[emsy]

I'm from Germany (born shortly before the fall) , and I always found it super weird that this "us vs. them" mentality existed. Compared to the enormous timespan east and west Germany was considered the same nation, those 40 years seem to pale in comparison. Besides that, there wasn't a civil war or anything that divided the population intrinsically, but it was forced upon us. On the other hand, Germans are known for doing or thinking what they're told and in German media and the German mindset, the wall still exists.

[jboynyc]

"Enormous timespan"? I think if you take some history into account you will reconsider that. We tend to project the existence of a construct called Germany backward in time, but Germany did not really come into existence until a bunch of small states were united under Prussian leadership in 1871, and even then it remained a pretty fragile construct. Lots of tribalisms remained. Still, if you count the timespan between 1871 and 1945, you get a bit over 70 years. That's not nothing, but not that much more than 40 years. You should probably subtract the four years of WWI and the 12 catastrophic years of Nazi rule, and then you are left with less than 60 years of shared history before the division into east and west.

[emsy]

A nation is not defined by borders and politics.

[dragonwriter]

I think you are confusing nation with state, which is an easy to mistake to make when the nation-state -- the idea of state tightly coupled to nations -- has been a norm for several centuries, but while nation-states might be the current norm, nations and states remain distinct concepts.

In the specific context of Germany, while its true that Germany has been a nation for quite a long time (long before it was a single state), but nations are just social identities, and both sides in the Cold War were quite active in actively using propaganda to build "us" vs. "them" identities, and its not that surprising that without strong organized active supporting for the old pan-German identity and with active efforts to create opposing identities to replace it over a couple of generations, that there is a gulf created which will take another couple of generations of active effort -- at least -- to erase.

[jboynyc]

Yes, it is. Nationalism as a political ideology just likes to pretend as though it weren't.

[AnonymousPlanet]

Ok, since we're kind of nitpicking over the word "nation": what do you suppose was the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation?

I'm aware that you were referring to the idea of a nation as it was established around the time of the French revolution. However, "Germany" as some kind of coherent construct is not just a recent concept.

[antocv]

Oh please then do tell what it is defined by.

[danbruc]

That is the distinction between nation and state - nation just means people sharing language, culture, history and so on but does not imply living together in one state. So even while Germans lived in two states while Germany was divided they still were one nation. And I just want to explain the difference, I don't want to make any statement whether this distinction is relevant or not for the parent comment.

[lispm]

WWII was wiping out a lot of German history. In the west some restauration of old elites took place. In the east, a new political and economic system replaced what was there before. 40 years means roughly two generations of socialism under soviet leadership. Both parts of Germany were developing into role models for their political systems. A lot of structural change took place in the east.

It's also always astonishing how very little basic views change over time in people. I can well remember that many of the generation who grew up before or during WWII was anti-semitic views long after the Third Reich. Even people who were not active racists had them. The Third Reich was responsible for some, but some views were very old (see for example Martin Luther http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemitism ).

For some change the previous generations have to die away, but there are underlying views which are hard to change even between generations.

> Germans are known for doing or thinking what they're told

Well, actually communism was a German invention. You may have heard of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and others. The particular combination of Racism and National Socialism / Fascism was also a home-grown development. A working model of democracy had to be explained to us, though. It took a few decades in West Germany to make it work, put the results were positive.

[emsy]

By "thinking what they're told" I mean that they believe everything they hear and see little to no reason for political activity. In caricatures, Germans were and sometimes still are depicted as a "Deutscher Michel" with a nightcap, because of their political inactivity and lethargy.

So what I actually meant was that in German media, the cultural differences between east and west are still heavily emphasized, there are special shows about it and thus the people tend to think about eastern Germany as "them". The differences do exist, but you could take any 2 Bundesländer and they'd have almost or even more differences to each other, than any western Bundesland has with an eastern one.

[lispm]

> The differences do exist, but you could take any 2 Bundesländer and they'd have almost or even more differences to each other, than any western Bundesland has with an eastern one.

There are differences between Bundesländer. But West vs. East has a lot of special differences: ownership, farms, small and medium companies, political views, religion, etc...

For example North and South parts of West Germany differ in religion: protestant vs. catholic. East Germany OTOH has a larger atheist population.

From a long term cultural view, somebody from Rostock is not much different than somebody from Hamburg (where I live). It's just that Hamburg had several decades economic success, and Rostock did not. This affects employment, job opportunities, population development, GDP, etc. The differences between the former East and West Germany are real, even though some are getting smaller. It will take more decades to change things. The equal living standard is a goal. Generally differences are okay and Germany had always states which had their own business/views/traditions - different from countries where there is a more centralized situation (UK/London, France/Paris, ...).

[Cthulhu_]

I like to think the German people as a culture changed twice or thrice over the past 100 years; WW1, then the economic problems which helped bring the nazi party to power and change the Germans' culture, then WW2 (as a continuation therof) and the post-war fallout and separation of the country for two generations. Then the post-cold war rebuild, the period we're in right now. I doubt much of 'classic' German-ness remained out of all of those events and cultural changes.