GERMANY: Five Years Later And The Wall Still Remains

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ramesh Jaura

BONN, Nov 7 1994 (IPS) - Five years after the Berlin Wall came down, paving the way for Germany’s reunification, the country remains divided.

The late German leader Willy Brandt’s expectation that “now things that belong together will grow together” is far from being fulfilled. The reasons, say analysts, are twofold — on the economic and political fronts.

Indeed, this is reflected in a topic that will be high on the agenda of the new parliament, ‘Bundestag’, scheduled to constitute itself Thursday in the historic Reichstag in Berlin. That is the so-called ‘Solidarity Levy’ (Solidaritaetszschlag).

If the parliament approves the coalition government’s draft bill, it would mean that on top of the tax wage and salaried workers pay on every hundred marks earned, an additional seven-and- a-half marks will be deducted for the state exchequer. This would work out to about 60 dollars a month less in the pockets of an average middle-class worker.

This additional tax will be levied on all subject to German taxation laws.

“This is not what we expected reunification to bring in its wake,” said schoolteacher Rolf Engler reflecting the prevailing view among many a western German. “Haven’t we from the ‘alte Bundeslaender’ (old federal states) already done enough by pumping billions and billions of marks into eastern Germany?” he asked.

“Old federal states” is a euphemism for western Germany, “new federal states” (neue Bundeslaender) being used to characterise former GDR which acceded to the then FRG on Oct 3, 1990 — a little less than a year after the Berlin Wall fell on Nov 9, 1989.

According to the Bonn finance ministry, the federal government has transferred some 500 billion dollars to the eastern part of unified Germany over the past five years.

State insurance company employee Wolfgang Meuter agrees that “our rich relatives in the west” have had to share the cake. “But nobody could have seriously expected to have unification at zero tariff.