The populist right AfD is doing also very well among gainers after the reunification. This is about perceived current inequality, not about a much needed compen

The populist right AfD is doing also very well among gainers after the reunification. This is about perceived current inequality, not about a much needed compensation of double de-industrialization and de-capitalization of the east (post WWII and Post 1990-Treuhand). In saxony the local candidates are well off business men with a tendency to war lord like attiude to local power grabs and corruption. AfD is not thematizing any of this but is currently on a well funded campaign run to retcon and ursurp the civil movement of 89/90 as a nationalist movement and branding itself of it's heir. All this while having no problems of having high ranking Stasi-Officers in the party itself. East Germany's larger cities with significant university clusters (Leipzig, Dresden, Halle, Rostock, Potsdam, Jena-Weimar-Erfurt) are doing well, the rest is aging away on well paved streets. That populist reigns there is no suprise if educated post reunifcation youth works in those cities or elsewhere and might return some day. But wouldn't write off the east yet, since a populist right with maximum 1/3 support of electorate is not too uncommon and it's all about how conservative CDU positions itself in relation to that.