Thirty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which the Germans are celebrating this Saturday, November 9, Anja Passehl can be proud of having succeeded professionally. Which, by his own admission, “was far from being won for his generation, coming from the former GDR”. With her baccalaureate in hand, this young woman from Rostock, a port city in the north-east of Germany, did like many of her classmates, she left her region, undermined by unemployment, and went to study and work in the West. Before returning to his city, to create an IT company. Today, she heads the chamber of commerce and industry there.
Access to high responsibilities
It was to talk about her professional success and the difficulties encountered in achieving it that she participated a few weeks ago in an evening, organized by the “Third Generation-East” association, at the municipal theater in Rostock. On this weekday evening, the audience looked strangely like him: men and women, in their forties, born in the region and having experienced life in the former GDR and the adaptation, not always easy, to the capitalist system of the Reunified Germany. In the room, most of the participants say they share a feeling: not being represented and above all being caricatured by the rest of the country. “I hear very often in the media that East Germans are not sure of themselves, that they do not know how to assert themselves. This narrative generalizes in a negative way and does not reflect reality“, notes Anja Passehl.
Editorial on the fall of the Berlin Wall: nothing is immutable, when people are stronger than their fears
It is precisely to change this discourse about this generation that “Third Generation East” was created 11 years ago. “Our goal is to network Wendekinder and make them more visible“, explains Claudia Geist, host of this evening at the Rostock theater. “Our generation is too poorly represented, too few East Germans occupy high-level positions. The rare people who have succeeded must therefore be more visible. We have obtained excellent qualifications using all the possibilities of reunification, we have experience and we want to take responsibility. This network helps us“, adds this senior official in the capital, Berlin.
Forced to erase his identity
Since the fall of the Wall, and despite an obvious economic catch-up, very few East Germans occupy very high positions. There are of course ex-chancellor Angela Merkel and former president Joachim Gauck, but the latter remain exceptions, and none of them has played on their East German identity in public. They are not the only ones.
Stefan Traeger also admits to having erased his identity as “Ossi”, an East German, in order to make a career. Born in Jena, in Thuringia, he now heads the Jenoptik group, specializing in optical techniques, and is the only manager from the east of the country at the head of a company listed on the Dax, the Stock Exchange. from Frankfurt. “Do you know the concept of infiltration? he asks, with a smile. That’s what I did, for a long time. Try making a career in Germany with a Saxon accent. You can forget this idea. So I erased my accent and avoided talking about my origins for a long time. So the question is not whether my identity helped me get to where I am, but rather whether I could have had a normal career in Germany while retaining my local accent. I have big doubts. And that’s a problem“, he laments.
“European leaders feared German reunification”
Persistent social injustices
More than thirty years after reunification, these themes are increasingly heard, thanks to the work of organizations such as “Third Generation East” and thanks to the publication of very personal books on the subject. The question of a clash of cultures between East and West, however, remains central, as Claudia Geist regrets. “I would like us to no longer have to speak in categories “East Germans, West Germans” but rather to recognize that reunified Germany is very diverse, with regional plurality. However, as long as structural inequalities persist, between the East and the West, such as salary differences and in terms of assets and inheritance, we must continue to put pressure on the policy to act.“, she believes.
Wage differences remain significant in reunified Germany. In the Eastern Länder – apart from Berlin – the population earns around 20% less than in the rest of the country, due in particular to a large low-wage sector. As for inheritance amounts, they are significantly lower in the east of the country. In recent years, however, we have noticed a new, positive phenomenon. More and more “Wendekinder” who left to work in the West are returning to their region of origin, particularly to raise their children there. But this phenomenon could be thwarted and slowed down by the rise of the extreme right, very strong in these regions. An electoral particularity which also contributes to dividing German society.
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