The “wall in the Mind” and Nostalgia for Separation in Reunified Germany*

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall, the iconic symbol of the Cold War, fell. Its disappearance marked the end of the repressive, communist regime of East Germany (hereafter GDR, German Democratic Republic) and offered prospects for a more hopeful future for its former citizens. Ossis (Easterners) could now take advantage of a variety of personal and civic freedoms. Integration into the larger, more dynamic West German economy and its substantial welfare state seemed likely to foster greater economic opportunity and raise living standards. Throughout the 1990s, the German government poured billions of marks into the new eastern Länder (regions) to help transform and modernize the economy and promote social development. Two decades later, it is apparent that not all the hopes engendered by the fall of the Wall have been realized. The eastern Länder (or, in politically correct discourse, the “new” German states) remain poorer than those in the West. Ossis are twice as likely to be unemployed as Wessis (Westerners). West