09 January 2008

First person by Kamal Dib

I am standing in front of Checkpoint Charlie that used to divide Berlin into a communist east and a liberal democratic west. Seventeen years after German reunification, Checkpoint Charlie is today a relic of the Cold War and is located in the Zentrum, the core body of Berlin.

That military hot spot of Berlin is surrounded today by fast-food restaurants and sellers of cheap tourist souvenirs.

The only serious reminders of the recent past are the Wall Museum, which displays the experience of people who tried to cross the Berlin Wall to freedom, a large communist flag covering the facade of a nearby building, and a huge portrait of what appears to be a Russian soldier. There is also a monument dedicated to the 191 people that were killed trying to flee East Germany, with two fields of crosses bearing the names and occupations of each of those people. The museum displays various ways people used to escape, or attempted to do so, including a homemade hot-air balloon, a hollowed-out car and surf board. Otherwise, the typically modernist Berlin architecture dominates in this part of the city. The Allied Forces bombed Berlin so fiercely in 1945 that most of the ancient neighborhoods resembled areas in Paris have disappeared, to be replaced by new structures.

Moving by car from Checkpoint Charlie to Alexanderplatz is easy in Berlin's very wide avenues, where people can park their cars in the center lane.

Alexanderplatz is Berlin's most significant public square. One can no longer see the huge empty square of pre-1989 communist Berlin where massive posters of Marx, Engels and Lenin covered the walls of shabby buildings. Before 1989, the massive Alexanderplatz tower dominated the scene, but today it is one attraction among hundreds, including a subway and bus stations, shops featuring Galleria Kaufhauf, the largest shopping mall in Europe, and hi-tech shops such as Saturn and Media Markt.

This is not the first time Germany has become a unified state, but this time it happened with such willingness that within a few years the concept of east and west disappeared, and the eastern suburbs were transformed such that they living standards an cleanliness does not differ significantly front the western suburbs. This transformation however, came about at a considerable cost to the federal government.

The previous unification of Germany took place in 1871, when Prussian leader Bismarck managed to unify a number of independent German states into one nation, thus creating the German Empire. Napoleon is credited with reorganizing what had been the Holy Roman Empire, made up of more than 1,000 entities, into a more streamlined network of 40 states, providing the basis for the German Confederation and the future unification of Germany under the German Empire in 1871.

Following the dark Nazi period and World War II, Germany came under Allied Occupation in 1945 and was subsequently divided into two states: West Germany (BRD - Bundesrepublikdeutschland) which included American, British and French occupation zones, and East Germany (DDR - Deutschedemokratishrepublik) which was formed from the Soviet occupation zone. Even Berlin was divided into four zones of occupation, and in 1961 a wall cut through it and made the western part a walled island surrounded by communist East Germany. Forty years later, the wall came down in 1989, and German reunification (Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) took place on October 3, 1990, when the defunct communist DDR was incorporated into the BRD.

The cost of reunification was a heavy burden on the German economy, having contributed negatively to Germany's almost stagnating economic growth in recent years. The total cost of reunification was estimated to amount to over 1,500 billion euros, according to researchers at the Free University of Berlin. The primary reason for the hefty price tag was the weak East German economy, especially as it stood in comparison to West Germany. In spite of West Germany's large investments, many East German businesses collapsed in the face of West German and European competition. Even today, the German government still allocates over 10 billion euros to the development of the former East German states every year. During the 1980s, the market economy of West Germany prospered while the communist economy of East Germany declined, subsequently straining the resources of the West which sought to provide goods and services to East Germany. Uncompetitive industries formerly supported by the East German government were slotted for privatization, often resulting in their stripping or complete dissolution.

As a consequence of reunification, much of the former DDR has been de-industrialized, causing an unemployment rate of up to 25 percent in some areas. Tens of thousands of former East Germans migrated to western Germany to find jobs and better living, resulting in the loss of significant parts of the eastern workforce, especially highly skilled workers who proved to be significantly more willing to move. According to the German Bundesbank (central bank), the causes of many problems in the German economy are actually rooted in reunification, rather than the introduction of the euro in 2002, as suggested by many economists.

Germany has a wealth of over two dozen world-renowned daily newspapers, including Die Welt, Algemeine Zeitung, Suddeutsche Zeitung and others. Today's papers (January 4) on display at a kiosk on the fashionable Kurfurstendamm street, are sharing a single headline about a report by the federal department of labor showing a dropping unemployment rate in Germany. However, on closer inspection, the papers showed detailed maps of Germany with unemployment figures by state. With no exception, the states that belonged to the former DDR doggedly show exceptionally high unemployment rates of 15 percent, while the western states are showing significantly lower rates. For example, rates are less than 5 percent in the states of Schleswig Hostein and Bayern (Bavaria). Berlin, the capital of a united Germany, is suffering from the same high level of unemployment as it is entirely located in the heart of the poorer eastern part of the country.  

If spreading economic prosperity throughout the country is a challenge to the federal government, social and cultural unity seem to be a lesser problem. There is one body of German literature by virtue of a single literary language and the popularity of this literature in all German speaking lands. The German-speaking lands do have geographic proximity and social linkages and customs. They have developed different histories and unique political entities. 

In the 20th century, borders shifted so often among the German-speaking countries that the same country, like Germany, had more than one literary tradition. Between 1945 and 1989, Germany was divided into East and West with very different political systems. Writers flourished on both sides of the border and a body of material today qualifies as DDR Literatur, such as by Christa Wolf and Kirsten Hensel. Wolf implicitly criticized East German ideology and practices in Kassandra, and Hensel reflected life in East Germany in Dance on the Canal.

Today, German culture is so varied and rich to the extent that Syrian-born Rafik Schami is a best-selling author in Germany with at least 13 national book awards to his name. Deutsche-Welle the official national radio station, offers an Arabic channel and Germany is actively participating in global commerce, peacekeeping and diplomacy. It is not a passing sign that a teenage pop group under the comic name of "Tokio Hotel" is today an expression of the spread of German culture around the world. Teenage girls from Canada to Japan are hardcore fans of this music band, and Tokio Hotel albums and T-shirts surpassed the million-copy mark outside Germany. Winning the cultural and social challenges may be the way forward for Germany to achieve sustainable economic prosperity.

Kamal Dib is a Canadian economist and an observer of German culture. His most recent work is "Warlords and Merchants."

Copyright The Daily Star 2008.