Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No. 104, December 1991/January 1992
3 October 1991. East Germany or ‘the five new Milder’, as it is affectionately called by its Western patrons) is supposed to celebrate the first anniversary of its initiation into freedom, wealth and democracy. Strangely enough, there is no trace of celebration anywhere, no fireworks – just the odd demonstration in Berlin against xenophobia and racist violence.
So how come there is so little enthusiasm for the united Germany? West Germans, on the one hand, are annoyed that unity is costing money. They have to pay a new sort of tax called Solidaritatsabgabe to sponsor unity! East Germans, on the other hand, have to understand that they will remain the ‘Ossies’, the underdogs of the country, for a long time to come.
Rather than bringing people together, this first year of unity has shown them how different they are – and the differences are growing. Surveys show that more than 50% of the East Germans feel colonised by West Germany. So let’s take a close look at this new colony Germany North-East. Does this colonisation follow the old rules?
■ Expropriation of the natives
There are 1.3 million applicants for the restitution of land and buildings. In East Berlin, every tenth estate is claimed by former owners (often war criminals who were expropriated after the war and moved west); in many other communities it is one in three. In extreme cases, up to ten owners-to-be are competing for the same attractive plot. Nobody cares for the residents of the past 40 years.
The restitution of the former national property of the GDR follows the same pattern. Three quarters of what was privatised by the Treuhandanstalt was handed over to West Germans. No single enterprise employing more than 1,000 people went to an East German.
The same picture in agriculture. East Germans don’t have the money to buy the land they’ve been cultivating for decades.
■ Raiding the country
Normally territory is colonised in order to strip it of its minerals and other goodies. In East Germany, there are no precious stones or other valuable raw materials. But something quite useful within the EC: production quotas allotted to factories. By buying up sugar factories in the East for example, West German competitors got the quota as well. Then Eastern factories are closed down, the production transferred to the West.
■ ‘Jungle bonus’ for the expeditionary force
West German civil servants who go to the East to set up new structures are entitled to a bonus of 1,500 to 2,500DM a month.A taxfree bonus that is higher than the monthly income of many East Germans
■ Taking over the administration
As East Germans didn’t know how to run a country, scores of advisers and administrators were sent East to turn local administration, the legal and educational system upside down to then elevate it to Western levels…
■ Protecting domestic economy from competitors
What do you do with East German factories that are capable of competing with their Western counterparts? You close them down – as happened to the NARVA light bulb manufacturer who would just have made a mess of the market Osram and Philips had so neatly divided between themselves.
■ Exporting waste to the colony
France became notorious for exporting toxic waste to their former colonies in West Africa. For a couple of dollars, highly toxic chemicals were dumped in villagers’ backyards. In the same way, East Germany is seen as a backyard for West German waste. Greenpeace found out that 150,000 tons of toxic waste from the West were illegally dumped in 1990 on one site alone. On other dumps the waste was just marked as ‘household refuse’.
■ Glass beads for the natives
It started with bananas in November 1989. After monetary union, it continued with second-hand cars, and now it is dubious insurance and investment funds that inexperienced Easterners are talked into So far, East Germans have lost 1 billion marks to smart ‘investment advisers’.
■ Destroying the culture
By the end of the year, there will be no more GDR television and radio. The first GDR TV station was taken over as early as a year ago, the remainder will follow suit. Many libraries, cultural centres, youth clubs were closed down the communities can’t finance them any more. Gone are the days of generous state subsidies for culture, artists and the arts . . . Video rentals are coming to the culture-starved natives’ aid and are offering the full range of sex and crime, all these highlights of Western culture people in the East had been deprived of . . . Writer Christa Wolf points to the fatal consequences of the colonisation of GDR culture in order to ‘demonise the real history of those who lived in the GDR and let it disappear in a dark hole of oblivion’.
Claudia, Berlin
