About East/West
@theomensilike (who, for some reason I cannot tag), graciously submitted this about some East/ West differences. Vielen Dank!
The twins would need to be at least 31 today to have been 3 and lived at least a few months in East and West Germany instead of the reunited Germany.
- Someone aged about 35 today would for example have experienced his first few years living in East Germany and have vague memories. For example: They would have been in school for the first year(s) expecting to live by the East German system. They would have gotten a first handkerchief marking their age and being part of the youth organisation or just missed that.
Someone that age used to tell me that losing that mark of age was a pitty for him. But the main thing influencing him was that his parents had told him lively stories of being watched all the time. Being controlled. Not speaking your mind towards friends or even family because they might be spies. People were so frightened of the Stasi that for example a husband would formally check his wife’s passport. Children might pick up a joke making fun of the political leaders and innocently tell that in school. Their parents would be frightened.
How much of this fear and danger would be transferred to the child depends on the family and their involvement. Some people only registered the absurdity of life under those conditions long after they had changed. Some people kept certain habits and taught their children those habits without noticing.
- Someone aged about 60 today would have experienced it for a long time. I mostly know about this from people living in West Germany who just experienced it when visiting. Or when they had pen pals because all their mail would be opened and sometimes parts would be blacked out. (16-year-old girls’ letters to each other!)
This is a feeling they can use to relate to today’s youth feeling watched and sad about being watched because our emails etc might be read by anyone.
Differences you notice today when you are from West Germany:
- names differ a bit. When there was a division, people in East Germany tended towards “American” names, so children would be called Mandy, Mike, Trixi, … - you seldom saw that in West Germany. So in some generations you can still recognize people from East Germany by that difference. (Today the names are partly a byword for stupidity in Germany. Someone MIGHT make fun of a person being called “Mandy”)
Here is a list from 2010 - the difference is vanishing: http://www.t-online.de/leben/familie/schwangerschaft/id_42993216/beliebte-vornamen-in-west-und-ostdeutschland-.html
- mothers working has a longer tradition in East Germany. It is more common there, but you only notice that after a while or in subtle differences. There is less stigma in relying on group child care from a very early age on.
- people still earn less - even in government jobs. By abusing possibilities, it might for example happen that you work 20 hours instead of the agreed upon 8 for a university in East Germany, where you would be paid 8 to work 6 in West Germany. There is no real compensation in living costs.
- Depending on where you live in Germany over all there are very different expectations regarding education. In some areas getting a university degree is becoming more or less the “norm” for people somehow able to achieve them, even when they need more time or invest a lot of money in tutors. In others it is still considered a waste of time to not work with your hands. This might affect the twins, but this is not something where “east” and “west” is the only dividing border.
- Even people who were born quite a while after the reunification often comment on something that they think is typical for “Ossis” or “Wessis”
Additional stuff about feelings. This is NOT to be understood as a fact, just as something that might be useful to write from a West German perspective:
- when you visit there coming from West Germany you sometimes feel like everything is about ten years back (in a nice way). Everything seems a bit slower, more innocent, … Every time I saw some group of youths hanging around in town I was just touched by them drinking bear instead of vodka and not many of them smoking. Advertisements seem less “modernized”. People seemed less worried about regulations somehow.
- Some dialects sound very sweet, others unbearable when you’re not used to them.
- people are a bit calmer and slower (not slow as in stupid, slow as in taking your time). This is noticeable when working across the country e.g. as a freelancer.
