One in seven Germans want Berlin Wall back

[snopes]

One in seven Germans want the Berlin Wall back because they were better off when the country was divided, according to an opinion poll published ahead of the 20th anniversary of its collapse on November 9, 1989.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_wall_odd

[Jay Tea]

Originally Posted by snopes

One in seven Germans want the Berlin Wall back...

Well they're not getting my chunk back.

[Canuckistan]

It's true. People will romanticize anything.

[Rebochan]

Kind of sad, really. Do they really think putting the wall back would make their problems go away? The wall is the reason they *still* have problems now.

[Kizhe]

Originally Posted by Jay Tea

Well they're not getting my chunk back.

They won't get mine either.

On the other hand I expect this lady, Frau Berliner Mauer, would be happy.

[Liza]

Originally Posted by Jay Tea

Well they're not getting my chunk back.

Or mine.

letters

[Broken Sword]

I lost my three chunks. My grandparents gave them to me when I was in seventh grade after my grandfather made a business trip there. I don't have the slightest idea where they are now.

What if the government let private citizens who really, really wanted the wall raise funds to build it? Then they could let private citizens who hated the wall raise funds to tear it down! This would be a tremendous stimulus to the economy.

In fact, the same thing would work in America! Let's let all the minutemen raise their own money to build their own wall, then make the Mexican drug cartels spend all their resources trying to break through it. More construction work for Americans, less time to shoot people for drug cartels.

[jimmy101_again]

Sounds like Germany has about the same fraction of complete morons as the US.

[Insensible Crier]

Maybe it's because the people next door won't keep their dog in their yard.

[Don Enrico]

Originally Posted by Canuckistan

It's true. People will romanticize anything.

Originally Posted by Rebochan

Kind of sad, really. Do they really think putting the wall back would make their problems go away? The wall is the reason they *still* have problems now.

It's mainly the common "in the good old days" way of thinking we've seen on this boards with all the "50 years ago children went outside to play and gas was cheap" letters. In the mid-late 1980's, people both in West and in East Germany were more likely to have a job and less likely to worry about the future than they are now. They want that feeling back, and since everything changed since the wall came down, rebuilding it would somehow make "the good old times" come back.

Additionally, you've got to know that economically as well as socially, a lot of East Germans were better of before unification (and I don't mean those working for the GDR administaration and armed forces).

There are villages in north-east Germany that had one big, state owned agrarian production facility everybody was working for. People had jobs, and money, and housing, and a place in society. There was a kindergarden, a shop, and a school one village over. Holidays were spent in Hungary or on the Baltic coast, and everything was fine. Ok, there was just the one newspaper, and state controled tv, and you were not allowed to travel wherever you wanted, and people were in prison for disagreeing with the gouvernment, but all that didn't really affect the proverbial man on the street that much.

Today, there may be a small crofter or dairy farm left that's on the brink of insolvency, everybody else has either moved to the West or is umemployed and living on social benefits. The kindergarden is closed, as is the shop, and the school won't have enough kids to stay open from next year's summer. Of course, now you can read free press (and probably read a cheap tabloid), and you can watch free and uncensored tv (and probably watch daytime soaps and reality shows) and you can spent your holiday in Thailand (but can't afford it). People aren't starving, but they lost their place in society, and being able to chose between 17 different kinds of washing detergent doesn't make up for that.

Add to that the real nutjobs, and the ones that find it funny to answer questions like that in the most provocative way, and you'll end up with the 15% found in the study.

Don Enrico

[Sebbenth]

I'm not surprised at all. My general experience is that a chunk of Western Germans own a lot of Eastern Europe; what's more, they bought a lot of it at bargain-basement prices of 1990es.

On the flip side, now, due to outsourcing and everything, the rank and file German salaries are not that great, in part, due to the competition with the said Eastern Europeans. And my general experience was that Germany is not a particularly new entrepreneur friendly state, nor it is friendly towards hired guns.

I'd say that it is similar to USA on many levels. Pardon my attitude, but I think a lot of Americans were objectively better off before the Wall went down, too.