[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, ...).