From DW Documentary.
Even 35 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there’s still an imbalance between eastern and western Germany. Many executive positions in the former East are still held by people from the former West Germany. What are the reasons for this?
Since the fall of the Wall, the former East Germany has undergone an unprecedented transformation, in which immigrants from former West Germany still play a significant role. Often, they arrived as young people, networked and rose to leadership positions. From here, they shaped and continue to shape eastern Germany today. According to figures published by the Federal Government Commissioner for Eastern Germany in September 2024, more than 3 decades after reunification, only around 12 per cent of the leadership elite in eastern Germany were actually born there. The documentary ponders the reasons for this – and its consequences. Does it go some way to explaining the widespread rejection of the democratic system and the great popularity of the far-right AfD party in eastern Germany?
The fact is that immediately after the fall of the Wall, West Germans were urgently needed – for example in the judiciary. Many East German lawyers didn’t make the grade. Iris Goerke-Berzau came to Saxony-Anhalt from West Germany in the 1990s and helped to rebuild the judiciary. She has stayed to this day. When it came to the economy in the new federal states, the rebuilding process also relied on skills of West Germans like Ludwig Koehne. The Oxford graduate came to the former East Germany in 1992 and worked for the Treuhandanstalt, a government agency set up to privatize East German state-owned enterprises. When the agency was dissolved in 1994, he took over a railway crane manufacturer in Leipzig and turned it into the global market leader in its sector. Koehne says this economic salvage operation wouldn’t have been possible without western knowledge and capital.
Angela Merkel and Joachim Gauck are prominent exceptions – former East Germans who have excelled in their field. Another is 45-year-old Manja Kliese, who heads the crisis response center at the Federal Foreign Office. "Many East Germans wouldn’t even dare to apply for careers like mine,” she says. Eastern Germans are also underrepresented in senior positions at the Federal Foreign Office. "We have a huge democracy problem,” says Kliese, "when people in the East have been controlled by others for decades.” This is another reason why people feel very distant from elite groups and are more likely to support right-wing extremists, she says. But still, she encourages other eastern Germans to get involved — and better represent their part of the country.
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