East Berlin, West Berlin

I was also asked to say something about cultural differences between East and West Berlin.
I am from the West, my girlfriend is from the East. I live in Reinickendorf, she lives in Hellersdorf. There are like 30 km between us.

Are there still differences?
Yes, while Berlin is definitely growing together, this is not happening with the speed most people hoped.
Many people in former West Berlin feel like they gave a lot of money to people who wouldn't work with enough effort, therefore the East appears to them as a money swallowing bottomless pit. This is - of course - doing East Berliners injustice. What is true, however is that many people in former East Berlin needed some time to adapt to West German way of life. Of course many of them don't want to. And that is totally fine. People in East Germany didn't revolt in order to become just like West Germans, they revolted in order to gain similar liberties and similar standard of living. While remaining with a different cultural identity is no big deal in one's spare time it was expected of them to assimilate in work life because (no matter whether it is sad or not) West Germans run the show economically.

On the other hand many people from former East Berlin are disappointed with what happened after reunification. They hoped to gain the standard of living of West Germans of their generation. Instead they lost their jobs because the East German industry couldn't compete well enough and many of them became welfare cases. They wanted to work and felt like 2nd tier citizens when they saw that they didn't get the chance to contribute. The problem wasn't always the bad state of East German industry. Often times Western companies received government money for transforming East German companies into a modern industry. The outcome was often the opposite: Managers bought the companies, took the money from the government and then let the East German economy die. It was an easy way to get rid of competition.
Again, there are two sides, however. Large parts of the economy are productive now after releasing like 90% of their work force.


When you look at Berlin today, yes it is growing together. There are parts where it is hard to determine whether they belonged to the East or to the West. On the other hand the differences can not be overlooked either. They also translate into election results. The socialist PDS party which had goverened the GDR under its original name SED for 40 years gets a large share of votes in East Germany. In Berlin it has enough votes to form a coalition government with the SPD.
It has been widely discussed in Germany whether the PDS would be a passing phenomenon or not. Well, I can't judge on that. My estimate is that it will remain influential as long as there are people who are not content with capitalism. This may be a long, long time.

Another thing to cultural differences is the phenomenon of "Ostalgie" a word play from Nostalgie, meaning a romantic image of what life was like in the GDR.
So special Ostprodukte are being bought again, movies are being made about how fun it was to be young in East-Berlin, and so on.
Famous movies of that sort are "Sonnenallee" (a comedy) and "Good Bye, Lenin" (a more serious comedy about the months of change in 1989/90).
While both movies made tons of money in Germany the second one is very successful internationally, as well. You can get it on amazon.com. (Btw, I recommend both.)

Finally, I would like to stress that I am not an expert in all of this. I am just reflecting some of the things I notice in everyday life. If you have questions or differing opinions, I 'll be glad to read and respond to them.