As a German, I think the term "unification" is very misleading and burying a lot of issues very relevant to this day in Germany. What happened back then wasn't

As a German, I think the term "unification" is very misleading and burying a lot of issues very relevant to this day in Germany. What happened back then wasn't "partners joining into an equal union", what happened was the annexation and selling out of a whole half of a country to prove an ideological political point about the alleged superiority of one of them. Which was then followed with widespread and systematic demonization of anything related to the GDR. A situation that left millions of Germans not just suddenly without a job or any perspective, but being the target of resentment from West Germans who allegedly have to pay for "lazy East Germans" trough the Soli, while seeing a lot of their own political views suddenly equaled to Nazi Germany. The result of which being that the modern day Federal Republic of Germany is not a product of "unification", but rather a continuation of the very same FRG that came out of Western allied occupation with the added territory of the GDR. But in the many ways a unified Germany could have learned from both sides, none did really manifest. For example unified Germany still took years and decades to decriminalize and rehabilitate homosexuality, an issue that was for the most part already solved in the GDR. That's why to this day there's a pretty massive rift going trough the country that particularly many Western Germans are completely oblivious about.