Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany still needed to work to improve the lives of the people in the east, for whom reunification also represented “a collapse.”
Germany’s political establishment gathered on Thursday to commemorate German Unity Day, the annual celebration of German reunification.
The festivities took place in the city of Schwerin, the capital of the east German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
In the city’s lavish 19th century Schwerin Castle, part of which is the seat of the state’s legislature, Germany’s politicians highlighted the need for more recognition of the east German experience.
Every year on October 3, Germany marks the unification of West Germany and communist East Germany in 1990, which was triggered after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The holiday always sparks debate over the state of the country after unification, with critics saying the promised economic boom in eastern Germany failed to materialize, with wide disparities between the two regions remaining to this day. This was perhaps most visible in Berlin on Thursday in the form of a “peace” demonstration led by critics of Germany’s support for Ukraine and Israel.
The challenge of unification
In Schwerin, Chancellor Olaf Scholz opened his remarks noting that German “unity and freedom was finally achieved on this day.”
“We Germans celebrate the great good fortune that things turned out this way. And it’s good we always take this opportunity to remind ourselves and others that everything could have turned out very differently in a far less self-determined, far less peaceful, far less happy time,” Scholz said.
The German chancellor said there was no single country in the world that had faced such a challenge as the one Germany had these past four decades.
“The challenge of bringing together two societies that were divided over four decades and organized in completely different ways – economically, politically, culturally and mentally,” Scholz added.
For the east ‘everything changed’
Several politicians spoke about the need for more recognition for the east German experience and the unfulfilled promises of reunification.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s premier Manuela Schwesig spoke about the inequality of experience.
“For most people in the west German states, not much changed as a result of German reunification,” Schwesig said. “But for us in east Germany, for our families, almost everything changed.”
Schwesig said the east “remains different: with its expectations and experiences, with its attitudes and life plans.”
She said that disadvantages still plagued the region, with east Germans having less wealth in comparison to the west.
Reunification ‘not complete’
Scholz echoed Schwesig’s point, adding that “for millions, the upheaval in the years following reunification meant one thing above all: a collapse.”
East Germans suffered “a devaluation of their knowledge, their experiences, their life’s work,” he said.
Scholz conceded that while the nation’s reunification has progressed significantly since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the process has been far from perfect.
“I’m not revealing a secret here: German reunification is, of course, not completed in this sense even after 34 years,” Scholz said.
The German chancellor called for continuing to work to improve the lives of the people in the east.
“Wherever politics can create better living opportunities and equal living conditions. This must happen. And that is exactly what we are working on together, at all levels,” Scholz said.
