Transformation process leaves rough ride behind

By Harry Bhaskara

Five Indonesian journalists, including one from The Jakarta Post, visited Germany last month in connection with the fifth anniversary of Germany's reunification. The following are the first articles in a series of reports based on the visit.

BERLIN (JP): Five years after the reunification of Germany, any trace of the Berlin Wall is barely visible. The 165-kilometer wall has been reduced to a mere 300-meter stretch which has been preserved.

This remaining section of wall served as a "stretched-giant- canvas" for artists during the euphoria of unification. The famous picture of Brezhnev kissing Honnecker is recorded here.

Small chips of the wall, however, are still to be found in souvenir shops or sold by side-street vendors near the Brandenburg gate.

Checkpoint Charlie, which was the entrance and exit gate between East and West Berlin, has now been turned into a museum.

This formerly split city, now the "laboratory" of unification, is beautifying itself to become the German capital in the year 1999. When driving around Berlin's streets you don't feel you are in a formerly separated city except when you happen to encounter the Trabant cars manufactured in former East Germany.

It is moving to think how the two ideologies used to sit side by side in animosity, each treating its part as a "spoiled kid" of free market and socialism "shopping window" respectively. In the past, Bonn set aside one third of the whole West German budget for West Berlin.

The combined results after the toppling of the wall is a magnificent city with beautiful scenery; well preserved historical buildings in the east, and modern buildings in the west.

But there is another wall which is harder to demolish.

"We've never known that a political system can change people's minds," said Mrs Barbara John, a commissioner for foreigners' affairs in Berlin. "If they have no money they think there must be an apartment without payment. Bread must cost 1 mark. Why? Because they are used to it."

Under the German Democratic Republic system, everything was provided by the state. A joke making the rounds says that eastern Germans think electricity comes from an electric socket, not from a power company.

"They have a certain 'entitlement' mentality. Born on the wrong side I can understand, but I don't think five years is enough to catch up with the west-side standards," said Dr. Erich Follath, foreign editor at Der Spiegel weekly news magazine.

The value system broke down completely, he said, and the west- siders think they have more knowledge about everything.

"There are psychological things which are very hard for the east-siders to swallow," said the editor of the western German magazine.

Antje Lawrence, who works for the German government, said that a wall in the mind is too simple a statement. The east- siders or the ossis, the local term for them, did not read magazines or papers from the west, she said.

"History needs time. Maybe we need another generation (to close the mind gap)," Lawrence said.

The east-siders have "broken backbones" and are not straightforward in expressing themselves, she said.

"They talk in circular ways to please the government or their superiors," said Lawrence, "it's very difficult to understand their mentality."

This is understandable, she said, since the beliefs the east- siders held for more than 40 years suddenly broke down.

"Now there's democracy, but to glorify their past they try to justify the past," she said.

Wolfgang Georgi, an eastern German journalist who works with the Berliner Zeitung, a paper owned by a western German investor, said that west-siders or wossis think they are better.

"We don't like each other too much," he said referring to his west-side colleagues.

Asked to compare the current situation with that of the past, he said: "In the old days many things may have been odd, embarrassing but the feeling of solidarity is strong. Today we have a more competitive situation".

Unlike in the former German Democratic Republic, Georgi said, west-siders have learned how to compete individually since their tender school days. He said many east-siders still think that socialism is good but their leaders are too old to turn the ideology into a reality.

"Now I don't know what to believe in. It's true that Germany is a democratic country but if we see the high rate of unemployment..."

In Brandenburg, one of the five new federal states, the unemployment rate is 14 percent. In other new states it is as high as 18 percent.

Sometimes employment cases take a funny turn. East-sider bus drivers, for instance, find better incomes in western Berlin.

"East Berlin bus drivers receive 86 percent of (the salary of) drivers in West Berlin," said Dr Dirk Kroegel, an advisor for parliamentary affairs at the Senate of Berlin.

This is a significant increase from the 40 percent after the reunification.

Bus and train tickets are still cheaper in the east.

But the biggest difference is still in house rent. The average rent is 8 to 9 marks in the west-side compared to 4 marks in the east, he said.

Nevertheless, the gap is likely to narrow in the years to come, especially since the government is allowing the legal owners of property in former East Germany who now live elsewhere to claim their properties. Soaring prices have always been a frightening prospect for eastern Germans.

Until late last year, east-siders could not go to the west to consult a doctor because their insurance would not cover them if they did so.

"Now everybody has a chance to look for a doctor throughout Berlin," said Kroegel.

There has been great differences as far as social conditions, transportation and housing are concerned, he said.

"But I think the first step has been taken to address these problems," Kroegel said. "People in the east are satisfied as far as we know, but I think 40 years of separation can't be level in a sense since their ideas and memories will linger on and there's not much we can do about it."

On Oct. 3, 1990, the date of unification, some 25,000 laws were introduced overnight.

"This was a very hard task. First, there was adjustment to western democracy, and then seeing how it was functioning," said Brandenburg government spokesman Erhard Thomas.

In the following months eastern Germans were disillusioned, for their dreams did not match reality; whereas western Germans were increasingly irritated for having to continuously support the Aufbau Ost (reconstruction of the east) project.

At least nobody claims to want the German Democratic Republic back now, Thomas said. Everybody now wants freedom, and to travel. They are reluctant to live in a sort of jail anymore.

"For many people, the breaking up of society is the hardest to go through. Every second someone loses their job. That's why the unemployment rate is high," Thomas said.

Dr. Follath of Der Spiegel thinks the biggest shortcoming of western Germans is their attitude that as the government has the money, it can solve problems; and they don't want to share their wealth.

He said Chancellor Helmut Kohl did many things right as far as the decision to reunify was concerned but he also made a number of mistakes.

First, he didn't make it very clear to western Germans that they would be expected to make sacrifices. "We had a feeling somehow that we didn't have to make many sacrifices, and easterners thought that in five years they would have cars and other things," Follath said.

Western Germans pay 7.5 percent of their salaries in solidarity taxes.

Second, the policy of returning property ownership in former East Germany to owners who may have resided anywhere during the last 40 years.

"It's a big mistake because it creates a bad feeling in the east. They feel the west claims that which is no longer theirs. The government should have compensated the owners but not returned their properties," he said.

The third mistake, Follath said, was that the government gave the impression that the reunification process would be easier than it really has been.

After five years of unification it is still difficult to get a clear picture of what has taken place. In economical terms, the five new states have already recorded a 9 percent growth rate over the past five years, the highest in Europe.

A survey reported in the Deutschland magazine shows that both eastern and western Germans are confident that the unification is a success. But differences between eastern and western Germans that result from socialization will continue for a long time, it says.

These differences refer to people's sense of what is right and what is wrong, in attitudes towards the economy, and opinions on international obligations.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl summed it up in his Oct. 3 Unity Day address: "In the long run, improving personal contacts among Germans is the bigger task for all of us. Here we need patience, goodwill and the readiness to listen to each other."

If Berlin is any indication of the success of the reunification process, and with 75 percent of the young supporting unification, it looks likely that the gentle revolution will smoothly continue in the coming years.