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Is there any East/West cultural tension in Germany lingering from the country being divided for a few decades? The US still has some undertones of North/South

Is there any East/West cultural tension in Germany lingering from the country being divided for a few decades? The US still has some undertones of North/South culture clashes and our civil war was over 150 years ago.

NelsonMinar 9y ago
I don't know if "tension" is the right word, but there's absolutely visible differences. Particularly countrywide. The reasons for the differences are complicated and involve history, culture, and economics. Some reading from the 2016 elections: https://www.ft.com/content/e7c7d918-a17e-11e7-b797-b61809486fe2 https://www.ft.com/content/e7c7d918-a17e-11e7-b797-b61809486... https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/09/berlin-after-the-elections/540996/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/09/berlin-after-the-elec... (I'm American, this is my outsider perspective.)
minikites 9y ago
Yep: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/30/AR2009103001844.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10... http://blog.goethe.de/meet-the-germans/archives/76-How-to-Tell-an-Ossi-from-a-Wessi.html http://blog.goethe.de/meet-the-germans/archives/76-How-to-Te...
germanier 9y ago
It's not just cultural tension, the divide is still deeply visible in society. You can see the old border in basically every statistical map you look at. A few years ago Zeit had this visualisation http://www.zeit.de/feature/german-unification-a-nation-divided http://www.zeit.de/feature/german-unification-a-nation-divid...
zerr 9y ago
I've heard neo-Nazis are usually in/from East.
kibwen 9y ago
Here's an article from two years ago comparing how reunification is proceeding: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/02/german-reunification-25-years-on-how-different-are-east-and-west-really https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/02/german-reunifi... TL;DR: the West is more than twice as wealthy as the East, nearly none of the wealthiest citizens or largest companies are based in the East, expected lifetimes in the East have just about caught up with the West, about 10% of marriages are between Easterners and Westerners (the same proportion as between citizens and immigrants), more migrants live in the West, though the East is leading in some areas such as education and the availability of childcare, and about half of all citizens report that Easterners and Westerners have more differences than similarities.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  That doesn't sound too bad. When the wall fell, an East German aunt of mine visited relatives in both West Germany and the US. She said something like "Everyone in West Germany is rich compared to us. Then you go to America and everyone is like on Dallas (a night time soap where everyone owned oil wells and stuff)." I was in West Germany when the wall came down. They stopped requiring ID cards to enter the American military base ("kasern" iirc). This lasted a week or so and then the Gulf War started, at which point you needed you military ID plus a second photo ID to get on base. I watched the wall come down on TV with my baby and toddler climbing all over me. I sent care packages to East German relatives for a time after it came down and it was no longer a security risk for my husband for me to admit I was related to these people.
rayiner 9y ago
West/South Germans have lots of stereotypes and jokes about East Germans. (Not condoning them, just know about them from my wife having lived in eastern Germany in the early 2000s.) See: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4stddr/til_that_kevin_is_seen_in_germany_as_a_lowclass/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4stddr/til_t... ("Only druggies and East Germans are named Kevin.").
electricslpnsld 9y ago
There is still a term "Ostalgie" that refers to nostalgia for life in Eastern Germany.
k__ 9y ago
Seemingly. My father came from the east and my mother from the west. I was born in tge west, 5 years before the wall fell. I had a bunch of girlfriends who grew up in the east. To me it was never much of a thing. But I know for many other people it is :/
nerfhammer 9y ago
"mauer im kopf" https://www.google.com/search?q=mauer+im+kopf https://www.google.com/search?q=mauer+im+kopf
improbable22 9y ago
Be careful with the causality here. Some East/West distinctions predate the wall. A vivid example is the 1933 electoral map http://brilliantmaps.com/nazi-votes/ http://brilliantmaps.com/nazi-votes/ but this too reflects an older reality. (Of course some of the contrast is indeed due to the postwar history, just not all.) And likewise, the US North/South culture war long predates the civil war. Puritans and Cavaliers didn't exactly see eye to eye 200 years before that.
- toyg 9y ago
  Even limiting ourselves to post-WW2, the wall went up more than 15 years after the end of the war; actual border lines were basically marked in 1944 already, and made official in 1949. That’s almost a generation spent apart before the wall symbolized the division. East Germany officially lasted 50 years; that buoy will only be passed in 2039.
  - improbable22 9y ago
    Sure! Perhaps I should have said iron curtain instead of wall. My point was only that quite a few of these differences East/West of the border would have been unsurprising long before the war. Some long long before: bits of the west were part of Charlemagne's empire. Likewise the US, where it's not so much of a stretch to map the culture war onto the English civil war.
- taejo 9y ago
  Regions 1 and 5-9 are now part of Poland rather than East Germany, and once you remove them the pattern is a lot less clear.
  - improbable22 9y ago
    This is true. About the people, I don't actually know much about where they were moved to. Do you perhaps know of a good summary? Within the current borders, names ending -ow & -itz (of slavic origin) look like they have a transition near the iron curtain: http://truth-and-beauty.net/experiments/ach-ingen-zell/ http://truth-and-beauty.net/experiments/ach-ingen-zell/ I thought this was very old, but I guess there could be some mass renaming campaign I somehow didn't know about...
toomanybeersies 9y ago
From some of the Germans I've talked to, there is a bit of a bias against East Germans. Some West Germans (especially Bavarians apparently) see East Germans as uneducated and more likely to be criminals. I don't know how deep this bias runs, or how common it is, but it does exist.

NelsonMinar 9y ago

I don't know if "tension" is the right word, but there's absolutely visible differences. Particularly countrywide. The reasons for the differences are complicated and involve history, culture, and economics. Some reading from the 2016 elections: https://www.ft.com/content/e7c7d918-a17e-11e7-b797-b61809486fe2 https://www.ft.com/content/e7c7d918-a17e-11e7-b797-b61809486... https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/09/berlin-after-the-elections/540996/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/09/berlin-after-the-elec... (I'm American, this is my outsider perspective.)

minikites 9y ago

Yep: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/30/AR2009103001844.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10... http://blog.goethe.de/meet-the-germans/archives/76-How-to-Tell-an-Ossi-from-a-Wessi.html http://blog.goethe.de/meet-the-germans/archives/76-How-to-Te...

germanier 9y ago

It's not just cultural tension, the divide is still deeply visible in society. You can see the old border in basically every statistical map you look at. A few years ago Zeit had this visualisation http://www.zeit.de/feature/german-unification-a-nation-divided http://www.zeit.de/feature/german-unification-a-nation-divid...

zerr 9y ago

I've heard neo-Nazis are usually in/from East.

kibwen 9y ago

Here's an article from two years ago comparing how reunification is proceeding: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/02/german-reunification-25-years-on-how-different-are-east-and-west-really https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/02/german-reunifi... TL;DR: the West is more than twice as wealthy as the East, nearly none of the wealthiest citizens or largest companies are based in the East, expected lifetimes in the East have just about caught up with the West, about 10% of marriages are between Easterners and Westerners (the same proportion as between citizens and immigrants), more migrants live in the West, though the East is leading in some areas such as education and the availability of childcare, and about half of all citizens report that Easterners and Westerners have more differences than similarities.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
That doesn't sound too bad. When the wall fell, an East German aunt of mine visited relatives in both West Germany and the US. She said something like "Everyone in West Germany is rich compared to us. Then you go to America and everyone is like on Dallas (a night time soap where everyone owned oil wells and stuff)." I was in West Germany when the wall came down. They stopped requiring ID cards to enter the American military base ("kasern" iirc). This lasted a week or so and then the Gulf War started, at which point you needed you military ID plus a second photo ID to get on base. I watched the wall come down on TV with my baby and toddler climbing all over me. I sent care packages to East German relatives for a time after it came down and it was no longer a security risk for my husband for me to admit I was related to these people.

rayiner 9y ago

West/South Germans have lots of stereotypes and jokes about East Germans. (Not condoning them, just know about them from my wife having lived in eastern Germany in the early 2000s.) See: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4stddr/til_that_kevin_is_seen_in_germany_as_a_lowclass/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4stddr/til_t... ("Only druggies and East Germans are named Kevin.").

electricslpnsld 9y ago

There is still a term "Ostalgie" that refers to nostalgia for life in Eastern Germany.

k__ 9y ago

Seemingly. My father came from the east and my mother from the west. I was born in tge west, 5 years before the wall fell. I had a bunch of girlfriends who grew up in the east. To me it was never much of a thing. But I know for many other people it is :/

nerfhammer 9y ago

"mauer im kopf" https://www.google.com/search?q=mauer+im+kopf https://www.google.com/search?q=mauer+im+kopf

improbable22 9y ago

Be careful with the causality here. Some East/West distinctions predate the wall. A vivid example is the 1933 electoral map http://brilliantmaps.com/nazi-votes/ http://brilliantmaps.com/nazi-votes/ but this too reflects an older reality. (Of course some of the contrast is indeed due to the postwar history, just not all.) And likewise, the US North/South culture war long predates the civil war. Puritans and Cavaliers didn't exactly see eye to eye 200 years before that.

toyg 9y ago
Even limiting ourselves to post-WW2, the wall went up more than 15 years after the end of the war; actual border lines were basically marked in 1944 already, and made official in 1949. That’s almost a generation spent apart before the wall symbolized the division. East Germany officially lasted 50 years; that buoy will only be passed in 2039.
- improbable22 9y ago
  Sure! Perhaps I should have said iron curtain instead of wall. My point was only that quite a few of these differences East/West of the border would have been unsurprising long before the war. Some long long before: bits of the west were part of Charlemagne's empire. Likewise the US, where it's not so much of a stretch to map the culture war onto the English civil war.
taejo 9y ago
Regions 1 and 5-9 are now part of Poland rather than East Germany, and once you remove them the pattern is a lot less clear.
- improbable22 9y ago
  This is true. About the people, I don't actually know much about where they were moved to. Do you perhaps know of a good summary? Within the current borders, names ending -ow & -itz (of slavic origin) look like they have a transition near the iron curtain: http://truth-and-beauty.net/experiments/ach-ingen-zell/ http://truth-and-beauty.net/experiments/ach-ingen-zell/ I thought this was very old, but I guess there could be some mass renaming campaign I somehow didn't know about...

toomanybeersies 9y ago

From some of the Germans I've talked to, there is a bit of a bias against East Germans. Some West Germans (especially Bavarians apparently) see East Germans as uneducated and more likely to be criminals. I don't know how deep this bias runs, or how common it is, but it does exist.