All Things '89

The current edition of Foreign Policy also has a concise article from Cameron Abadi that assesses the effects of reunification on the former East Germany. In what amounts to a vindication of Günter Grass's frequently cited status as the voice of Germany's conscience, Abadi refers to the writer's cautious approach at the time to the outcomes of immediate, rather than gradual, reunification. Given that most Easterners continue to travel West to ensure better and higher prospects, it would seem that East Germany is something like the ugly sister, if one may so term it. But what is alarming is how the East's beleaguered state of affairs is creating a vacuum that the far-right is more than happy to fill:

Today, Germany finds itself picking through the wreckage of the accident that Grass saw coming. East Germany's landscapes have not "bloomed," as Kohl promised. Instead, its economy is stagnant, its prospects are precarious, and its mood is foul. The region is trapped in a downward spiral of residential and commercial flight westward. East Germany's shrinking cities have proven a boon not only for the urban planners charged with managing their slow-motion collapse, but also for the extremist neo-Nazi groups and neo-Communist parties that have amply recruited from their stranded populations.

Familiar story? Visiting Berlin recently with the Rough Guide brought my attention to these issues in their reference to two distinct areas they recommended (distastefully, to my mind) as some sort of (strictly daytime) poverty tourism: Marzahn and Lichtenberg. How ironic it is that the infamous baby booming district of Prenzlauer Berg should have established itself in the East. And what a glorious district it is, too, although not beyond parody: my friend and I chuckled at some posters for 'Kinder yoga' on our walk around the area.

Der Spiegel is in much more of a melancholic mood, celebrating East German design here in an article which unequivocally yearns for a lost world. [There is also a website from Der Spiegel which collects all pieces written for the magazine's focus on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall.]