[Schlagbohrer]

East Germany was completely looted by West German corporations. There were east german workers who's final job was packing up all the machinery and inventory in their plant to ship to the west german company that had bought it all for €1, for example. Basically west germany did to the former east what private equity in the united states does to many companies- tear it down for scrap and sell it off. Then years later people blame the Ossies for just being backwards.

If you want more information about this I highly recommend Katja Hoyer's book, "Beyond the Wall" about life in the east and the problems of reunifcation.

[ahf8Aithaex7Nai]

Absolutely right: they took advantage of us and exploited us, and ever since then they’ve been calling us lazy. Many people in East Germany and West Germany don’t even realize this, but what actually happened during reunification closely resembles the way a colonial power treats a colonized territory: extraction of value, exploitation of cheap labor, and systematic discrimination against the local population. For many people from the generation before mine, there’s the typical term “Wendeverlierer” (those who lost out in the reunification). I would classify my father and other members of my family into this group. Even in my generation, it’s still the case that West Germans from comparable social classes have disproportionately more inherited wealth and prosperity. We East Germans, on the other hand, have longer de facto working hours and lower salaries. I don't blame every single West German for this, but collectively, I do hold Germany largely responsible for the fact that East Germany and East Germans remain economically disadvantaged to this day.

The saddest part is that there are even many East Germans who don't see this at all, but instead attribute the economic stagnation of many regions in eastern Germany to the mindset of the people living there.