What the CDU’s choice of colors reveals about the state of unity

It’s the little things, the subtle differences, not only among French sociologists, but also among Germans in East and West. And that’s why, I promise, a final word for now on “Cadenabbia turquoise” and “Röhndorf blue”, the new ones. We laughed so hard. But for the wrong reasons.

Of course, it was a marketing gimmick to name the disdainful sounds after the home and vacation spot of the first German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, in order to give them a historical charge, so to speak. A gag that accidentally revealed more about the status of German unity than some socio-economic maps that will keep us busy for days from today. Just like every year at the beginning of October, for 33 years now.

Or Karl Marx City beige?

It can be done, but it’s an interesting strategy for a party that has to wage a kind of fight for survival, especially in the East. When it comes to the color thing, you just have to imagine for a moment that the Left Party had decided to expand its signal red design (color code HKS 14) to include the colors Karl Marx City Beige and Oberhof Green – the latter, by the way, named after Walter Ulbricht’s favorite vacation spot. Of course, this is not a political comparison; after all, Ulbricht once had the wall built, and Adenauer brought us the social market economy. It is precisely this “us” that reveals the special perspective. This is not an explicitly East German perspective, it is an exclusively West German perspective.

Konrad who? Apart from Angela Merkel, who realized early on that as an East German Protestant she would only have a career as an Adenauer ultra in her Catholic-influenced Western Party, Ossi doesn’t have much of a connection with the old man from Cologne. And he has similarly little regard for the social market economy. She brought him Coke and took his job. But now they shouldn’t be so ungrateful: because without Adenauer there would be no prosperity, without prosperity in the West there would be no reconstruction in the East.

Why am I so upset? This must be a misunderstanding, I’m not upset. Hardly at all. I’m not a CDU member who has to try to win three eastern state elections next year. I would only be very much in favor if all democratic parties made at least enough effort to ensure that the party that has been steadily getting stronger for years, the AfD, does not emerge as the winner in the end. (with the exception of greetings from the southern Harz!)

In the damp basement of the emotional household

This AfD has succeeded in revitalizing a typical Eastern feeling. A feeling that the SED successor and Left Party predecessor, the PDS, had nurtured for two decades, but which in recent years has actually only lingered in a damp corner in the basement of the East German emotional household: the learned feeling Helplessness.

It is a practical emotion, passive and relieving at the same time, directed against “those up there” and “those in Berlin”. Even during the GDR era, you could hand over all responsibility for your own actions like a coat in the cloakroom in the district culture center. And apparently it still works today.

Ossi is Ossi, Wessi is German

Perhaps this “East” is not a pure “West German invention” after all, as the Leipzig German scholar Dirk Oschmann claims in his book, which for some reason has now sold more than 100,000 copies – and if it were, then it would at least be an invention that was thought of as such some in the East now like to believe it themselves. After all, there must be a reason why 40 percent of East Germans still feel like they are East Germans, but only 14 percent of West Germans feel like they are West Germans, as it was said on Monday in an ARD documentary about the East. Sounds weird? No, logical. You, the West Germans, are the Germans.

And over in Lost Germany? Not that easy to say. “Either communists or fascists,” as Springer boss Matthias Döpfner once so beautifully said? Or all victims of transformation who have had nothing on their mind for three decades other than to recapitulate their experiences of powerlessness. Doomed forever to lag behind in conformity with the Western standard.

Little to pass on except anger

And so, starting today, we’ll be staring together again for a few days at color-coded maps on which, depending on the socio-economic criterion selected, the course of the former inner-German border can still be traced with surprising precision. There is an equalization when it comes to pensions, wages and salaries, but of course not when it comes to assets. For historical reasons, the East lags behind. There’s little to pass on, except perhaps anger.

There is always a new reason. Although they make up 20 percent of the total population, only twelve percent of management jobs are held by East Germans. In the media there are eight percent, in the economy 4 percent and in the military 0 percent. And loudly, it’s not the old, eternal Ossis who are bothered by it. It’s the younger ones: three quarters of the 18-39 year olds who were born in East Germany, far away from Röhndorf.

A light blue called Hiddensee

They want more. Also more “political self-efficacy,” as the Federal Government’s Eastern Commissioner, Carsten Schneider, calls it. And he means all those who stayed – not despite everything, but perhaps even because of it. Because of a homeland, for example, that they don’t want to hand over to the AfD without a fight. It would be worth listening to them instead. A different, more optimistic picture of the East could also be painted. The CDU could join in. She wouldn’t have to dip the brush into Uckermark green straight away. For starters, a light blue called Hiddensee is enough.

Source: Stern