20% of the Germans want the Berlin Wall back

One in five Germans want Berlin Wall back

"Fourteen years and a trillion euros after reunification one in five Germans would like to see the barrier that split the
country during the Cold War put back, a survey has found.

A poll by the Forsa institute released on Wednesday found a quarter of western Germans wishing the 15 million east Germans were cut off
again by the Berlin Wall, living in a different state, while 12 percent of eastern Germans wanted out of the united Germany.

Many westerners said they were disgruntled because they have had to foot the bill for reunification -- 24 percent said they had suffered
financially as a result.

In the formerly communist east, which has twice the unemployment as in the west and where wages are still below western levels, one-third
said they were no better off financially because of unification and the end of communism."



That�s interesting. I�m surprised.
Quite shocked actually. Is this true or just a joke?
Do they really want the wall back?
Or do they just miss the "good old days"?

And note: This is a wish from both sides...
25% of western Germans and 12% of the eastern Germans, according to this Swiss article...

Well...to me, this is just a clear example of the exisiting animosity that remains between east and west Germans...many still hold their origins as a distinctive identifying feature beyond their dialect...as though it makes one german better than the next.

Saying 1 out of every 5 germans is just a statistical twist.....They could have just as easily deducted that 4 out of 5 germans are glad to longer be restricted by the wall....but b/c 20% are against the good will of the 80% that suddenly becomes news-worthy....lol...

25% of western Germans and 12% of the eastern Germans, according to this Swiss article...

I find that interesting...I can sort of understand how the western germans came to that percentage....but 13% from the east?! I want to know the age brackets....that would explain a lot....

Cool find Hellmutt

Originally posted by EnronOutrunHomerun
Cool find Hellmutt

Thanks.

I found a norwegian article after I posted this.
They say that Brandenburg and Sachsen (from former DDR) are having an election Sept. 19th and that this election could become a "political earthquake" of some kind.
The communists might get the majority of the votes...

is an East German band!

Originally posted by Aelita
is an East German band!

Ahh, Rammstein...

MPJay posted a link to an amazing video using Rammsteins� "Sonne".
Download from here:
Aircraft crashes captured on video, pid#791801

Originally posted by Hellmutt

Originally posted by Aelita
is an East German band!

Ahh, Rammstein...

MPJay posted a link to an amazing video using Rammsteins� "Sonne".
Download from here:
Aircraft crashes captured on video, pid#791801

Gee man this is almost too morbid... I liked the original clip a lot better

Originally posted by Aelita
Gee man this is almost too morbid... I liked the original clip a lot better

It�s a great song.
I haven�t seen the original video.
I guess it�s good?

I wanna see it...

isn't reunification better then the on going tension of evasion by either side?

It's suprising that so many want it back the way it was though I don't find the numbers overwhelming in any way.

I liken it to the people in this country who wish the Cold War was still going on....ahhhh....the Cold War, how I miss those days!

I lived in the former East for ten months about three years ago and was very surprised at the animosity that remained in the country. A lot of westerners hating having to pay for the east to catch up - and losing a lot of jobs, etc. in the process. A lot of easterners were jobless (factory jobs all leaving) and were wishing for communisim to come back since at least then everyone had the basics.

Any Germans here? This is just a foreigner's point of view from a couple years back.

Originally posted by Hellmutt

Originally posted by Aelita
Gee man this is almost too morbid... I liked the original clip a lot better

It�s a great song.

I haven�t seen the original video.
I guess it�s good?

I wanna see it...

It was posted on herzelied.com a while ago, but now they removed everything

The video is stunning. It's about Snow White overdosing on stuff that the dwarves are mining for her.

Originally posted by EnronOutrunHomerun
Well...to me, this is just a clear example of the exisiting animosity that remains between east and west Germans...Cool find Hellmutt

Man, I can't believe after all these years and the hundreds of lives lost trying to escape the east, they could even think about putting it back up ( if its true).

That would be analogous of the Confederate States of America forming again.

We were one nation in the beginning, ( I was born in the South, family fought for the South and I'll always believe our Southern soldiers to be noble and courageous to my deathbed, But that's beside the point) and we're one nation now. Today, I'll fight, die and kill for my brothers and sisters from the North.

The fact remains clear, we're all Americans, and Germans are all Germans. Plain and simple!

Germany needs to stay intact if they want to stay an economical power in Europe. Tearing her in half would destroy any hopes of being #1 in todays European Community ( I've also got 25% German blood, but I'm all American, yeya!)

[edit on 9/9/04 by Intelearthling]

it's going to take a long time to fully reintegrate Germany after such a long division. 14 years is nothing and great progress has been made, East Germany still needs a lot of work.

They need more time.

Forget parity, East Germans told

"President Horst K�hler of Germany on Sunday tapped seething resentment among East Germans and fueled tensions inside the country over the financial costs of reunification after he said it was no longer realistic to expect the Eastern states to have the same living standards as those in the West.
�
It was the first time that K�hler, a Christian Democrat, had raised the issue of long-term financing for the East since his election as president last July.
.
His remarks, made a week before East Germans go to the polls to elect regional governments in the states of Brandenburg and Saxony, are likely to be exploited by the far-right parties as well as the Party of Democratic Socialists, or PDS, created out of the former East German Communist Party."

Germany as a whole wouldn't have such a problem with refinancing the reconstruction if they would reign in their welfare system and quit giving it out to every foreigner that comes into the country. This is something that most Americans can't grasp. And that is a non resident having welfare rights. Thats the problem in Germany. I was there this past summer visiting my mom and its really bad. The city is crawling with Russians and Turks who all came over for the free ride. You walk around the city and there are foreigners all over just standing around doing nothing and living off of a welfare system that neither they nor their family has ever contributed to. If you speak with a real German and especially an elder this will be a BIG complaint. I would venture to guess that immigration would squash unification as the biggest financial burden in any poll. I could be wrong.

In Sachsen, "The Nazi-party" gets the same amount of representatives in "The house of chosen ones" as the "government-party"!

Now that`s an eye-opener...

[edit on 2004/9/19 by Hellmutt]

Here we go again:

Swissinfo: Berlin Wall being rebuilt at Checkpoint Charlie

"Fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a private museum is rebuilding a 200-metre section
close to Checkpoint Charlie, the famous Cold War border crossing, to satisfy tourists who flock to the site.

The replica consists of graffitied concrete slabs, salvaged from the actual wall, but must run a slightly different
course because of new buildings on the site of the former death strip. Dozens of the 3.6-metre high slabs are already
in place."

Click link or picture above for the full article from Swissinfo...

Originally posted by Indy
Germany as a whole wouldn't have such a problem with refinancing the reconstruction if they would reign in their welfare system and quit giving it out to every foreigner that comes into the country. This is something that most Americans can't grasp. And that is a non resident having welfare rights. Thats the problem in Germany. I was there this past summer visiting my mom and its really bad. The city is crawling with Russians and Turks who all came over for the free ride. You walk around the city and there are foreigners all over just standing around doing nothing and living off of a welfare system that neither they nor their family has ever contributed to. If you speak with a real German and especially an elder this will be a BIG complaint. I would venture to guess that immigration would squash unification as the biggest financial burden in any poll. I could be wrong.

Russians really tend to annoy. Lazy people and intelligence as well as being polite is foreign to them. They love to do nothing, provoke and just be violent.
Stereotyping? Racism?

Sorry, no. I love to have turks here, indians and all other people. You see them busy working, next to you they start building their houses, park their mercedes next to yours. They are a good addition.
But Russians, sorry but this whole bunch from over there has a huge attitude problem!

Anyway, back on topic.

That poll is a waste of money as it wasn't questioned if they want the wall just back up or the DDR back again. The DDR back again? You could bet that only some mentally disrupted people would love to get the DDR back.

This whole poll makes no sense at all or let's better say we have 25% of very stupid people in Germany. In what way are we better off with the wall being built up again? Uhm, I really don't know it.
Won't bring back the money, help the economy or the social relationships.

No no, after all this poll was just populistic and showed to me how many stupid people are currently annoying my country.





Thanks to the posters before for the discussion, I missed it till today, sorry.

The two German exchange students on my cross team, Raik and Dennis, told me that East and West Germans hate eachother still. Kind of like the East side vs. West side hate here in America. Raik is East and Dennis is West. They always make jokes about who is better. East or West? Maybe it is more then play?

Originally posted by Indy
Germany as a whole wouldn't have such a problem with refinancing the reconstruction if they would reign in their welfare system and quit giving it out to every foreigner that comes into the country. This is something that most Americans can't grasp. And that is a non resident having welfare rights. Thats the problem in Germany. I was there this past summer visiting my mom and its really bad. The city is crawling with Russians and Turks who all came over for the free ride. You walk around the city and there are foreigners all over just standing around doing nothing and living off of a welfare system that neither they nor their family has ever contributed to. If you speak with a real German and especially an elder this will be a BIG complaint. I would venture to guess that immigration would squash unification as the biggest financial burden in any poll. I could be wrong.

hmmm a few numbers to debunk this crap.

Currently there are over 4 million unemployed people in Germany.
ONLY about 600,000 are foreigners, the rest are full-blooded germans. Out of those 600,000, 37% are women who can't work because of lack of proper education or qualification (think of countries they come from). Another 11% are over the age of 50.

Some numbers can be found here: www.isoplan.de...

When a foreigner comes to live in germany, they can only stay if they have WORK PERMIT, meaning they have to work, unless they seek asylum, or they are old, kids, women (as a part of family), etc, etc. So to tell that these 600,000 people and the wellfare they live on are the cause of all germany's troubles is absurd.

THe reason is far more complicated, you have the difference between east and west in number of work places, development, as somebody mentioned it has only been 15 years since the fall of berlin wall, economy takes time to develop.
Then there is the fact that germany's economy is the backbone of the whole EU, the general weak state of world's economy, etc, etc.

Communism was very good at creating illusions that everything is ok. In communism everyone did have a job, but those jobs were not very productive, thats why it eventualy collapsed. Countries were spending money they didn't have, printing money every month, borowing from other countries, national debts of communist countries were HUGE. Now that the East Germany has been integrated into West, they got slaped by reality. It is difficult to adjust to it.
I am confident though that there is a way out of the current situation. Germans are a nation of survivers and hard workers. They rebuilt germany after WWII and turned it into one of the most powerful nations in the world, this is only a minor setback compared to that