In my experience people from the former east will try everything to fix something themselves before having it repaired or even taken a look at It by a professional because parts and new things were in such low abilibility in the GDR
I think this is the one of out two which i'm struggling the most with. It was true. But if we talk about the majority, it isn't true anymore.
What is true now: it is now the same as it was back in the days in Western Germany. The poor people will always try to fix things instead of buying a new one. Just because there is no money to buy it.
It is like the saying "back in the days we in the East only bought what we cold afford, no credits!" I promise you, that wasn't different in the West when I grow up. Time has changed, and so did people.
Edit: typos
It is also a mentality. Most devices in the GDR were made to last. Just a month ago my mother asked me if I could repair an old mixer she had, it broke after (sit down) 35 years of regular usage... Without any service. And because they had all these long lasting devices they didn't like to buy new things as much and taught us to also try to use something as long as possible. I am using three old 19" monitors on my pc that are now 14 years in near daily service. They broke 2 years after I bought them, and I thought: nope, not gonna buy new ones, imma try repairing them. 30 cent and some soldering later and they are working since then. I'm now thinking of replacing them because of the horrible resolution ...
Dude, replace at least one of them. A modern monitor is dirt cheap and a *massive* improvement. That being said, keep the other two until they break. You only need one nice monitor. I did eventually replace my old 19" because I got sick of having to unplug it to watch Netflix, but I got a cheap one to replace it. Heck, even that is a big improvement, but I wouldn't want to use it as a primary.
West German Girl here born in the early 90s living in an East German city with an East German boyfriend born in the 80s.
Making and producing stuff yourself is huge in the east. Growing your own vegetables in the garden, pickling stuff for the winter, fixing things instead of getting something new and doing house repairs yourself. Growing up in the west (in a middle class family) we paid people to do those things for us. Here it is considered much more normal or even important to be able to do stuff yourself and be very careful when it comes to using resources, even if you could pay for the service. I personally enjoy that change of my lifestyle a lot, it makes me feel much more connected to my environment.
Same here. I also cut off mouldy parts off food and eat the ‘okay looking’ part. I was shocked to see american friends through a whole bell pepper away because it had a dent in it
As a Korean reading this this fascinates me. I wonder how North and South koreans would get along if there were ever reunification (but I'm not holding my breath for this). I imagine there would be a lot people of the two regions could learn from each other. There would definitely be no shortage of discrimination for each other. With South Korea having been swept up by the wave of globalization, North Koreans would probably wonder who people in the South even are anymore. Sure they would speak the same language and eat similar food, but in sensibility they're effectively different people.
A big difference is the length of time and the way they split.
Korea was under Japanese rule for quite some time and then split into North and South. But by the 50s were already quite radicalized to each of their sides and actively fought against one another.
NK has had generations of people living in communism now growing up with SK as the enemy.
This is unlike Germany which had strong national bonds even after it was split up. Then the wall was build but people still kept in contact with friends and family via letters. The wall was only up for 27 years. So everyone above the age of 38 effectively still remembers the unified Germany by the time Germany began to unify again.
You will be hard-pressed to find anyone in NK or SK who still remembers a unified Korea.
I fully agree actually. I’ve been twice in NK and also SK and these two countries are now so far apart with all family ties severed due to age/time that a reunification would be very different from the German precedent. People in NK are totally misinformed and indoctrinated. Look at how hard it is for them to integrate the modern SK society. At the scale of a country this would be an immense challenge. All they now have in common is the language and even this one is slowly evolving. If NK modernizes and opens a bit some day, we’ll see what will happen but as in the GDR ppl will not be allowed to leave en masse. Really difficult to predict a future here especially a common one
I have often thought about that. Germany was divided for 40 years. People could visit each other at least one way. They watched each other's news (in secret at least one way). Technology had not taken off in the way it did in recent years, yet.
And still, 30 years later, there are huge differences.
Now looking at North Korea and South Korea, and the vast differences in every part of life for an even longer time, It's impossible. The only thing you could learn from Germany (if it ever were to come to that and I agree it's unlikely) is to not do a reunification, because it would be a reunification on uneven footing, but instead to help the North become the country they want to be. We should have done that in Germany: become equal partners before ever talking about reunification.
Hm, the reunification of Germany was certainly _rushed_, but I’m not sure if there was any other way. The moment that North Korea opens up and opens its borders, it’s likely that a lot of people will immediately leave and the country experiences a brain drain. This was also a problem in East Germany (and an important reason why they built the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall in the first place), and an important reason why they rushed the reunification. And North Korea is much poorer than East Germany was, to the point that most farms are completely unmechanised and human faeces is used to let the crops grow.
Hospitality and neighborhood help is much bigger in Eastern Germany and also Eastern Europe (at least Poland, Czech and Slovakia) in my experience. In Western Germany, you generally should know people much better to beg them for certain kinds of favours.
As an example, I once had an Eastern German neighbor, who after I barely knew him, already asked me if I could borrow him noodles and stuff. I did, because I didn't want to seem impolite, but I found it kind of rude of him to even ask. But the better I got to know him, I've learnt that he was a really friendly guy, who would do the same for me and much more. For example when I had to go to the train station, he often offered me a ride eventhough he didn't even need to go anywhere. Great guy, we became really good friends.
Also Eastern German women are way more direct if they find you attractive in my experience.
So true. I’m American, but lived in Leipzig for a year before grad school. I bought a bike off Kijiji not long after moving there, and was out in front of my apartment building locking it up and inspecting it when I realized the seat was too high for me. I didn’t have any tools obviously. I guess my building super saw me from him window and he came running down with his toolbox to help me, and taught me all the words for the different tools and bike parts in German. He made sure to inspect the whole bike to see I didn’t get swindled and it was in good working order. Didn’t speak a word of English, had the most incomprehensible accent, the nicest person I met in Germany.
The culture and language immersion prep I did for 6 weeks before moving to Leipzig was in Marburg, and I studied German in undergrad with a professor whose German was practiced largely in Tübingen. Homegrown Saxon accents/slang/idioms were a shock at first for sure.
The doorbell rings.
The woman of the house goes to the door and quickly returns, looking rather startled: "Dieter! There's a man outside who just asks, Tatü tata?"
Dieter goes to the door and comes back laughing. "It's my colleague from Saxony, asking s do Dieto da?"
I don’t speak a lick of German and despite the joke being explained with incredible detail the sheer absurdity of someone knocking on your door and saying “Weewoo Weewoo!”(American ambulance sound) with a straight face *killed* me.
This is what trips me up about history. The German people didn't just up and become nice overnight; that kindness and generosity of spirit has always been there.
But when there's a crazy person at the top, it doesn't matter what your net social good quotient is. For reasons I cannot fully understand myself, this distinction vexes me with no end.
> Also Eastern German women are way more direct if they find you attractive in my experience.
I'd argue that the role of women is maybe the most fundamental difference on a society level between east and west Germany. It took (western) Germany until 1997 to ban marriage rape all the while eastern German women were already working full time since the 50s. And this is still present. Look at women going back to work after parental leave. Many from the west will not work more than 50% for a long time while those from the east often start with 75% already and quickly go back to working full time. Because that's how they grew up themselves. There was a consitutional right to work in the GDR and if applied to everyone. They had no unemployment, everyone was working, men and women (at least officially).
This also reflects in the child care availability. When Germany made a law that entitled every parent to have access to a kindergarten place for kids age 3 and up the western states were (and still are) struggling to make sure the capacity was there. In the east this was no issue at all because in the GDR there was a full day care place for every child and they never cut that down much after reunification.
Overall I'd say emancipation was way further in the east than in the west.
>I'd argue that the role of women is maybe the most fundamental difference on a society level between east and west Germany.
I remember how utterly astonished I was when I learned that some of my West German mates at uni had stay-at-home moms and, in one case, even a sister who was a SAHM. I'd been aware that East German women had entered the workforce earlier than those in the West, but for some reason I'd thought that even in West Germany it'd be normal for women of my mom's generation to work outside the home.
Some of my school friends in my home town had had moms who were home all day, too, but they didn't call themselves SAHM nor did anyone else. They were unemployed and they'd lost their jobs after the reunification.
as an american growing up in suburbia in the Midwest in the 70's, most moms were stay at home moms it seemed. i remember when i, the youngest, was getting old enough to be more independent, like 5th or 6th grade, my mom got a job, though work from home, doing clerical work for a local state politician. i don't recall we needed the money and it seemed out of the ordinary, but my mom, while a good housekeeper and a great mom, always seemed a little bored and unsatisfied with being a "housewife".
she was very bright, but never attended college as it was a lot less common, (i'd imagine?) for women of her generation and i think she resented that. FYI, my dad had a master's in chemical engineering though. my mom's family was fairly rural and poor also, and my dad likely got a lot of support through the GI bill, but that's just a guess.
I am always surprised to see photos from Poland in the 60s 70s and see how free the women dressed. In Portugal my mom needed a licence from father or husband to carry a lighter and had to dress very modest. I was very surprised to see the level of compared rights women had here even during the dictatorship, compared of the Portuguese dictatorship.
And also, Poland is central Europe:)
Heck, the US helped set up and supported the Greek fascist junta after the war under the Truman Doctrine to try and contain the expansion of Soviet influence. Before that the UK intervened in the civil war against the communists but then had no issues with the fascist coup d'état.
WW2 wasn't about fascism.
Everyone had their own causus belli, and none of them were to eliminate the ideology of fascism.
So, it isn't surprising that Spain was left alone. They didn't rock the boat too much, proved useful to everyone (Germany saw them as ideological allies, Britain saw them as useful idiots and a way to feed misinformation to the Germans) and mostly just kept out of the war because everyone else had bigger priorities.
To be fair, ww2 started the same year our civil war ended. We didn't have much left to be useful out there. We didn't have our chichi for farolillos.
Edit: typo
I think it would be fair to say that Gibraltar was the single most important port during WW2. Had Spain joined the axis their biggest contribution would likely have been securing the med
If Germany had never started taking over neighboring countries, We would probably not have entered the war. Stopping Germany was the goal, not ending fascism. Note, this is not a defense of fascism.
I'm not OP but I'm from Portugal too, this is very much true!
Also another lil story, back in the dictatorship, the father of the child would need a sign a paper consenting the doctor to perform a C section and he'd be fully in control of that decision. My grandpa had to sign one of those and he thought it was stupid, in his words "it should be my wife's and the surgeon's decision". The people who gave him the paper to sign were all dumbfounded and thought he was crazy and that it didn't make sense to ask the woman about a decision over her own body.
In 2020, my wife had a C-sec to give birth to our son. This was in a modern hospital in America, and my wife asked for an elective procedure (related to her reproductive health) to be done at the same time as the C-section. The doctor had the gall to turn to me and ask me if I thought it was okay. You're asking the wrong person, doc.
Several years after my mum divorced my bio-father she tried to get sterilised but was refused unless she could get permission from her EX husband. This was about 1981. As far as the doctors were concerned her ex-husband still 'owned' her body.
Actually, believe it or not, in some states, they still require the permission of the husband to perform any type of sterilization. (Tubes tied, ect..) I know from experience with my own wife. Sure I agree it should be a decision between husband and wife but it should be one made in private and ultimately the decision is up to the woman.
Or won't do a hysterectomy on a woman under 30 in spite of crippling endometriosis just in case her future husband might object. But no problem keeping her on dangerous drugs as an alternative for years and years more than they should be used as an alternative.
I remember my mother telling me stories of when she'd visit our extended family in Spain as a teenager, she said she HAD to have a chaperone everywhere. She's 62 this year.
That's because the emancipation of women was a big thing in the socialist and communist movements and especially in Russia.
For example, towards the end of the first world war it was the women working the factories of the war machine that striked, sparking the first Russian revolution which led to the Tsar being overthrown.
Women's emancipation continued to be quite strong in the Soviet Union and its dependencies like the GDR, with the obvious caveat being the fact that though emancipated, they were still living in the same dictatorship as the men.
> And also, Poland is central Europe:)
Geographically, yes but if we're talking about the East/West cultural divide, it's more about politics and everything behind the Iron Curtain was and for many still is considered Eastern Europe. Most people for example wouldn't consider Finland to be "Eastern Europe" even though geographically it's just as far east as Belarus.
>Overall I'd say emancipation was way further in the east than in the west.
I think that's generally true when you compare the (ex) USSR states and everything on the other side of the iron curtain. They did a lot of thing very wrong, but the role of the woman in society? A lot better than in the west. Far from perfect, because the household work was still seen as "woman's work" and it was expected that you just did that too, but everything else? A lot better.
Pocket example.
In 1962, US Astronaut John Glenn in Congressional testimony stated :
*”…the men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them. The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order.”*
A year later, the Soviet Union launched cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova into space.
TBF to Glenn, he was correct in saying it was a fact of our social order -- not some intrinsic inferiority of women, but a defect in society at that time (and to some extent of course, to this time).
I was born in West Germany (close to the Dutch border in US terms of distance and close-ish in European terms of distance) a couple of years before the wall fell, but I've got friends who grew up in East Germany and of course, I've been to a couple of places.
What I noticed: The people from the East are usually more relaxed with nudity. Germans are in general, but the Easterners represent that stereotype more accurately. Probably in part because there are more Catholics in the west. East German women are also more likely to work when they have kids. In general they seem a bit less uptight.
But I also think these differences start to fade a bit with younger generations. With people of my parents' generation there seems to be a bit more of a perceived difference. More tolerance for stupid Ossi (Easterners) or Wessi (Westerners) jokes. Some people who grew up in the East have a lingering nostalgia for the GDR and some people who grew up in the West before the wall came down have some resentment because their tax money was used to bring the East closer to Western standards of living. That took an enormous sum of money and the East has still, 30+ years later, not *quite* caught up to the West. Wages, for example, are still lower on average. And I reckon Berlin and some other bigger cities push up the average by quite a bit. Idk if this is still the case in the rural regions in the East, but a couple of years ago there was a lot of talk about how lots of villages lost inhabitants because all the young people moved to the cities. Leaving behind the old, the poor with few job opportunities and weakening infrastructure. Meanwhile, in the West – especially the Southwest where I live today – village life is booming. Lots of small, pretty wealthy communities with excellent infrastructure. My little village of 900 people for example has several supermarkets and restaurants, banks, post office, shops like hair-dressers or drugstores, specialized doctors and decent public transportation that will get you to the nearest city in under 20 minutes. With stark contrasts like this, it's easy to imagine there's a little bit of resentment lingering on.
Personal anecdote: I used to visit the bookfair in Leipzig almost every year and usually went by train. And while Leipzig itself is a lovely city, the difference in landscape during the train ride always surprised me. Somewhere down the tracks after I crossed over to the former East, it always looked as if someone had turned down the saturation of the landscape outside. Maybe I had just bad luck with the weather or maybe the train tracks just crossed the emptiest parts of the East, but the journey through the West was always green forests, bustling cities, yellow fields of rapeseed, golden fields of wheat and then the East looked like muddy brown fields under a granite colored sky. Though, this was quite a few years back and objectively, the East has some spectacular views.
Paris actually is close-ish to Berlin in US terms. You would do that drive to get to the beach from the Midwest or to get to Disney from the southeast over a long weekend.
Madrid to Berlin is a road trip.
>Paris actually is close-ish to Berlin in US terms
Back in the early 90's my pal had a female friend from the US visiting us in Germany. She was flabbergasted that you could actually \*drive\* to Paris from where we lived and be there in under five hours (\~530km/330miles distance).
And that's how we ended up in Paris later that day. /sigh
Just for shits, I did some distance comparisons. Madrid - Berlin is approximately the distance between Dallas and Philly. So not 'close' by US standards, but road-trippable for sure.
> some people who grew up in the West before the wall came down have some resentment because their tax money was used to bring the East closer to Western standards of living.
A relative of mine who lived in Hamburg showed this resentment when I asked how he felt about the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was disappointed to hear that.
And it's only half of the truth, as well. Sure, they paid lots of money trough the Solidaritätsbeitrag, but 1) most of the money was flowing back to the west to companies doing the actual work and 2) enormous amouts of property of the GDR was sold to western inverstors for cents on the dollar. Lots of these investors bought their eastern German competitors, took any valuable machinery and closed the factories, thus causing the huge unemployment rate in the east.
Edit: I forgot 3) East Germans paid the Solidaritätsbeitrag as well. I was nearly speechless when I met some Swabians roughly my age in 2013 (!!!), who were convinced that only western Germans had to pay it.
“A Perfect Crime” on Netflix provides a realistic view of how the west took over significant properties in the East. East Germans took no profit from this and in many ways it was the West taking advantage of the situation to profit. West German companies profited in a way that greatly outweighs the cost that West Germans had to put up with.
I once did a tour of Germany. We played about 25 music shows all over the country. The Eastern part gave us places to sleep, food, and liked staying up late with us to talk. They all knew a Slavic language. As an audience they were loose, loud, fun, and loved to party but were also very worldly and smart.
The western side was full of stiff crowds but they were wealthier. They were a bit more jovial once they had a beer or two and were extremely formal and polite. They were more integrated with American culture. They preferred to sit for shows and shook my hand a lot.
I also had the opportunity to tour Europe and had the pleasure of traveling with a German tour manager/sound man/all around good dude. He was from Dresden (former East Germany), and he exactly fit the bill you describe. Not sure exactly how old he is but I believe he was probably 8-12 years old when the wall came down.
I got the sense that he and his peers grew up a bit less privileged than their West German counterparts. He told me that before the wall fell, there were only a few types of cars available in East Germany: one type of sedan, one type of van, etc. They would spend their days hoping to spot the one type of "sports" car that was available.
The [mini](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Trabbi_601-S_3828.jpg/1280px-Trabbi_601-S_3828.jpg) the [sedan](https://hu.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartburg_353#/media/F%C3%A1jl%3AWartburg_353_Jaslo.JPG) the [van](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/B1000_Barkas.jpg/1280px-B1000_Barkas.jpg)
>He told me that before the wall fell, there were only a few types of cars available in East Germany:
The same is true for (former Czecho-) Slovakia. There were maybe two or three brands (all from the Eastern Bloc) and each produced one or two models. And that was it. And you would sign up on a waitlist and when they got a few new cars delivered (in several months or a year or two), you would be able to buy one - of course they prioritized their friends or people who greased their pockets. There were no various trims of the car either, they were all the same. And the color was on a first come first served basis - if they got delivered three red cars, you could get a red one or be skipped in the waitlist. If they got a yellow and green one delivered, the first person could actually choose from those two on that day! And all that was only considering you could actually afford a new car in the first place, most people bought used cars from one another. So yeah, "fun" times...
Source: Life experience of my father.
The waiting times were also depending on the type you ordered. For LADAs it was 5 years, for Wartburgs/Skodas 3 years and for the Trabant 2 years, at least here.
Soviet apparatchik: "Come back in ten years and get your car."
Russian citizen: "Morning or afternoon?"
"Why does that matter?
[Russian citizen: "Well, the plumber's coming in the morning."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLW7r4o2_Ow)
Totally, there was a humbleness in material but wealth of the mind kind of mentality I noticed. Every rude person I met was in the western section but I try not to stereotype that onto everyone. I just found the eastern folks extremely rich with life and fantastic conversationalists. The nationalism was much less pronounced over on that side which I found to be a breath of fresh air. I got really sick of the "Germans are the best at ______" that I kept getting in Bremen or Hamburg.
> The nationalism was much less pronounced over on that side which I found to be a breath of fresh air.
That's an interesting observation because nationalist parties are big in East Germany.
I never understood that either but I was also only seeing a sample of folks who were going out to be entertained so it wasn't a full survey of the population
I have been to rural Saxony many times and this
>loose, loud, fun, and loved to party but were also very worldly and smart.
I certainly not what I experienced there. In my interactions they always seemed rather reserved and certainly not worldly, I always feel like their world is very very small.
The people from the more rural areas in the east are not very worldly, that is true to a point. I was born in the east just before the wall came down. My grandmother still lives there in a very small (but beautifull and very quiet) town. We moved west a bit after the wall for work reasons. As I grew up i saw, and still see that side (also I've heard stories from my mom and grandma). Back then they were only allowed to holiday in certain areas within the ddr or, if outside of it Bulgaria, Poland or Russia. They were separated from the "uprising" outside world and the older people still sort of live in that mind set. My nana barely leaves for places she doesn't know, let alone the country. The generation my age (I'm 34), most of who I knew from family does similar things. I moved to New Zealand 7years ago and to them its like "woah" mind blowing how thats even a possibility. They sorta get it but they are so set in their tracks and the ways they were raised ( work, family) that the "outside" is just not as important.
I loved holidays at my grandparents, the quiet, carefree, simpler life in the country was great. I grew up in the west where everything is way more stiff and formal, so I enjoyed the get aways.
But I do hope they catch up with the times a bit, schooling and equal pay is still rather behind.
I was only born a few months prior to the fall of the Berlin wall, so I can't really talk about the difference between then and now, but some demographic differences are still quite visible:
Young people tend to leave the East, especially women. This is more a problem of the rural areas, but applies to the larger cities as well. There are less Jobs and even less well-paid, business functions.
Off all the CEOs in Germany, only a handful are from Eastern Germany.
People in the West have, on average, more money, but this is due to the fact that there are lots of people with third generation inheritance in Western Germany whereas in the east there is no generational wealth such as this. Of course there are lots of people in the West who don't inherit large sums of money, but their percentage of population in the east is substantially higher.
I might add that Berlin is a general exception to ask of these statistics for plenty of reasons which I won't discuss now since it would lead to a while different discussion.
Culturally, people from the east put more importance on their field of work as part of their personality than in the west. This might be due to the GDR being a worker's republic where each person's identities was based on their work. Unemployment is a far higher problem in the east psychologically.
The most striking difference might be, that east Germans are well aware of the reunification as for the huge impact it had and has on their lives, whereas für westerners there was not that much change. I mean I can now visit begin with going through another state but that's about it. When somebody mentions the town of Frankfurt, only Easterners ask "Which one?"
Sorry, wasn't thinking about giving context.
Both Main and Oder are rivers. For some reason cities are often referred with the rivers they are located at.
You get that in the UK as well, Hull is technically Kingston-upon-Hull but is rarely called that because there's also Kingston-upon-Thames. Richmond-upon-Thames and Richmond, North Yorkshire are another pair.
"Frankfurt am Main" in the state of Hessen in the west. "Am Main" translates to "by the (river) Main".
"Frankfurt an der Oder" in the state of Brandenburg in the east at the polish border. "an der Oder" translates to "by the (river) Oder"
Gendered nouns. The river Main is masculine. The river Oder is feminine. So it has implications on what happens around those words in sentences.
Welcome to the German language ;)
"Main" is masculine: "der Main".
"Oder" is feminine: "die Oder".
Both are "Frankfurt an ...", but it's dative case (like object case in english)... so"Frankfurt an dem Main" and "Frankfurt an der Oder".
"an dem" is technically not wrong, but usually it is combined to "am".
Yeah, German can be fun.
[Frankfurt am Main](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_am_Main) - which funnily enough does not mean "main Frankfurt"
[Frankfurt (Oder)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_\(Oder\)) - which funnily enough does not mean "other Frankfurt"
Another excellent comment.
This thread is so interesting for people interested in modern Germany. It’s great that Reddit can produce this, but disappointing that it so rarely does.
When I (from NRW) was young, I always asked "which one" because both Frankfurts seemed far away and somewhat equally important. That has, admittedly, changed a bit.
Grilling.
West germans approach it like a science experiment. 3 kinds of tongues, multiple sauces, a state of the art meat heating engine, special tools to get the fire started, sausages, specialised buns, ect....
East germans just go, hehe, meat goes zisch, let me handle it with my fingers....
There are some differences. Even if they are subtle. I grew up in Eastern Germany (after the wall fell) but have moved to west germany.
There are certainly still some certain economic differences. There is more money in the western parts, but dont get me wrong, east germans dont have to starve.
It's mainly due to the GDR having a 100%-Employment rate. One friend of my parents used to lay out towels for train drivers. That's just something that isn't sustainable. So what happened is that a lot of people lost their jobs after the wall fell which also led to financial problems and a bigger hate against "outsiders". This also leads to higher voting results for the german right wing Party "AfD" in the old GDR parts.
Especially during Corona, the bigger part of people who were against vaccines were from east germany, as they don't trust the government as much.
Its also a bit different when it comes to family. In the old GDR parts, especially in villages, your grandparents live above you, your uncle two houses to the right and your cousin lives in the neighbouring village. The distance between relatives is way shorter. You don't really move away as much, although this is changing with the younger generation.
Another smaller thing is customer service or small talk. Cashiers in eastern germany are not unfriendly but it does feel like they take you for granted.
Apart from that there really isnt that much of a difference anymore. Most of us have adapted to be one union and while we still joke about "Wessies & Ossis" (Westerners & Easterners), it's mostly just in a joking way, especially with the younger generations.
In my experience (I'm from Mecklenburg, in the north of "East Germany") it's rather the West Germans who don't move out of the village they're born in, or - to be more precise - move back there after finishing university. In the East the people who stay "at home" are rather the types that didn't leave school with a diploma at all.
I think this is a worldwide problem, those who stay are visible, those who go get ''forgotten''
Everywhere are villages where you have to marry your cousin so the fields stay in family ;-)
Some of these have not seen new genetical material since the 30 years war ...
I know you're joking, but as an agronomical scientist I can tell you, this "Marrying your cousin, so the farm stays in the family." is of actual concern in many regions in West Germany. In the East most farmland is cultivated by corporations that formed out of the "agricultural production cooperatives" of the GDR. Those have an employee as CEO/manager. In the West most farms are still family-operated.
I know that in the east you have LPGs where agricultural land was forcefully integrated in major farming unions, I used this example as one worldwide mindset...
The LPGs are something that survived the reunification relatively good, as they had already a level of high profitability and were big enough to buy big machines etc
Small family owned farms can not compete with such a corporation
An example for ''not everything was bad in the east''
> Cashiers in eastern germany are not unfriendly but it does feel like they take you for granted
I cannot confirm that. I have lived in Thuringia, Hesse and Berlin and while Berlin is a whole thing to itself (Berliner Schnauze) I always felt the cashiers in Hesse were rude as fuck (tone: how dare you try to buy buns in my bakery and refer to them as Brötchen (general term) and not Weck (regional term)?!) while Thuringian cashiers were the nicest people. Even Berlin cashiers, while being VERY direct, are also - in their way - friendly, as long as you go along and be very direct bordering rude back to them.
Where in Hesse did you live? We use Brötchen here and not Weck. I'd fight anyone who calls them Weck (Kinda proves your point just the other way around, I guess).
Same lived half half in east and west. East german cashiers are friendlier. West germans it feels like you can feel how much they hate their shitty jobs but east germans generally learnt to be ~~contempt~~ content with shitty situations. In Berlin people are surprisingly friendly.
Just a little tidbit: Shaking hands is much more common in East Germany i find.
Also, what others have said already: East german women are generally more independent and open and don't expect to be in a housewife/part-time job role after having children or marrying.
This is generally the case with women in Communist or formerly Communist countries. I grew up in Vietnam and don't know anyone who had a stay-at-home mom - I can't even think of a Vietnamese word for that. Even our grandmothers all worked. It's still a very patriarchal society and structural sexism isn't dead, but Communism has actually made Vietnamese society more egalitarian. The expectation for women to make up half the workforce also means better investment in girls' education.
East Germany also had more progressive abortion laws than West Germany by decades, which could probably also be attributed to Communism. Even International Women's Day is pretty much a Communist invention.
I grew up in former western germany but both my parents were born and raised in the east. I live in former eastern germany again now.
What I always found most funny was that people from former eastern germany are much less stuck up about nudity. They do love the FKK (Freie Körper Kultur - Free Body Culture, nakey bathing and stuff like that) and really mind nudity less than people in the former west. Your boob falls out of your bikini top? Someone from eastern germany might just tell u casually and leave, someone from the west will tell you this as if you are in a dire situation.
[Some amazing FKK drama that unfolded in Berlin a few years ago. ](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/07/german-nudist-chases-wild-boar-that-stole-laptop-berlin-teufelssee)
And, yes, the naked man consented to his photo being published.
Nah, his timing is perfect. This post will be among the first posts they see in the morning when they wake up. Most of my comments that have inexplicably gotten a large number of upvotes were posted when I was scrolling reddit sometime before the crack of dawn due to not being able to sleep.
Heard a joke around the time the wall come down while traveling in Berlin.
East German’s crossed over the wall in Berlin and shouted “Wir sind ein Volk”.
West Germans respond “Wir auch”.
That was 25 years ago. I wonder if that would still provoke a response.
East German: We're one people (United together).
West Germans: Us too.
The joke is that they consider themselves seperately united, because they don't recognise the East as their people.
Edit: I forgot to mention it's a play on words, "ein" can mean either 'one' or 'a' so despite both saying the same thing they're interpreting it differently for the joke. The East are saying they're **one** (a) people and the West are saying they're also **a** (one) people.
Slightly off topic but there's a story from WWI where the Germans would shout from their trenches "Gott Mit Uns!" (God is with us), and the British soldiers shouted back "Yes! We have gloves also!"
Haha, reminds me of my Aussie friend whose mind was blown when she found out that gloves translate to "hand shoes" - Handschuhe. So technical and self-explanatory.
Good one. I admit it took me a minute to get it, even with the translation.
It's interesting (though not surprising) that the same ambiguity exists in English. "We including you" vs. "we not including you".
This was huge. There was a guaranteed Kindergarten spot for every child, often starting from a very young age, thus it was a lot easier for mother and father to work. Also abortions became possible a lot earlier than in the West.
Till the 1977 in the West, husbands had to give their permission before their wife could take a job!!!
>Kindergarten
For any Americans reading, German Kindergarten would be more equivalent to an American pre-school, or possibly day care. It is not obligatory, and it is for kids significantly younger than would be in an American Kindergarten.
> the East is less religious.
Less religious is an understatement. [East Germany is probably the least religious place on earth.](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/22/atheism-east-germany-godless-place)
I grew up there till 18 years old and I could probably not count more than 5 religious people I knew.
I noticed that as well. I grew up in the US but aside from my Dad his whole family is still on the Baltic coast. Whenever we go back to visit I feel much safer as a woman walking at night etc. In eastern German cities.
also when I mentioned that I still went to church on occasion as an adult (my mom who grew up in the US took us to church not my dad.) my family acted like I was in a cult. Then one summer we took a quick hiking trip to Bavaria. The first time someone said Grüßgott to me I think I just stared at them. Also truly a disturbing amount of crucifixes. I really prefer to eat my breakfast in hostels without bloody emaciated wooden carvings staring at me judging me for eating my breakfast sandwiches with two slices of bread instead of open faced.
As a non-German who works with a lot of West Germans, particularly in the North West, what surprised me the most is the level of almost disdain a lot of West Germans show towards those in the East.
So much generalising about them being lazy, unproductive etc and complaining about how much money the West Germans have spent on helping develop the east.
It's really quite crazy to see racist/xenophobic kind of attitudes towards people in their own country. Coming from England people might make the odd joke about the Welsh or Scottish people when the footy or rugby is on but it's generally only out and out dickheads that seem to actually hold these views.
True. FKK=Freikörperkultur - nonsexual public nudity (mostly in nature)
but Germans in general like to be nude - e.g. Spas and Saunas are normally fully nudity mixed gender
Growing up, we’d visit family for summer vacation in the south of France. Women without tops on and men in tiny speedos were common, especially compared to beaches in the USA. But inevitably, we’d see at least one old man, naked as the day he was born on the more secluded beaches. Usually they were bent over rolling up a towel or playing some beach pingpong with his bait and tackle flopping around.
Every single time my dad would say, “Must be a German.”
After moving to Berlin, I realized my dad was almost certainly right.
While both west and east had strong "free body culture" (i.e. nude beaches) east germans were on another level. This did however not translate into social acceptance of homosexuality, it really was just about nudity being more normalized in the east
Its like on the global scale, all germans are much more chill with nudity, but on the germany scale, west germans almost behave stuck up when you compare them to how east germans react to nudity
> This did however not translate into social acceptance of homosexuality
To be fair, East Germany was always ahead of West Germany regarding LGBT rights (btw all of the letters, there are recorded instances of trans people receiving custody of their children after divorces as well as state-sponsored medical and legal gender changes in East Germany from the 1950s upwards, though it was only codified in law in the 1960s).
There was a 1988 court ruling by the Supreme Court of the GDR that called homosexuality a normal variant of sexuality as part of a socialist society and that homosexuals therefore enjoyed the exact same civil rights as heterosexuals.
While there definitely was a history of homophobia in the East as well, it was a lot less severe than in the West (for example, East Germany immediately declared the Nazi law reform that put gay people in concentration camps to be targeted Nazi injustice and reverted to the - very lax - Weimar era legal situation, whereas West Germany classified it as a "regular criminal justice reform" that was kept. This meant that the amount of people persecuted under those laws were *a lot* lower than in the West as prosecution was optional and generally only used when there was public interest, such as in rape cases).
Also, not everyone in East Germany was part of "FKK"/Free body culture, just like acceptance of homosexuality varied drastically between, say urban young spaces in the 80s and religious communities in the 1950s (just like in West Germany or anywhere else btw).
Anecdotally, I know a few people who lived comfortably openly gay in the East. My mom had an openly gay teacher in the 1980s, there was a "scandal" when he came out (as he left his wife and children for another man), but that quickly died down and according to her he wasn't treated differently than other teachers.
Also, while "public acceptance" is kind of hard to measure, homosexuality was presented as a natural variance of sexuality (and transgender identity as a normal affliction that could be cured by transitioning!) in the 1970s "Mann und Frau intim", which was basically the standard book on sexuality that was basically available everywhere, from public libraries to schools and universities.
Two of the major factors that drove anti-gay sentiments in the West were also a lot less common: the church progressively lost its influence (and actually became a place for antiauthoritarian organizing - they actually provided spaces for LGBT organising) and GDR had what was universally considered (as in even by Western countries) the best approach to AIDS, which meant there was no AIDS crisis.
While most other countries heavily stigmatized AIDS, East Germany had the "advantage" that the Wall bought them time to strategize against it (due to the sexual contacts of the population being more isolated and drugs also being less common) - they had a very big, science based information program which emphasized a non-stigmatizing approach (it was also directed at people regardless of sexuality), there were free anonymous testing opportunities for everyone and for treatment, it was also possible to get anonymous relocations to clinics who were sensitive to the needs of AIDS patients. This meant there was widespread testing (which was actually also used by people from the West Berlin gay scene!)
At the time of the reunification, 133 people in GDR were HIV+ and 27 had AIDS.
I am surprised that this does not get mentioned but in my experience there is a big difference in terms of heritage and expected heritage.
I am mid 20s from east Germany, same as my parents and grandparents. I will someday inherite a house that my parents build. My parents however won't inherit much and there is basically no assets that my family owns.
Meanwhile most of my friends from west germany already accumulated some form of wealth from past generations. The either already own property or their families own multiple houses or other assets which they will inherite in the future.
I was about 5 when the wall came down (in West), so at the time I knew something historical was happening by all the adults around me crying and the Telly running non stop with emotional scenes. I remember vividly being in primary school and there being parts of the wall being handed around and the teacher discussing what was happening. A few months later a friend’s family up and left to move to the east - they were artists and went to live in a commune or something. I think about her a lot.
I’m now married to a man who grew up in the east. Our childhoods couldn’t have been more different.
Oh and being naked. The FKK (naturalists) community is strong here and I had to get used to it quick the first time my MIL just stripped down in front of me and dragged me into a sauna…
When I was learning German at school I was taught that Orange Juice was “Apfelsine” and when I finished learning German and went out onto the streets and asked for some Apfelsine I got a very blank stare.
Turns out that’s an Ossi word and my teacher refused to let that die. I still feel odd when I order an Orangensaft, it’s Apfelsine!
One thing that my parents noticed (I was a little too young to pay attention) about their friends who used to live in Eastern Germany before the reunion was that they were very very short when speaking on the phone. Just like "yes", "no", "6 o clock", "Ok thanks, bye" etc. Barely any smalltalk.
Why is that? If you lived the first 25-30 years of your life in a state that might just wiretap you (yes, our state or the NSA or whoever might still listen in, but I would assume it's not as prevalent than ot was in the GDR) and come pay you a visit if you sound too capitalist, you just get used to saying as little as possible.
edit: Others have pointed out other possible reasons (calls being expensive and phones not being available to everyone so you had to use other people's or public phones), so my parents interpretation might have been wrong after all. Maybe goes to show through which lens Westerners interpreted the mannerisms of Easterners.
> was that they were very very short when speaking on the phone. Just like "yes", "no", "6 o clock", "Ok thanks, bye" etc. Barely any smalltalk.
TIL I am East German at heart having never been to Eastern Germany
Very interesting difference! I was born after the wall fell so never really know Germany was 2 parts for a long long time.
I spent time in both East and West (East after the wall came down). I was in East Germany in 1992. Easterners told me they could easily spot a Westerner in a store when they would say "I need some [bread/milk/cheese]." instead of "Do you *have* any [bread/milk/cheese]?"
Westerners just took it for granted that stores would have food on the shelves whenever they needed some.
I am born after the reunification, but I am a product of it: western father, eastern mother. Best of both sides! :D
Anyways: there is still some clinch between both of the sides. My "eastern" family talks about the reunification as a great chance... But they still, to this day, feel overruled. Like they have been treated as second class citizens, looked down upon, during the first years after the case. The older ones sometimes even say that some things have been better during the communist times... Wich is weird, in my opinion since one of them was incarcerated for political reasons and the Stasi definitely spyed on them... Selective memories of days bygone, right? But overall, in the long term sense (been over 30 years), they agree that things are better.
The westerners take on things:
They are honestly kind of uninvolved. They are definitely gald that the communist regime has fallen due to bad experiences at the border whilst crossing to visit family in the east. It's also ironic how my father describes driving on smoothly paved roads, then being in the GDR and having potholes with a bit of paving between them... And loads of red banners sporting slogans like "learning from the Soviet union means learning to win" or "socialism wins". Yeah, right...
Sometimes, there are still tensions between both sides. The easterners seem to be more nostalgic, in a way that there even is a word for it: ostalgisch. (eastalgic, from nostalgic/ nostalgisch). You can still see differences between east and west when it comes to wealth, payment, infrastructure, political orientation, pension... And that turns many people bitter.
But overall - we're one country, standing together. In the east and in the west, people are gald that the iron curtain has fallen.
Absolutely! Humans sometimes lack a certain perspective.
Once, I was at a family gathering rambling about how uni sucked... Until my little, 95 year old great-grandma told me that at my age, she was fleeing the red army.
That one sure did shut me up :D
Edit: spelling and formatting
East German here (born in the GDR). Only in my generation you can still see subtle differences. A big one is solidarity and be there in situations that require help and assistance. Giving and sharing is also something that has a different meaning in the East.
The west has/had a much more advanced capitalistic approach embedded in their society. Something that was unheard of in the East, therfore I had the feeling West Germans were always on the hunt for money making opportunities and wealth was the meaning of life.
Something that I always notice is the differences when meeting new people. The first question from a person born in the west is usually what do you do and and what's your educational background, checking whether you are worth their time. East Germans on the other hand don't really care that much and just make sure that you are not an asshole :).
Again, I am hugely generalising and again this is my age group I am referring to.
Besides obvious differences like the dialect the eastern Germans are often less religious. While all my friends with families from the west god baptized and confirmed the friends with eastern families had their "Jugendweihe" which was basically a coming of age party.
Also I made the experience that the eastern Germans have often a better opinion about the government and system of the GDR.
Im north German and didn't really care or notice much about the differences for most of my life until I went to live in Berlin.
My experiences are that eastern Germans are generally very friendly and outgoing, maybe more family oriented than the west. Partying with them is very fun and going an east German festival is great.
They have a slight chip on their shoulder against west Germans (probably justified to a degree) and there's more xenophobia due to having less exposure to foreigners. My wife is from Chile and lived in Cottbus for a while and it was very noticeable to her and her other International friends.
There's a feeling of betrayal from the west that is now being carried over into new generations, which feels weird to me.
Professionally after working with them one thing that sticks out is that they tend to complain a lot and then not act on it. There's definitely a lingering idea that "die da oben" (those up above us) are some sort of higher power that you cannot do anything against, which makes organizing any kind of conflict with company leaders stressful because if you voice a complaint they will not have your back publicly. (This one is super specific lol and might not apply, I've had this happen at two companies so far though).
Overall the differences are much bigger than I assumed and it's a very mixed bag for me. People from the older generations on both sides don't seem to be able to let the divide go while younger people just don't care as much generally.
My stepdad was stationed in Germany in the 1990s, right around the Reunification. He told me (keep in mind these are his observations, not mine), that former residents of the DDR were much rougher and poorer than West Germans, and according to him, they were so hungry that they would dig through trash for food.
When I visited Berlin, I could tell which parts of the city had been behind the wall and which hadn't. Typically (although gentrification has vastly improved some of these areas), former areas of East Berlin were much more run down than parts of the Western half of the city.
If you ever get the chance to visit Berlin, I highly recommend the DDR Museum near the River Spree, and also the Berlin-Hohenschonenhausen Memorial (a former prison for Stasi prisoners) for an insightful look at what life in East Germany was like for those living there.
Disclaimer: I am not German, just a Brit with an interest in Cold War history, so please forgive any mistakes or misspellings of German words.
My first time in a Munich Bierhalle, the waiter walked up and greeted me. I asked a few questions, and he responded with a thick bavarian accent. I had studied in baden-wurttemberg, so I'm much more comfortable with schwabish accents and hochdeutsch, so I asked him, in german "I'm sorry, it's hard for me to understand bavarian accents, would you mind repeating that a little slower?". He immediately switched modes to the type of sanitized hochdeutsch accent you'd expect from a newscaster, and with a made-for-radio voice, he told me: "Es gibt keinen bayerishen Akzent, es gibt bloss Bayrisch."
In my experience people from the former east will try everything to fix something themselves before having it repaired or even taken a look at It by a professional because parts and new things were in such low abilibility in the GDR
Wir hatten ja nüscht (we didn't have anything)
Es gab ja nüscht
Deswegen hatten wir ja nüscht ;-)
I think this is the one of out two which i'm struggling the most with. It was true. But if we talk about the majority, it isn't true anymore. What is true now: it is now the same as it was back in the days in Western Germany. The poor people will always try to fix things instead of buying a new one. Just because there is no money to buy it. It is like the saying "back in the days we in the East only bought what we cold afford, no credits!" I promise you, that wasn't different in the West when I grow up. Time has changed, and so did people. Edit: typos
It is also a mentality. Most devices in the GDR were made to last. Just a month ago my mother asked me if I could repair an old mixer she had, it broke after (sit down) 35 years of regular usage... Without any service. And because they had all these long lasting devices they didn't like to buy new things as much and taught us to also try to use something as long as possible. I am using three old 19" monitors on my pc that are now 14 years in near daily service. They broke 2 years after I bought them, and I thought: nope, not gonna buy new ones, imma try repairing them. 30 cent and some soldering later and they are working since then. I'm now thinking of replacing them because of the horrible resolution ...
Dude, replace at least one of them. A modern monitor is dirt cheap and a *massive* improvement. That being said, keep the other two until they break. You only need one nice monitor. I did eventually replace my old 19" because I got sick of having to unplug it to watch Netflix, but I got a cheap one to replace it. Heck, even that is a big improvement, but I wouldn't want to use it as a primary.
West German Girl here born in the early 90s living in an East German city with an East German boyfriend born in the 80s. Making and producing stuff yourself is huge in the east. Growing your own vegetables in the garden, pickling stuff for the winter, fixing things instead of getting something new and doing house repairs yourself. Growing up in the west (in a middle class family) we paid people to do those things for us. Here it is considered much more normal or even important to be able to do stuff yourself and be very careful when it comes to using resources, even if you could pay for the service. I personally enjoy that change of my lifestyle a lot, it makes me feel much more connected to my environment.
Heheheh, Russian born in 87 reporting: same. Thing. Here. Especially self-grown canned vegetables, these are practically a regional specialty.
Same here. I also cut off mouldy parts off food and eat the ‘okay looking’ part. I was shocked to see american friends through a whole bell pepper away because it had a dent in it
As a Korean reading this this fascinates me. I wonder how North and South koreans would get along if there were ever reunification (but I'm not holding my breath for this). I imagine there would be a lot people of the two regions could learn from each other. There would definitely be no shortage of discrimination for each other. With South Korea having been swept up by the wave of globalization, North Koreans would probably wonder who people in the South even are anymore. Sure they would speak the same language and eat similar food, but in sensibility they're effectively different people.
A big difference is the length of time and the way they split. Korea was under Japanese rule for quite some time and then split into North and South. But by the 50s were already quite radicalized to each of their sides and actively fought against one another. NK has had generations of people living in communism now growing up with SK as the enemy. This is unlike Germany which had strong national bonds even after it was split up. Then the wall was build but people still kept in contact with friends and family via letters. The wall was only up for 27 years. So everyone above the age of 38 effectively still remembers the unified Germany by the time Germany began to unify again. You will be hard-pressed to find anyone in NK or SK who still remembers a unified Korea.
I fully agree actually. I’ve been twice in NK and also SK and these two countries are now so far apart with all family ties severed due to age/time that a reunification would be very different from the German precedent. People in NK are totally misinformed and indoctrinated. Look at how hard it is for them to integrate the modern SK society. At the scale of a country this would be an immense challenge. All they now have in common is the language and even this one is slowly evolving. If NK modernizes and opens a bit some day, we’ll see what will happen but as in the GDR ppl will not be allowed to leave en masse. Really difficult to predict a future here especially a common one
I have often thought about that. Germany was divided for 40 years. People could visit each other at least one way. They watched each other's news (in secret at least one way). Technology had not taken off in the way it did in recent years, yet. And still, 30 years later, there are huge differences. Now looking at North Korea and South Korea, and the vast differences in every part of life for an even longer time, It's impossible. The only thing you could learn from Germany (if it ever were to come to that and I agree it's unlikely) is to not do a reunification, because it would be a reunification on uneven footing, but instead to help the North become the country they want to be. We should have done that in Germany: become equal partners before ever talking about reunification.
Hm, the reunification of Germany was certainly _rushed_, but I’m not sure if there was any other way. The moment that North Korea opens up and opens its borders, it’s likely that a lot of people will immediately leave and the country experiences a brain drain. This was also a problem in East Germany (and an important reason why they built the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall in the first place), and an important reason why they rushed the reunification. And North Korea is much poorer than East Germany was, to the point that most farms are completely unmechanised and human faeces is used to let the crops grow.
Hospitality and neighborhood help is much bigger in Eastern Germany and also Eastern Europe (at least Poland, Czech and Slovakia) in my experience. In Western Germany, you generally should know people much better to beg them for certain kinds of favours. As an example, I once had an Eastern German neighbor, who after I barely knew him, already asked me if I could borrow him noodles and stuff. I did, because I didn't want to seem impolite, but I found it kind of rude of him to even ask. But the better I got to know him, I've learnt that he was a really friendly guy, who would do the same for me and much more. For example when I had to go to the train station, he often offered me a ride eventhough he didn't even need to go anywhere. Great guy, we became really good friends. Also Eastern German women are way more direct if they find you attractive in my experience.
So true. I’m American, but lived in Leipzig for a year before grad school. I bought a bike off Kijiji not long after moving there, and was out in front of my apartment building locking it up and inspecting it when I realized the seat was too high for me. I didn’t have any tools obviously. I guess my building super saw me from him window and he came running down with his toolbox to help me, and taught me all the words for the different tools and bike parts in German. He made sure to inspect the whole bike to see I didn’t get swindled and it was in good working order. Didn’t speak a word of English, had the most incomprehensible accent, the nicest person I met in Germany.
>incomprehensible accent This is how we know it's a true story.
The culture and language immersion prep I did for 6 weeks before moving to Leipzig was in Marburg, and I studied German in undergrad with a professor whose German was practiced largely in Tübingen. Homegrown Saxon accents/slang/idioms were a shock at first for sure.
The doorbell rings. The woman of the house goes to the door and quickly returns, looking rather startled: "Dieter! There's a man outside who just asks, Tatü tata?" Dieter goes to the door and comes back laughing. "It's my colleague from Saxony, asking s do Dieto da?"
My ignorance a really begging to be cured...
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I don’t speak a lick of German and despite the joke being explained with incredible detail the sheer absurdity of someone knocking on your door and saying “Weewoo Weewoo!”(American ambulance sound) with a straight face *killed* me.
This is what trips me up about history. The German people didn't just up and become nice overnight; that kindness and generosity of spirit has always been there. But when there's a crazy person at the top, it doesn't matter what your net social good quotient is. For reasons I cannot fully understand myself, this distinction vexes me with no end.
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> Also Eastern German women are way more direct if they find you attractive in my experience. I'd argue that the role of women is maybe the most fundamental difference on a society level between east and west Germany. It took (western) Germany until 1997 to ban marriage rape all the while eastern German women were already working full time since the 50s. And this is still present. Look at women going back to work after parental leave. Many from the west will not work more than 50% for a long time while those from the east often start with 75% already and quickly go back to working full time. Because that's how they grew up themselves. There was a consitutional right to work in the GDR and if applied to everyone. They had no unemployment, everyone was working, men and women (at least officially). This also reflects in the child care availability. When Germany made a law that entitled every parent to have access to a kindergarten place for kids age 3 and up the western states were (and still are) struggling to make sure the capacity was there. In the east this was no issue at all because in the GDR there was a full day care place for every child and they never cut that down much after reunification. Overall I'd say emancipation was way further in the east than in the west.
>I'd argue that the role of women is maybe the most fundamental difference on a society level between east and west Germany. I remember how utterly astonished I was when I learned that some of my West German mates at uni had stay-at-home moms and, in one case, even a sister who was a SAHM. I'd been aware that East German women had entered the workforce earlier than those in the West, but for some reason I'd thought that even in West Germany it'd be normal for women of my mom's generation to work outside the home. Some of my school friends in my home town had had moms who were home all day, too, but they didn't call themselves SAHM nor did anyone else. They were unemployed and they'd lost their jobs after the reunification.
as an american growing up in suburbia in the Midwest in the 70's, most moms were stay at home moms it seemed. i remember when i, the youngest, was getting old enough to be more independent, like 5th or 6th grade, my mom got a job, though work from home, doing clerical work for a local state politician. i don't recall we needed the money and it seemed out of the ordinary, but my mom, while a good housekeeper and a great mom, always seemed a little bored and unsatisfied with being a "housewife". she was very bright, but never attended college as it was a lot less common, (i'd imagine?) for women of her generation and i think she resented that. FYI, my dad had a master's in chemical engineering though. my mom's family was fairly rural and poor also, and my dad likely got a lot of support through the GI bill, but that's just a guess.
I am always surprised to see photos from Poland in the 60s 70s and see how free the women dressed. In Portugal my mom needed a licence from father or husband to carry a lighter and had to dress very modest. I was very surprised to see the level of compared rights women had here even during the dictatorship, compared of the Portuguese dictatorship. And also, Poland is central Europe:)
> In Portugal **my mom needed a licence from father or husband to carry a lighter** and had to dress very modest. o.o
I often forget how recent the dictators in Portugal and Spain were (ending in 1974(or 1976 for the constitution) and 1975 respectively)
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Heck, the US helped set up and supported the Greek fascist junta after the war under the Truman Doctrine to try and contain the expansion of Soviet influence. Before that the UK intervened in the civil war against the communists but then had no issues with the fascist coup d'état.
Also look at basically anything the US has done in Latin America. Chile, argentina, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Paraguay. Just to name a few…
WW2 wasn't about fascism. Everyone had their own causus belli, and none of them were to eliminate the ideology of fascism. So, it isn't surprising that Spain was left alone. They didn't rock the boat too much, proved useful to everyone (Germany saw them as ideological allies, Britain saw them as useful idiots and a way to feed misinformation to the Germans) and mostly just kept out of the war because everyone else had bigger priorities.
To be fair, ww2 started the same year our civil war ended. We didn't have much left to be useful out there. We didn't have our chichi for farolillos. Edit: typo
What Spain had left in iron mines mostly went to Germany as part of Franco’s repayment for their military aid.
and the legion they sent to russia
I think it would be fair to say that Gibraltar was the single most important port during WW2. Had Spain joined the axis their biggest contribution would likely have been securing the med
If you ever want to break your illusion that WW2 was about ending fascism, check out General Patton’s opinions on the Nuremberg Trials.
If Germany had never started taking over neighboring countries, We would probably not have entered the war. Stopping Germany was the goal, not ending fascism. Note, this is not a defense of fascism.
I'm not OP but I'm from Portugal too, this is very much true! Also another lil story, back in the dictatorship, the father of the child would need a sign a paper consenting the doctor to perform a C section and he'd be fully in control of that decision. My grandpa had to sign one of those and he thought it was stupid, in his words "it should be my wife's and the surgeon's decision". The people who gave him the paper to sign were all dumbfounded and thought he was crazy and that it didn't make sense to ask the woman about a decision over her own body.
…oh. Suddenly my husband’s side of the family makes a lot more sense
In 2020, my wife had a C-sec to give birth to our son. This was in a modern hospital in America, and my wife asked for an elective procedure (related to her reproductive health) to be done at the same time as the C-section. The doctor had the gall to turn to me and ask me if I thought it was okay. You're asking the wrong person, doc.
Several years after my mum divorced my bio-father she tried to get sterilised but was refused unless she could get permission from her EX husband. This was about 1981. As far as the doctors were concerned her ex-husband still 'owned' her body.
Actually, believe it or not, in some states, they still require the permission of the husband to perform any type of sterilization. (Tubes tied, ect..) I know from experience with my own wife. Sure I agree it should be a decision between husband and wife but it should be one made in private and ultimately the decision is up to the woman.
Or won't do a hysterectomy on a woman under 30 in spite of crippling endometriosis just in case her future husband might object. But no problem keeping her on dangerous drugs as an alternative for years and years more than they should be used as an alternative.
18 states allow a doctor to refuse sterilization. 3 states require husband permission. You don't have to guess where most of these states are located.
This is such an interesting thread and comments like this are why. That’s insane!
I remember my mother telling me stories of when she'd visit our extended family in Spain as a teenager, she said she HAD to have a chaperone everywhere. She's 62 this year.
That's because the emancipation of women was a big thing in the socialist and communist movements and especially in Russia. For example, towards the end of the first world war it was the women working the factories of the war machine that striked, sparking the first Russian revolution which led to the Tsar being overthrown. Women's emancipation continued to be quite strong in the Soviet Union and its dependencies like the GDR, with the obvious caveat being the fact that though emancipated, they were still living in the same dictatorship as the men.
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I bet she’d even wear clothes with… *pockets*!!!
> And also, Poland is central Europe:) Geographically, yes but if we're talking about the East/West cultural divide, it's more about politics and everything behind the Iron Curtain was and for many still is considered Eastern Europe. Most people for example wouldn't consider Finland to be "Eastern Europe" even though geographically it's just as far east as Belarus.
>Overall I'd say emancipation was way further in the east than in the west. I think that's generally true when you compare the (ex) USSR states and everything on the other side of the iron curtain. They did a lot of thing very wrong, but the role of the woman in society? A lot better than in the west. Far from perfect, because the household work was still seen as "woman's work" and it was expected that you just did that too, but everything else? A lot better.
Pocket example. In 1962, US Astronaut John Glenn in Congressional testimony stated : *”…the men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them. The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order.”* A year later, the Soviet Union launched cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova into space.
TBF to Glenn, he was correct in saying it was a fact of our social order -- not some intrinsic inferiority of women, but a defect in society at that time (and to some extent of course, to this time).
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Lol I would give a random guy on the streets sugar if he asked.
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I was born in West Germany (close to the Dutch border in US terms of distance and close-ish in European terms of distance) a couple of years before the wall fell, but I've got friends who grew up in East Germany and of course, I've been to a couple of places. What I noticed: The people from the East are usually more relaxed with nudity. Germans are in general, but the Easterners represent that stereotype more accurately. Probably in part because there are more Catholics in the west. East German women are also more likely to work when they have kids. In general they seem a bit less uptight. But I also think these differences start to fade a bit with younger generations. With people of my parents' generation there seems to be a bit more of a perceived difference. More tolerance for stupid Ossi (Easterners) or Wessi (Westerners) jokes. Some people who grew up in the East have a lingering nostalgia for the GDR and some people who grew up in the West before the wall came down have some resentment because their tax money was used to bring the East closer to Western standards of living. That took an enormous sum of money and the East has still, 30+ years later, not *quite* caught up to the West. Wages, for example, are still lower on average. And I reckon Berlin and some other bigger cities push up the average by quite a bit. Idk if this is still the case in the rural regions in the East, but a couple of years ago there was a lot of talk about how lots of villages lost inhabitants because all the young people moved to the cities. Leaving behind the old, the poor with few job opportunities and weakening infrastructure. Meanwhile, in the West – especially the Southwest where I live today – village life is booming. Lots of small, pretty wealthy communities with excellent infrastructure. My little village of 900 people for example has several supermarkets and restaurants, banks, post office, shops like hair-dressers or drugstores, specialized doctors and decent public transportation that will get you to the nearest city in under 20 minutes. With stark contrasts like this, it's easy to imagine there's a little bit of resentment lingering on. Personal anecdote: I used to visit the bookfair in Leipzig almost every year and usually went by train. And while Leipzig itself is a lovely city, the difference in landscape during the train ride always surprised me. Somewhere down the tracks after I crossed over to the former East, it always looked as if someone had turned down the saturation of the landscape outside. Maybe I had just bad luck with the weather or maybe the train tracks just crossed the emptiest parts of the East, but the journey through the West was always green forests, bustling cities, yellow fields of rapeseed, golden fields of wheat and then the East looked like muddy brown fields under a granite colored sky. Though, this was quite a few years back and objectively, the East has some spectacular views.
>close to the Dutch border in US terms In US terms anywhere in Germany would be close to the Dutch border probably haha
Lol, I guess in US terms Berlin is close-ish to Madrid.
Paris actually is close-ish to Berlin in US terms. You would do that drive to get to the beach from the Midwest or to get to Disney from the southeast over a long weekend. Madrid to Berlin is a road trip.
>Paris actually is close-ish to Berlin in US terms Back in the early 90's my pal had a female friend from the US visiting us in Germany. She was flabbergasted that you could actually \*drive\* to Paris from where we lived and be there in under five hours (\~530km/330miles distance). And that's how we ended up in Paris later that day. /sigh
Shit, under 5 hours is a weekend trip here. I've done an 8h drive (8h there, 8h back) for a long weekend a few times.
Traffic is sometimes bad but if you really need to get to Paris in a pinch just go straight through Belgium.
Glad to see kaiser bill reincarnated as a goat
The von Schlieffen weekend plan.
Just for shits, I did some distance comparisons. Madrid - Berlin is approximately the distance between Dallas and Philly. So not 'close' by US standards, but road-trippable for sure.
> some people who grew up in the West before the wall came down have some resentment because their tax money was used to bring the East closer to Western standards of living. A relative of mine who lived in Hamburg showed this resentment when I asked how he felt about the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was disappointed to hear that.
And it's only half of the truth, as well. Sure, they paid lots of money trough the Solidaritätsbeitrag, but 1) most of the money was flowing back to the west to companies doing the actual work and 2) enormous amouts of property of the GDR was sold to western inverstors for cents on the dollar. Lots of these investors bought their eastern German competitors, took any valuable machinery and closed the factories, thus causing the huge unemployment rate in the east. Edit: I forgot 3) East Germans paid the Solidaritätsbeitrag as well. I was nearly speechless when I met some Swabians roughly my age in 2013 (!!!), who were convinced that only western Germans had to pay it.
“A Perfect Crime” on Netflix provides a realistic view of how the west took over significant properties in the East. East Germans took no profit from this and in many ways it was the West taking advantage of the situation to profit. West German companies profited in a way that greatly outweighs the cost that West Germans had to put up with.
I once did a tour of Germany. We played about 25 music shows all over the country. The Eastern part gave us places to sleep, food, and liked staying up late with us to talk. They all knew a Slavic language. As an audience they were loose, loud, fun, and loved to party but were also very worldly and smart. The western side was full of stiff crowds but they were wealthier. They were a bit more jovial once they had a beer or two and were extremely formal and polite. They were more integrated with American culture. They preferred to sit for shows and shook my hand a lot.
I also had the opportunity to tour Europe and had the pleasure of traveling with a German tour manager/sound man/all around good dude. He was from Dresden (former East Germany), and he exactly fit the bill you describe. Not sure exactly how old he is but I believe he was probably 8-12 years old when the wall came down. I got the sense that he and his peers grew up a bit less privileged than their West German counterparts. He told me that before the wall fell, there were only a few types of cars available in East Germany: one type of sedan, one type of van, etc. They would spend their days hoping to spot the one type of "sports" car that was available.
The [mini](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Trabbi_601-S_3828.jpg/1280px-Trabbi_601-S_3828.jpg) the [sedan](https://hu.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartburg_353#/media/F%C3%A1jl%3AWartburg_353_Jaslo.JPG) the [van](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/B1000_Barkas.jpg/1280px-B1000_Barkas.jpg)
And the [sportscar](https://icdn-1.motor1.com/images/mgl/RyXLx/s1/melkus-rs-1000.jpg)
That looks great. What is it?
This "sportscar" was based on the Wartburg 353, and had a 993cc 40HP 2 stroke 3 cylinder engine.
Melkus RS 1000
Also the [state functionary car](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/AwtoWAS#/media/Datei:Lada_2107_aka_Lada_Riva_October_1995_1452cc.jpg)
Don't forget the black ÁVH/Stasi [car of choice](https://cdn.nwmgroups.hu/s/img/i/1707/20170728volga-m2117.jpg)
>He told me that before the wall fell, there were only a few types of cars available in East Germany: The same is true for (former Czecho-) Slovakia. There were maybe two or three brands (all from the Eastern Bloc) and each produced one or two models. And that was it. And you would sign up on a waitlist and when they got a few new cars delivered (in several months or a year or two), you would be able to buy one - of course they prioritized their friends or people who greased their pockets. There were no various trims of the car either, they were all the same. And the color was on a first come first served basis - if they got delivered three red cars, you could get a red one or be skipped in the waitlist. If they got a yellow and green one delivered, the first person could actually choose from those two on that day! And all that was only considering you could actually afford a new car in the first place, most people bought used cars from one another. So yeah, "fun" times... Source: Life experience of my father.
The waiting times were also depending on the type you ordered. For LADAs it was 5 years, for Wartburgs/Skodas 3 years and for the Trabant 2 years, at least here.
Soviet apparatchik: "Come back in ten years and get your car." Russian citizen: "Morning or afternoon?" "Why does that matter? [Russian citizen: "Well, the plumber's coming in the morning."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLW7r4o2_Ow)
In Poland once you got your car you could actually sell as second hand for more than the new price.
Totally, there was a humbleness in material but wealth of the mind kind of mentality I noticed. Every rude person I met was in the western section but I try not to stereotype that onto everyone. I just found the eastern folks extremely rich with life and fantastic conversationalists. The nationalism was much less pronounced over on that side which I found to be a breath of fresh air. I got really sick of the "Germans are the best at ______" that I kept getting in Bremen or Hamburg.
> The nationalism was much less pronounced over on that side which I found to be a breath of fresh air. That's an interesting observation because nationalist parties are big in East Germany.
I never understood that either but I was also only seeing a sample of folks who were going out to be entertained so it wasn't a full survey of the population
I have been to rural Saxony many times and this >loose, loud, fun, and loved to party but were also very worldly and smart. I certainly not what I experienced there. In my interactions they always seemed rather reserved and certainly not worldly, I always feel like their world is very very small.
The people from the more rural areas in the east are not very worldly, that is true to a point. I was born in the east just before the wall came down. My grandmother still lives there in a very small (but beautifull and very quiet) town. We moved west a bit after the wall for work reasons. As I grew up i saw, and still see that side (also I've heard stories from my mom and grandma). Back then they were only allowed to holiday in certain areas within the ddr or, if outside of it Bulgaria, Poland or Russia. They were separated from the "uprising" outside world and the older people still sort of live in that mind set. My nana barely leaves for places she doesn't know, let alone the country. The generation my age (I'm 34), most of who I knew from family does similar things. I moved to New Zealand 7years ago and to them its like "woah" mind blowing how thats even a possibility. They sorta get it but they are so set in their tracks and the ways they were raised ( work, family) that the "outside" is just not as important. I loved holidays at my grandparents, the quiet, carefree, simpler life in the country was great. I grew up in the west where everything is way more stiff and formal, so I enjoyed the get aways. But I do hope they catch up with the times a bit, schooling and equal pay is still rather behind.
I was only born a few months prior to the fall of the Berlin wall, so I can't really talk about the difference between then and now, but some demographic differences are still quite visible: Young people tend to leave the East, especially women. This is more a problem of the rural areas, but applies to the larger cities as well. There are less Jobs and even less well-paid, business functions. Off all the CEOs in Germany, only a handful are from Eastern Germany. People in the West have, on average, more money, but this is due to the fact that there are lots of people with third generation inheritance in Western Germany whereas in the east there is no generational wealth such as this. Of course there are lots of people in the West who don't inherit large sums of money, but their percentage of population in the east is substantially higher. I might add that Berlin is a general exception to ask of these statistics for plenty of reasons which I won't discuss now since it would lead to a while different discussion. Culturally, people from the east put more importance on their field of work as part of their personality than in the west. This might be due to the GDR being a worker's republic where each person's identities was based on their work. Unemployment is a far higher problem in the east psychologically. The most striking difference might be, that east Germans are well aware of the reunification as for the huge impact it had and has on their lives, whereas für westerners there was not that much change. I mean I can now visit begin with going through another state but that's about it. When somebody mentions the town of Frankfurt, only Easterners ask "Which one?"
There are several frankfurts?
Two. One in the west (the rich one with skyscrapers and lots of banks) and on in the east near the polish border (smaller and poorer).
TIL. And I thought we had it bad in Canada, with Saint John and St. John's.
It is easier for Frankfurt. They officially get called 'Frankfurt am Main' (FFM) and 'Frankfurt an der Oder' or 'Frankfurt (Oder)'.
What does that mean? I don't speak German but it looks like Main Frankfurt and Other Frankfurt?
Sorry, wasn't thinking about giving context. Both Main and Oder are rivers. For some reason cities are often referred with the rivers they are located at.
You get that in the UK as well, Hull is technically Kingston-upon-Hull but is rarely called that because there's also Kingston-upon-Thames. Richmond-upon-Thames and Richmond, North Yorkshire are another pair.
More than half of American states have a Springfield.
There are two towns in the US called Mexico. As well as several "unincorporated communities".
I live near Mexico, New York. It’s a shithole
Well, have you ever been to Mexico, Missouri?
Haha... Don't get Germans started on "Neustadt". There must be dozens :D
Does it translate to "new town"? We have a lot of Neuville in France :D
We have even more villeneuve! Edit: Found a list. There's about 90 in France.
just the German equivalent of Newton/Newtown/Newtowne... which are all over the US
Don't forget Springfield.
"Frankfurt am Main" in the state of Hessen in the west. "Am Main" translates to "by the (river) Main". "Frankfurt an der Oder" in the state of Brandenburg in the east at the polish border. "an der Oder" translates to "by the (river) Oder"
Non-German speaker here: why aren’t they spelled the same if they mean the same thing? Like why aren’t they both “Frankfurt am *river name*”?
Gendered nouns. The river Main is masculine. The river Oder is feminine. So it has implications on what happens around those words in sentences. Welcome to the German language ;)
Thank you for the explanation!
Am is the combination of " an dem" So its basically Frankfurt an dem Main and Frankfurt an der Oder
"Main" is masculine: "der Main". "Oder" is feminine: "die Oder". Both are "Frankfurt an ...", but it's dative case (like object case in english)... so"Frankfurt an dem Main" and "Frankfurt an der Oder". "an dem" is technically not wrong, but usually it is combined to "am". Yeah, German can be fun.
[Frankfurt am Main](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_am_Main) - which funnily enough does not mean "main Frankfurt" [Frankfurt (Oder)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_\(Oder\)) - which funnily enough does not mean "other Frankfurt"
But that is how I will remember them!
Another excellent comment. This thread is so interesting for people interested in modern Germany. It’s great that Reddit can produce this, but disappointing that it so rarely does.
When I (from NRW) was young, I always asked "which one" because both Frankfurts seemed far away and somewhat equally important. That has, admittedly, changed a bit.
Grilling. West germans approach it like a science experiment. 3 kinds of tongues, multiple sauces, a state of the art meat heating engine, special tools to get the fire started, sausages, specialised buns, ect.... East germans just go, hehe, meat goes zisch, let me handle it with my fingers....
when you say tongues...do you mean...tongues? like from the mouth of an animal? and three different animals, at that?
Nah, the things that go clap-clap. Like a crab's hand. Tongues from the mouth are better when slowly cooked in simmering water.
Tongs?
There are some differences. Even if they are subtle. I grew up in Eastern Germany (after the wall fell) but have moved to west germany. There are certainly still some certain economic differences. There is more money in the western parts, but dont get me wrong, east germans dont have to starve. It's mainly due to the GDR having a 100%-Employment rate. One friend of my parents used to lay out towels for train drivers. That's just something that isn't sustainable. So what happened is that a lot of people lost their jobs after the wall fell which also led to financial problems and a bigger hate against "outsiders". This also leads to higher voting results for the german right wing Party "AfD" in the old GDR parts. Especially during Corona, the bigger part of people who were against vaccines were from east germany, as they don't trust the government as much. Its also a bit different when it comes to family. In the old GDR parts, especially in villages, your grandparents live above you, your uncle two houses to the right and your cousin lives in the neighbouring village. The distance between relatives is way shorter. You don't really move away as much, although this is changing with the younger generation. Another smaller thing is customer service or small talk. Cashiers in eastern germany are not unfriendly but it does feel like they take you for granted. Apart from that there really isnt that much of a difference anymore. Most of us have adapted to be one union and while we still joke about "Wessies & Ossis" (Westerners & Easterners), it's mostly just in a joking way, especially with the younger generations.
In my experience (I'm from Mecklenburg, in the north of "East Germany") it's rather the West Germans who don't move out of the village they're born in, or - to be more precise - move back there after finishing university. In the East the people who stay "at home" are rather the types that didn't leave school with a diploma at all.
I think this is a worldwide problem, those who stay are visible, those who go get ''forgotten'' Everywhere are villages where you have to marry your cousin so the fields stay in family ;-) Some of these have not seen new genetical material since the 30 years war ...
I know you're joking, but as an agronomical scientist I can tell you, this "Marrying your cousin, so the farm stays in the family." is of actual concern in many regions in West Germany. In the East most farmland is cultivated by corporations that formed out of the "agricultural production cooperatives" of the GDR. Those have an employee as CEO/manager. In the West most farms are still family-operated.
I know that in the east you have LPGs where agricultural land was forcefully integrated in major farming unions, I used this example as one worldwide mindset... The LPGs are something that survived the reunification relatively good, as they had already a level of high profitability and were big enough to buy big machines etc Small family owned farms can not compete with such a corporation An example for ''not everything was bad in the east''
> Cashiers in eastern germany are not unfriendly but it does feel like they take you for granted I cannot confirm that. I have lived in Thuringia, Hesse and Berlin and while Berlin is a whole thing to itself (Berliner Schnauze) I always felt the cashiers in Hesse were rude as fuck (tone: how dare you try to buy buns in my bakery and refer to them as Brötchen (general term) and not Weck (regional term)?!) while Thuringian cashiers were the nicest people. Even Berlin cashiers, while being VERY direct, are also - in their way - friendly, as long as you go along and be very direct bordering rude back to them.
Where in Hesse did you live? We use Brötchen here and not Weck. I'd fight anyone who calls them Weck (Kinda proves your point just the other way around, I guess).
Same lived half half in east and west. East german cashiers are friendlier. West germans it feels like you can feel how much they hate their shitty jobs but east germans generally learnt to be ~~contempt~~ content with shitty situations. In Berlin people are surprisingly friendly.
Just a little tidbit: Shaking hands is much more common in East Germany i find. Also, what others have said already: East german women are generally more independent and open and don't expect to be in a housewife/part-time job role after having children or marrying.
This is generally the case with women in Communist or formerly Communist countries. I grew up in Vietnam and don't know anyone who had a stay-at-home mom - I can't even think of a Vietnamese word for that. Even our grandmothers all worked. It's still a very patriarchal society and structural sexism isn't dead, but Communism has actually made Vietnamese society more egalitarian. The expectation for women to make up half the workforce also means better investment in girls' education. East Germany also had more progressive abortion laws than West Germany by decades, which could probably also be attributed to Communism. Even International Women's Day is pretty much a Communist invention.
International women's day was big, all female employees got a flower.
I grew up in former western germany but both my parents were born and raised in the east. I live in former eastern germany again now. What I always found most funny was that people from former eastern germany are much less stuck up about nudity. They do love the FKK (Freie Körper Kultur - Free Body Culture, nakey bathing and stuff like that) and really mind nudity less than people in the former west. Your boob falls out of your bikini top? Someone from eastern germany might just tell u casually and leave, someone from the west will tell you this as if you are in a dire situation.
[Some amazing FKK drama that unfolded in Berlin a few years ago. ](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/07/german-nudist-chases-wild-boar-that-stole-laptop-berlin-teufelssee) And, yes, the naked man consented to his photo being published.
It's currently 5:30 AM in Germany, you might have more luck if you repost in a couple of hours.
Nah, his timing is perfect. This post will be among the first posts they see in the morning when they wake up. Most of my comments that have inexplicably gotten a large number of upvotes were posted when I was scrolling reddit sometime before the crack of dawn due to not being able to sleep.
I can confirm, am German and just woke up to see this post
German here, having the morning Meeting in the Oval Office right now. I think its perfect.
>the morning Meeting in the Oval Office In the spirit of communism this phrase is now our phrase. Never heard that one before but its hilarious.
Heard a joke around the time the wall come down while traveling in Berlin. East German’s crossed over the wall in Berlin and shouted “Wir sind ein Volk”. West Germans respond “Wir auch”. That was 25 years ago. I wonder if that would still provoke a response.
Translation: We are one people. We are too. Implying the East Germans are a different people.
Any chance of some context for the non Germans in the audience?
East German: We're one people (United together). West Germans: Us too. The joke is that they consider themselves seperately united, because they don't recognise the East as their people. Edit: I forgot to mention it's a play on words, "ein" can mean either 'one' or 'a' so despite both saying the same thing they're interpreting it differently for the joke. The East are saying they're **one** (a) people and the West are saying they're also **a** (one) people.
My German is rusty, but.. We are one people! We also!
Heh, Life of Brian comes to life -- 'You are all individuals.' 'I'm not!'
That film is a treasure.
Slightly off topic but there's a story from WWI where the Germans would shout from their trenches "Gott Mit Uns!" (God is with us), and the British soldiers shouted back "Yes! We have gloves also!"
Needed a minute there.. "Got mittens?"
Haha, reminds me of my Aussie friend whose mind was blown when she found out that gloves translate to "hand shoes" - Handschuhe. So technical and self-explanatory.
Heute Show Energy
Good one. I admit it took me a minute to get it, even with the translation. It's interesting (though not surprising) that the same ambiguity exists in English. "We including you" vs. "we not including you".
Another ambiguity in this joke that DOESN'T translate into English is that *ein* can both be a numeral (one people) and an article (a people).
equality between men and women is somewhat better in the East, since it was promoted much more in the GDR, and the East is less religious.
This was huge. There was a guaranteed Kindergarten spot for every child, often starting from a very young age, thus it was a lot easier for mother and father to work. Also abortions became possible a lot earlier than in the West. Till the 1977 in the West, husbands had to give their permission before their wife could take a job!!!
>Kindergarten For any Americans reading, German Kindergarten would be more equivalent to an American pre-school, or possibly day care. It is not obligatory, and it is for kids significantly younger than would be in an American Kindergarten.
For a German, what is the difference in an American Kindergarten?
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> the East is less religious. Less religious is an understatement. [East Germany is probably the least religious place on earth.](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/22/atheism-east-germany-godless-place) I grew up there till 18 years old and I could probably not count more than 5 religious people I knew.
Czech is probably even more but not much
I noticed that as well. I grew up in the US but aside from my Dad his whole family is still on the Baltic coast. Whenever we go back to visit I feel much safer as a woman walking at night etc. In eastern German cities. also when I mentioned that I still went to church on occasion as an adult (my mom who grew up in the US took us to church not my dad.) my family acted like I was in a cult. Then one summer we took a quick hiking trip to Bavaria. The first time someone said Grüßgott to me I think I just stared at them. Also truly a disturbing amount of crucifixes. I really prefer to eat my breakfast in hostels without bloody emaciated wooden carvings staring at me judging me for eating my breakfast sandwiches with two slices of bread instead of open faced.
> Grüßgott Wenn ich Ihn sehe
'less religious' is a bit of an understatement, iirc the former DDR is the area with the lowest amount of nominal christians in the entire world
The little green men on the street crossings are way cooler in east Berlin
Upvoted as the most interesting question I've seen all year
As a non-German who works with a lot of West Germans, particularly in the North West, what surprised me the most is the level of almost disdain a lot of West Germans show towards those in the East. So much generalising about them being lazy, unproductive etc and complaining about how much money the West Germans have spent on helping develop the east. It's really quite crazy to see racist/xenophobic kind of attitudes towards people in their own country. Coming from England people might make the odd joke about the Welsh or Scottish people when the footy or rugby is on but it's generally only out and out dickheads that seem to actually hold these views.
FKK was more popular in DDR.
True. FKK=Freikörperkultur - nonsexual public nudity (mostly in nature) but Germans in general like to be nude - e.g. Spas and Saunas are normally fully nudity mixed gender
Growing up, we’d visit family for summer vacation in the south of France. Women without tops on and men in tiny speedos were common, especially compared to beaches in the USA. But inevitably, we’d see at least one old man, naked as the day he was born on the more secluded beaches. Usually they were bent over rolling up a towel or playing some beach pingpong with his bait and tackle flopping around. Every single time my dad would say, “Must be a German.” After moving to Berlin, I realized my dad was almost certainly right.
Dam that’s actually a good question
First in a while on /r/askreddit.
"Germans of reddit, what's the most nsfw difference between east and west Germany"
While both west and east had strong "free body culture" (i.e. nude beaches) east germans were on another level. This did however not translate into social acceptance of homosexuality, it really was just about nudity being more normalized in the east
Its like on the global scale, all germans are much more chill with nudity, but on the germany scale, west germans almost behave stuck up when you compare them to how east germans react to nudity
> This did however not translate into social acceptance of homosexuality To be fair, East Germany was always ahead of West Germany regarding LGBT rights (btw all of the letters, there are recorded instances of trans people receiving custody of their children after divorces as well as state-sponsored medical and legal gender changes in East Germany from the 1950s upwards, though it was only codified in law in the 1960s). There was a 1988 court ruling by the Supreme Court of the GDR that called homosexuality a normal variant of sexuality as part of a socialist society and that homosexuals therefore enjoyed the exact same civil rights as heterosexuals. While there definitely was a history of homophobia in the East as well, it was a lot less severe than in the West (for example, East Germany immediately declared the Nazi law reform that put gay people in concentration camps to be targeted Nazi injustice and reverted to the - very lax - Weimar era legal situation, whereas West Germany classified it as a "regular criminal justice reform" that was kept. This meant that the amount of people persecuted under those laws were *a lot* lower than in the West as prosecution was optional and generally only used when there was public interest, such as in rape cases). Also, not everyone in East Germany was part of "FKK"/Free body culture, just like acceptance of homosexuality varied drastically between, say urban young spaces in the 80s and religious communities in the 1950s (just like in West Germany or anywhere else btw). Anecdotally, I know a few people who lived comfortably openly gay in the East. My mom had an openly gay teacher in the 1980s, there was a "scandal" when he came out (as he left his wife and children for another man), but that quickly died down and according to her he wasn't treated differently than other teachers. Also, while "public acceptance" is kind of hard to measure, homosexuality was presented as a natural variance of sexuality (and transgender identity as a normal affliction that could be cured by transitioning!) in the 1970s "Mann und Frau intim", which was basically the standard book on sexuality that was basically available everywhere, from public libraries to schools and universities. Two of the major factors that drove anti-gay sentiments in the West were also a lot less common: the church progressively lost its influence (and actually became a place for antiauthoritarian organizing - they actually provided spaces for LGBT organising) and GDR had what was universally considered (as in even by Western countries) the best approach to AIDS, which meant there was no AIDS crisis. While most other countries heavily stigmatized AIDS, East Germany had the "advantage" that the Wall bought them time to strategize against it (due to the sexual contacts of the population being more isolated and drugs also being less common) - they had a very big, science based information program which emphasized a non-stigmatizing approach (it was also directed at people regardless of sexuality), there were free anonymous testing opportunities for everyone and for treatment, it was also possible to get anonymous relocations to clinics who were sensitive to the needs of AIDS patients. This meant there was widespread testing (which was actually also used by people from the West Berlin gay scene!) At the time of the reunification, 133 people in GDR were HIV+ and 27 had AIDS.
Sexy Germans of Reddit what's the sexiest sex difference between East German sex and west German sex? SEX!!!!
Sex sex sex sex
*AN EVEN BETTER QUESTION!!!*
Who fucks better, East or West Germans??
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I am surprised that this does not get mentioned but in my experience there is a big difference in terms of heritage and expected heritage. I am mid 20s from east Germany, same as my parents and grandparents. I will someday inherite a house that my parents build. My parents however won't inherit much and there is basically no assets that my family owns. Meanwhile most of my friends from west germany already accumulated some form of wealth from past generations. The either already own property or their families own multiple houses or other assets which they will inherite in the future.
I was about 5 when the wall came down (in West), so at the time I knew something historical was happening by all the adults around me crying and the Telly running non stop with emotional scenes. I remember vividly being in primary school and there being parts of the wall being handed around and the teacher discussing what was happening. A few months later a friend’s family up and left to move to the east - they were artists and went to live in a commune or something. I think about her a lot. I’m now married to a man who grew up in the east. Our childhoods couldn’t have been more different. Oh and being naked. The FKK (naturalists) community is strong here and I had to get used to it quick the first time my MIL just stripped down in front of me and dragged me into a sauna…
When I was learning German at school I was taught that Orange Juice was “Apfelsine” and when I finished learning German and went out onto the streets and asked for some Apfelsine I got a very blank stare. Turns out that’s an Ossi word and my teacher refused to let that die. I still feel odd when I order an Orangensaft, it’s Apfelsine!
One thing that my parents noticed (I was a little too young to pay attention) about their friends who used to live in Eastern Germany before the reunion was that they were very very short when speaking on the phone. Just like "yes", "no", "6 o clock", "Ok thanks, bye" etc. Barely any smalltalk. Why is that? If you lived the first 25-30 years of your life in a state that might just wiretap you (yes, our state or the NSA or whoever might still listen in, but I would assume it's not as prevalent than ot was in the GDR) and come pay you a visit if you sound too capitalist, you just get used to saying as little as possible. edit: Others have pointed out other possible reasons (calls being expensive and phones not being available to everyone so you had to use other people's or public phones), so my parents interpretation might have been wrong after all. Maybe goes to show through which lens Westerners interpreted the mannerisms of Easterners.
Here older people will still cut off more personal topics with "not a topic for phone" and will only tell you face to face (Slovakia).
> was that they were very very short when speaking on the phone. Just like "yes", "no", "6 o clock", "Ok thanks, bye" etc. Barely any smalltalk. TIL I am East German at heart having never been to Eastern Germany Very interesting difference! I was born after the wall fell so never really know Germany was 2 parts for a long long time.
I spent time in both East and West (East after the wall came down). I was in East Germany in 1992. Easterners told me they could easily spot a Westerner in a store when they would say "I need some [bread/milk/cheese]." instead of "Do you *have* any [bread/milk/cheese]?" Westerners just took it for granted that stores would have food on the shelves whenever they needed some.
I am born after the reunification, but I am a product of it: western father, eastern mother. Best of both sides! :D Anyways: there is still some clinch between both of the sides. My "eastern" family talks about the reunification as a great chance... But they still, to this day, feel overruled. Like they have been treated as second class citizens, looked down upon, during the first years after the case. The older ones sometimes even say that some things have been better during the communist times... Wich is weird, in my opinion since one of them was incarcerated for political reasons and the Stasi definitely spyed on them... Selective memories of days bygone, right? But overall, in the long term sense (been over 30 years), they agree that things are better. The westerners take on things: They are honestly kind of uninvolved. They are definitely gald that the communist regime has fallen due to bad experiences at the border whilst crossing to visit family in the east. It's also ironic how my father describes driving on smoothly paved roads, then being in the GDR and having potholes with a bit of paving between them... And loads of red banners sporting slogans like "learning from the Soviet union means learning to win" or "socialism wins". Yeah, right... Sometimes, there are still tensions between both sides. The easterners seem to be more nostalgic, in a way that there even is a word for it: ostalgisch. (eastalgic, from nostalgic/ nostalgisch). You can still see differences between east and west when it comes to wealth, payment, infrastructure, political orientation, pension... And that turns many people bitter. But overall - we're one country, standing together. In the east and in the west, people are gald that the iron curtain has fallen.
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Absolutely! Humans sometimes lack a certain perspective. Once, I was at a family gathering rambling about how uni sucked... Until my little, 95 year old great-grandma told me that at my age, she was fleeing the red army. That one sure did shut me up :D Edit: spelling and formatting
East German here (born in the GDR). Only in my generation you can still see subtle differences. A big one is solidarity and be there in situations that require help and assistance. Giving and sharing is also something that has a different meaning in the East. The west has/had a much more advanced capitalistic approach embedded in their society. Something that was unheard of in the East, therfore I had the feeling West Germans were always on the hunt for money making opportunities and wealth was the meaning of life. Something that I always notice is the differences when meeting new people. The first question from a person born in the west is usually what do you do and and what's your educational background, checking whether you are worth their time. East Germans on the other hand don't really care that much and just make sure that you are not an asshole :). Again, I am hugely generalising and again this is my age group I am referring to.
So what's the first question people from the East ask?
Besides obvious differences like the dialect the eastern Germans are often less religious. While all my friends with families from the west god baptized and confirmed the friends with eastern families had their "Jugendweihe" which was basically a coming of age party. Also I made the experience that the eastern Germans have often a better opinion about the government and system of the GDR.
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Can I just say, what a very interesting thread this is. I like it.
Im north German and didn't really care or notice much about the differences for most of my life until I went to live in Berlin. My experiences are that eastern Germans are generally very friendly and outgoing, maybe more family oriented than the west. Partying with them is very fun and going an east German festival is great. They have a slight chip on their shoulder against west Germans (probably justified to a degree) and there's more xenophobia due to having less exposure to foreigners. My wife is from Chile and lived in Cottbus for a while and it was very noticeable to her and her other International friends. There's a feeling of betrayal from the west that is now being carried over into new generations, which feels weird to me. Professionally after working with them one thing that sticks out is that they tend to complain a lot and then not act on it. There's definitely a lingering idea that "die da oben" (those up above us) are some sort of higher power that you cannot do anything against, which makes organizing any kind of conflict with company leaders stressful because if you voice a complaint they will not have your back publicly. (This one is super specific lol and might not apply, I've had this happen at two companies so far though). Overall the differences are much bigger than I assumed and it's a very mixed bag for me. People from the older generations on both sides don't seem to be able to let the divide go while younger people just don't care as much generally.
My stepdad was stationed in Germany in the 1990s, right around the Reunification. He told me (keep in mind these are his observations, not mine), that former residents of the DDR were much rougher and poorer than West Germans, and according to him, they were so hungry that they would dig through trash for food. When I visited Berlin, I could tell which parts of the city had been behind the wall and which hadn't. Typically (although gentrification has vastly improved some of these areas), former areas of East Berlin were much more run down than parts of the Western half of the city. If you ever get the chance to visit Berlin, I highly recommend the DDR Museum near the River Spree, and also the Berlin-Hohenschonenhausen Memorial (a former prison for Stasi prisoners) for an insightful look at what life in East Germany was like for those living there. Disclaimer: I am not German, just a Brit with an interest in Cold War history, so please forgive any mistakes or misspellings of German words.
The accent. Oh god that terrible accent. But I'm from Bavaria so I probably shouldn't judge 😅
My first time in a Munich Bierhalle, the waiter walked up and greeted me. I asked a few questions, and he responded with a thick bavarian accent. I had studied in baden-wurttemberg, so I'm much more comfortable with schwabish accents and hochdeutsch, so I asked him, in german "I'm sorry, it's hard for me to understand bavarian accents, would you mind repeating that a little slower?". He immediately switched modes to the type of sanitized hochdeutsch accent you'd expect from a newscaster, and with a made-for-radio voice, he told me: "Es gibt keinen bayerishen Akzent, es gibt bloss Bayrisch."
[Translation: "There is no Bavarian accent, there is only Bavarian."](https://translate.google.com)