983 and also met a group of twenty-year-olds from Eisenach. Westerners who look down on Easterners make me want to vomit.
"Western Germany was like a Fantasy world to us." This. As a child I dreamt of going to Paris or London (among other places). But those places could have been on the moon instead of "just" 1000 km away. When I first saw the Eiffel Tower with my own eyes, I cried. It was something that was simply impossible for a normal child in East Germany. Now, I've been to Paris and London multiple times (and other places) and I'm thankful for the possibility to travel freely wherever I want! And most of all, I'm thankful that my father got to visit the grave of his grandmother. (Half of my parents families on either side lived in the West.) She died in 1978 and because he was a young man at the time, he wasn't allowed to go to her funeral. The visit of her grave was one of the first things we did in 1990.
There was a region in the GDR, where you didn't got western tv or radio, because of distance and hills. That are was called "Tal der Ahnungslosen" (valey of clueless). But it was the same during second world war, were it was not allowed to listend to allied radio, were you had the secret police GESTAPO and people reporting you.
Don't think that everyone was suffering all the time in the GDR. I mean, yes there were bad things happened (Stasi...), but the normal life was mostly just normal life. Yes we couldn't go to Italy or Spain for vacation, but we had beautiful vacations on the Baltic sea or the Harz mountains. Yes we couldn't get fruits like bananas or pineapples, but we eat what we grow in our gardens: tomatoes, peas, strawberries, carrots, cucumbers ... (in much better quality than today). The social life between people was better, cause if you needed help there was always someone you could ask for. We watched western german TV, but we also had good content on GDR TV, like the Sandmännchen, which is shown until now every evening on German TV for the kids. I was born in 1981, so I was just a little kid and I know that there were many people who has made really bad experiences at this time. I just wanna say, it wasn't like that all the time for everyone. Please keep that in mind. Greetings from Berlin 😎
Until 1987, it was forbidden for members of the state authorities to listen to or watch Western radio and television channels, this applied to members of the army, police, fire brigade and others... there were jammers (for example on the Brocken... i.e. nearby where I lived)....and at school, teachers asked the children subtle questions to find out who and where they were watching Western television at home, for example, whether the television clock had dots or dashes (Eastern television had dots - ARD had dashes ) ...so yes and no, it wasn't directly forbidden to watch western television, but the authorities didn't like it for normal citizens either.... but somehow no one cared. Funny story: We lived in a house with many teachers, including 2 party school teachers (i.e. the very convinced communists), my parents and an older couple were the only ones who weren't teachers... my father was a simple craftsman and my mother factory worker. Once, when ZDF brought the annual monumental film (I think it was "Ben Hur") for Christmas or Easter, I don't remember exactly, it definitely snowed, not only the weather but also on the screen, it was almost exclusively to see white scrawls (we always called it "snow on the screen", or "the fight of the white and black ants") ... that's why my father climbed on the roof to adjust the antenna and everyone (and I mean everyone) stood underneath and shouted to him whether the picture got better or worse... depending on which way my father turned the antenna, because everyone wanted to watch that damn movie...😂
I hate that it's "GDR" in English. "DDR" is much catchier 😂. We call it DDR in Finnish too even though the Finnish official name for the country has different letters.
I was born in East Germany in 1973 and grew up near the border, so I had very good reception of West German television and radio. And of course everyone used it, how could you stop that? I also had a very nice childhood. If you don't know things any differently, you don't really miss anything. It's just the way it is. Back then, you simply appreciated some things more. We only had oranges at Christmas. That was something very special and that's why they tasted better than any orange you can buy all year round today, even if they were probably only half as good. We had to wait a long time for many things, if we got them at all. But then the joy was all the greater. I sometimes miss that feeling today and I create it artificially by not buying everything I might want straight away. I think everyone who grew up in East Germany can tell you many stories and most of them will have many nice experiences, but unfortunately some of them will also be less nice.
Yes, there was a helpful spirit among Easterners, but it was one that often came from necessity. Such as, “do you have some bricks or paint, I need to renovate my house…“ What many Easterners forget over the Eastalgia they experience for the good times back then, they often forget the snitching, the monitoring. Many people had the snitch in their family or their own bed. Many only found out who snitched on them once the secret files of the Stasi (Staatssicherheit - Secret police) that were essentially kept on everyone, were released to the public. Many divorces followed and many “friendships“ were broken….
I didn't forget about it...I just didn't experience any snitching. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but it did not happen to everyone. A lot of people simply didn't care about politics. They lived their lifes and gave no reason to be monitored.
@@endless-nimu Of course, some people may not have experienced that. Even these people may have experienced injustices. What about being forbidded to study because you were from an academic family then? Or being separated from your parents and being given up for adoption against your parents parents‘ will or knowledge? What about not being able to travel to places? Or unknowingly being given anabolika and other drugs because you were a promising sports talent? Or plain everyday nuisances. I recall, during a vacation in the GDR back in the late seventies, when my parents sent us kids to get breadrolls for breakfast. When we had not returned after more than two hours, they started panicking. As it turned out, oranges had arrived at the little village store that morning, and we were stuck in the line for HOURS as the entire village had heard the word and got in line to secure some of this exotic fruit…
@@Attirbful I'd rather say that most people have not experienced that. At least none of anyone among my friends, neighbourhood, family, colleagues did. I think people who haven't lived there simply can't imagine, that GDR citizens didn't spend all day thinking about all the bad stuff . Like I said - we lived our lifes, cared about ourselves and our loved ones...and it wasn't a bad life - at least from the perspective of someone who was born and grew up in that system. It was just normal for me, to not be able travel to western countries. I didn't miss it or dreamt about it. It simply wasn't important to me. I also didn't know anyone who wasn't allowed to study. At least not due to being part of an academic family or being religious, but for not having the needed grades. It is actually new to me that people who came from an academic family weren't allowed to study. Were I lived there were several generations of families who were doctors. Granddad, father, son..so obviously they had the opportunity to study even if the parents had an academic background. I also knew religious people who studied (Angela Merkel is a good example). All I know is, that people who were...let me say unconvenient (in terms of critizising the government/politics/system) often times couldn't study. Apart from that it was just limited by the amount of spots and the grades you'd got. I don't know much about children being seperated from their parents and given up for adoption. All I know that it happened if parents were on the radar and a so called bad influence or simply unable to care for their children. What I know kind a bit about is the other way around....parents who fled to the west and left their children behind, since the mother of my best friend worked at a children's home and we often times played with some of the kids. Talking about sports talents... I actually was close to be one :D I had the chance to join a sports school, but refused to, because I would have had to move to another town and didn't want to be seperated from my family at such a young age (I was 9 at that time). So I only know about these anabolika and drugs stuff, that was given to professional sports talents from the media and not from personal experience or people I knew on a personal level. Bad things happened - nobody denies that, but like I said - most people just lived an ordinary and mostly happy life.
I had a boyfriend who lived in the eastern german era. Hold told me things like how kindergarten teachers would ask the children if the shape of the clock that was on the news their parents watched was round or square to distinguish if someone watched the forbidden western media. He also told me, that he got so brainwashed at some point, his own parents were scared of him and that he could snitch on them.
I was also born in the GDR. My mother was always rebellious. She was also summoned by the secret service, and they threatened to take me away from her if she continued to rebel against the system. She ended up fleeing with me in '84. There is also a crazy story about a hot air balloon that my father and friends secretly built. It was never used, however. Partly because a group flew through before my father and then they were too afraid to try again. My grandfather was also picked up because of the story and disappeared for two days. But he came back because they couldn't prove anything.
Good Bye Lenin, Balloon and Das Leben der Anderen (The life of others) where good movies to entertain and educate you, if you want to know more about living in the GDR
@@wietholdtbuhl6168Stimmt doch, was er sagt. Wurde mir genau so bei einem Besuch der DDR berichtet: Tal der Ahnungslosen oder ARD - Außer Raum Dresden.
We still talk about east and west Germany nowerdays. And there are still diffrences, though they try to adjust the wage structure etc. Politically, one also sees a different voting behaviour in the former East. Many villages have hardly any inhabitants left and the vacancy rate is high. This is also because many companies were sold or moved away after the fall of the Wall. This naturally creates dissatisfaction. But you can't force anyone to move there, even though housing is very cheap there. Not everything in the former East was bad, but I don't understand why so many people who weren't even there (because they're too young) want the GDR back. The value of freedom is simply underestimated here. Also, the fact that there were often shortages of food and raw materials in the East. What you couldn’t produce yourself didn’t exist
I was born in West-Berlin and all I knew from the DDR was the famous Transitstrecke. Endless "babummbabumm", Vopos checked the car and we drove nonstop so we were not allowed to pee. ☠ I was 13 when the wall came down and I remember everything in East-Berlin was grey and they had only one telephone for the whole street. The people have been more social and down to earth. A few years later my best friends were usually from the East and I fell in love with the Ostsee. Today I live in Brandenburg. I'm always ashamed when West-Germans have this arrogant, often insulting attitude towards East-Germans. I think the difference in voting has a lot to do with the experience East-Germans made after the reunification ("Treuhand" etc.). This attitude of the West looking down on the East in general is a problem.
I was born in 1984 in East Germany. I don't remember much, but I do remember when the Wall fell. And I remember when my parents found out, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that their best friend worked for the state and spied on them. That was terrible
I was 14 when the wall came down, growing up in the west. I remember for months after the wall fell, we couldn't buy bananas. All the Easteners bought them all once the stores opened up in the morning and they were just out for the rest of the day. And I remember all the funny shoeboxes on wheels that they drove around in. My neighbors actually moved to the West in 1988 before the wall fell. They fled through Hungary and Austria and moved next door to me. They told me so many stories that were just unbelievable. These "shoeboxes on wheels" they called "cars" had to be ordered once a child was born, because it took that long to receive it so when the child turned 18, they had a car. I remember my neighbors asking my parents why all our cars had so boring colors. All black, silver, grey and white while their cars were blue, green, red, yellow, orange, any color you can think of but never black. And I remember of course the funny dialects I had never heard before. I still have East German currency. The coins were made from aluminium which was so weird because they weighed almost nothing. It's a shame they all fell for the promises from the Nazi party AfD. Being gay with a black husband, I have no intentions to ever go east again.
In 1984, while spending New Year in West Berlin, my friends and I got a day pass to visit East Berlin. It was an unforgettable experience. We were forced to change 10 DM into Eastern currency (worth about £25 in today's money). We simply could not spend it all, despite eating in the best restaurants and buying plenty of drinks in various bars because the prices were so low. We still had half of it left when we returned and could not change it back to Western money. There were shortages of certain foods, such as mushrooms. The shops were very dimply lit and all the goods were unbranded. A can of beans would just say what was inside with no picture or fancy packaging. There were many bookshops, which led me to think that the people were well educated and avid readers. We were watched by police officers from a distance the whole time we were there. Everyone could tell we were Westerners because of our clothing. Everything was over manned (to avoid unemployment). In one tiny bar with room for only 20 customers, there were four staff. We tried to talk to some of the young locals of our own age, but were told quite rudely that we could not. For me the worst thing was that the only shop which sold luxury goods like video recorders was for Party members only and everything in it cost more than most people could make in a year. There were also almost no cars, just trams swishing through the heavy snow in eerie, almost empty, dimly lit streets. I'm very grateful I got to see it before the Wall came down in 1989.
Thank you for giving a grown up perspective to the video…. I was born in W.-Germany in 1980, and we‘ve also heard the same eerie feeling from our family members who were courageous enough to venture East.
@@lynnm6413 Thanks. I have never forgotten that day, even though it was just over 40 years ago. I felt a real mixture of admiration and disquiet about East Berlin.
The expensive shop you went to, much likely was a so called ''Deli''-Shop (delicacy). Almost each town had at least one and it sold pretty rare imported stuff. My grandma used to buy the special cherries there for her Frankfurter Kranz she made each christmas.
I was born in West Berlin. Most Berlins had family of the other side of the wall, so we do. So we went several time per year to East Berlin or other parts of the GDR to visit family members. So we knew the western life and knew a litte bite of the eastern life. As a West Berliner you wasn't an "east" german but you wasn't also a not a "real" west german. Until now I notic that I am neither West nor East German. I understand both the perspective of the former West and East Germans and as a former West Berlin you was something special. The little island West Berlin surrounded from the red sea of communism was uniqu with its special oddities, like west berlin subways linies drove under east berliner territory without stopping at the east subway stations (called ghost stations) with eastern armed boaderguards. And the station were preserved in the some bombed condition as 1945 and advertising from the 1940th.
They had no unemployment because a job done by one engineer in the West was split up into multiple jobs in the East. We had a friend in Thuringia whose sole job is was to take readings from machinery. He was surprised that his job did not exist in the West but was simply a small part of a full position. I find it funny that this is always used as an "it wasn't all bad" example when it became clear after the fall of the wall that labor productivity was shockingly low. Another positive that is always pointed out is that there were kindergarten spaces for every toddler which, of course, was a way for the government to get early control over the children. There was no free choice of schools or professions. It all depended on how "conforming" you and your parents were.
when it comes to what communism did to people you can look up the term Homo Sovieticus on wiki. Sociological impact was so big and wide spread that it got a name
„No unemployment“ is a little bit misleading… Yes, everyone had a job, but very many not in the field they wanted to because the access to Gymnasium/Abitur and University was heavily restricted. If you lacked the necessary system conformity you could forget it. Also the majority of businesses was highly inefficient. The GDR was basically bankrupt and could only keep functioning supported by massive „loans“ from Western Germany.
5:10 Ironcally the "Schwerter zu Pflugscharen" (swords to ploughshares) monument at the UN Headquarters in NYC was a present by the USSR in 1959. In the 1980s the GDR peace movement started to use an image of this sculpture as their symbol; later it was also used by (mostly Christian) peace groups in the West. 7:15 The Nazis had introduced the "Blockleiter", colloquially "Blockwart" (block warden), as a lower rank in their party, responsible for the political supervision of the neighborhood. "Blockwart" is still used as a pejorative for nosy neighbors with a "Karen"-like attitude. In the GDR those were replaced by the official "ABV" (Abschnittsbevollmächtigter, sector representative) as a task within the "Volkspolizei" (people's police), a kind of community policeman, and the inofficial "AKP" (Auskunftsperson = informant) of the StaSi (state security). The region of the GDR was therefore ruled by totalitarian regimes spying on their own citizens for about 56 years, 1933 - 1989. People less than 60 years old at the time as the wall fell had never experienced something else in their live. And then came the "Wende" (the turn) and shortly after the "unification" - which felt for many of the same people who had voted for it in the East soon like a hostile takeover. Venturers and frauds from the West searched to get their money, and the "Treuhand" (trust corporation) meant to manage the state-owned companies who had hitherto guaranteed employment for (nearly) everyone and organize their transition in a market economy instead often collaborated with the competing corporations from the West (which sometimes bought the factories only to shut them down, at least after taking all assets for themselves), sometimes also with former GDR functionaries with good credit standing buying out the collective they formerly managed and laying off most workers or with the heirs of some former owner who were more interested in the real estate then the works itself and were anyway not qualified to lead an enterprise through difficult times. Unemployment in the East soared, and many younger people looked for better paid jobs in the West - in many villages only the elderly remained. Some qualified craftsmen tried to commute to their western employers, but only to be able to come home every other weekend does cause much strain on families. This caused much resentments in the East and also a feeling of inferiority respectively to be considered inferior by the "Wessies", supported by the far lower wages and pensions they received. Such resentments are still noticeable today, and also (with some people, not the majority) some strange mixture of suspicion in "die da oben" (lit. those at the top, the powers that be) as well as maybe a subconscious longing for authoritarian leadership.
Born in GDR 1984, had a nice childhood, kindergarten was great and then the unification. Since i was just 5-7 years old when this happend, i could not remember much. But my mother said that there was such a feeling of safety there, that the mothers led their strollers with the child inside OUTSIDE the shops.
Humans will always be humans. They will find a way to ge trough and live a family and neighborhood live as normal as possible. Five year old children won't see much of politics unless the family is directly affected. Most people who were toddlers in the third reich would have fond childhood memeries, too.
I remember very well when the Wall came down, I was 21. It was a great time to be in Germany. There are several good German movies about the GDR, like "Good Bye Lenin!", "The Life of Others", "Balloon", about the true story of two families who managed to escape to West Germany in a self-made balloon... And "Deutschland '83", a short series that gets the times extremely well, in both west and east Germany.
I never visited or went to West Berlin/GDR while I was young. But I visited Northern Ireland in 1988. For me, that was the most horrible experience I’ve ever experienced. All the machine guns pointing in your car at the border from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland was just insane. That and some Military stops within the country stopped us going back into the north (my wife is Irish). We just had the imagination that’s the way it must be going to West Berlin or GDR and we never did go back
Yeah it is so interesting. I only know Germany as a whole and it is so normal to me. I just think about it when i move to another Western City and realize again that my parents were not allowed there when they were my age. But they dont talk negatively of the GDR, ist was normal. To them and they miss Lots of stuff. Still, both of them were glad when they could finally follow their dreams After 89 of being artists and travel and stuff
@@wietholdtbuhl6168Not for all, and not free. The right to get a place at a Kindergarten from 1 to 3 years of age was only established in 2013, but still not free of charge.
I was born in East-Germany in 1999, so I didn't experience the GDR in person. But from what my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles told me, it was by far not as bad as many believe today. My grandma father's side had three children. In the GDR, the more children a family had, the less taxes they had to pay. And with 3 kids, they were completely freed from taxes. Children were highly valued, because they were the future of the country. Also, life was affordable. My father got a monthly salary of like 700 Mark DDR (with an exchange rate of 1:4, that would be like 175€ today, but it's hard to do the conversation). Doesn't sound much, but if the rent for your flat is only like 50 Mark (water, electricity and heating included), you pay only 6,50 Mark for a monthly (!) bus ticket and food was also affordable, that made for an enjoyable life. Cars and electric devices such as TVs or fridges were expensive though, but in return they lasted for decades, unlike today. Some of these devices are still working today. The point that the lady made in her video about no unemployment in the GDR is also true. People who didn't want to work were looked down upon and they were called "Gammler", so in order to be accepted in society, you had to work. And there were enough jobs for everyone. That changed with reunification though, because all of the former GDR companies were closed and now, all the East- Germans had to be integrated into West- German labour market. Which didn't turn out well for everyone, especially people over 50. The Stasi (short for Staatssicherheit, the Secret Service) was really bad and people had to be careful about what they say. Even in kindergarten, the nurses tried to get information by asking the kids about the TV programme that they watch at home, what their parents do and what they talk about in the family.
We could make life today also as affordable as in the DDR, cheap rents, free Kindergarten, ... But then we would be also as financially bankrupt as the DDR was very quickly.
@@toxiccc777 well, we are financially bankrupt now, too. Our economy is ruined, they want to raise taxes even more and higher the pension age because "there's not enough money" 🤡🤡 There is enough money, but instead of spending it on improving life, infrastructure and the educational system in our own country, we give it to asylum seekers who don't integrate and don't work here (don't want to generalise here, but there are a lot who act that way), spend it on bike tracks in Peru and for a senseless war in Ukraine, among many many other things we pay for worldwide.
Germany in general is very conservative, also the former West. But having a look at the recent EU parliament elections, you'll see the Nazis on first place in all former East German states, except Berlin. So calling them conservative is very much an understatement. Quite a worrying situation there...
Right-wingers are not nazis. Tell me ANY PARTY in the EU parliament which wants to have a single-leader, 4 or 5 year production planning and a religious anti-semit grounding.
Back in 1990, when I was a young man in my early 20s, I got to know a woman from the GDR here in West Germany. The border was open by then, but as nobody could have known if and when that would be, she had taken her chances during a vacation in Hungary (socialist) to flee to Austria and then came to West Germany because she thought that would be her best chance to be reunited with her family, i.e. her young son and her parents, who had stayed in the East. It happened faster than they thought. Long story short, we became good friends, talked a lot, her son liked me, too, and I liked him, and so we drove to Leipzig in 1991 to meet with some of her friends who had stayed there and wanted to stay. I thought I knew a lot from what she had told me, but reality shocked me. Later in my life, I was to very distant places, like Asia, but never experienced a culture shock like that. I mean, when you travel to a distant country, you know that they'd speak a different language and have a different cultural background, and you're somehow mentally prepared for that. But these guys spoke my language, belonged to my people, if you so want, and yet thought and acted so different from what I was used to, and in many ways more friendly, trustful, and helpful than we were in the West. They had dreams of a better and brighter life once the nation was reunited, and I told them lies. They had no clue of what capitalism is all about, and they wouldn't have believed the truth anyway. Don't get me wrong: I'm not defending the GDR regime in any way. But I can't defend the west German government and the vulture capitalists either. That wasn't a reunification, that was a conquest, in my opinion.
I also was born in the GDR in1978 and my childhood was very beautiful. She's right with the sentence "It wasn't all that bad. I was a happy child until I grow up and as a teen I began to question some things like why can't I say what I think? Why is there a wall/border you can be shot if you try to cross? Why can't we just fly to the US to visit my uncle? Well then the wall fell and I began to understand how capitalism works. It was more of a hell like the socialist way. Anyway I believe till today a mixture of both system would be good but unfortunately the human is made to just think in black or white.
Ich bin in west berlin geboren und habe dort 28 jahre gelebt bis die mauer viel. Wir konnten auch ddr fernsehen empfangen. Als kind liebte ich das sandmännchen und die märchenfime sehr. Als erwachsene fand ich das fernsehen der ddr unerträglich. Die oberen dort predigten dem volk das eine und gingen dann bei uns in west berlin einkaufen. Natürlich nicht irgendwo sondern im teuersten kaufhaus der stadt im kadewe. Wo sie auch schonmal beim klauen erwischt wurden. Als west Berlinerin, war es für mich immer wichtig zu wissen, wo ist der nächste bunker. Weil man ja nie wissen konnte ob die russen nicht doch irgendwann versuchen werden auch west berlin einzunehmen. Wenn man aus der stadt raus wollte, so ging das nur über bestimmte routen, da musste man sich mit dem auto anstellen teilweise stundenlang bis die vopos(volkspolizei) die ausweise und das auto kontrolliert hatten. Dann begann die fahrt über die ostautobahn die echt miserabel war, obwohl wir wessis für den ausbau und die instandsetzung jährlich millionen bezahlten. Auf den autobahn rastplätzen traute man sich nicht sich mit jemandem zu unterhalten, weil es ein stasi spitzel sein konnte. A,so meine erinnerungen an die ddr um mich rum als west berlinerin waren echt miserabel. Nach der Öffnung der mauer zog mein Arbeitgeber nach lichtenberg einen bezirk im ostteil der stadt. Als ich da das erste mal aus der s Bahn stieg sah ich noch einschusslöcher in den häusern und ratten die sich tummelten. Alles war grau in grau. Keine farbe nichts hübsches. In den 10 jahren die ich dann dort gearbeitet habe wurden nach und nach alle häuser renoviert, die ratten verschwanden und nette restaurants, bäckereien und andere kleine läden entstanden. Das war ja nicht nur in west berlin so, sondern in ganz ost Deutschland. Das wurde alles aus dem solidaritätszuschlag gezahlt, den jeder bundesbürger von seinem gehalt abgezogen bekam. Also war es eine gemeinschaftsleistung aller den osten deutschlands wieder aufzubauen. In der ddr hatte hwar jeder eine beschäftigung, doch nicht jeder hatte arbeit. Es gab leute die wurden fürs enten füttern bezahlt. Das übernehmen normalerweise die rentner. Sorry
Honestly I was pleasantly surprised by this video, usually reaction videos are extremely surface level, and it feels more like trying to get some content out. But you actually thought about what was said in the video and brought up some things that even West Germans in particular don't want to admit (like the fact that there very much is still an East-West divide today) Most of what I wanted to comment has already been said, but about the voting: you're wrong actually! Even though unfortunately our far right party (AfD) has been gaining a lot of prominence in recent years, traditionally the East has always been leaning very left. I think we're the only one with a federal state that has had Die Linke in the government? So in the west there have traditionally been more conservative voters (CDU/CSU), and also more and more of our green party (Die Grüne), and we have always been more on the """extreme""" end of the spectrum (all the quotation marks because Die Linke really isn't all that extreme, especially in comparison to AfD...)
They had no unemployment, because they had extremely low productivity. There, 5 people did the same work as 2 or 3 in the West. It just didn't matter how, as in capitalism.
Na endlich mal einer, der die Wahrheit schreibt. Westfernsehen war NIE verboten. Es war nicht gern gesehen, aber nie verboten. Mein Vater war bei der Polizei und ich habe schon in meiner Kindheit Westfernsehen geschaut. Mit riesigen Antennen auf dem Dach, die man nicht übersehen konnte. Später gab es die Antennengemeinschaften über die man Westfernsehen auch in Gebieten empfangen konnte, die sonst keine Möglichkeit hatten Westfernsehen zu empfangen. Wir haben das Aufblühen von SAT1 und RTL genauso miterlebt, wie die westdeutsche Bevölkerung.
@@PotsdamSenior Mein Vater war bei der Polizei und hat nie irgendwelche Probleme deswegen gehabt. Und unsere Antennen auf den Dächern waren genauso wenig zu übersehen, wie die der tausenden anderer Menschen.
Well i´ve been to the GDR in 1988 and THERE WERE HOMELESS people. I saw and spoke to them at the "Alexander Platz" tube station. Since we westerns were forced to change 25 DM west money to 25 Ostmark east money, we had a lot of money to spend. And it was forbidden to take this money back to west Germany. So i gave it to the homeless guys and talked to them. She can´t say, that there were no unemployed people. Thats wrong. But they had a lot of good things there as well. One thing is the "green arrow" which allows you to take a turn at a street crossing even if the traffic lights are red. We now have thisn in the whole of Germany.
Well, there were no "official" unemployed people. But there were people with an official "Berufsverbot" (a ban from your profession) as punishment for speaking up against the regime or asking to permanently leave the country. It's just one of those facts people like to repeat because we were essentially brainwashed with them...
It was never allowed. I had family in the GDR (DDR). But with advanced tehcnologie it was easier later on. But it was never allowed.If a neighbor reported you to the Stasi, and that happened often because they could gain advantages from it, it could result in very high penalties. I had family in the GDR and my aunt was always afraid of that.
totaler Quatsch. Es war NIE offiziell verboten. Es war nicht gern von den staatlichen Stellen gesehen, aber es war nie verboten. Das wird heute nur behauptet, obwohl es eine glatte Lüge ist.
I lived near the border on the west. The GDR was a surreal country since i visited many eastern bloc nations i know how ruined trodden down it was. Many villages didn´t have much of an improvement from pre war standarts even in the 80s. Few new houses and all with cement facades. Sure they had their representative buildings like "Honnie´s Lampenladen" in Berlin but few and far between. I hate it when i hear all this whining about how "cruel" the Treuhand was. In 1991 shortly after the official reunification Germany ran a 100 Mio. DM deficit *every* month. The east contributed *nothing* . Their companies were allready on their last legs in 1980 when Straus (from Bavaria) helped facilitating huge loans for the GDR with west German banks thus prevented bancruptcy. Their supposed joblessness was a mirage with four people doing the job easily done by one half the time idling due to lack of input from other equally inefficient state owned companies only to churn out inferior quality trash like the "Rennpappe" (racing-papier-mache) Trabant "car". When we had our first workers from the east they were suprised we actually had to work for 8 hrs straight five days a week, every week. Much later i was fortunate enough to have a collegue who explained to me how life was in the GDR. He was at first a stout pro GDR follower indoctrinated as he pointed out. He joined their army the NVA and became a tech specialist. That was when he realized how phony the whole system was. He hated their "Parade-Ronnies". You might not know but Ronnie or Henrie were quite popular names in the GDR. Anyways his parading Ronnies were turncoats cheering as told, when told who´d stab you in the back out of sheer spite for little or no gain. As he was a tech specialist and listend to Bundeswehr or Police transmissions looking for plans and schemes to invade the GDR but he quickly realized none of this was vaguely true. When there was one of the regular "invasion alarms" he allready knew nothing´d happen. Eventually the GDR ended and he was free. And he left. I think what you said about the impacts on the psyche can be seen today since traumata´re very often passed to children and despite none of those 40 yrs or younger know what life was in this sureal prison they yearn for another strong man telling them how great they are and so we see a Nazi from the Rhineland leading the polls in the east. Disgusting.
Who said it was beautiful? It had many shortcomings, but as long as you you didn't step out of line and kept a low profile, you could have a relatively comfortable life. Boring, no luxuries, no International travel to non-socialist countries, many empty shelves in the shops, but the basics were provided and your path from birth to grave was straightforward and more or less risk-free.
Due to children being oblivious to a lot of behavioral strictures the adults were suffering from, the added security risks the children posed to their families, teachers being ideologues and school masters often times active Party members, Children out of this generation had the best impression of the GDR. This phenomenon is called Ostalgie, which means overlooking that people couln‘t chose their own professions, there was a class system, so worker‘s children rarely got to go to University, Religion was frowned upon No unemployment in name only, because -communism- . . . The list goes on. I don‘t want to take beautiful childhood memories away from people, yet any adult who wants to reevaluate things they perceived differently as children once they have grown up knows how little we got told as children of cheating husbands, dire health conditions and family feuds. GDR was a dictatorship. Period.
You're partially right, but I've known a lot of people while it was still the GDR, and after the unification, who lived in the GDR during these times, and weren't children, who have/had the same feelings about that time. I think the woman in the video has a clearer grasp on the situation as it was for many people than what your comment portrays. It most certainly wasn't all good, but it wasn't all bad either.
@@user-xi6nk4xs4s during the time of the GDR, more than 3,8 Million people fled the Soviet Sector, with considerable risk to their lives and family. It is a self-selecting factor, that the ones who stayed were less opposed, politically more willing to adhere to party mandates and thus had a different impression of the life in de GDR. It‘s the same as everywhere…if you never find the courage to oppose the system, you will be happy sheep following along.
People from east Germany often have these nostalgic feelings about the GDR, and then they say things like "we didn't have unemployment". I'd like to respond: "Ok. And why was that so?" It was communism. Jobs weren't provided by companies, but by the state. So when they needed jobs, they'd just create some. Whether that was economically reasonable or not. And what happened to that state? It went bankrupt. Without the unification, it would have been it's end. That state, or lets say it's people, were saved by the west.
And still they are right...they was (almost) no unemployment. That's the perspective of normal citizens and having a job and not having to be afraid to lose it, was a positive for them. It at least worked like that for 40 years. The GDR being bankrupt had several reasons, not only creating jobs even when they weren't desperately needed.
She has a romanized view of the GDR and it is not true that there was unemployment before the unification. As unemployment was basically almost unknown, but if you were unemployed you were given a lot of money, far more than now and without any demands or cuts. It is interesting how things changed after the unification as unemployment shot up overnight. Before banks for example were looking for an apprentice with school grades of about 3.5 secondary school, after unification this changed to 1.1 high school diploma. The shock for schoolkids from the west was real and tough as you suddenly needed to work hard to get better grades as children from the east came by the thousands to steal your job and they all had excellent grades. I hated every one of them as they still had no clue of how the world works and their englisch pronunciation was miserable, mine was excellent and without any accent, I spoke like an American.
9:09 yes, she’s is right. There were many good things in the GDR that was destroyed after the reunification. It’s no surprise that there are people who want eastern Germany to be independent again. The federal republic of Germany is going down
I have never ever heard someone say that. But western politicians still like to blame communism for lots of mistakes they made themselves. It's a bit similar to the story of brexit and the evil EU (imho). So maybe they shouldn't hold a referendum on east german independence afterall :)
I was Born in GDR in 1983, I did not miss Bananas 😂… turns out I dont Like them this much. Beautiful memories as a Child. Now I know it was Not easy for everybody… but hey we Are going back to it… now all of Germany… thats the vibe my parents get nowadays.. only one Party to vote… history returns…
Sie romantisiert ! Frag dich mal warum so viele AFD im Osten wählen. Die DDR hat auch sehr viele Nazis zu beginn aufgenommen und geduldet. #Braunbuch Probleme mit Nazis gab es dort schon sehr lange. Alles sehr romantisiert.
@@endless-nimu "Braunbuch über ehemalige Nationalsozialisten in hohen Positionen in der DDR Im Gegenzug erschienen in West-Berlin und der Bundesrepublik ähnliche Veröffentlichungen, die die nationalsozialistische Vergangenheit von Staats- und Parteifunktionären der DDR thematisierten. Der Untersuchungsausschuss Freiheitlicher Juristen veröffentlichte 1958 unter dem Titel Ehemalige Nationalsozialisten in Pankows Diensten erstmals eine Liste von 75 ehemaligen NSDAP-Mitgliedern. Bis 1965 erschienen fünf jeweils erweiterte Auflagen.[21] Die Rechercheure hatten offenbar Zugang zum US-amerikanisch verwalteten Berlin Document Center sowie zu Informanten in der DDR. Im Jahr 1981 legte Olaf Kappelt das Braunbuch DDR. Nazis in der DDR vor.[22] Es enthielt 200 Namen. Im Jahr 2009 veröffentlichte Kappelt eine bearbeitete Neuauflage seines Werkes mit Angaben zu über eintausend NS-belasteten Personen, die in gesellschaftlich einflussreichen Positionen der DDR Fuß fassen konnten.[23] Zusammenfassend schrieb im Vorwort das langjährige SED-Politbüro-Mitglied Günter Schabowski: „Ein Nazi, dem es gewährt war, zum Sozialisten, genauer zum Kommunisten zu mutieren, war total und für immer entnazifiziert. Er war wie neugeboren. Wen aber die westdeutsche Demokratie umerzog, der blieb ein Nazi.“[24]"
Als ob es im Westen keine Nazis/AfDler gibt... Das ist eigentlich weniger ein Ost-West-Problem als ein Problem der strukturschwachen Orte/Gegenden. Wo den Leuten die Alternativen und Hoffnungen fehlen haben braune Propagandisten leichtes Spiel. Auch im Osten gibt es viele, die das braune/blaue Gesocks nicht gewählt haben und auch nie werden. Aber, die werden nicht weiter erwähnt, weil sie nicht ins Narrativ des "demokratiefeindlichen" Ostens passen.
@@wietholdtbuhl6168 Alt genug, um den Mauerfall in den Nachrichten zu verfolgen. Sehr viel aus eigenem Interesse mit der DDR beschäftigt. Oft im Osten auch über längere Zeiträume gewesen. Viele Menschen, die in der DDR gelebt haben ausführlich ausgefragt. Und ich hab mehr als genug Wissen über China und der chinesischen kultur, um einen Vergleich ziehen zu können. Und selbst? 😊
@@wietholdtbuhl6168 Und die Beziehungen nach China? Aber das Internet scheint noch zu funktionieren. Ich war schon fast beunruhigt, heute noch keinen passiv aggressiven Kommentar bekommen zu haben. Aber so kann ich später doch noch in Frieden schlafen gehen. Trotzdem alles Gute, auch für die Gesundheit.
I was born in the GDR in 1978 and found my childhood to be beautiful. We had relatives in West Germany and often received packages from the West (so-called “Westpakete”). That was always nice. When the Wall came down I was 11 years old and it was a beautiful and exciting time, especially if you were a child back then. I have wonderful memories of this time.
I happened to grow up in West Germany and have vivid memories of the pictures in the tv news. First all the protesters in the East, and then all of a sudden the wall was down. I was a civil protection volunteer and we manned our stations the day after. However, only one charming couple with two kids arrived and needed a place to sleep, which they were provided with. And a gorgeous breakfast before they returned to the East. A once in a lifetime experience. But I even saw a huge number of unemployed in a queue in Dresden ten years later, so I understand that some of them thought they had been better off before the reunification.
same here. :)
@@andreasfischer9158
Maybe I need to clarify something.
I know it is difficult for many who grew up in a western democracy to understand. I've experienced this many times, it's expected that we complain about how bad things were for us in the GDR and many people dismiss it as nostalgia when I say that I had a nice childhood, or some people recommend that I live in North Korea if I don't I like how things are going today and I compare it with my experiences back then.
What these people don't understand is that no human being (as long as you're mentally healthy) can be permanently unhappy. No matter where you live you create beautiful moments for yourself, you fall in love, or celebrate successes, or simply get drunk with friends and then go swimming naked on a warm summer night (just as examples) you create little islands of happiness for yourself (that's by the way also the thing that doesn't make you go crazy when things go bad) and you carry that in your heart because we are human, we have our lives to live, no matter what... the fakt that they expect me to I was unhappy all the time in my life in the GDR, I hide or deny that I experienced happiness, it's as if I had no life at all, ... but it is a part of me and always will be .... that good and bad experiences.
@andreamuller9009 I was afraid of this misunderstanding as it is common. I dislike the condescending attitude many westerners had and have. It is perfectly normal to arrange your life best as you can and then be genuinely satisfied with what you have achieved. That doesn’t mean things couldn’t be better. There is a huge potential for improvement even in Western societies. When I was younger, I was a part-time politician in my Scandinavian home country because I wanted to contribute to improving things. But then, Americans wonder how one can be happy in ”socialist” Scandinavia. Compared to Western standards, many companies in the GDR were poorly run, but that doesn’t imply that East Germans in general were lazy, incompetent, inferior or thoroughly unhappy. I have told this unnumerable times …
@@andreamuller9009I understand that, especially for children, but I think the older the more problematic. Teenagers and twens may have had more problems. You want to go far away, listen to music, go to concerts, etc. I went with school to the GDR in 1983 and also met a group of twenty-year-olds from Eisenach.
Westerners who look down on Easterners make me want to vomit.
"Western Germany was like a Fantasy world to us."
This. As a child I dreamt of going to Paris or London (among other places). But those places could have been on the moon instead of "just" 1000 km away. When I first saw the Eiffel Tower with my own eyes, I cried. It was something that was simply impossible for a normal child in East Germany.
Now, I've been to Paris and London multiple times (and other places) and I'm thankful for the possibility to travel freely wherever I want!
And most of all, I'm thankful that my father got to visit the grave of his grandmother. (Half of my parents families on either side lived in the West.) She died in 1978 and because he was a young man at the time, he wasn't allowed to go to her funeral. The visit of her grave was one of the first things we did in 1990.
There was a region in the GDR, where you didn't got western tv or radio, because of distance and hills. That are was called "Tal der Ahnungslosen" (valey of clueless).
But it was the same during second world war, were it was not allowed to listend to allied radio, were you had the secret police GESTAPO and people reporting you.
Don't think that everyone was suffering all the time in the GDR. I mean, yes there were bad things happened (Stasi...), but the normal life was mostly just normal life. Yes we couldn't go to Italy or Spain for vacation, but we had beautiful vacations on the Baltic sea or the Harz mountains. Yes we couldn't get fruits like bananas or pineapples, but we eat what we grow in our gardens: tomatoes, peas, strawberries, carrots, cucumbers ... (in much better quality than today). The social life between people was better, cause if you needed help there was always someone you could ask for. We watched western german TV, but we also had good content on GDR TV, like the Sandmännchen, which is shown until now every evening on German TV for the kids. I was born in 1981, so I was just a little kid and I know that there were many people who has made really bad experiences at this time. I just wanna say, it wasn't like that all the time for everyone. Please keep that in mind.
Greetings from Berlin 😎
Born in 1979 and can confirm everything you said. Greetings from Brandenburg :D
@@endless-nimu to be correct: Grüße vom Rande Berlins also auch Brandenburg 😉👋
Until 1987, it was forbidden for members of the state authorities to listen to or watch Western radio and television channels, this applied to members of the army, police, fire brigade and others... there were jammers (for example on the Brocken... i.e. nearby where I lived)....and at school, teachers asked the children subtle questions to find out who and where they were watching Western television at home, for example, whether the television clock had dots or dashes (Eastern television had dots - ARD had dashes ) ...so yes and no, it wasn't directly forbidden to watch western television, but the authorities didn't like it for normal citizens either.... but somehow no one cared.
Funny story: We lived in a house with many teachers, including 2 party school teachers (i.e. the very convinced communists), my parents and an older couple were the only ones who weren't teachers... my father was a simple craftsman and my mother factory worker.
Once, when ZDF brought the annual monumental film (I think it was "Ben Hur") for Christmas or Easter, I don't remember exactly, it definitely snowed, not only the weather but also on the screen, it was almost exclusively to see white scrawls (we always called it "snow on the screen", or "the fight of the white and black ants") ... that's why my father climbed on the roof to adjust the antenna and everyone (and I mean everyone) stood underneath and shouted to him whether the picture got better or worse... depending on which way my father turned the antenna, because everyone wanted to watch that damn movie...😂
I hate that it's "GDR" in English. "DDR" is much catchier 😂. We call it DDR in Finnish too even though the Finnish official name for the country has different letters.
I was born in East Germany in 1973 and grew up near the border, so I had very good reception of West German television and radio. And of course everyone used it, how could you stop that? I also had a very nice childhood. If you don't know things any differently, you don't really miss anything. It's just the way it is. Back then, you simply appreciated some things more. We only had oranges at Christmas. That was something very special and that's why they tasted better than any orange you can buy all year round today, even if they were probably only half as good. We had to wait a long time for many things, if we got them at all. But then the joy was all the greater. I sometimes miss that feeling today and I create it artificially by not buying everything I might want straight away. I think everyone who grew up in East Germany can tell you many stories and most of them will have many nice experiences, but unfortunately some of them will also be less nice.
Yes, there was a helpful spirit among Easterners, but it was one that often came from necessity. Such as, “do you have some bricks or paint, I need to renovate my house…“ What many Easterners forget over the Eastalgia they experience for the good times back then, they often forget the snitching, the monitoring. Many people had the snitch in their family or their own bed. Many only found out who snitched on them once the secret files of the Stasi (Staatssicherheit - Secret police) that were essentially kept on everyone, were released to the public. Many divorces followed and many “friendships“ were broken….
I didn't forget about it...I just didn't experience any snitching.
I'm not saying it didn't happen, but it did not happen to everyone. A lot of people simply didn't care about politics. They lived their lifes and gave no reason to be monitored.
@@endless-nimu Of course, some people may not have experienced that. Even these people may have experienced injustices. What about being forbidded to study because you were from an academic family then? Or being separated from your parents and being given up for adoption against your parents parents‘ will or knowledge? What about not being able to travel to places? Or unknowingly being given anabolika and other drugs because you were a promising sports talent? Or plain everyday nuisances. I recall, during a vacation in the GDR back in the late seventies, when my parents sent us kids to get breadrolls for breakfast. When we had not returned after more than two hours, they started panicking. As it turned out, oranges had arrived at the little village store that morning, and we were stuck in the line for HOURS as the entire village had heard the word and got in line to secure some of this exotic fruit…
@@Attirbful I'd rather say that most people have not experienced that. At least none of anyone among my friends, neighbourhood, family, colleagues did. I think people who haven't lived there simply can't imagine, that GDR citizens didn't spend all day thinking about all the bad stuff . Like I said - we lived our lifes, cared about ourselves and our loved ones...and it wasn't a bad life - at least from the perspective of someone who was born and grew up in that system.
It was just normal for me, to not be able travel to western countries. I didn't miss it or dreamt about it. It simply wasn't important to me.
I also didn't know anyone who wasn't allowed to study. At least not due to being part of an academic family or being religious, but for not having the needed grades. It is actually new to me that people who came from an academic family weren't allowed to study. Were I lived there were several generations of families who were doctors. Granddad, father, son..so obviously they had the opportunity to study even if the parents had an academic background. I also knew religious people who studied (Angela Merkel is a good example).
All I know is, that people who were...let me say unconvenient (in terms of critizising the government/politics/system) often times couldn't study.
Apart from that it was just limited by the amount of spots and the grades you'd got.
I don't know much about children being seperated from their parents and given up for adoption. All I know that it happened if parents were on the radar and a so called bad influence or simply unable to care for their children.
What I know kind a bit about is the other way around....parents who fled to the west and left their children behind, since the mother of my best friend worked at a children's home and we often times played with some of the kids.
Talking about sports talents... I actually was close to be one :D I had the chance to join a sports school, but refused to, because I would have had to move to another town and didn't want to be seperated from my family at such a young age (I was 9 at that time). So I only know about these anabolika and drugs stuff, that was given to professional sports talents from the media and not from personal experience or people I knew on a personal level.
Bad things happened - nobody denies that, but like I said - most people just lived an ordinary and mostly happy life.
I had a boyfriend who lived in the eastern german era. Hold told me things like how kindergarten teachers would ask the children if the shape of the clock that was on the news their parents watched was round or square to distinguish if someone watched the forbidden western media. He also told me, that he got so brainwashed at some point, his own parents were scared of him and that he could snitch on them.
I was also born in the GDR. My mother was always rebellious. She was also summoned by the secret service, and they threatened to take me away from her if she continued to rebel against the system. She ended up fleeing with me in '84. There is also a crazy story about a hot air balloon that my father and friends secretly built. It was never used, however. Partly because a group flew through before my father and then they were too afraid to try again. My grandfather was also picked up because of the story and disappeared for two days. But he came back because they couldn't prove anything.
Good Bye Lenin, Balloon and Das Leben der Anderen (The life of others) where good movies to entertain and educate you, if you want to know more about living in the GDR
And ‚Sonnenallee‘
And the "Weißensee" tv-series.
They could receive West German TV in most of East Germany, except a small area called "The Valley of Ignorants"...
Erfahrungen ist besser als Google!
@@wietholdtbuhl6168Stimmt doch, was er sagt. Wurde mir genau so bei einem Besuch der DDR berichtet: Tal der Ahnungslosen oder ARD - Außer Raum Dresden.
We still talk about east and west Germany nowerdays. And there are still diffrences, though they try to adjust the wage structure etc. Politically, one also sees a different voting behaviour in the former East. Many villages have hardly any inhabitants left and the vacancy rate is high. This is also because many companies were sold or moved away after the fall of the Wall. This naturally creates dissatisfaction. But you can't force anyone to move there, even though housing is very cheap there. Not everything in the former East was bad, but I don't understand why so many people who weren't even there (because they're too young) want the GDR back. The value of freedom is simply underestimated here. Also, the fact that there were often shortages of food and raw materials in the East. What you couldn’t produce yourself didn’t exist
I was born in West-Berlin and all I knew from the DDR was the famous Transitstrecke. Endless "babummbabumm", Vopos checked the car and we drove nonstop so we were not allowed to pee. ☠ I was 13 when the wall came down and I remember everything in East-Berlin was grey and they had only one telephone for the whole street. The people have been more social and down to earth. A few years later my best friends were usually from the East and I fell in love with the Ostsee. Today I live in Brandenburg. I'm always ashamed when West-Germans have this arrogant, often insulting attitude towards East-Germans. I think the difference in voting has a lot to do with the experience East-Germans made after the reunification ("Treuhand" etc.). This attitude of the West looking down on the East in general is a problem.
In a queing competition, East Germans would be a worthy contestant for Englishmen.
true :)
@@endless-nimu Edeka in Berlin ist heute noch wie Konsum. Irgendweche Produkte fehlen immer, was mir in Westdeutschland noch nie aufgefallen ist.
@@IIIOOOUS Wenn ein ex-SED-Bonze den Laden leitet, würde mich das nicht wundern...
I was born in 1984 in East Germany. I don't remember much, but I do remember when the Wall fell. And I remember when my parents found out, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that their best friend worked for the state and spied on them. That was terrible
If you can find it, watch "The Lives of Others". It's an Oscar winning movie about Stasi (secret service in the GDR).
I was 14 when the wall came down, growing up in the west. I remember for months after the wall fell, we couldn't buy bananas. All the Easteners bought them all once the stores opened up in the morning and they were just out for the rest of the day. And I remember all the funny shoeboxes on wheels that they drove around in. My neighbors actually moved to the West in 1988 before the wall fell. They fled through Hungary and Austria and moved next door to me. They told me so many stories that were just unbelievable. These "shoeboxes on wheels" they called "cars" had to be ordered once a child was born, because it took that long to receive it so when the child turned 18, they had a car. I remember my neighbors asking my parents why all our cars had so boring colors. All black, silver, grey and white while their cars were blue, green, red, yellow, orange, any color you can think of but never black. And I remember of course the funny dialects I had never heard before. I still have East German currency. The coins were made from aluminium which was so weird because they weighed almost nothing. It's a shame they all fell for the promises from the Nazi party AfD. Being gay with a black husband, I have no intentions to ever go east again.
Used to dictatorship seems to be their nature sadly...😒
In 1984, while spending New Year in West Berlin, my friends and I got a day pass to visit East Berlin. It was an unforgettable experience. We were forced to change 10 DM into Eastern currency (worth about £25 in today's money). We simply could not spend it all, despite eating in the best restaurants and buying plenty of drinks in various bars because the prices were so low. We still had half of it left when we returned and could not change it back to Western money. There were shortages of certain foods, such as mushrooms. The shops were very dimply lit and all the goods were unbranded. A can of beans would just say what was inside with no picture or fancy packaging. There were many bookshops, which led me to think that the people were well educated and avid readers. We were watched by police officers from a distance the whole time we were there. Everyone could tell we were Westerners because of our clothing. Everything was over manned (to avoid unemployment). In one tiny bar with room for only 20 customers, there were four staff. We tried to talk to some of the young locals of our own age, but were told quite rudely that we could not. For me the worst thing was that the only shop which sold luxury goods like video recorders was for Party members only and everything in it cost more than most people could make in a year. There were also almost no cars, just trams swishing through the heavy snow in eerie, almost empty, dimly lit streets. I'm very grateful I got to see it before the Wall came down in 1989.
Thank you for giving a grown up perspective to the video…. I was born in W.-Germany in 1980, and we‘ve also heard the same eerie feeling from our family members who were courageous enough to venture East.
@@lynnm6413 Thanks. I have never forgotten that day, even though it was just over 40 years ago. I felt a real mixture of admiration and disquiet about East Berlin.
The expensive shop you went to, much likely was a so called ''Deli''-Shop (delicacy). Almost each town had at least one and it sold pretty rare imported stuff. My grandma used to buy the special cherries there for her Frankfurter Kranz she made each christmas.
I was born in West Berlin. Most Berlins had family of the other side of the wall, so we do. So we went several time per year to East Berlin or other parts of the GDR to visit family members. So we knew the western life and knew a litte bite of the eastern life. As a West Berliner you wasn't an "east" german but you wasn't also a not a "real" west german. Until now I notic that I am neither West nor East German. I understand both the perspective of the former West and East Germans and as a former West Berlin you was something special. The little island West Berlin surrounded from the red sea of communism was uniqu with its special oddities, like west berlin subways linies drove under east berliner territory without stopping at the east subway stations (called ghost stations) with eastern armed boaderguards. And the station were preserved in the some bombed condition as 1945 and advertising from the 1940th.
They had no unemployment because a job done by one engineer in the West was split up into multiple jobs in the East. We had a friend in Thuringia whose sole job is was to take readings from machinery. He was surprised that his job did not exist in the West but was simply a small part of a full position. I find it funny that this is always used as an "it wasn't all bad" example when it became clear after the fall of the wall that labor productivity was shockingly low. Another positive that is always pointed out is that there were kindergarten spaces for every toddler which, of course, was a way for the government to get early control over the children. There was no free choice of schools or professions. It all depended on how "conforming" you and your parents were.
when it comes to what communism did to people you can look up the term Homo Sovieticus on wiki. Sociological impact was so big and wide spread that it got a name
„No unemployment“ is a little bit misleading… Yes, everyone had a job, but very many not in the field they wanted to because the access to Gymnasium/Abitur and University was heavily restricted. If you lacked the necessary system conformity you could forget it. Also the majority of businesses was highly inefficient. The GDR was basically bankrupt and could only keep functioning supported by massive „loans“ from Western Germany.
Fully agree. It was artificial unemployment if you will. Productivity was way lower.
5:10 Ironcally the "Schwerter zu Pflugscharen" (swords to ploughshares) monument at the UN Headquarters in NYC was a present by the USSR in 1959. In the 1980s the GDR peace movement started to use an image of this sculpture as their symbol; later it was also used by (mostly Christian) peace groups in the West.
7:15 The Nazis had introduced the "Blockleiter", colloquially "Blockwart" (block warden), as a lower rank in their party, responsible for the political supervision of the neighborhood. "Blockwart" is still used as a pejorative for nosy neighbors with a "Karen"-like attitude. In the GDR those were replaced by the official "ABV" (Abschnittsbevollmächtigter, sector representative) as a task within the "Volkspolizei" (people's police), a kind of community policeman, and the inofficial "AKP" (Auskunftsperson = informant) of the StaSi (state security). The region of the GDR was therefore ruled by totalitarian regimes spying on their own citizens for about 56 years, 1933 - 1989. People less than 60 years old at the time as the wall fell had never experienced something else in their live.
And then came the "Wende" (the turn) and shortly after the "unification" - which felt for many of the same people who had voted for it in the East soon like a hostile takeover. Venturers and frauds from the West searched to get their money, and the "Treuhand" (trust corporation) meant to manage the state-owned companies who had hitherto guaranteed employment for (nearly) everyone and organize their transition in a market economy instead often collaborated with the competing corporations from the West (which sometimes bought the factories only to shut them down, at least after taking all assets for themselves), sometimes also with former GDR functionaries with good credit standing buying out the collective they formerly managed and laying off most workers or with the heirs of some former owner who were more interested in the real estate then the works itself and were anyway not qualified to lead an enterprise through difficult times. Unemployment in the East soared, and many younger people looked for better paid jobs in the West - in many villages only the elderly remained. Some qualified craftsmen tried to commute to their western employers, but only to be able to come home every other weekend does cause much strain on families. This caused much resentments in the East and also a feeling of inferiority respectively to be considered inferior by the "Wessies", supported by the far lower wages and pensions they received. Such resentments are still noticeable today, and also (with some people, not the majority) some strange mixture of suspicion in "die da oben" (lit. those at the top, the powers that be) as well as maybe a subconscious longing for authoritarian leadership.
Born in GDR 1984, had a nice childhood, kindergarten was great and then the unification. Since i was just 5-7 years old when this happend, i could not remember much. But my mother said that there was such a feeling of safety there, that the mothers led their strollers with the child inside OUTSIDE the shops.
Humans will always be humans. They will find a way to ge trough and live a family and neighborhood live as normal as possible. Five year old children won't see much of politics unless the family is directly affected. Most people who were toddlers in the third reich would have fond childhood memeries, too.
I remember very well when the Wall came down, I was 21. It was a great time to be in Germany. There are several good German movies about the GDR, like "Good Bye Lenin!", "The Life of Others", "Balloon", about the true story of two families who managed to escape to West Germany in a self-made balloon... And "Deutschland '83", a short series that gets the times extremely well, in both west and east Germany.
I never visited or went to West Berlin/GDR while I was young.
But I visited Northern Ireland in 1988. For me, that was the most horrible experience I’ve ever experienced. All the machine guns pointing in your car at the border from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland was just insane. That and some Military stops within the country stopped us going back into the north (my wife is Irish).
We just had the imagination that’s the way it must be going to West Berlin or GDR and we never did go back
Yeah it is so interesting. I only know Germany as a whole and it is so normal to me. I just think about it when i move to another Western City and realize again that my parents were not allowed there when they were my age. But they dont talk negatively of the GDR, ist was normal. To them and they miss Lots of stuff. Still, both of them were glad when they could finally follow their dreams After 89 of being artists and travel and stuff
The good of east Germany ; free Kindergarten for All 😊
And West Germany ???
@@wietholdtbuhl6168Not for all, and not free.
The right to get a place at a Kindergarten from 1 to 3 years of age was only established in 2013, but still not free of charge.
@@PotsdamSeniorUnd deswegen wollen wir nicht anfangen was alles nicht so gut war in der DDR! Ich habe auch das gute und das Böse 😈 gesehen!
I was born in East-Germany in 1999, so I didn't experience the GDR in person. But from what my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles told me, it was by far not as bad as many believe today.
My grandma father's side had three children. In the GDR, the more children a family had, the less taxes they had to pay. And with 3 kids, they were completely freed from taxes. Children were highly valued, because they were the future of the country.
Also, life was affordable. My father got a monthly salary of like 700 Mark DDR (with an exchange rate of 1:4, that would be like 175€ today, but it's hard to do the conversation). Doesn't sound much, but if the rent for your flat is only like 50 Mark (water, electricity and heating included), you pay only 6,50 Mark for a monthly (!) bus ticket and food was also affordable, that made for an enjoyable life. Cars and electric devices such as TVs or fridges were expensive though, but in return they lasted for decades, unlike today. Some of these devices are still working today.
The point that the lady made in her video about no unemployment in the GDR is also true. People who didn't want to work were looked down upon and they were called "Gammler", so in order to be accepted in society, you had to work. And there were enough jobs for everyone. That changed with reunification though, because all of the former GDR companies were closed and now, all the East- Germans had to be integrated into West- German labour market. Which didn't turn out well for everyone, especially people over 50.
The Stasi (short for Staatssicherheit, the Secret Service) was really bad and people had to be careful about what they say. Even in kindergarten, the nurses tried to get information by asking the kids about the TV programme that they watch at home, what their parents do and what they talk about in the family.
We could make life today also as affordable as in the DDR, cheap rents, free Kindergarten, ... But then we would be also as financially bankrupt as the DDR was very quickly.
@@toxiccc777 well, we are financially bankrupt now, too. Our economy is ruined, they want to raise taxes even more and higher the pension age because "there's not enough money" 🤡🤡
There is enough money, but instead of spending it on improving life, infrastructure and the educational system in our own country, we give it to asylum seekers who don't integrate and don't work here (don't want to generalise here, but there are a lot who act that way), spend it on bike tracks in Peru and for a senseless war in Ukraine, among many many other things we pay for worldwide.
Germany in general is very conservative, also the former West. But having a look at the recent EU parliament elections, you'll see the Nazis on first place in all former East German states, except Berlin. So calling them conservative is very much an understatement. Quite a worrying situation there...
Right-wingers are not nazis. Tell me ANY PARTY in the EU parliament which wants to have a single-leader, 4 or 5 year production planning and a religious anti-semit grounding.
Back in 1990, when I was a young man in my early 20s, I got to know a woman from the GDR here in West Germany. The border was open by then, but as nobody could have known if and when that would be, she had taken her chances during a vacation in Hungary (socialist) to flee to Austria and then came to West Germany because she thought that would be her best chance to be reunited with her family, i.e. her young son and her parents, who had stayed in the East. It happened faster than they thought.
Long story short, we became good friends, talked a lot, her son liked me, too, and I liked him, and so we drove to Leipzig in 1991 to meet with some of her friends who had stayed there and wanted to stay. I thought I knew a lot from what she had told me, but reality shocked me. Later in my life, I was to very distant places, like Asia, but never experienced a culture shock like that. I mean, when you travel to a distant country, you know that they'd speak a different language and have a different cultural background, and you're somehow mentally prepared for that. But these guys spoke my language, belonged to my people, if you so want, and yet thought and acted so different from what I was used to, and in many ways more friendly, trustful, and helpful than we were in the West. They had dreams of a better and brighter life once the nation was reunited, and I told them lies. They had no clue of what capitalism is all about, and they wouldn't have believed the truth anyway.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not defending the GDR regime in any way. But I can't defend the west German government and the vulture capitalists either. That wasn't a reunification, that was a conquest, in my opinion.
Hi Dude react to ; Das Leben der anderen !! 😊😊
Maybe do Goodbye Lenin first…it‘s offering insights without all the doom and gloom
I also was born in the GDR in1978 and my childhood was very beautiful. She's right with the sentence "It wasn't all that bad. I was a happy child until I grow up and as a teen I began to question some things like why can't I say what I think? Why is there a wall/border you can be shot if you try to cross? Why can't we just fly to the US to visit my uncle? Well then the wall fell and I began to understand how capitalism works. It was more of a hell like the socialist way. Anyway I believe till today a mixture of both system would be good but unfortunately the human is made to just think in black or white.
Ich bin in west berlin geboren und habe dort 28 jahre gelebt bis die mauer viel. Wir konnten auch ddr fernsehen empfangen. Als kind liebte ich das sandmännchen und die märchenfime sehr. Als erwachsene fand ich das fernsehen der ddr unerträglich. Die oberen dort predigten dem volk das eine und gingen dann bei uns in west berlin einkaufen. Natürlich nicht irgendwo sondern im teuersten kaufhaus der stadt im kadewe. Wo sie auch schonmal beim klauen erwischt wurden.
Als west Berlinerin, war es für mich immer wichtig zu wissen, wo ist der nächste bunker. Weil man ja nie wissen konnte ob die russen nicht doch irgendwann versuchen werden auch west berlin einzunehmen.
Wenn man aus der stadt raus wollte, so ging das nur über bestimmte routen, da musste man sich mit dem auto anstellen teilweise stundenlang bis die vopos(volkspolizei) die ausweise und das auto kontrolliert hatten. Dann begann die fahrt über die ostautobahn die echt miserabel war, obwohl wir wessis für den ausbau und die instandsetzung jährlich millionen bezahlten. Auf den autobahn rastplätzen traute man sich nicht sich mit jemandem zu unterhalten, weil es ein stasi spitzel sein konnte. A,so meine erinnerungen an die ddr um mich rum als west berlinerin waren echt miserabel.
Nach der Öffnung der mauer zog mein Arbeitgeber nach lichtenberg einen bezirk im ostteil der stadt. Als ich da das erste mal aus der s Bahn stieg sah ich noch einschusslöcher in den häusern und ratten die sich tummelten. Alles war grau in grau. Keine farbe nichts hübsches. In den 10 jahren die ich dann dort gearbeitet habe wurden nach und nach alle häuser renoviert, die ratten verschwanden und nette restaurants, bäckereien und andere kleine läden entstanden.
Das war ja nicht nur in west berlin so, sondern in ganz ost Deutschland. Das wurde alles aus dem solidaritätszuschlag gezahlt, den jeder bundesbürger von seinem gehalt abgezogen bekam. Also war es eine gemeinschaftsleistung aller den osten deutschlands wieder aufzubauen.
In der ddr hatte hwar jeder eine beschäftigung, doch nicht jeder hatte arbeit. Es gab leute die wurden fürs enten füttern bezahlt. Das übernehmen normalerweise die rentner. Sorry
If you can get it, watch the movie "Sonnenallee" 😊
How is that crazy? If you were allowed the Berlin Wall would have fallen the day it was built…
Honestly I was pleasantly surprised by this video, usually reaction videos are extremely surface level, and it feels more like trying to get some content out. But you actually thought about what was said in the video and brought up some things that even West Germans in particular don't want to admit (like the fact that there very much is still an East-West divide today)
Most of what I wanted to comment has already been said, but about the voting: you're wrong actually! Even though unfortunately our far right party (AfD) has been gaining a lot of prominence in recent years, traditionally the East has always been leaning very left. I think we're the only one with a federal state that has had Die Linke in the government?
So in the west there have traditionally been more conservative voters (CDU/CSU), and also more and more of our green party (Die Grüne), and we have always been more on the """extreme""" end of the spectrum (all the quotation marks because Die Linke really isn't all that extreme, especially in comparison to AfD...)
unfortunately, we are still a divided country in many respects..
They had no unemployment, because they had extremely low productivity. There, 5 people did the same work as 2 or 3 in the West. It just didn't matter how, as in capitalism.
West German tv was not forbidden (de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westfernsehen)
Yes, but don't tell the STAATSSICHERHEIT!
@@wietholdtbuhl6168 Well, yes, they might have had an eye on you if they found out. But it wasn't forbidden per se.
Na endlich mal einer, der die Wahrheit schreibt. Westfernsehen war NIE verboten. Es war nicht gern gesehen, aber nie verboten. Mein Vater war bei der Polizei und ich habe schon in meiner Kindheit Westfernsehen geschaut. Mit riesigen Antennen auf dem Dach, die man nicht übersehen konnte. Später gab es die Antennengemeinschaften über die man Westfernsehen auch in Gebieten empfangen konnte, die sonst keine Möglichkeit hatten Westfernsehen zu empfangen. Wir haben das Aufblühen von SAT1 und RTL genauso miterlebt, wie die westdeutsche Bevölkerung.
@@wietholdtbuhl6168 Quatsch.
@@PotsdamSenior Mein Vater war bei der Polizei und hat nie irgendwelche Probleme deswegen gehabt. Und unsere Antennen auf den Dächern waren genauso wenig zu übersehen, wie die der tausenden anderer Menschen.
Well i´ve been to the GDR in 1988 and THERE WERE HOMELESS people. I saw and spoke to them at the "Alexander Platz" tube station. Since we westerns were forced to change 25 DM west money to 25 Ostmark east money, we had a lot of money to spend. And it was forbidden to take this money back to west Germany. So i gave it to the homeless guys and talked to them. She can´t say, that there were no unemployed people. Thats wrong. But they had a lot of good things there as well. One thing is the "green arrow" which allows you to take a turn at a street crossing even if the traffic lights are red. We now have thisn in the whole of Germany.
Well, there were no "official" unemployed people. But there were people with an official "Berufsverbot" (a ban from your profession) as punishment for speaking up against the regime or asking to permanently leave the country.
It's just one of those facts people like to repeat because we were essentially brainwashed with them...
Yes, it was not allowed to watch western TV... in the 50s. ;)
It was never allowed. I had family in the GDR (DDR). But with advanced tehcnologie it was easier later on.
But it was never allowed.If a neighbor reported you to the Stasi, and that happened often because they could gain advantages from it, it could result in very high penalties. I had family in the GDR and my aunt was always afraid of that.
@@Sc4v3r Maybe you had family there but I was born (in 1966) and lived there. And I watched as everyone who I knew.
totaler Quatsch. Es war NIE offiziell verboten. Es war nicht gern von den staatlichen Stellen gesehen, aber es war nie verboten. Das wird heute nur behauptet, obwohl es eine glatte Lüge ist.
@@alexanderkalex877 Same here - I lived there and nobody had any issue witch watching and talking about the content the next day at school or at work.
I lived near the border on the west. The GDR was a surreal country since i visited many eastern bloc nations i know how ruined trodden down it was. Many villages didn´t have much of an improvement from pre war standarts even in the 80s. Few new houses and all with cement facades. Sure they had their representative buildings like "Honnie´s Lampenladen" in Berlin but few and far between.
I hate it when i hear all this whining about how "cruel" the Treuhand was. In 1991 shortly after the official reunification Germany ran a 100 Mio. DM deficit *every* month. The east contributed *nothing* . Their companies were allready on their last legs in 1980 when Straus (from Bavaria) helped facilitating huge loans for the GDR with west German banks thus prevented bancruptcy. Their supposed joblessness was a mirage with four people doing the job easily done by one half the time idling due to lack of input from other equally inefficient state owned companies only to churn out inferior quality trash like the "Rennpappe" (racing-papier-mache) Trabant "car". When we had our first workers from the east they were suprised we actually had to work for 8 hrs straight five days a week, every week.
Much later i was fortunate enough to have a collegue who explained to me how life was in the GDR. He was at first a stout pro GDR follower indoctrinated as he pointed out. He joined their army the NVA and became a tech specialist. That was when he realized how phony the whole system was. He hated their "Parade-Ronnies". You might not know but Ronnie or Henrie were quite popular names in the GDR. Anyways his parading Ronnies were turncoats cheering as told, when told who´d stab you in the back out of sheer spite for little or no gain. As he was a tech specialist and listend to Bundeswehr or Police transmissions looking for plans and schemes to invade the GDR but he quickly realized none of this was vaguely true. When there was one of the regular "invasion alarms" he allready knew nothing´d happen. Eventually the GDR ended and he was free. And he left.
I think what you said about the impacts on the psyche can be seen today since traumata´re very often passed to children and despite none of those 40 yrs or younger know what life was in this sureal prison they yearn for another strong man telling them how great they are and so we see a Nazi from the Rhineland leading the polls in the east. Disgusting.
Ha Ha Ha the East Vote ? One only one the SED🎉
If it was so beautiful, why did so many people want to leave?
Stupid question. Because a golden cage is still a cage.
She wasn't glorifying the regime, but saying that she liked certain parts of the culture they had. Not everything is just black and white.
Who said it was beautiful? It had many shortcomings, but as long as you you didn't step out of line and kept a low profile, you could have a relatively comfortable life. Boring, no luxuries, no International travel to non-socialist countries, many empty shelves in the shops, but the basics were provided and your path from birth to grave was straightforward and more or less risk-free.
Due to children being oblivious to a lot of behavioral strictures the adults were suffering from,
the added security risks the children posed to their families,
teachers being ideologues and school masters often times active Party members,
Children out of this generation had the best impression of the GDR. This phenomenon is called Ostalgie, which means overlooking that people couln‘t
chose their own professions,
there was a class system, so worker‘s children rarely got to go to University,
Religion was frowned upon
No unemployment in name only, because -communism-
.
.
.
The list goes on.
I don‘t want to take beautiful childhood memories away from people, yet any adult who wants to reevaluate things they perceived differently as children once they have grown up knows how little we got told as children of cheating husbands, dire health conditions and family feuds.
GDR was a dictatorship. Period.
You're partially right, but I've known a lot of people while it was still the GDR, and after the unification, who lived in the GDR during these times, and weren't children, who have/had the same feelings about that time. I think the woman in the video has a clearer grasp on the situation as it was for many people than what your comment portrays. It most certainly wasn't all good, but it wasn't all bad either.
@@user-xi6nk4xs4s during the time of the GDR, more than 3,8 Million people fled the Soviet Sector, with considerable risk to their lives and family.
It is a self-selecting factor, that the ones who stayed were less opposed, politically more willing to adhere to party mandates and thus had a different impression of the life in de GDR.
It‘s the same as everywhere…if you never find the courage to oppose the system, you will be happy sheep following along.
People from east Germany often have these nostalgic feelings about the GDR, and then they say things like "we didn't have unemployment".
I'd like to respond: "Ok. And why was that so?"
It was communism. Jobs weren't provided by companies, but by the state. So when they needed jobs, they'd just create some. Whether that was economically reasonable or not.
And what happened to that state? It went bankrupt. Without the unification, it would have been it's end.
That state, or lets say it's people, were saved by the west.
And still they are right...they was (almost) no unemployment. That's the perspective of normal citizens and having a job and not having to be afraid to lose it, was a positive for them.
It at least worked like that for 40 years. The GDR being bankrupt had several reasons, not only creating jobs even when they weren't desperately needed.
Yes that means that these people are idiots.
She has a romanized view of the GDR and it is not true that there was unemployment before the unification. As unemployment was basically almost unknown, but if you were unemployed you were given a lot of money, far more than now and without any demands or cuts. It is interesting how things changed after the unification as unemployment shot up overnight. Before banks for example were looking for an apprentice with school grades of about 3.5 secondary school, after unification this changed to 1.1 high school diploma. The shock for schoolkids from the west was real and tough as you suddenly needed to work hard to get better grades as children from the east came by the thousands to steal your job and they all had excellent grades. I hated every one of them as they still had no clue of how the world works and their englisch pronunciation was miserable, mine was excellent and without any accent, I spoke like an American.
You obviously didn't live in the GDR - so what do you know about the experiences of someone who actually did?
9:09 yes, she’s is right. There were many good things in the GDR that was destroyed after the reunification. It’s no surprise that there are people who want eastern Germany to be independent again. The federal republic of Germany is going down
I have never ever heard someone say that.
But western politicians still like to blame communism for lots of mistakes they made themselves. It's a bit similar to the story of brexit and the evil EU (imho).
So maybe they shouldn't hold a referendum on east german independence afterall :)
I was Born in GDR in 1983, I did not miss Bananas 😂… turns out I dont Like them this much. Beautiful memories as a Child.
Now I know it was Not easy for everybody… but hey we Are going back to it… now all of Germany… thats the vibe my parents get nowadays.. only one Party to vote… history returns…
Sie romantisiert ! Frag dich mal warum so viele AFD im Osten wählen. Die DDR hat auch sehr viele Nazis zu beginn aufgenommen und geduldet. #Braunbuch Probleme mit Nazis gab es dort schon sehr lange. Alles sehr romantisiert.
Was haben denn ihre Erfahrungen mit der AfD oder Nazis zu tun?
@@endless-nimu "Braunbuch über ehemalige Nationalsozialisten in hohen Positionen in der DDR
Im Gegenzug erschienen in West-Berlin und der Bundesrepublik ähnliche Veröffentlichungen, die die nationalsozialistische Vergangenheit von Staats- und Parteifunktionären der DDR thematisierten. Der Untersuchungsausschuss Freiheitlicher Juristen veröffentlichte 1958 unter dem Titel Ehemalige Nationalsozialisten in Pankows Diensten erstmals eine Liste von 75 ehemaligen NSDAP-Mitgliedern. Bis 1965 erschienen fünf jeweils erweiterte Auflagen.[21] Die Rechercheure hatten offenbar Zugang zum US-amerikanisch verwalteten Berlin Document Center sowie zu Informanten in der DDR. Im Jahr 1981 legte Olaf Kappelt das Braunbuch DDR. Nazis in der DDR vor.[22] Es enthielt 200 Namen. Im Jahr 2009 veröffentlichte Kappelt eine bearbeitete Neuauflage seines Werkes mit Angaben zu über eintausend NS-belasteten Personen, die in gesellschaftlich einflussreichen Positionen der DDR Fuß fassen konnten.[23] Zusammenfassend schrieb im Vorwort das langjährige SED-Politbüro-Mitglied Günter Schabowski: „Ein Nazi, dem es gewährt war, zum Sozialisten, genauer zum Kommunisten zu mutieren, war total und für immer entnazifiziert. Er war wie neugeboren. Wen aber die westdeutsche Demokratie umerzog, der blieb ein Nazi.“[24]"
Als ob es im Westen keine Nazis/AfDler gibt...
Das ist eigentlich weniger ein Ost-West-Problem als ein Problem der strukturschwachen Orte/Gegenden. Wo den Leuten die Alternativen und Hoffnungen fehlen haben braune Propagandisten leichtes Spiel.
Auch im Osten gibt es viele, die das braune/blaue Gesocks nicht gewählt haben und auch nie werden. Aber, die werden nicht weiter erwähnt, weil sie nicht ins Narrativ des "demokratiefeindlichen" Ostens passen.
Was like China Today!😢
Nothing like china today...
@@plutoniumlollie9574 Hast du in der DDR gelebt und wie alt bist du?
@@wietholdtbuhl6168 Alt genug, um den Mauerfall in den Nachrichten zu verfolgen. Sehr viel aus eigenem Interesse mit der DDR beschäftigt. Oft im Osten auch über längere Zeiträume gewesen. Viele Menschen, die in der DDR gelebt haben ausführlich ausgefragt. Und ich hab mehr als genug Wissen über China und der chinesischen kultur, um einen Vergleich ziehen zu können. Und selbst? 😊
@@wietholdtbuhl6168 Und die Beziehungen nach China? Aber das Internet scheint noch zu funktionieren. Ich war schon fast beunruhigt, heute noch keinen passiv aggressiven Kommentar bekommen zu haben. Aber so kann ich später doch noch in Frieden schlafen gehen.
Trotzdem alles Gute, auch für die Gesundheit.