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Exactly 30 years ago, this couple celebrated reunification. Image: keystone
German Unity Day: these 30 numbers show how things are with reunification
30 years have passed since the GDR and the FRG merged to form a unified Germany. What has happened since then? A summary of reunification in 30 issues.
75
According to a survey by ARD Germany, 75 percent of the population is very or largely satisfied with the general events in Germany since reunification.
2. 3
According to the same survey, 23 percent are predominantly dissatisfied or very dissatisfied.
3’681’649
More than 3 million East Germans moved away from the former GDR after the Wall fell, and fewer than 2.5 million people moved from West to East, as research by “Zeit Online” shows. The reasons for the waves of emigration were mainly better career and income opportunities in West Germany. The wave has now flattened out.
sixteen
In 1990, 16 percent of households in East Germany owned a telephone. In the FRG it was above 99 percent. Today there is no longer a difference between East and West.
160
The Berlin Wall, which separated the eastern and western parts of the city between 1961 and 1989, was 160 kilometers long. Some fragments can still be seen today, for example in the Eastside Gallery, in Mauerpark or at Checkpoint Charlie.
1400
The former border strip between East and West Germany is now called the Green Belt; it was recently declared a nature reserve. The strip is almost 1,400 kilometers long and 600 endangered species live there.
4
Was everything better before? There isn’t much left of Ostalgie these days. According to a survey last year, a total of only 4 percent of Germans want the RDA back; if you just take the East, it’s just a little more, 5 percent.
108
The area of the GDR was around 108,000 square kilometers. It was less than half the size of the FRG at 249,000 square kilometers.
13
The fall of the Wall still affects 13 percent of Germans very hard. Most people, however, have little (24 percent) or no feelings (15 percent) for it.
38
More than a third of West Germans, 38 percent, believe the East would have benefited from reunification. 22 percent of East Germans believe this. With a large majority of 42 percent, they believe that unity has the same number of positive effects for both sides.
fifteen
According to the statistical federal state, only 15 percent of all Germans live in the new federal states. This number has steadily decreased since reunification and the problem of emigration from the former East German regions persists.
140
At least 140 people died from the Berlin Wall, as the associated monument investigated. In addition, there are 251 people who suffered fatal heart attacks at the Berlin border crossings during or after border police checks.
1’300’000
1.3 million landmines were buried on the death strip by the GDR. Most of them have since been removed, but it is said that 33,000 mines are still underground in the Thuringia Green Belt; they did not have removal protocols. No one has been injured as a result.
53
More than half of all children under the age of three in the new federal states are cared for in day care centers (52.7 percent). In the former federal states there are still far fewer, that is, only one in three children (31%).
2’000’000’000’000
Historical facts have their price: According to estimates, reunification costs between 1.3 and 2 trillion euros. A large part of the costs are social benefits, but also construction aid for the former federal states of the GDR.
7
The gender pay gap is smaller in the east than in the rest of Germany: in the east, women earn 7% less than men, in the west 21.
6400
The current wage gap between East and West is 6,400 euros. While the average annual salary for skilled workers in eastern Germany is 34,700 euros, in the west it is 41,200 euros.
fifteen
According to an estimate by the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, 15 percent of the GDR’s population is said to be covertly unemployed. This means that 1.4 million people had jobs but they were superfluous from a business point of view.
2’000’000
About two million people in West Germany are said to have been unemployed to achieve unification.
33
About a third of East Germans prefer to vacation here, compared to 26 percent of West Germans.
383
According to the Berlin Science Center, more than 383,000 people legally left the GDR between 1961 and 1988. To do this, an exit request had to be submitted, often only approved after years and often resulting in harassment and persecution. Many exit requests were then withdrawn.
222
222,000 people emigrated from the GDR “in another way”: illegally escaping across the German internal border, shopping free from custody, or not returning from an approved trip.
23:30
On the night of November 9, some 1,000 people crowded in front of the Bornholmer Strasse border crossing in Berlin. Under pressure from the masses and due to the lack of clear instructions from superiors, the head of the border crossing finally opened the border around 11:30 pm and stopped all passport controls: the first East Berliners were able to enter West.
60
In the GDR, women traditionally worked full time, also due to comparatively good childcare. Sixty percent of women with one or more children worked here full-time in 1991. In West Germany, this was only the case for 18.5 percent of women at that time.
112
As is known, the Stasi meticulously recorded their observations in archives. After reunification, 112 kilometers of archives were discovered.
5000
Get out of the GDR by swimming through the Baltic Sea: Over the years, more than 5000 GDR citizens tried to do this, reported “Stern”, among others. However, very few of them succeeded: 174 drowned, 4,522 were captured and arrested.
8
According to the Federal Statistical Office, about 8 percent of people in the new federal states have an immigration history (as of 2019). In the former West Germany, this number is more than three times higher and is 29 percent.
3
Since 1990, only three women from the new federal states have been chosen as “Miss Germany”, at least five other winners came from Berlin. The East German beauty queens came from Brandenburg (1991), Thuringia (2011) and Saxony (2017).
2’300’000
2.3 million people were members of the SED. After the fall of the wall, the numbers dropped significantly. In May 1990 there were already around 400,000.
72
According to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 72 percent of Germans rate reunification as positive today.
(ftk / ak / tkr / jd)
