The German elections held last Sunday revealed a nation divided in two once more. Age, education levels and gender all proved to be telling signs in an election that saw yet more gradual gains by the far-right. However, no voting indicator was more telling than the old dividing line between East and West Germany.
The post-election map showed a line running down Germany where the Iron Curtain once stood.The AfD won all but two of 48 voting districts outside of Berlin in the former East Germany. Germany’s Chancellor-elect, Friedrich Merz of the centre-right CDU, must now face up to the old challenges of the 90s; reuniting a fractured national identity whilst navigating the dual threats to democracy posed by the far-right and Russia.
Since unification in 1990, East Germany has broadly embraced the centre-left and centre-right parties of the SPD and CDU. Challenges to the consensus tended to come from the left, with the PDS party, the legal successor to East Germany’s ruling communist party, regularly receiving around 15%-25% of the vote in Eastern German states, but never fully able to overcome its history. The SPD offered a more palatable left-wing alternative to the tainted legacy of the PDS, whilst Merkel’s East German heritage allowed the historically West German oriented CDU to gain a foothold in the region.
East Germany’s pivot towards the hard-right was not then immediately apparent, but the way in which integration was managed has created fertile ground for xenophobic and protectionist sentiment. Unlike other formerly communist economies, such as Poland or Czechia, who underwent a gradual period of reform and normalisation before integrating with the EU and adjusting to full market economies, East Germany underwent a form of shock therapy.
The CDU-led Kohl government of the early 1990s approached deindustrialisation in the East with apparent indifference. It rapidly privatised many profitable Eastern enterprises and land was sold off in fire-sales marked by both legal and illegal corruption that overwhelmingly favored Western businesses. Behind the patriotic rhetoric of reunification, only 5% of privatised businesses ended up in Eastern hands, 85% were acquired by Westerners. This ‘great handover’ ensured that Germany’s Western states became the main hubs for capital and skilled labor, fueling local market growth and attracting further investment and immigration, meanwhile, many Eastern regions faced economic stagnation.
This stagnation resulted in those with human capital emigrating en masse towards Berlin and the West. Those that moved away were more likely to be young, female, and highly educated.This emigration caused what the New York Times deemed a ‘Doom Loop’, whereby high levels of emigration diminishes the quality of life and public services in ‘left-behind’ regions and local populations tend to direct their frustration at the national government and mainstream political parties, fueling even stronger support for the far-right.
This phenomenon has been felt by similarly ‘left-behind’ regions around the world, such as the Rust Belt in America that has formed the bulwark of Trump’s MAGA movement and the former industrial towns in the UK’s Red Wall, where Reform are currently topping various polls.
Whilst economic uncertainty is a powerful indicator of support for the far-right, it is far from determinative. Today, the AfD remains strong in low-unemployment areas of the East such as Saxony. Aside from economic stagnation, feelings of resentment over the uneven unification process have been stoked among East Germans, manifesting as anti-establishment sentiment. As they were passed over for key appointments and their GDR qualifications became devalued, many East Germans have a shared experience of becoming second class citizens in their own country, of having, “emigrated while remaining rooted to the spot”.
Additionally, whilst immigration has been a constant feature of life in West Germany, and much of the bigotry that defined the 70s, has been slowly pushed back as immigrants integrated into society, the East retained a level of mistrust. Fewer immigrants coupled with high levels of emigration has , as the contact hypothesis puts, kept intergroup prejudice high, since increased interaction is necessary to reduce prejudice. This is precisely how the doom loop self-perpetuates; the lack of economic opportunities spurred on by emigration out of the East, results in low levels of immigration, in turn increasing resentment towards the immigrants that do arrive to fill employment gaps.
This divide manifests itself outside of domestic politics as well, with attitudes towards Ukraine another key difference between East and West. While skepticism about military support for Ukraine exists nationwide, it is significantly more pronounced in the East. Around 50% of residents believe military assistance has gone too far, compared to roughly a third in the West. This reflects a more deeply ingrained skepticism towards Western institutions and foreign policy and is a sentiment that has been shaped by historical ties to Russia/USSR and a lingering sense of detachment from the political mainstream.
As Merz takes office, he faces the monumental task of bridging these divides. Boosting immigration to the East is likely to be politically impossible, complicating his efforts to surmount the long-standing economic challenges in the region. A challenge that will hopefully be more feasible in the short term for Merz is not merely one of policy but of trust. The faith of East Germans in the national government must be a core policy directive of the new government, not least with the looming threat of a wider European conflict on the horizon.
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