East-side Story

Humpty and Dumpty sat across the Wall, which had an incredibly great fall and shook the world, but Humpty and Dumpty have not been able to put their act together again. East is still east and West is still west for the twain has met only on the surface and no one is really satisfied. Billions of euros have been pumped into the reconstruction of the East after reunification, with Berlin being described as the prime construction site of Europe. And yet, housing in the new settlements in the East looks like a child’s brightly coloured Lego fantasies while so many of the elegant homes in the exclusive parts of the West are reminders of the old imperial Berlin. It was East Berlin, which suffered the worst of the 1945 blitz and was reconstructed with the depressing egalitarian architecture of the post-war era. West Berlin was also badly hit but retained much of its character and went on to match the best in the world in its architectural modernity. Despite these still glaring contrasts, young working-class westerners talk of moving to the East because rents are lower and prices of daily necessities cheaper. Enjoying an evening out with her family in an Italian restaurant, Le Condola Due, the bubbly Auriella and her not-so articulate husband Mathias even while expressing their admiration for the eastern welfare state—‘good education, community feeling, they helped each other’—was resentful that "we have to pay for them". She saw it as the hangover guilt of the war—"we can’t say no to them. But that is not good enough—we must go, go forward and leave the past! People are different. The easterners are not so independent. We are aggressive. But it is affecting us". Talking about her half-brother, Auriella was contemptuous: "He is lazy and arrogant because he has no hope for the future." Clearly, Germany has not been able to synthesise the two systems economically or even culturally. It seems to have been something of a burst balloon at least in the short term.