Since 1945 East Berliners have been subjected to a double colonization, first by the Soviets immediately following World War II, and an almost neo-colonization after the fall of the Wall by West Germany. After the Wall came down, Germany embarked “on a nationbuilding process, integrating two radically different and inherently unequal geographical entities into one political, economic, and cultural system”. This was prompted by the new government’s sole focus on making a bid for Berlin to host the 2000 Summer Olympic Games. The city started to change physically as construction began in areas like Potsdamer Platz. East Berliners felt they could not influence the process at hand and must simply adapt to the current environment created by the new political decisions. Unemployment and competition in the open market increased for everyone, creating feelings of insecurity and inferiority for the unemployed and from some of the employed that feared losing their jobs. As those in East Berlin were unaccustomed to a free market economy, some people fell into depression and long-term instability. Now operating as a single and united Berlin, there was the need to eliminate the duplication of city services such as police, fire, and postal, as reunification rendered the separate systems redundant. These actions were duplicated in Berlin’s cultural sphere. During the Cold War Eastern and Western parts of the city competed for international recognition of their cultural facilities, as it was a direct representation and showcase of the success of each respective economy. When the Wall fell, there was an extraordinary density of duplicate cultural facilities—two orchestras, radio choirs, large concert halls, “national” libraries, museum complexes, and three operas. Many politically oriented cultural institutions in East Berlin were the first to close, including Haus der Lehrer (House of Teachers), Haus der jungen Talente (Home of Young Talents) and Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic). The cultural geography of East Berlin was so transformed so greatly, and immediately after 1989, that only selective institutions of high culture—two operas, theatres, and symphonic orchestras—survived the upheaval. Continuing Berlin’s transformation, streets were renamed to erase the commemoration of the socialist system and its heroes, only furthering East Berlin identity crisis. Lenin Square became the Square of Nations, where as Ho-Chi-Minh Street was renamed Gandhi Street. Easterners felt disoriented, unable to give directions in their own native borough of the city, and the imposition of new capitalist street names was a constant reminder that the socialist state had “lost” the Cold War.

Moreover, workers in East Germany were supported by an extensive health care service, childcare, and housing. Some regretted losing the sense of belonging and stability that went with the fall of the Wall. In particular, teachers from the former GDR had a hard time readjusting as they were given new textbooks to follow and expected to pursue completely different methodological and ideological guidelines than those they of the past forty years. Massive educational and societal changes were being ordered by those in charge in the former West, with the expectations that East German teachers would successfully bring about the transition in the schools from below. This was to be accomplished without their involvement in educational decision-making at the political level and without clarification of their new roles. Economically the East German transition proved far more difficult than anyone thought at the outset. The mid 1990s were perhaps the worst years of the transition. Different estimates – which are hard to reconcile – suggest that two and a half million workers lost industry jobs during the early years of the transition, approximately 60 per cent of those who had been employed in the industrial sector. During 1990-91, East German industry cut back work-time for 900,000 employees. Unemployment exceeded a million (after many hundreds of thousands had already moved West), and after 1992, early retirement at age 55 went into effect for perhaps 800,000; job retraining would occupy another 400,000: in effect a massive underemployment. The problem was that the GDRs major specializations, heavy industry and chemicals were oriented toward the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) markets. But after 1989 the CMEA was being pried apart as a zone of economic exchange: each of its European components was being left to make its own arrangements with the West. And what East Germany could offer no longer had a role for western producers or markets. Moreover, what East Germany produced, brought with it particular ecological vulnerabilities, since the country’s major domestic fuel was lignite or brown-coal, a particularly sooty fuel with two sevenths the thermal output of equivalent weights of hard coal. Further, as part of the CMEA as a whole, it lagged in such post-modern goods as computers, and indeed post-industrial services and consumer items in general. Attention early on was focused on the setting of the exchange rate of the two German currencies at the ratio of 1:1, at a time the East German currency possessed perhaps one quarter or one fifth the purchasing power of the West German Deutschmark in any

international standard of comparison. This decision, which was politically motivated, and for which many good reasons can be given, supposedly made the wage costs of GDR industries unsustainable. In addition, West German unions, which largely took over the wage bargaining in the East, pressed for a rapid convergence of East German pay scales, which far exceeded the convergence of labor productivity rates. As a result, East Germans, like immigrants, “left their home behind, landed in a strange country, a society they had not participated in shaping, that did not welcome them,” and spoke the “wrong” language, abided by the “wrong” rules, and needed to learn a new etiquette. East German government posts, political parties and cultural institutions were reconfigured, supplanted, or even erased, and West Germans expected the East to simply assimilate. It is clear that there is still a high degree of social, political and cultural divergence that had emerged among individuals who were nominally residents of the same city. The physical separation led way to genetic divergence and partition. By separating the population, divergent experiences were created which in turn contributed to the formation of distinct socio-cultural groups, with the Wall acting as a screen obscuring the differences. After the Wall these differences evolved into prejudices, creating the “Wall in the Head” among Berliners. As seen with racism in the United States, only time and a conscious effort by Berlin residents will be able to reconcile with the prejudices held towards one another. Until that day, the Wall will continue to loom, harassing residents in their day to day activities, whether they are aware of it or not.

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/newsletter/articles/en_GB/Maier-article-1109/ http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/232/4/berlin-after-the-wall-decades-after-its-fallhistory-still-haunts