DDR nostalgia / Ostalgie

For the last year I have lived in the old East of Germany. Over 30 years since reunification, it seems most of the old east-west differences have disappeared. Day to day things are clearly unified - laws and government, currency, transport, media - and shops.

But I'm still sometimes aware that I'm living in the old east. My limited interactions with locals suggest political differences, with people in the former east being less keen on Europe, and more accepting of far-right parties. This was borne out by a recent Pew Research Centre Study, which also noted that people here are also less optimistic overall, earn less, suffer higher unemployment, and are more likely to have negative views about minority groups.

From a personal perspective, whilst most apartment blocks here have been spruced up, it takes more than a lick of paint to cover brutalist DDR architecture. And whilst I've tried to improve my German, it would have been much easier if I wasn't in the part of Germany where folk my age learned Russian not English at school!

It's not all one way: people are less religious here, so the church's socially conservative influence is reduced - the gender pay gap here in the old east is 6%, compared with 21% in the west, and I have certainly found that childcare here is very well set up to support working parents.

There is some hope in politics: Angela Merkel is an Ossi (though she will soon be replaced by a Wessi), and our town even has a Green mayor. There are some cultural positives too - ranging from widespread benefits such as lower Covid rates in the more rural, less mobile populations of the East, through to the rather more esoteric, such as having a decent number of Vientnamese restaurants (thanks to links with communist Vietnam) and the thriving practice of Freikörperkultur (FKK) - naked swimming - which I can heartily recommend.

All of which made the DDR museum on Usedom island a fascinating visit: there seemed to be genuine nostalgia for the boxy old cars, clanky word-processors, and pretty unappetising range of foodstuffs in the pictured recreation of this not so super-market, an old-style Kaufhalle - but I'm sure people here are still mighty glad that these are now confined to a museum.