Part II: Twenty-Four Years Later, July 2014

Abstract

Approximately one-fourth of those formally interviewed in 1990–91 were re-interviewed in the summer of 2014. The questions put to them dealt with the issues of whether the GDR was united with or dismantled and absorbed—“Abwicklung”—by the FRG; their sense of cultural and national identity; their views on the advantages and disadvantages of living in a capitalist Germany, and whether the unification process could have been enacted in a different manner so as to facilitate contributions of GDR society into unified Germany. They regard themselves as former citizens of the GDR now residing in the unified German state. None of them had any praise for capitalism, yet most—not all—felt that the failure of the GDR was inevitable.