Unified Germany 20 years on

For the vast majority of Germans, the 20th anniversary of political reunification is cause to celebrate - but there remain strains below the surface, rooted in Germany's fractured past. Professor Mary Fulbrook (UCL German) here describes how scandals, stereotypes and sanitisation have made the path to a single 'normal' state far from smooth, in an article first published on the UCL European Institute website. ?In the revolutionary autumn of 1989, many East Germans came out on the streets to challenge the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) and its dreaded State Security Service, the Stasi, culminating eventually in the collapse of the communist regime in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). And East Germans soon voted, once they had the chance, in favour of the fastest route to gaining western democracy and western currency, this time culminating in the accession of the newly constituted East German regional states (Länder) to the western Federal Republic of Germany on 3 October 1990. Dislike of the GDR was not new in 1989. Over the preceding decades large numbers of East Germans had, by continual grumbling, by making exit visa applications, or by 'virtual exodus' watching western television, long hankered after another way of life. Yet for many East Germans, initial delight at the fall of the Wall was rapidly followed by disillusionment and a strong sense of dislocation after unification.