One in five Germans wants the Berlin Wall back.Guess which side of it they weren't on

[Mr. Ritz]

One in five Germans want the wall back
Article from: Agence France-Presse

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From correspondents in Berlin

October 02, 2007 02:46am

ONE in five Germans would like to have the Berlin Wall back, according to a poll released ahead of the 17th anniversary of German reunification.

Nineteen percent of respondents surveyed said the country was better off while it was divided, while 75 percent said they were glad the Wall that kept easterners captives of the communist bloc for 28 years had fallen.

Remarkably, a full 21 percent of the country's 16.7 million easterners felt nostalgic about the concrete, barbed wire and armed guards that separated them from the west.

The poll conducted by independent opinion research firm Emnid found 74 percent of easterners had felt like second-class citizens since Germany reunited on October 3, 1990.

About the same share of westerners - 73 percent - said they did not believe easterners were at a disadvantage.

The communist regime of East Germany erected the Berlin Wall in 1961 to stop a flood of refugees to the west. The Wall tumbled in a peaceful revolution in November 1989, paving the way to national unification 11 months later.

The former communist east has lagged behind economically since then despite billions of dollars in aid from the west.

Salaries in the east remain 25 percent lower than in the west, according to the Institute for Labour Market and Career Research in the southern city of Nuremberg.

And unemployment hovers at about 15 percent in the eastern states compared to half that in the west.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/s...003402,00.html

[TheHipHopBillGates]

sure they were at a disadvantage, when the wall went down westerners started buying up land & businesses like we're doing in Iraq now, about 40% of the eastern businesses immediately went out of business, it was a diaster, eastern productivity before the wall collapsed was thought to be like 75% to west german's 85% turned out to be about a 1/3.......I was just re-reading the chapter in Greenspans book on this, sure the prejudice must suck to detail with but the opportunity is much better, central planning also doesn't provide the type of technological change/advancement that an open market economy does, and though salary is 25% lower, chances are so are cost of living too, it's like comparing the tri-state to ohio....you can't do it.

[Defekted]

Im feeling nostalgic about that concrete wall also :(

[Mr. Ritz]

there's a slab of it on 53rd between 5th and madison