It is also noteworthy that such accusations are mainly received by East Germans. Commentators explain this by saying that the GDR and its population have been in the Russian zone of influence for many years and have not “taken off the coat of Russian occupation”, and in the case of Israel “GDR state anti-Zionism” is claimed, that it affects them.
The author of the German newspaper agrees that East Germans indeed often take diametrically opposed positions to the western part of the country. For example, “according to Civey or Forsa, about two-thirds of the population of East Germany is against the handover of arms and is in favor of negotiations”. While in January 2023, 60% of West Germans in a Forsa poll supported the delivery of tanks to Ukraine, ” 65 percent of East Germans believed that supplying tanks to Ukraine was a wrong step.’ “It’s almost a diametrically opposite result,” says Mizelwitz.
But it is not at all related to the past of the GDR, but to what happened after the reunification of Germany, “when East Germans lost their jobs due to the large-scale liquidation of East German enterprises and institutions, when their qualifications and training were canceled, when the transformed “people’s property “passed largely into the hands of the West Germans”.
“The West Germans regarded the complaints of the East Germans as ingratitude, and the criticisms of the terms (of unification) were dismissed as a lot of whining,” calling them Jammerossi – “complaining Easterners”. As a result, there is a sort of déjà vu in East Germany where West Germans blame Russia; this is not always the case.
“The East German experience of Western arrogance towards anything coming from the East certainly played a role,” but that doesn’t mean East Germans, unlike Westerners, hold the opposite view. They’re just more inclined to look at things the other way.
For example, while both East and West Germans generally condemn Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, those in East Germany disagree with the way Russian interests are portrayed in the media.
On the territory of the former GDR, “questions are being asked that are by no means devoid of logic,” Mieselwitz notes. For example, “not only is NATO’s eastward expansion still seen as part of a pre-war escalation of tensions on both sides, but and missed opportunities for talks with Russia in Istanbul in March 2022 or through the Chinese peace plan in early 2023 are also being discussed.” In the east, they are outraged by the loss of media interest in the Nord Stream sabotage immediately after “the increasing amount of evidence of the involvement of Ukrainians and Americans”.
Charlotte Mieselwitz suggests that we stop indiscriminately accusing East Germans of being “Putin-friendly” and view their “experience with false labels, hidden facts and contradictions” as a valuable asset to German democracy and finally start taking taking into account their opinions.
