The western Allies did more of what needed to be done to modify the culture and character of Germany. The Russians did little or nothing.
2
lol "a broad class of women were independent, emancipated, often better educated and working in more adaptable service jobs"
The women went after West German men and their money, thats what happened.
12
East Germany, and its rural men in particular, need radical empathy and action, not pitying and patronising.
5
I thank you for this article as it make this situation less abstract, and offers a more human view. I do not know about my fellow human beings, but I suspect we all like stability, at least of a sort. Was it Twain who said, "Ilike progress, it is just the change I do not like?" Suddenly to be literally left behind without the courage or skills to do otherwise is a humiliation. The situation with women, or lack thereof, is another case where in the East men were all the qualities that they thought were needed as establish by the society they lived in. Then to have Merkel be the amazing woman and leader she is, with the former useful men feeling useless, I feel compassion for all. The question becomes are there these men, the deitrius of change, to be sacrificed or is there another way of integration. Perhaps World societies are changing faster than humanity can absorb, leading to this loss of place.
19
Merkel’s legacy or East German male weakness? But it is not only a German problem. There’s a global white male crisis that is dysfunctional and fueled by hate. History reveals it never ends well.
15
The East even in Germany, is not the West. Culturally, the East has a history of conservative anger or whatever. Nazism emerged from angry, young Prussian men who faced unemployment and underemployment. These values are the problem in Eastern Europe and Russia. Let's hope these values stay in the East and the American South, or better yet fade away.
3
I think the government in East German towns/cities need to implement an unconventional and even a radical solution. I remember reading about "Wives wanted in the Faroe Islands" in bbc.com where men end up looking for women in far away lands - Phillipines and Thailand. Something along those lines, help the men of East Germany find the right woman.
1
On a positive note, the Persian restaurant owner is back running his restaurants and serving his guests, although he is still recovering from his wounds. Here's a link to an article in German. I wish him the best in his recovery. Perhaps his strength can serve as a model to confront the forces of hate.
https://www.mdr.de/sachsen/chemnitz/chemnitz-stollberg/betreiber-restaurant-safran-arbeitet-wieder-100.html
1
The video shows an excerpt of a speech by Bjorn Hoecke (4:30) and comments on it in vitriolic tones - but surely the relevant question is whether Hoecke is factually correct.
He is.
2
Take all the West German money but ditch any responsibility to build a civil society. That sees to be the general behavior of East Europeans Happy to take the Euro's but quick to ditch any responsibility to build a free civil liberal society. Maybe adding them so soon will be seen as the EU's biggest mistake.
5
This is very interesting. The female to male ratio was quite surprising. Some readers have asked why males didn't follow females in the flight. That is a germane question but that is to blame the men who stayed back. And, it is not the solution either. What about the sick and old and young who could not move? Should they be left to die? Maybe men stayed back to take care of older parents, maybe they had more attachment to the land of their birth, maybe they just could not marry someone in the west, and maybe they just don't have the fire in the belly that has made immigrants move to distant lands in search of a better life for centuries.
Regardless, these men deserve a dignified life if they choose to stay back.
A bigger question for the society is, why do we allow capitalist greed to destroy communities like these? Why do our government policies that waste trillions of dollars in wars and giant military industrial complex not find money to invest in these communities that are devastated by globalization? We face the same issues in rural America. It leads to rise of demagogues like Trump in the US and Afd in Germany, and similar parties in Austria, Poland, and Sweden.
But it doesn't have to be that way. I hope to get some idea about how people prefer to respond to these issues after election results tonight.
10
The East even in Germany, is not the West. Culturally, the East has a history of nasty, right wing conservatism. These values are the problem in Eastern Europe and Russia. Nazism emerged from angry, young Prussian men who faced unemployment and underemployment. We in the West must ensure their values do not take hold, and better yet fade away.
1
There's an unmistakable correlation here between male sexual frustration/inadequacy and support for far-right movements. We see the same thing here in the US, with bitter "incels" forming far-right online communities.
"If you get me a wide I will stop marching for Pegida." Doesn't get any more straightforward than that.
10
Excellent article, great reporting and analysis! This suggests that populist / far-right movements are driven by men's lack of sex and marriage. This is a powerful force, perhaps even more powerful than economic and racial grievances.
Can we use this lens to examine our own neo-Nazis and right-wingers? They are often caricatured as bumbling romancers, hiding their wants and needs behind their calls for male domination. Maybe it's more than a caricature?
8
Interesting that Herr Fritz is holding an MP-38.
So easy for New Yorkers to scoff at these people. They are, translated, Trump voters. No women. Greatly diminished prospects. Nothing but grease from the oligarchs.
I commend this article for its sympathy. I condemn those who would read it in condemnation of those men who have no exit. Look in your heart.
24
Reading this article - which is excellent - I get a feeling of cognitive dissonance. "Unemployment, once over 25 percent, is now below 3 percent." What?? So the majority should not be, and probably are not, complaining about jobs. I think there are two factors at play here.
First, East Germans probably never confronted their racist past like the West Germans did. I suspect this left a lot of racial animus simmering beneath the surface, which came to the forefront when Merkel took in refugees fleeing from the destruction of the Middle East.
Second, one cannot discount the part that demagogues play given this kind of an opportunity. Any disquiet on the part of the population must be soothed and their fears allayed by responsible leaders. Unfortunately, the East Germans were snared in by their version of Trump and Republicans, spewing hate and confusion.
I think there's hope as long as the majority is clear headed and on the right path. If not, the consequences will be disastrous, not only for Germany, but also for Europe as a whole.
9
@RajS
True, after WW2 the West Germans confronted the "Schuldfrage"- the question of guilt; however, in the East all the blame was put on the Fascists. So yes, the East never effectively confronted the crimes committed by Germany during WW2.
4
Looks like the inevitable parade of comparisons between East German right-wing men and MAGA Americans. It's easy to make that parallel, but equally easy to debunk it. If being left behind as an indigenous group is a reason to support Trump, why is it that African Americans are not signing up with the right wing? Surely they are as indigenous as any group in America, and here before the waves of white German, Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants. Could it possibly be that right wing ideologies are about racism, not about economic issues?
3
@Pete - African Americans are not signing up with the right wing, because African Americans have not historically been the privileged class in America. African Americans have been at or close to the bottom rung of American society for hundreds of years. African Americans have had to pull themselves out of their situation by seeking opportunity, where ever it may be.
Unfortunately, what we're seeing with the far right in America, and the Afd supporters in Germany, is a historically privileged class of white men that haven't had to go elsewhere to find opportunities in a very long time. They've had it good where they are, and now they don't. So rather than going to find it good somewhere else, they point to the foreigners "those brown people over there. They are the problem!" They've heard the steady drumbeat of modern society calling for equality for women, and minorities and immigrants and and and. And now those white men are hopping mad, and they're not going to take it anymore. To the historically privileged, equality feels like oppression. But they will have to learn to move on and find opportunities, just like the rest of us.
Unfortunately, the big scary dangerous difference is; the vast majority of women and minorities and legal immigrants just want equal opportunities. Those alt right and Afd guys? They want superiority.
15
@Ken So, small time factory workers and miners in communist Eastern Germany 'had it good' and were 'historically privileged'?
That's an interesting take on life behind the iron curtain!
4
@Maarten - Maarten, white Europeans have historically had the lion share of opportunities in Western society. Some made the most of those opportunities, some did not. Yes, I agree that East Germans had it rough under communism, but when the wall came down, they at least had the opportunity to go to West for better education and work opportunities. Many stayed home. My point is that they at the very least had an opportunity. As for rural whites in middle America, they’ve had far better opportunities than their black neighbors up the road.
8
I understand why these people are frustrated. But why are so many more voting for the AfD than for die Linke? If you're fed up with neoliberal capitalism, why swing right rather than left?
9
Ms. Kopping's statement "migrants difficult journey proves they are everything eastern men are not - dynamic, determined and driven - other wise they would not have made it here in the first place." betrays the logic, reason and justice that European civilization is based on. First the majority of these migrants and most immigrants through out the world also evidence a lack a patriotism, and a base selfishness and cowardice when they don't stay in their home nations to work, protest and if necessary fight to the death to make their home countries decent places to live. If the millions of Syrians now in Europe had stayed in Syria and fought for the democracy and society they seem to want - the world would be a much better place. And second, their "driven" efforts to violate many laws and the sovereignty of multiple nations and the numerous lies they've told to officials "make it here" indicate a massive importation of a contagion, of a culture of dishonesty, criminality and lack of community and patriotic spirit into Germany, other European democracies and the USA. Apparently in the modern progressive Germany it is now considered a moral deficiency to tell the truth and obey the law. While criminality, cowardice and lying are thought to be some indication of the kind of sexy roughish 'innovative' character that is necessary for success in the brave new globalized world of open borders anarchy that our 1% criminal class has invented in order to steal most of the world's wealth.
14
@winthrop staples Your interpretation of this piece speaks more to the deficiency of logic, reason, and justice of your empathy than anything else. The war being fought in Syria may have begun as a revolution, a forum where all these refugees could have stood up and made a difference, but it's far from that now. An everyday citizen stands no chance of making a change when they're being fought over in a proxy war by the US and Russia. The likelihood of them surviving and making a difference is infinitesimal in the face of chemical attacks, drone strikes, insurgent attacks, bombings, etc. Their desperation to survive, to get their children to a safer home, pushes them into actions and measures they would have otherwise never contemplated, not because their culture is inherently dishonest or criminal. I hope you never experience that drive, that determination. I'm sure all of them would have happily gone without, too.
5
Humans have always migrated to pursue a better life or opportunities. Why not Syrians? Europeans have taken over entire countries via migration. The US and Australia are prominent examples.
4
Very similar to the angry white men voting for Trump and Trump-like characters in the US who've lost their blue collar jobs in industries that are no longer economically viable or sustainable. Unfortunately, in the US, these men have little access to re-training programs or any form of social assistance compared to eastern German men. None of these men are educated enough to realize that immigrants and women are not to blame for their lack of motivation to train for a new job and move to where the jobs are.
10
Any astute politician could easily have seen this coming. The obligations of any leader is first and foremost the citizens of their own country, and not foreign nationals.
Being an Easterner herself, Merkel should have known better than the other politicians from the West, that there was this disconnect, that more work was needed regarding reunification of her own country. She should have set aside more resources to help with the reunification and integration.
Instead she lost focus on her own country, dropped the ball, and prioritized mass migration of approx 2 million, mostly young single men, from continents away, and with a different culture.
And these migrants went to Eastern Germany too, Merkel dictated that every corner of Germany take in their obligated share, so they were not far away from these struggling Eastern men as this piece claims.
The murder of an eastern German by 2 migrants has no been explained by the media, and the reporting was turned upside down by downplaying the murder and emphasizing instead the resulting protests in Chemnitz portrayed by the media as xenophobic White men, who had the nerve to protest the murder of one of their own.
It is also more than insulting for elitist politicians to make remarks praising the migrants while insulting their own home grown eastern countrymen. It shows that these elitist politicians still do not get it. But the AfD gets it alright. At least they get it.
14
There are also angry women, afraid of the violence, abuse and rape crimes.
6
This article portrays the legitimate issues facing East Germaners (men &, I suspect, women too) in an unsympathetic, mocking light.
Policies formulated by an elected government need to work to the benefit of everybody & shouldn't leave huge swaths of society behind.
I would serve the readers better if the Times did an article on the causes behind continuing disparity between East & West Germany 30-years after re-unification.
16
Clearly people should be more like "me".
2
@Jack McCoy
Clearly, people should be using birth control in earnest. Almost all the world's problems today would be alleviated with fewer of us, instead of the 3.5 billion excess procreated since the 1960s and 4 billion+ due within the next generation.
8
Could it be Russia has been spreading mistrust in east Germany as well? That was my first thought after I read this article.
13
The greater ease with which resentful, xenophobic, and anxious "Eastern Men" turned to a quasi-fascist alt-right populism than have those in the western part of Germany is not disconnected from the fact that during fifty years of Soviet-imposed communism, east Germans were not required to confront the darkness of Germany's recent past. Instead, Nazism was said to have been an excrescence of capitalism, and that, therefore, all of Germany's moral guilt lay with the capitalism of the Federal Republic. At the same time, east Germans, former Nazis included, were promiscuously recruited into the SED, the new East German totalitarian ruling party. The party line was that there were bad Germans in West Germany, and good Germans in the Soviet-shaped DDR. Nothing in the east had to change, No process of self-examination and social opening and cultural liberalization that painfully took place over time in the west. In the Federal Republic that process at least in part inoculated west Germans from the kind of quasi-fascistic urges, whatever the immediate trigger, that explains the popularity of the AfD among "Eastern Men."
11
It is funny but I came to this conclusion a long time ago. If you want to bring down Putin, you'll have to be sexist and allow (induce, reward) Russian women to emigrate to Germany.
It just goes to show you, women are more flexible, durable than men.
3
Unfortunately for the Eastern Man, Merkel clearly understands something they don’t. That German birth rates are falling, and clearly the Eastern Man and all his qualities are not helping that problem. Immigrants are the best way to revitalize struggling areas. But not if you’re going to tell them to stay home, don’t go out, don’t spend your money here, you might take away one of our females.
5
Leave behind and antagonize the men in your population at your own peril.
Evolution has programmed men to react quite distinctively to threats or perceived threats.
5
@Baron95
Men can only be left behind through their own inactions.
No man who wants to learn and progress through his lifetime will ever be "left behind".
Instead of relying on an evolutionary excuse for violence, use the stronger evolutionary trait of adaptability and curiousity, they will serve you far better.
6
On the surface the situation in East Germany resembles what is occurring in the US. But there seems to be a major difference. In the US many of people who support Trump live in economically depressed areas . But this area in Germany only has 3% unemployment. In addition, finding better economic opportunity doesn't require someone to move to to West Germany. This area is only a three hour drive from Berlin which is a prosperous modern city. So there are other cultural factors in play here that can not be addressed by only economics. There seems to be a generational divide and the sociological upheaval that has occurred as society moves to a post industrial future. Men who had planned their futures working in a local factory that manufactures things, are now alienated in a technologically driven globalized world. It seems many of these middle aged men are a lost generation that struggles to come to terms with change. Those that could adapt, moved on, but the rest are stuck in time. They are frustrated and disillusioned so they look for others to blame. They see others succeed whether it be peers, or foreigners, or women and the alienation manifests in anger. It is a very difficult problem to resolve. There is no going back in time and no easy fix. What might help is for politicians to acknowledge the plight of these people and not be dismissive of them. I think that is the problem Democrats made is this country. They ignored this group and were not constructively helping them.
13
It would be comforting to believe that the AfD is primarily composed of older men in what was former East Germany. The reality is somewhat different. The photo leading this story shows a woman actually leading a demonstration. The video accompanying this article interviews a woman from the AfD who was actually elected. The most recent elections clearly show the AfD gaining strength - these were in the wealthier regions of Germany. The reality is the fact that the AfD is rapidly gaining considerable political power. More attacks are going to make the AfD even stronger.
3
Not so fast. On average the AfD gets 13% in the west, stagnating at this point since more than a year. In the east they get on average 25%. The beauty is, there are living more people in the west. For every vote, the AfD doesn‘t get in the west, they need five in the east. I‘m not so concerned about the AfD getting more and more votes. They won‘t. And since Merkel declared to step back from leading the CDU and will resign after 2021 as chanclor, AfD is already declining in polls. Personally I think, we won‘t get rid of them totally, but I think, the worst is over.
2
@Stefan
I disagree. I do not think it is a good idea to discount this party. You may be correct, but I do not think so. According to the published reports of election results in both Hesse and Bavaria, they are already quite strong - and will probably grow stronger.
Excellent article! I had no idea about the gender dynamics in eastern Germany and how they have contributed to the rise in the far-right. Articles like these are why I love the NYT!
7
Three things can be asserted factually about the modern condition.
There are too many people, too many competing institutional authorities, too many projects and plans, too much regulation, too much waste. Operative concept? "Too much."
The global infrastructure -- a mesh of digital, electronic and mechanical systems of manufacture, transport and communication -- is too complex for even sophisticated people to comprehend. Computers, not humans, now run the system.
The energy and financial systems are unsustainable in the face of climate change and a failure of moral hazard. Vast social dislocations can be readily foreseen with high precision.
In this context, the maligned "racist" and "fascist" and "anti-immigrant" movements, now appearing globally, can be interpreted more simply: "Slow down. Stop. Change is too fast."
Yes, the language and lies these movements use is wrong and offensive. But to a doctor, your description of pain also probably sounds stupid. To an accountant, your description of your financial situation probably sounds naive and delusional.
You're the boss, so heal the political pain and lay down the concept of limits.
If you look at the alt-right as the pollution created by your progressive viewpoint, you are the cause of their failures of fact and reason. So look at our current situation, and ask how your liberal ideology has created obstacles to curbing the momentum of change.
7
Whether, in Germany where the women have gone west or, in Arab countries, where they are held pretty much in confinement in their homes as second class citizens, one thing is for sure.
Bars full of angry men.
I am not sure how they can be helped. The article mentions retraining. It is hard to assess how this is working and, definitely, men are not as "adaptive" as women.
Nowadays life is better in the sense that we know more than, say, in the middle ages, in terms of gathering data and projecting outcomes. I assume that if identifiable problems such as the one mentioned in this article received the care that D-Day and the aftermath had (there probably are better examples), the tremendous shocks to society could be somewhat successfully alleviated.
Humans are not like robots or widgets and, if the emotional support is not there for a long time, things will drift down. See the opioid epidemic as an example.
Same with the minorities in America. If you do not take the LONG time of emotionally bringing everybody into the fold, then it will not work. It takes 20 years to bring a kid into society. It takes many years also to absorb someone into a different culture.
Either we are in it together or we build walls!
As far as the cost is concerned, whatever cost would have been to bring a minority into the fold, you would have to compare that with the cost of not having done so.
I wish people were made more aware of such notions when they are in their formative years
5
This article doesn’t seem to acknowledge that a huge amount of women lost their jobs with the fall of the Wall & Reunification. The equality between men and women and the large number of women in the workforce in eastern Germany was not a value shared in western Germany. Women suffered disproportionately with the fall of the Wall and job / livelihood loss.
9
I served in West Germany in the 1980’s with the US Army. Germany is simply a fantastic country which offers a good life to its citizens. I hope that Germany will be successful in integrating more fully its citizens of the former East Germany, I can’t imagine how difficult that transition is to make for those caught up in it. Maybe the struggles, economic and social, in the USA in the rust belt is some indication. As Americans we should all wish Germany well, they are the key to a peaceful Europe in the future and maybe even a peaceful world.
15
I am insulted by your statement that women needed the #MeToo movement to become fully formed people.
7
An important factor not mentioned in this article is that during the post-war period, the fascist Nazi's crimes were depicted in a manner that relieved most East Germans of much of the guilt that West Germans were forced to confront.
For the communists, they too were victims of the fascist crimes ("like the Jews!") and therefore did not carry the same responsibility. The fascists were all off in West Germany pretending they had no wartime criminality.
As such, there still has been no full accounting of and confrontation with personal responsibility. In some ways, it is not unlike the post-Confederate South where history after Reconstruction was re-written with a false exculpatory narrative that defended the slave era and justified white supremacy even down unto today.
11
They're thrown out of work, they're invaded by foreigners, and they can't get a wife or girlfriend.
Germany is lucky these guys have not taken up arms. In American they would have. Come to think of it, in America they have.
14
5.5% unemployment in Saxony and 6.4% in Germany’s largest Federal State Nordrhein Westphalen. 3.9% foreigners in Saxony versus 11.8% in Nordrhein Westphalen. Remains the “problem” not to find a girlfriend locally in Saxony. And yes, that is as well a major issue the disenfranchised refugees from mostly Arab countries face. And to make it clear this is not the fault of the ladies who left the east for the west. I am male and have left my rural home village in the State of Rheinland-Pfalz immediately after obtaining the general university entrance qualification (“Abitur”), exclusively to build and advance a professional career in bigger cities in Germany and abroad.
So those men in Saxony who complain in 2018 have failed to master their own destiny.
The author should make it more clear that these people in East Germany have nowadays (different than in the 1990s) no reason to complain, matter of fact. See the statistics on the top.
When I am among Chinese in South East Asia I am called “Angmoh” (red haired) or in Cantonese “Guailo” (Foreign Devil). I guess in the US this would be an offence if accordingly addressed to someone who is not Caucasian. In putonghua it is a bit more polite “Laowai” (wise foreigner). But I know how I would be treated in Mainland China if I were of dark skin. I studied there together with friends from African countries. Racism exists not only among white males but also among people of Chinese origin - in China and elsewhere - knowingly or subconsciously
6
'He won freedom and democracy when the Berlin Wall came down 29 years ago on Nov. 9. But he lost everything else: His job, his status, his country — and his wife. Like so many eastern women, she went west to look for work and never came back.'
Reminds me of the Ents and their lost Entwives.
4
Fascinating.
Now, how about a similar analysis of the US?
Hillbilly Elegy raises the questions, but only nibbles at the answers. No one has nailed it down that I've seen.
5
Sounds like a familiar story to what we are seeing here in the States. The writing has been on the wall for a while but some men stick their heads in the sand, unwilling to consider change, stubbornly holding on to what they've known. Guess what guys, things change. There are no guarantees in life and if it's anyone's fault, it's yours. But you want to feel better by escalating anger at whomever and whatever. Hope the helps (but it won't).
7
One particular angle I have yet to hear anyone expound upon is the argument that socialism will/has produce(ed) an specific class of citizens; those incapable of transitioning from the teet of government welfare to the dynamo of free market capitalism. Perhaps in this case people existed in areas in numbers which were only sustainable by the artificiality of socialisms nanny-state care. Once that went away in 1989 and the numbers had to sustain themselves through free-market capitalism, the veil of faux-sustainability was lifted.
Our founding fathers were very adept at understanding "mans" reluctance to change and said as much in their declaration to king geo. Still, at some point you must move on and start to make the best of what you have available to you. In a socialist country like Germany the ballot box is definitely part of that tool box.
1
This is frightening. As a Black man in America, I always knew that my prosperity was not linked to the place where I grew up. I traveled for opportunity. What I read hear about East German men is the same thing that I read about some rural White men in the U.S. -- my job is gone, someone took my job! Well, why are you staying there? are you like Dracula in that you can rest only on the soil of your birth? Your great grandparents left Europe for opportunity, why can't you leave Ohio or WV or Chemintz?
186
@newyorkerva
Most people in most countries do not want to leave their birthplaces. Most countries are not countries of immigrants, but of people with deep roots.
It is the US that is exceptional in having extreme levels of mobility, or at least it used to be. The people who chose to come here were an exceptionally adventurous, risk-taking, untypical bunch.
Even in Canada, another country of immigrants, people are not as geographically mobile as the US.
22
You're right. But the thing is, that all over the wealthy west countries the situation is mkre or less the same. It is in the U.S, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Sweden, in Australia they fear Chinese immigration so much they even made some TV series about it.
2
@newyorkerva I recommend that you read a recent British book titled "The Road to Somewhere" by David Goodhart, it might help you understand people who are committed to living, for many reasons, in a given place.
13
I lived in Munich for nine years & Berlin for 2 years. From 1984-1995. I recall T-Shirts in West Berlin that were sold in 1993-94 that read "Ich Will Das Mauer Wieder Haben Aber 10 Meter Hohe" which means I want the wall back only ten meters higher"
East Germans wanted instant 'West' everything. They wanted the freedoms, the money, the success, the travel, the Rolex, the condo in Charlottenburg-all these things are transient but they still want them. Is this not the same as folks in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pensylvania, and Arkansas? Obtaining these things that are similar to our 'American Dream" which is just a mythical objective.
Here, and in Germany, we see the silent, lower/middle class 'volk'. Low and Behold here they are again back to doing what human beings do when they are frightened or insecure, and ignorant of the world, they lash out. Now they have brown refugees to blame for their plight when really it's just their own inability to navigate their own circumstances and take responsibility for their lives. They shout and establish their right for all their dreams. I blame us that judge and cajole them rather than asking of them to learn that the world is evolving and people migrated over continents to populate the world over tens of thousands of years. America and the Allied forces helped rebuild Germany and helped them establish their Parliamentary Democracy. We are now helping ourselves to be just as hateful and afraid. Our American nightmare.
76
@Mark D
For decades they dreamt of living "like normal countries", i.e. like West Germans did, and assumed, that once the wall came down and they were free, that is what would happen. And they were encouraged by the West to believe that.
It turned out that didn't happen, and they feel they were sold a bill of goods, rightly so.
As for migration being normal, not for most people it isn't, most people have roots and are attached to their traditional homes and cultures, they don't just pick up and move at the slightest excuse, just for the adventure, there has to be some real crisis to force them to.
11
I grew up in East Germany and was 11 years old when the wall came down. I can only speak from my narrow perspective and from inside a social/family network with roots in Protestant morale and values (lots of Protestant pastors within my family). I don‘t know anyone who was eager to possess any of the luxurious goods that you mention. People had to learn what luxury meant in the first place and didn’t navigate as confidently as suggested through the material world instantaneously. After all the fall of the wall marked the end of a society organized by a specific political setup, as well as the change in values, as well as initial exposure to a lot of things previously unknown or unavailable. This transformation was a huge challenge especially for the generation that completed their education, had a stable job, and recently founded families (like my parents in their early 40s). All the sudden things changed around, values previously shared by a peer group weren’t considered reasonable anymore within a larger context, state-owned companies shut down and people were laid off. I feel very sad sometimes for the immense insecurity this transition (among other) caused esp. for my mom. However, she still does not support right wingers, she still does not blame migrants or anyone else for that matter. I don’t know anyone in the extended family or circle of friends with similar experiences, who casts their vote for the AfD. It’s too simplistic to try to explain this phenomenon that way.
19
@Mark D
In the socialist system in the former Eastern Germany, citizens were looked after and not encouraged to think for themselves. Reunification has not brought prosperity to Eastern Germany. In Western Europe like the US, many rural areas have declined as young people have moved to cities for work. Unlike the immigrants who arrived in Germany, there are no supports or programmes for these men to re skill. Many prefer to remain in areas they are familiar with. Ireland is a country known for emigration all over the world. Yet some of us had to stay behind to look after family and contribute to our country as best we could. Not everyone can become successful but one can contribute to the community and eventually feel a member of society. It is hard being unemployed and having no skills. Possibly some of these men have lost sight of their identity and the value of contribution. In the the socialist system everyone had their place, a job, a home. To us in the West it appears stifling but to others it was security.
9
I agree strongly with Angela's contention that white men in both the U. S. and Germany want to blame someone else rather than look in the mirror and think seriously about applying "pull one up by one's bootstraps" maxims to themselves. I guess they never read Horatio Alger stories.
You can see this behavior if you hire some white male service to work on your house or your yard. The men do not plan well for their work on your property, and they are a complete disaster when it comes to cleaning up after themselves. I have had to stop some service teams and make them clean up better before they exited my property.
I am a 68-year-old white male.
8
The sad thing is what woman would want one of these angry men? What would life be like married to one of these far-right proponents? Reminds me of countries like India where a large disparity in the number of women vs. men makes the men not take better care of their women, but the opposite-violence against women and gang rape is rising. These men need more than a wife or a better job. Gender imbalances and the changing role of gender can not be ignored as a reason for the many problems east and west face.
12
Just for the records: the unemployment rate in Saxony is unbelievably 5.5%
You may look up the unemployment rate for Nordrhein Westphalen, the largest Bundesland (Federal State) in Germany (which has more inhabitants then all the Eastern Bundesländer together) for yourself . But wait - I tell you: it’s 6.4%.
And yes - streets and infrastructure are better in Eastern Germany than in Nordrhein Westphalen where I do live (because it was all built from scratch there after reunification). Our bridges across the Rhein are near collapse (e.g. for the very interested readers one of the Autobahn bridges between Köln and Leverkusen is blocked for trucks and cars are allowed to drove 60 only). And yes, the share of foreigners in Saxony is 3.8% and in Nordrhein Westphalen it is 11.8%.
So the complaints are by no means based on facts („they do not integrate me but only the foreigners....“).
9
Very accurate and well argued, Joachim!
1
Hi there
Im from Switzerland and I am also a citizen of Germany. I have the urge to post a comment here on the situation, as u guys have a similar issue as we as all have in the west. It is necessary for those with power the help and assist where it is in our power. It is necessary for all our countries to have immigration. But there must be a limit somewhere. Switzerland itself has over 25% of citizens without citizenship. You can look at it this way. U all have to buy groceries and it is good to buy groceries. But that doesn't mean that when u go to a store that u have to buy all of it. Even if u plan to donate a part for welfare. Somewhere must a limit been set. These happenings in our country signals us, that at some point in this iterativ process we might have gone to far at some point. It is on us as democratic individuals in our countries to regulate immigration in a way which serves all. Polarization in which either way is harming this iterativ process and disables our societies to act objectively on this serious issue.
6
The German government spent billions maybe two trillion to modernize East Germany and clean up the environmental mess left by Socialism. Why didn't it step in aggressively to retrain workers free of charge? Who were do the work to clean up the mess?
As usual people, men in this case, grumble and complain. Why didn't the German government not try to lure people from the western part of the country to re-locate.
Since the German birthrate is too low to keep the population from declining why don't they try to solve the problem produing 250,000 more babies a year?
3
@Alexander
Reproductive age females actually have a say in whether they breed or not. Obviously, educated and employed young women are the arbiters of their bodies, not constantly grumbling and violent males.
4
The assumption in the developed world had been that everyone willing to work deserved, and could make, a decent living. Have that family, small house, a car, modest vacations.
That was the expectation of citizens in former Communist countries when the wall came down. It hasn't happened, for many they are actually worse off than they were under Communism and its artificially protected economy, and they were not prepared to adapt to the new economic rules when their old economy collapsed under them.
Heck, the situation of most millenials in the new economy isn't much better.
And that is a tragedy. Anyone claiming to be "on the left" should understand that.
7
Many years ago I had met a resistance fighter from Holland.I was moonlighting at a local Hospital on weekends.I thought she was from Germany.She replied “God forbid”.She then went on to explain to me about her experiences in the war.I will never forget her anger.She said and I quote,”The world will regret the reunification of Germany.It appears perhaps she was right.
4
We should be careful to remember that totalitarian regimes are voted into office when the people are desperate. People in our communities who know this and have lived through it are a valuable counter-balance to those who would vote in dictatorial leadership in an effort to bring the much-needed changes they seek.
2
Where did all of the jobs go? Jobs do not suddenly evaporate. I presume jobs in Germany went the way of American jobs -they went to China, India, Indonesia, etc, where labor is cheap, thus increasing company profits. Or, the human job evolved into a job for a machine or a computer.
Will we ever stop competing with, and blaming, each other? Voting for right-wing parties, or for Trump in the U.S. will contribute nothing toward solving the problems. Understanding this is the first step, followed by electing politicians who will address these issues by reigning in corporate profits, creating new and needed industries HERE, and building a sense of community rather than stoking competition and hatred.
3
Judith: the East German economy was on the brink of collapse in 1989. This was a highly inefficient command economy which had survived for so long as part of a closed eastern alliance and lived largely on western debt. Add into this equation the fact that prices for key trading partners and salaries were liberalized virtually overnight with the introduction of the Deutsche Mark in July 1990. Costs were skyrocketing, while traditional markets disappeared. Moreover, many Western companies had no interest in nurturing competition from the East. A whole economy had to be privatized ASAP by a single institution tasked by the federal government. This is how those jobs got lost.
I was a child back then, a born-and-bred Saxon living not far from the towns and hamlets mentioned in the article. For our generation this was an era of opportunities, but it is true that many of us (such as yours truly) had to leave in their pursuit.
7
The gender imbalance in eastern Germany approaches 115:100 in many parts of the region. Women tend more than men to move to western Germany for higher-paid jobs and partnerships. As a result the male population in eastern Germany has little chance of finding a partner or starting a family.
History shows that low-status men without wives or partners tend to get frustrated and violent. The socio-economic woes – abject poverty, rampant corruption, youth bulge and high unemployment – led to the revolts of the Arab Spring in 2011. Uneducated and unemployed, young men could not marry. Although men in eastern Germany are better off economically, it’s their self-esteem that suffers. They see in the AfD an outlet to vent their anger.
7
Right on target!
1
It's astonishing to me how people will fall for the same demagoguery time and time again. Hitler snowed the disaffected working class in the 1930s, and we all know how that turned out. Now the AfD is using the same tactics to rile up the angry men of eastern Germany. Let's hope it turns out better this time.
And here, in the US, we have Trump spewing the same dysfunctional malarkey to a similarly angry group of men. Will we ever learn? What is it with my gender, anyway?
10
Merkel and more importantly the ruling SPD-CSU-CDU coalition has devastated Germany and which is why the AFD rose to power. However it is evident that their are men in Eastern Germany that clearly have sexist and racist beliefs, along with their lack of open thinking and capacity for change. I believe that the rise of AFD backed by this populace would have not occurred if the ruling coalition in Germany if more pro-labor policies were implemented instead of taking in millions of migrants whom do not wish to assimilate (and tend to have even more sexist attitudes, ex: classes for migrants to not be sexist are government sponsored". Also these men's disgusting attributes were exposed because the ruling elite in Germany did not care for them. So when the AFD talked about any of the issues they cared for like the EU, and migration they supported them. Also the AFD affirmed these men's racist and sexist tendencies, making it more prevalent in Germany. Furthermore Germany (indigenous lands of the Germans) and is not the USA (the land of immigrants), and the migration should have not been on such a massive scale to solve the supposed issue of "aging demographics" which could have been solved by instituting pro-labor policies like less work hours, higher pay, and even stronger unions. If the ruling elite actually cared for these people, these racist and sexist tendencies of these German men would subdue and the AFD's power would diminish.
27
@ssd63 no, East German men didn't have the cash which is why their women deserted them.
Lonely unemployed men blaming women for their situation. That's much easier than taking responsibility for themselves and improving their situations and their communities.
16
Germany, the birthplace of Marx and thus of Marxism, has always had a tumultuous history of left-right divides. To me, the only thing surprising is that it has taken the East so long to decide that the anti-communist revolts of the late 80's did not go far enough right.
2
Good article! But there are some important things I think are left out. Many of the most ambitious East Germans left (escaped) before the Berlin Wall fell down. Women were encouraged to work in East Germany and even supported by free child care. But most importantly, East Germans never experienced the "Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung" (overcoming of the past) that was a huge social phenomenon in West Germany. There was unescapable pressure on all West Germans to confront the racist history of their Nazi past, to acknowledge it and feel guilty. It created a society and culture that became more liberal than Ameican liberal culture and explains why Merkel's "Wilkommenskultur" (welcoming culture) has been able to absorb so many refugees from the Middle East.
I was in Berlin the year the wall fell down and often visited the east. On one trip to Magdeburg (east), just weeks after November 9, 1989, I ran into a demonstration of angry young men shouting "Deutschland fuer Deutscher, Turken heraus" (Germany for Germans, get out Turks). It was terrifying and totally different from anything I had experienced in West Germany. I was told by West Berlin friends, including some who had just come West, that such racism had never ceased in East Germany and had been regularly demonstrated against Vietnamese, and other foreign immigrants, who had come to work there. This tradition is what has produced the Pegida, formed largely as a racist anti-immigrant movement and helps explain AfD.
10
Great article! Having resided in (Western) Germany for almost twenty years in 3 different regions, a recurring thread I found in all three was the not-so-subtle discrimination against "Ossies" – from immediately discarding job applications sent by people from the former DDR (just because it was where they were from) to the hostility that a significant chunk of our taxes go to support "solidarity" with the former East. Indeed, Eastern men are viewed by many as xenophobic/racist, lazy, unwilling to change, resentful of and ungrateful to their Western counterparts. They are viewed as essentially having gone from being brainwashed by one warped ideology (national socialism) to another (neo-communism). Neither make for independent-thinking, liberally-minded people (in many ways, Chemnitz was Germany's Charlottesville). The physical walls separating Germany might have come down almost 30 years ago, but the psychological/mental ones will endure for at least another generation or two.
6
Fifteen years ago, I went to see neo-Nazis in Saxony. They were young and liked the uniforms - silly and thinking being enemies . Now and I can see them older. Are they really 'far right' or any difference? I see them in France, in throughout Britain and Italy - and they look like in your reporting in the US. There are many people who don't like immigrants or what we call 'neoliberalism'. I think this is a huge problem. I don't see how people can be 'left behind'. In Britain now there are many people don't want to stay in Europe - or stay in multicultural London. I don't think that reporters understood the cohorts of Brexit - old people and with no prospects and the politicians want their efforts and destroy liberal societies. The cultural wars are destroying liberalism. How do we talk to people who are my enemies? But they aren't enemies. They don't like cosmopolitanism. I liked your reporting - but in your excellent newspaper doesn't describe any solutions. Are there any ones?
2
Overt the last years, in France and in Germany it has been difficult to say that uncontrolled immigration has dire consequences without being suspected of being hardhearted or even racist. I learned to avoid the topic with highly educated liberals who will never lose their qualified jobs and send their kids in good schools.
Who are the hardhearted?
8
Why are men often more easily duped by propaganda than women? Men who are voting against her are actually voting to keep the male power-over model that has run our lives for centuries. HIStory.
Angela Merkel has my undying gratitude for seeing the world as it is and working to make it as democratic and fair as possible. She will go down in the annuls of OUR story - the one that is beginning now where Socially Conscious Women and men share power to bring balance to OUR world - as a true hero.
Thank You, Ms. Merkel!!!
6
Nazi Germany arose after a failure or hiccup in the transition from an agrarian society into an industrial one — exacerbated by WWI. Now we are seeing a similar moment in the transition from industrial to informational.
As many comments have noted, women in East Germany were better suited to make this transition and did so. Unfortunately, it is too late for most of the men who hoped to keep or replace their industrial jobs. The only real option is to pay them off and let them fade into history. The alternative is an ugly political and potentially violent resistance. (The same may be true in the US.)
68
@Steele
Thing is - they all are being paid, even if they do not work. Unemployment or Hartz IV social welfare.
6
@Steele
The Nazis gained power because Germany was economically devastated by WW 1. The German people were humiliated by the punishing reparations they were forced to pay to France and Great Britain. The anger generated by those conditions fueled the Nazis' rise to power. Let's hope the outcome this time isn't as horrific, but I fear that it might be.
11
@Steele
The reason why anyone immigrates to Germany is because you cannot get fired from a job. If you are laid off, you get full time compensation for years, until you are employed again.
The reason why companies incorporate in Switzerland and not in Germany but operate in Germany is to avoid paying the taxes that will pay the former employee compensation.
If you are fired from a job in Germany as a German, the employer MUST keep you on, for months or years, until you find another replacement job. Really, you will work along side a person who was fired. How comfortable is that?
It may be that Merkel changed some of the employment compensation and unemployment compensation for the benefit of corporations, and not say for the Eastern Germany male workers.
3
Disgruntled and resentful mostly White men also bought Trump's siren song- women of all backgrounds can help save us this week.
11
Some might not feel it is any more than gender dysfunction, but it could easily degenerate into a resurgence of something akin to Nazism.
8
Aging demographics and Automation really hurt. People in some countries grew up with low expectations and exceeded them, e.g. Australia and Norway. People in other countries, e.g. the USA, grew up with high expectations and have fallen short. The same applies to women vs. men, educated vs. ill-educated. The US Lobbyocracy seems particularly ill-prepared to help. Today's vote may make a huge difference.
10
You reap what you sow, and Angela Merkel is now reaping it big time. You cannot thumb your nose at your own citizens and culture by openly inviting an invasion of people from Islamic countries who then burden your social welfare system and taxpayers, and then expect native born citizens to not express their righteous anger in opposition. Angela Merkel failed her country and its citizens.
78
@paul Did you read the article? Immigrants are not even living in these towns. They're living in East Germany, but are not competing for jobs. Immigrants there, like here, are used as props for fear mongering.
49
@paul Ganz im Gegentiel Herr Paul (that means "quite the contrary").
Germany needs immigrants. The native-born population is aging, and birth rates among the younger generations had been falling (although more recent statistics point to a moderate uptick). Germany can't maintain its economic growth or vaunted social system without an influx of immigrants. Restrictions on refugees', migrants' and asylum seekers' ability to work are imposed by the German state, and many more could probably find work (and leave the welfare system), if allowed and if their credentials were recognized.
See: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Publications/Specialized/Population/GermanyPopulation2060_5124206159004.pdf?__blob=publicationFile
https://www.dw.com/en/job-numbers-benefit-claims-rise-for-migrants-to-germany/a-43124826
20
Paul, this idea that Merkel “invited” millions of Islamic refugees is alt-right spin. The vast majority were fleeing apocalyptic conditions in Syria & Iraq and were in Greece, Turkey, Hungary in numbers that could not be managed. Merkel took a practical decision that something had to be done for these people as winter approached. What those who accuse her of “inviting” hoards of Muslims into Germany fail to state is how they would have handled the crush of refugees - what realistic, timely, humane solution do you propose instead? Much as we would like, we cannot just wish away the misery of the world’s oppressed, and that goes for the Hondurans and other Central Americans currently making their way north. Wealthy countries (just as W. Germany in this piece) would do well to examine their own contributions to creating the inequities and injustices that provoke extreme actions and ideologies.
28
So much, if not all, of what the right believes is nonsense and delusion seems to be the common strain. Mr. Fritz in particular has, to say the least, a distorted view of reality. I'm sure he believes East Germans brought down the GDR however the Stasi operated in full vigor right up until reunification.
East Germans lived in a totalitarian country from 1933 to 1990. Few people, east or west, saw the collapse coming least of all the average citizen so to actually believe they brought down the old system doesn't square with the facts, like so many right wing delusions. And if had been up to the East Germans to get democracy for themselves, as Mr. Fritz also believes, they'd still be waiting. It was a gift to them, too.
11
The article insinuates that these men have no valid reason to support the AfD, they are just losers who can't find a woman. If only they had a woman, they'd be happy and support decent parties.
That's hardly fair. The gender gap exists in exactly the same way in America, where Republicans win big with men while Democrats win big with women. This political gender gap is quite universal.
15
"The working-class heroes of Socialism became the working-class losers of capitalism." The tragic and inevitable betrayal of the false promises of capitalism. This is the greatest danger to progressive, inclusive, successful societies everywhere.
5
Masculine versus feminine jobs. Women move into fields usually done by men and adjust. Men are often stuck on the idea of a "girly job" versus a"manly one". Health care, bank tellers, office jobs etc. are not accepted. It would be important to see the eduction differences also. In the USA women are the majority in colleges, in many professions. I am betting that is the case in Germany. Like the USA the GDP and growth depend on new workers and its interesting that 50% of the jobs in the USA are done by immigrants. Seems that Native citizens can't or won't adapt and immigrants are necessary to keep things going.
4
Why didn’t your writer ask: ‘How will the AFD transplant thousands of young women back into your small towns, and otherwise address these grievances?’ The article is totally incomplete unless you question these fixed dogmas of the interview subjects and make them have to answer for what happens three steps beyond their first move.
4
Far left -> far right transitions not confined to Germany
The FN (Far Right in France) does best in regions that formerly voted communist
Common origin: Workers that formerly did will lost out in globalization. Mainstream parties have other priorities than helping those out.
Hence you also see far right far left to form national governments
Greece : Far left allied with far right
Italy : Far left allied with far right
1
The EU IS all about cheap labor nothing more,that is why so called asylum seekers are let in.
6
@DC, As it is the same here in the US. Both of our political parties highly desire illegal workers.
4
Unfortunately, it is largely the same problem in rural areas of the US. The young often move away if they can. The women are flexible and will take any job to put food on the table and care for their kids. The men stew about how things have changed and they have lost their position and perks and vote for fascists like Trump. Many of them refuse training or won't take jobs in healthcare or other so-called women's jobs, no matter how well they pay. They delude themselves that coal is coming back (nope), and that Trump will bring back high wage factory and "men's jobs (never gonna happen). In fact, Trump is hurting these people far more than they realize. Change happens and it's really hard. But stewing in a toxic brew of testosterone and male privilege won't help these men succeed in the long run.
13
Neoliberalism at work. Read the work of Naomi Klein. The capitalism that came into places like East Germany was rapacious and greedy. And women are actually always more adventurous than men; it's just that men get all the glory. If you watch the wonderful PBS series from 2002 called "Frontier House". It is the girls who are the rebels and the ones who crave stimulation and are curious. The failure to stop this from happening lies squarely at the feet of Merkel and her government as does the disastrous decision to go all in for so called "clean diesel" (an oxymoron) rather than electric vehicles and many other unforced errors. Even the migrant situation could have been handled in such a way that it didn't enrage and threaten the population. So yes, she's a scapegoat but she's also a huge part of the problem.
2
What this article fails to discus is that 10's, if not 100's of billions of Euros/Deutschmark were invested in the former East. The idea that these men have been forgotten about is nonsense. Their towns, roads, and infrastructure have all been rebuilt. There are social programs galore. I cannot underscore enough the huge investment that has been made in the former East. These men are not forgotten, just irrelevant to the larger world and, at least partially, it is of their own doing. Their resentment comes from this irrelevance and they have decided to make themselves relevant by demonising the "other". The irony is that most of those small East German towns have almost no "others" in them. These men have patriarchal, authoritarian and racist views and if the country is bent to their will, it will be a case of history repeating.
15
Goodness gracious. Blaming women (or immigrants) for their situation is insane. If there are no jobs where you live, then move! The women were evidently smart enough to do this. And I have a feeling some of these men only want a wife so she can take care of them like they are expecting the state to. What babies. Grow up and make the future the way you want it to be. Create your own companies. Find a need in your community and create a business to fill it. With all the abundant resources available online and with the power of the internet to reach a world market, you will not get any sympathy from me for men looking to outside sources to make them happy. No, look in a mirror if you want to find the real reason for your discontent.
12
Alarmingly, the anger of the east German man is shared by its women and children. Greifswald, a small university town on the Baltic sea, was quite dilapidated five years ago. Slowly, EU money has improved the infrastructure (roads in town, highways to Rostock/Berlin, the central bus and train station, shopping complexes, playgrounds). A high income tax supports the lives of those both unwillingly and willingly unemployed.
Concerning the latter, immigrants from the EU, US, Asia (e.g., scientists, academics and medical doctors) contribute to the lives of these locals, yet, as this article shows, some locals remain resentful and openly hostile to foreigners, including west Germans. The hostility is not so class-bound, however: educated East German University researchers are hostile to west Germans within their own teams, and leaders of the neo-Nazi party are law and economics professors.
As for my experience, (female, cosmopolitan, Oriental) an angry man (20s-30s) barked in my face as I cycled past (obeying cycling rules) with my child seated behind me. My child's kindergarten is inclusive, located in an area with mass social housing. Here, my child, along with others, is frequently beaten up by children from this neighbourhood (they have problems). A young woman at a bakery has thrown change at me over the counter. Administrative workers are unhelpful to English speakers.
Their lives are surely improving; is it so difficult to open their hearts/minds to the world?
9
Interesting that the women seem have the good sense and moxie to move where the opportunities are, but men stay. It's not unlike the US, where some (men and women) who have been born in declining areas, often rural, have the gumption to move to places, especially cities, that have opportunity for them, where they succeed and incidentally tend to form a progressive outlook, while the rest stay, and then bellyache about how life has passed them by and vote for Trump.
7
Are white men really so terribly insecure that if they cannot dominate every single sector and area of our shared society and planet that they feel persecuted? Is the leveling of the playing field to (finally) include voices of women and people of color an existential threat? We have lived under white male domination for centuries... we want a say, too.
These guys need to grow up
21
An interesting article - however, this is an extremely complex issue. AfD and similar “nationalist” parties have been growing throughout Europe - not solely in Germany - and in particular, the former “east” Germany. Why should it be surprising that Merkel’s long domination of both Germany and Western Europe is being finally being challenged? This is not about older men unable to find wives - there is something more fundamental here and I am disappointed that it was not even directly acknowledged.
8
East Germany is my ancestral homeland which my parents were forced to leave during the war. They came to Canada when I was two. They left their Vaterland and belongings behind, but packed plenty of cultural baggage they never completely unpacked. Coming of age in the sixties and seventies, I was forced to excommunicate myself from the worst of it so I could live my life instead of the one laid out for me.
I think I have some idea why angry East German men can't find women to marry. What they expect from them is to hew to the traditional German roles of "Kirche, Kinder, Kueche" (church, children,kitchen,) and leave the rest to men.
It was the ethos and still is the ethos of some in the diaspora here and I'm not surprised that so many East German women, used to the social freedom of the flawed but still socially progressive leftist regime, want little to do with men who refuse to adapt to a changing world. I have absolutely no sympathy for any of them. Grow up, adapt!
As to that odd picture of men being real men sharing a fire hose, is it just me ....?
25
@Memi von Gaza
Hi.
Unfortunately, I can't quite agree with that.
During the war there was still no "East Germany".
The GDR was atheistic, the church was perceived as a threat.
Women were officially placed on an equal footing in the GDR, their traditional role as housewives is more likely to be assigned to Germany before 1945 and West Germany.
It was self-evident that women had a profession and also accompanied leading positions.
It is no secret or miracle that East German women are strong.
There was a mass exodus after the fall of the Wall from East to West, there were more women among them, so what? I think it is very unlikely that the East German men are mainly responsible for this.
1
The question is not whether the broad strokes of this are true, but why western feminists are so loathe to acknowledge these truths. Simple acknowledgment alone, without even beginning to speak to how we get ourselves out of this mess, would do wonders. Womens issues are mens issues and vice versa. If this was ever understood, it has been long forgotten.
It would be fairly difficult to track, but would it surprise everyone in the US if this same flight to cities was also done by more women than men? Because women seek higher status partners, and all higher status partners are likely to be found in cities? Because it is probably easier to blend into a crowd and avoid judgment’s you’d face more squarely in the provincial parts of the West? We understand so little about our own psychology, we admit so little, that it is no surprise we find ourselves in this moment.
8
@Matt The bigger question is why 1) why have the eastern women fled, and 2) why are they, on average, more successful than the men in terms of adapting? We see the same trends in China and the U.S.
13
@Matt Wow. Women go to cities to seek higher status partners? No. We move seeking more opportunity and higher achievement for ourselves. Like migrating humans have done for hundreds of years. I do believe with you that women's issues are men's issues too -- our fates are tied together. However, the dissatisfaction of a region of men for their own life choices is not the fault of women who had motivation to better their situation. What is stopping those men from doing the same?
11
Surely you must be able to acknowledge the most women dont want to be property? The men are literally demanding wives from the mayor. Perhaps that plays a larger role in detesting the women of E. Germany than "women want a high status partner, and the exist in the cities".
7
This has really helped me understand what is happening in America. White men see themselves as failures and are lashing out. They used to be the economic engine of America, rewarded for their hard work. But capitalism is not loyal to its constituents. It used them and left them behind with no skills to cope. Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama... symbols of those who used to fall in line behind the White man, now in charge. Education is egalitarian and they are left behind.
23
Capitalism uses everyone the trick is to use it.
4
Sorry but what really happened when Obama was elected is that it became special rights instead of equal rights. Black people where given an advantage instead of playing on a level field. This is the reason for such anger by white males.
1
@SMS
White men were rewarded - by other males - for simply being male. (Same as in every race and in every nation.)
The first Europeans to the New World included female indentured servants and wives looking to escape the wretched social order that was not of their own doing but which they suffered under. And suffered and suffered.
Being East German Merkel has no excuse. Her error was unforgiveable, as has been made clear. The consequences have yet been resolved.
5
If gender imbalances favour nationalism and far right, what will happen of let's say China and India, where one-child policies or a cultural aversion for baby girls, have led to even greater imbalances?
15
@Purity of both India and China are nuclear powers. Do we really want to either deliberately or by ineptitude in international diplomacy maneuver them into conflict?
1
Well thought article. What I find rather special with former 'East' Europe — just look at Poland, Hungary and perhaps also at the Baltics, is that after long and lasting anti Soviet western propaganda, people in those countries became furious fascistoid, alt-right people.
3
What this article skipped - avoided? - was the level of sexual assaults in the east, which must be high now and probably were in the past. Could this be another reason for the flight of women to the west?
I am reminded of the gravest error of the Iraq war, which was to unemploy a large army of young men overnight. And of the use of sex as a recruiting tool for ISIS soldiers who couldn’t get it otherwise (does this work for Boko Haram?). The solution is obviously not to socially dispossess men when changes occur, but how to do that when so many men resist the cure: education?
13
@Tony Peterson
Very few immigrants settled in the Eastern parts which the women fled.
1
@Tony Peterson Seriously comparing Germany to Iraq? Religion and legal system and all?
2
Let's be honest. When you have an imbalance in the number of men and women (in this case, too few women) there's going to be serious problems. Do I need to spell it all out? This is especially the case in this article when men feel that they are not " enough" in one way or many others for the women -who are working and achieving higher goals and better opportunities on a number of fronts. The men here feel left behind...because they are. In a culture that was conservative male dominated for centuries what could possible go wrong - including finding new scapegoats , or resorting to the traditional scapegoats ,which may be difficult since there are so few left. Wonder where they went? Well, no matter after all-for 2,000 years- it's someone else's fault.
No wonder sales of mirrors are so down.
8
No German, No German, No German has a right to these views or to exercise them.
Not now, not for 1,000 years.
These indecent men have learned nothing from the way 5 million of their fathers and grandfathers died. Nothing.
Never again means never again, means never again in every possible way for Germany, for Germans, for every German.
18
White men are the greatest danger to civil society from Germany to the US. This is the perfect picture of these terrifying radicals, disenfranchised, the women on their lives have left them, they’ve had all the privilege and still have made nothing with their own lives- so it must be the fault of migrants and women in power. What a sad state the world is in, letting these pathetic, violent, hateful people rise up and behave as if their lack of success is someone else’s fault, and then allowing them to terrorize civil society to get their point out. The far right is pathetic, all around the world.
26
Funny how appalling behavior by men is always the fault of women.
31
Is history going to repeat itself? I think we're about to find out. We saw this in the Thirties. Let's hope that reason prevails.
4
This article ignores almost entirely the economic reasons for despair in East Germany. It seems to me that market forces -- good old western capitalism -- has proved to be worse, in many ways, than communism. Especially for working people, that is, and their communities. Too bad these left-behind men in the U. S. and in eastern Germany can't join up with democratic socialist parties and launch a real resistance. The DSA is gaining adherents all the time in the U. S. So -- you men! Get smart, learn how to fight back in the right direction.
10
@Martha Stephens Yeah, so the East was actually socialist before, and their party still exists. Except, the followers are flipping from left to right, so, they voted on that proposal with their feet.
1
I am at least confused by the article's tone: The man has lost everything, among others his wife, who has left "like so many eastern women"? As others have already commented: Why didn't the men leave, too? And why is the man portrayed as the poor, passive part, whereas the active part is even partly to blame for the man's frustration and everything that follows?
I am originally from Germany, have spent a bit of time elsewhere over the years, and I have learnt a lot of things looking at Germany from "somewhere else": Above all, Germans do not exactly embrace freedom. I get that freedom can be scary, it comes with a lot of responsibility, a lot of decisions you have to make on your own, a lot of risks to take. And taking risks isn't really taught in Germany. Also, many Germans have a strange understanding of failure - for many it means "owning less" than the majority or it's about a "social status" that comes with a job. Like you can never leave the FDR once you entered. Even I had bought into that myth for far too long before I realized how little this has to do with the value of a person. Btw, I have lived for many years (full working) around the poverty line, yet, I never felt poor. And I never would have blamed my single status for any misery.
Yes, many mistakes were made when the Wall came down, mainly by "Wessis" and politicians, unfortunately, I'm running out of space here. But please do not blame part of it on the women who decided to take action instead of staying.
16
@Sandra the key issue is how do you deal with change in economics in an individual human level. The same question to ask in the Appalchians, the Rhein-Ruhr, the UK, France, when steel and coal leaves/left. The issue is that the underlying change is not clearly communicated and expectations are not corrected.
A sub part is that the GDR had emphasized education equality for genders as a socialistic standard. This is after system change firing back, leaving issue #1.
2
What a fascinating piece of journalism. Now that I regularly skip over articles about latest garbage that spews from trump's mouth, I find the NYT at its best. The reporting on the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre was a fine example. This piece as well adds so much useful information about an important phenomenon, in Germany and certainly here in America. Thank you.
20
I am an Asian person who lived in Eastern Europe during the 90s. Racial hostility was the norm in the region. I have experienced it almost every day. I had an opportunity to visit both parts of Germany during that time and experienced hostility in the East but not in the Western part. So, I don't think it is a new phenomenon. It has been there. When I went back to Eastern Europe a couple of years ago I felt things have improved. I did not experience an open hostility as I used to. I guess the old communist regime contributed to this and kept it alive.
10
@peakfinder You're right, it's not new at all. There are reports of growing xenophobia in the early 1980ties and later within the files of the East German Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit or Stasi for short), especially in the state of Saxony.
The East German government concealed this on purpose, because things like xenophobia were not meant to exist in a socialist society.
There is a German proverb for this: "es kann nicht sein, was nicht sein darf". It basically means, that certain things cannot exist, because they weren't meant to exist.
It's was just stupid and to make it even more stupid, the East mostly ignored the events of World War II and especially the genocide of Millions of Jews.
In the West was larger focus on this crimes against humantiy. During my schooldays, in the 1980es and 1990es, those topics were part of the history lessons multiple times and we visited the concentration camp in Dachau.
All this at least helped a little, but there a still some in the West, who think exactly like the far-rights in the East. The bavarian state parliament elections happend a few weeks ago, 11% for the AfD.
But do not make the mistake and think all AfD-supporters are Nazis. Their voters are a strange mix of EU/Euro sceptics, conservatives and the real far-right. Conversatives are the majority, but they tolerate the real Nazis within their ranks. They just ignore real radicals like Björn Höcke, who talks like Goebbels. It's disgusting.
5
Most people of my generation had grandparents who were not American born. They emigrated to this country for opportunities. Maybe these men should stop complaining, get their act together and move on to new cities, new countries. Got to love those German women who had the courage to leave their comfort zone. No wonder these men can't find wives. They are about as interesting as a slab of granite--no ambition, no get-up and go. Only a "woe is me" attitude.
20
@mfiori the core of the socialist system was to remove the individual spirit. It succeeded in these people. Yes they brought down a system, but they did not (need to) build a new one.
1
I am not surprise about the rise of AfD. I have friends who lived in Leipzig before 1989. By the mid 90's they told me that they missed the good old days. He lost his job, his wife became the breadwinner, and their daughter moved to the Western part of Germany. Today they talk about the immigrants and the crime. There is a lesson here for the USA. The Democratic Party has abandoned the fly over states. These people have legitimate grievances that have been ignored. Unfortunately some of the media are beholden to political correctness and identity politics and it is obvious in their reporting. Therefore some journalist do not fairly report on these grievances as legitimate (what I define as responsible journalism, whether it is against your personal bias or not). My concern is, by the time we reach the 2020 election, the nation will become more and more divided.
13
@Rod Mnay states are flyover states for the Republicans and the Dems. For the people who just got a trillion dollar tax cut, the very, insanely extremely wealthy, the entire country is a flyover. Our countries wealth has continually been going to the top 0.1 to 1%. We are feeling the effects of it. I know I am. Our country is a kleptocratic, plutocracy run by the few oligarchs who can’t get enough money to satiate their greed. The middle class has been destroyed by those greedy oligarchs.
11
If I am from Lincoln Nebraska with a bachelors degree and there is not much going on in Lincoln Nebraska and I choose to live in Miami because of a better lifestyle that's the way it goes.
2
The destiny of Eastern Europe has always been to march towards Fascism.
That is its true calling, the natural predisposition of its society.
The intervening fifty years of Communism were a welcome break.
Look at even this article, which is not very friendly towards Communism. Factually, objectively, it tells you that life was better under Communism for the East Germans - there were dignified factory jobs and Communism created a generation of educated strong independent women.
Once that was gone, the usual DNA of racism, supplication to big capital, and misogyny was free to proceed apace.
5
I want to thank the Times for this great, interesting and illuminating article. It has attracted some of the best comments i have ever read on this site.
6
This is an important topic that needs more in depth investigation both globally and in the US.
How much of the political and social turmoil we’re seeing has a gender component of resentment or fear about the progress of women?
28
@Barbara Brundage Yes, I would agree with you. Margaret Thatcher face a antagonism besides she was a strong woman NOT on the left. She was treated dismally and hated by many on the left in the United States. Yet, she withstood the vitriol from the left and held office for a dozen years.
1
@Carlos Thatcher was a strong woman, who also, unfortunately, a terrible leader whose policies and impact have brought the UK to its current sociopolitical crisis. Tell the people society doesn't exist and pull the ladder up behind you. Every citizen of the UK that celebrated her death did so with justification
1
@Barbara Brundage I think it's less about the progress of women and more about men not having jobs, lacking education, and being really lonely. There's more to this than some narrative about men just being filled with resentment because women aren't just at home barefoot and pregnant. Hetero men literally go bonkers when you take away their ability to provide for themselves and to feel loved by someone of the opposite gender. Not that we all need to have some big hug fest for a bunch of racist, misogynist jerks but maybe if we addressed those two concerns without compromising gains in equality and equity we could pull a lot of men back from the brink.
2
“The West was handed democracy after the war, we in the East had to get it for ourselves.”
FDR and the allies at the Yalta Conference betrayed Poland and Eastern Europeans, and basically gave them as slave states to Russia. It’s a dark moment in the aftermath of the Allied victory in WW II that is seldom discussed.
26
@Conservative Democrat Ehem, the plan after the war was not to establish a prosperous democracy in the West. The orginal Morgenthau Plan wanted to turn Germany in a agrarian, non-industrial economy and was devised by a German emigre, it was replaced by the Marshall plan to achieve that current outcome. Notable is that the Truman doctrine was established in concert, yet is abdicated under Trump.
1
All Merkel did was create the AfD. The party will succeed in the West as well because everywhere you go you hear nothing but anti immigrants feelings. She made a grave error. She underestimated her followers. She and she alone made it possible for the rise in right wing politics. My family lives in the West and are NOT happy with the migrants. None of them!
11
@Chris Anderson You're pretty much on here. I'm a progressive, but when she advocated taking in the mass migration of people fleeing the wars in the ME and North Africa, I couldn't believe it. Anyone who has been to Germany and North Western Europe must know this is a small georgraphical area with quite a bit of history, and pride in their culture. Saturation of people of such a different culture suddenly immigrating there was bound to cause a large backlash, and I can't say I blame them for their fears, and the policy just enabled the more radical nationalists. Too much too soon.
8
@Chris Anderson Angela Markel being from East to Germany should have anticipated this problem. She should have invested in the reintegration of east German.
Instead she chose to welcome middle easterm mostly men with diametrically opposed religious and cultural more. Each action has an equal and opposite reaction. Charity begins at home!
8
@Chris Anderson Merkels position coming from a protestant pastor family upbringing, and knowing how Germany has integrated or at least lived with millions of guest workers (making Berlin factually the second largest Turkish city), and seeing the need for workforce in a 70% export oriented economy, and the need for social security contribution, was and is fully under stable and logical. Where the administration failed is was the execution. Recognizing that German planning is not fail proof, see Dieselgate, BER, Stuttgart, etc should be the key lesson.
1
This is obviously a cautionary tale for the U.S. Many men refused to vote or Hillary because she alienated them. And so we have Trump. What I don't understand is why men's grievances aren't taken seriously and considered valid. In high school and college and earlier in my career I had to listen to so many arrogant sexist over privileged white women lecturing me on how terrible I was, and all men. Unjustly so. Human nature is not going to change because of alienating feminist lectures. And it is not smart politics to alienate 1/2 of your population and pit people against each other.
17
@Sal
If you're not the kind of man about which the women were lecturing, why did you take it personally? I've seen too many of my women friends treated as second-class citizens their entire lives; if I were a woman, I'd be a bit on the hostile side myself. When they complain, I don't personalize it. I try to understand it. You had an opportunity for growth, Instead, it sounds as if you simply felt attacked and got defensive; and it certainly sounds as if you've never let this go. Maybe you should questions the inner buttons that got pushed, rather than dismiss what they said out of hand.
14
@Sal "And it is not smart politics to alienate 1/2 of your population and pit people against each other."
Exactly. That's what Trump has been doing, and is continuing to do right now, and this is what the conservatives/Republicans have been doing for decades. Look where it's got us.
11
Why is the success of women so threatening to men? (This is sincere question). And why is s woman making an emphatic point described as "lecturing"? Are men really so fragile? Or perhaps I have misunderstood.
11
Similar to the economic plight in the 1930s, the most hated group is being victimized for the troubles today. History repeats itself.
12
@Lois steinberg
Though history does tend to repeat itself, largely because people ignore its lessons, the situation in Germany today is different from the 1930s in a number of ways - the hated group you refer to then being the Jewish population, who were not immigrants but long-established, integrated and largely law-abiding; most felt themselves to be as German as their neighbors - hence, the difficulty among many to suspect or believe possible the ultimate fate that lay ahead for them. In contrast to today, the German government then were systematically indoctrinating the public against the Jews, blaming them for all of Germany's ills. Not so for today's allegedly 'hated' group (recent Muslim immigrants), who have been officially welcomed and given considerable aid, as opposed to the Jews from whom everything was eventually taken. German public resentment today is based on their society being SUDDENLY inflicted with all the multiple problems (including police advising young women not to venture out alone in the evening) resulting from Merkel's unilateral decision. Neither today's facts or problems are really comparable with 1930s Germany nor confined to Germany alone - just take a look at what is happening in the rest of Europe.
4
If Eastern women left for better opportunity, why didn't the men? Were they too comfortable, too afraid of change, not as courageous and determined as the women? Women have been scape gated since the beginning of time, and have always proved more resilient than their swarthy counterparts. Instead whining, look, listen and learn.
35
@Angelique Craney My guess is that eastern women were already subjugated and when they had the opportunity to go west, they did so eagerly because it couldn't have been worse than staying in the east. In the west, they found opportunities and flourished. The eastern men, however, had power and comfort which they lost when the wall came down, though they may not have realized it; they likely underestimated the amount of change to come. In contrast to the women, they had more to lose so they didn't take the opportunities of moving west.
Very understandable why men would be resentful: they see in hindsight- though they may not be willing to admit it to themselves - that they missed out on the great opportunities in the west brought by unification. Though it may appear like misogyny, and a lot of this may very well be rooted in that, the larger factor is that they are angry at their own failure and loss at what could have been.
7
@Angelique Craney
My understanding is that Eastern women were better represented in service economy jobs which are more mobile, and therefore were better able to take their skills West and find employment.
6
@Angelique Craney The article partially explains this. The communist schools educated the men and women differently. The women were more administrative, the men more blue collar. more industrial and in trades. Then the blue collar industrial jobs were lost, but they men did not have the admin skills to go west.
5
Margaret Atwood's book, A Handmaid's Tale, occurring in real life. Gender imbalance can make women "owned property" again.
11
@Daphne That day will never happen again unless men want to self-destruct.
I live in the East, and I have already experienced the GDR.
I am not an AFD voter and thank God I got a dear woman.
The AFD is a "West German idea". The majority of its managers come from the West. The human act of uncontrolled reception of refugees has made them great.
In the East, politics is made with fear, fired up by the language of established politicians, by some (not all) media and the "social" networks including foreign influence.
But this is not the main reason why the AFD has grown so strongly in the East, because there are hardly any foreigners here, at least not in the countryside.
Most people here took to the streets in 1989 for their freedom, not for a Germany they thought they knew.
I think many AFD voters know that AFD is not the solution, but it is an election.
You can find that good or bad, but it's democracy.
12
@Kai
We should also remember that, for Germans in the west, 1945 was the start of a new era and way of life, helped along by the Marshall Plan and similar infusions. This was not the case for east Germans, who lived under rigid totalitarian dictatorships from 1933 to 1989 and had nothing like the "economic miracle" and open society of the west. Another factor, though little discussed today---is that much of the east Germany makes up a good part of the region of historic Prussia, that had its own culture in which "ordnung" and tradition were particularly important and ideas that went against them less welcomed.
3
@Want2know
Of course, two dictatorships have left their mark on cultural memory for almost 6 decades.
The topic of the historically happy West Germans is often discussed.
Unfortunately, the fronts are very rigid and it usually ends with irreconcilable opposites.
It is mostly about how much the West has invested in the East and/or the East.
feels betrayed, who has paid the most reparations, and so on.
It's about money, it's not about people.
Historically, Saxony always had an ambivalent relationship with Prussia.
Over the centuries, Prussia was an enemy, an ally and also an occupier.
Prussia was also present in today's West in its largest expansion.
Thus "Ordnung & Tradition" did not pass the West Germans by without a trace :).
There was a "felt" loss of state control in 2015, people don't like such things.
The AFD knows that.
1
Sounds similar to England’s north and south divide after Thatcherism. The problem often is one side thinks the other can adapt to their way of life but forgot to give them the skill set and prep them for it. And the richer side just can’t understand why the poorer side can’t get along.
And the poorer side are so desperate they will listen to anyone that says they will get them out of their mess. In the 80s U.K. it was the left and nu labour. In Germany it’s facsists.
Basically, society needs to look out for everyone. Instead society just lets whole chunks of itself die off. I don’t understand why. Really I don’t. That section always comes back to haunt you in the worst way.
22
@albee This is a great comment. In the US we have a very similar phenomenon. Huge expanses of the country are overlooked and virtually abandoned by the wealthy enclaves located mostly on the west and east coasts but also found in certain places in the interior. At a more local level, in Los Angeles I am expected to simply ignore the people living in tents next to the sidewalks of commercial streets and under bridges. They are quickly becoming an American version of India's untouchables.
7
I think Eastern Germany has gotten tons of help since the wall came down, but it was the women who tended to take advantage of it more than the men. There are all kinds of programs for people, and unemployment is very low right now. I don't think it's fair to say a "whole chunk", i.e. eastern men, were allowed to die off. The men simply weren't up to the task of accepting that the world was changing, and that they needed to get on with it.
6
@David Skogley but that’s my point. It seems like a survival of the fittest scenario and it’s just their fault that they didn’t adapt.
I don’t think that’s a good enough response. If government and indeed society is to look after everyone it needs to deal and plan for the fact that many huge sections of society won’t take to the plans imposed on them.
One of the issues in terms of the workforce in the west is the move from skilled manual work to a knowledge / service economy. A type of work that suits women far more than some men. Especially men who have been brought up to seek manual labour type roles.
Furthermore, since so many women rely on 1 Male breadwinner if they have children it’s further compounds the issue. As even if the the women are enjoying great employment opportunities the benefits disappear if their partners do not find appropriate work.
This scenario is being replayed all through western economies as the type of labour needed moves to high margin, knowledge based work.
Yet we have a society that just says “let them eat cake” basically. It isn’t good enough. Society needs to cater for all and needs to be proactive in preventing huge groups from falling down the cracks. Saying they have done enough and yet the result is clearly a failure is not good enough really.
3
Perhaps some of this rise in the right wing in the eastern part of Germany comes down to raw biology. The competition for females is high so they start to be more combative. And the last thing they want is more males entering the arena.
It is not a happy place, of course, for those who are not chosen by a woman. I always find it a little sad when I watch nature films and I see various male birds rejected as mates. But there is surely something the female bird sees that we don’t.
Maybe someone needs to suggest these men try an internet dating service.
6
@SkL
Just out of curiosity, why can't you say 'men' or 'women'? This male/female thing referring to people is very odd.
@SkL Just along your biology train of thought: The female has to protect her future off-spring and give it the best chance of survival with the strongest male. Guess that was not found in the East.
East German men, middle American men. I see similarities.
Both enjoyed status as the privileged class for a very long time. Both watched as young women left small town life behind to pursue education and career opportunities in the big city. While many of the men stayed behind, hoping the failing industries of their home towns would one day return to prominence. Those men are now under employed, under educated, lonely and bitter. Those men want their privilege back. Thus the rise of white nationalism and Afd. They blame the immigrants (North African in Germany, South American in America) for taking away their jobs and opportunities. Some of them also blame the immigrants for taking away "their" women too. I'm a black American married to a woman who was born and raised in a tiny town in Northern Germany. She left that tiny town for education and career opportunities elsewhere. She also left (in her own words, not mine) because many small rural town men want their women to be subservient and stick to the traditional roles of wife and mother. The women however want more than the traditional "zwei Kinder und ein Hund" (two kids and a dog).
Stubbornness and resistance to change. Those are Eastern German man's and middle America Man's biggest problems.
89
You have hit the nail squarley on the head, Jeff! Lots of similarities indeed. And the solution in their eyes? Look for someone who talks about the "danger" surrounding them and then promises safety. Trump in the US, The AfD and some other conservative politicians in Germany. Unfortunately, it often seems to work.
7
Germany being a parliamentary democracy, it is worth noting that Chancellor Angela Merkel also represents the state of Mecklenberg-West Pomerania, itself a part of former East Germany. It has the lowest population density of the 16 German states
The citizens of Mecklenberg-West Pomerania first sent Merkel as their representative to the Bundestag in 1990, and her constituency has retained her in every federal election since.
While Syrians do form the largest immigrant group in Mecklenburg-WP, there are nearly as many immigrants there from Poland, followed by the Ukraine and Russia. In addition to the gender gap so well explained here, the emerging right in the east has been fueled as much by nationalism as by racism.
11
I was just under 3 yo when my mother escaped from Hungary in 1956, thus I was raised in the US. Having been raised by a strong, educated, independent woman, who taught me to think for myself, I tend to reject archaic gender roles and the men that wish to continue them.
Perhaps the women that are leaving the East are fleeing the oppressive patriarchy in which they might have felt imprisoned. Therefore, it is possible that they are escaping towards the freedoms that they felt were lacking in the East and the men that want to maintain the status quo.
My mother fled Hungary for similar reasons. She was an educated woman who, because she was not a communist, was not valued for her knowledge but placed in a factory to do piece work. The communists did not want educated, thinking people in positions of influence. Those in power were there because of their relationship to the Soviet regime.
Thus, many of those that were educated fled the country after WW2. I would venture to say this is the same that happened in East Germany. Under communist rule, progress was delayed in the Eastern Block nations by approximately 44 years.
Glasnost was a rallying call and people believed that everything would be miraculously "better". They did not understand how far behind they were. The disappointment and disillusionment is evident throughout the Eastern Block, not just in East Germany. It is this that began the disenfranchisement of so many and until they can "catch up" it will continue.
19
@Gyulay From my experience I found that women adapt far more easily to change than men.
2
@Gyulay. One of the distortions created by the Soviet takeover of the Warsaw Pact countries was the substitution of Russian goals for those more appropriate for the occupied countries. While Soviet Russia was trying to catch up to the Industrial Revolution, places like Germany and the Czech half of Czechoslovakia were fully industrialized since the 19th Century. The Soviets viewed a new factory as progress whereas the central Europeans needed to move on to the next thing. But, of course, they couldn't and their people are now handicapped as you describe.
3
I grew up in the east and served the army in 89. My parents where workers. I am still here. My wife too. We have solid jobs and only know people around us also having solid jobs since many years. I can not see around me what is descibed in the article although it might exist. All the people screaming the right ideas have much better lifes than they had back in 89 or they would have now if the GDR would not have died. So all this screaming and yealing happens on a very high comfort level. In every society there will be winners and "loosers". Those guys would be the loosers in any society. I had those kind of guys during my school years also. Typically the had bad grades and where pushing the nerds around. Now they again want a share of the cake of Germanys economical success. Humans always went were the work was. So after 98 there was not much work here. Americans move for a new job much more often than central Europeans (I used to live in the US also). So this article puts a dark shadow on east Germany. We went along way since 98 and as some stated here this walk is not done yet. The eastern part of Germany is beautiful and inviting in most of the places. People here usually are friendly and open minded.
45
How interesting that 60 years of Communism had a worse effect on its population, particularly the males, than 60 years of Capitalism.
The former Communist countries are all much more stuck in their socially traditional ways of thinking than the ones which developed under Capitalism.
All the years of official emphasis on social equality and class struggle and the dignity of working people, seem to have been less successful in creating the new, improved, egalitarian, open-minded man than 60 years of being exposed to market competition and marketing...
13
How interesting that 30 years of Capitalism has made things worse
I'm curious if there is some kind of similar, inverted dynamic in West German women of this generation.
If so many women went to the West, doesn't this imply that there would be a class of West German women who "lost out" to East German women, who took jobs, husbands, etc?
It might not even show up as a class of people who seem to have "lost out" like the East German men, but perhaps an increase in single career women in the West, an increase in Western women marrying foreigners or emigrating.
It's kind of almost a supply and demand dynamic -- if there is a dynamic explained in part by the decline in female population, isn't there a companion dynamic for a surplus in female population in the destination demographic?
16
@Mobocracy Interesting question and I don't have an answer. I do have an observation. Unless constrained by patriarchal power that leaves women unable to earn their living, many more women than men get along just fine socially without being married. We make friends, mostly other women, and join organizations, like church, community, and professional groups. Many choose to have a child, a much easier choice for a single woman than for a single man. Looked at objectively, marriage as a social institution has always been more beneficial to men than to women, for whom it brought economic disempowerment and frequent exposure to the life-threatening condition of pregnancy. Maybe the "excess women" are rejecting marriage.
10
@Mobocracy I don't know what the case is in Germany, but from what I have read the shortage of women is acute in China due to their one child policy, parents wanting a boy, and the abortion of girls, and even infanticide. The Chinese men are desperate, go abroad to places like Thailand to, basically, buy brides, and kidnapping of young women is also used by these men to get a wife. I think the same is true in India. And the Incels are frightening right here.
1
@MidcenturyModernGal
I think marriage serves as a moderating influence on men socially, mostly via child rearing which leads to a protective impulse to invest in the family unit economically versus focusing on external threats. This might explain a lot in eastern Germany.
I'd agree that the modern woman has fewer economic reasons to be married but I don't think this reduces the desire to pair with a committed male for child rearing in most cases. In a state of nature, pregnancy isn't just life threatening because of its biological impact, pregnant women have reduced physical abilities which can limit obtaining resources, movement or defending against threats, whether human or animal. I think this pairing drive is probably pretty instinctual.
None of this though explains what impacts shifting the gender balance 5-10% in the West had on women.
Some of the sharpest conflicts arise when dominant groups face demands for equality from those previously under them. Lynchings became a terror tactic during reconstruction, not slavery.
Gender inequality is the oldest form of inequality there is, and a great deal of violence throughout the world is triggered by male anxiety over their changing status and competition for women when there's an imbalance in the population.
One of the causes of China's recent assertiveness and soft colonization of parts of Africa is the surplus male population due to selective abortion. What better way to solve it than to ship some of them overseas and to ramp up the nationalist rhetoric back home.
Feminism taught us that the personal is political, but we now have to modify that to "the personal is geopolitical"
43
@Rajesh Kasturirangan In
In India and China they kill baby girls at birth by drowning or suffocating them. A practice initiated by man! What do you expect the consequences are? Men are just starting to have a taste of their own bitter medicine.
West Germany should have taken better care of its eastern counterpart, instead of bringing over 1 million middle Eastern men with diametrically opposed system of believes and cultural mores. Angela Markel being from East Germany should have anticipated this problem.
Men have to adapt or be left behind. I feel sorry for the women not the men who refused to grow up. The religions and cultures that have favored them for hundreds of years are falling apart because they were fabrications based on thin air.
2
If the former East Germans don't like the unification of Germany, let them simply go to Russia. There, they will surely know what it was to have problems. The unification of Germany provided lots of opportunity and incentives to the former East Germans, and there still are plenty of opportunities.
Sit or cut bait!
23
@Majortrout
That’s easy to say, but really, if they don’t have jobs how are they supposed to move anywhere? Everyone knows it is not simple to relocate, just look a the refugees.
7
It is relatively simple for sny EU citizen to relocate - that's the point of the free movement
clause.
2
@Concerned They do have jobs at 3% unemployment rate.
This article presents east German men as angry and whiney - why would any woman in her right mind want to be with someone with those traits??? But I think its more than that - all over the world right now people pretend that they want equality - but in essence their egos want to be better and have more security than "the others" - whoever they are. And it seems to me that country after country is turning toward fascism - strong handed leaders (dictators) who think of themselves as leading the country with conservative values - but in actuality are just stacking the game in their favor. I still think that democracy is the right way to go - but besides the Iroquois confederacy - no country ever gave the idea a real chance.
63
A simplistic explanation, but perhaps attributed to the short amount of space taken to explain a complicated reality. But the bit about the Iroquois is accurate.
4
@Robert Lee
East German men are not the only ones that need to grow up, there are tons of them here in the USA that need to grow up as well. Women are the future!
3
People love to find a scapegoat. Perhaps the planet just has too many people. We should consider whether overpopulation is contributing to the discontent of our people and of our environment. Perhaps people need to consider whether their country and countrymen are willing to keep factories inside their own country. If not then perhaps having one or two kinder is just too many.
And here I thought it was only gay men in Germany who are marginalized.
24
Hi. Former teacher here, spent years embedded deep in the former East Germany in the 90's, shortly after reunification.
I taught English to long-time unemployed former East Germans who had to take English classes as part of a government sponsored re-training program to prepare them for life in unified Germany. I had them for 8 hours a day, every day.
We talked. A lot.
My take: most East German men don't want power. In fact, quite the opposite. Most I worked with (both men and women from the former East) were actually pretty meek and shy. They just want equal opportunity in a land they feel has forgotten them. They want nothing more than a comfortable life; the typical German ideal -- a comfy 9 - 5 job, enough money at the end of the week for a little beer at the pub, and a small garden to putter around in on the weekend. That's all. Maybe the occasional trip to the coast on the weekend. Nothing more.
The neo-Nazis and AfD followers are largely a different story that I won't get into here. I obviously do not condone them.
BUT: immigrants are scary for many in the East because Germans grew up in an incredibly homogenous culture, devoid of virtually any diversity at all. It is not, and was never, a melting pot. Grotesque racial stereotypes still exist - in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Just last year on a business trip, I saw blackface on German primetime TV.
Not excusing it. Simply explaining. Unified Germany is still a young country. Growing pains. Give them time.
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@Michael
But we are watching closely the political polarisation in the U.S. and are afraid of a similar development. The language in political debates has changed already and became rude and exaggerated in a way we couldn‘t imagine before. A deeply worrying deterioration of political culture. It still is a minority but that may change with any bigger economic or financial crisis.
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@Michael
Good post. Wondering if the modest, "comfortable life" described here as desirable hasn't now become unrealistic - not just for them; for any of us. Most of the world doesn't have it. The more connected the world becomes by tech, the less ignorant/dismissive we can be of the hardships faced by everyone, worldwide. That could ultimately be a good thing - depending on who's in charge.
With all the problems it raises to solve, at the heart of Merkel's - and other civilized leaders' - tolerance of immigration is an empathy and an acceptance of responsibility. Those are good things.
I feel for these dudes in East Germany. It's very hard, almost impossible, for adults to change. But the aforementioned tech has forced the issue, and the only alternative is self-destruction.
10
@Michael
Merseburg, Leipzig and East Berlin 1989-90. They had Vietnamese and African guest workers in the East and some Germans did not respond well. Xenophobia caught in amber by another authoritarian regime with internationalism as part of its party line.
10
Everyone looking for someone else to blame because the world didn't hand them a living on a plate.
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@Jim
Much of the anger is in response to seeing others being handed a living on a plate. Actions seen by some as attempts to undo past inequities , will always be seen as present inequities by those disadvantaged.
4
@RG Luck can only be partially adjusted for, at best.
1
@Jim well, socialism handed them a living on a plate - minus democracy and free speech, plus state control.
1
The similarities of the East German men to Trump supporters are interesting. Trump and the AfD use the same play-book.
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@ron
Correct and as a native German i can clearly see the reason. The Russian influence targets the Trump supporters as well as the East German men. An easy target : Frustrated people confronted with hate speech are willing to sacrifice democracy and freedom. The real reason for these similar problems on both side of the Atlantic can be reduced to one name. Vladimir Putin.
41
and they got it at the second hand playbook shop.
none of this is new.
meanwhile, the article makes it sound as if the basic issue is the war between the sexes: the men want to stay where they are secure and change as little as possible, while the women are more adaptable to current conditions and perhaps more willing to change themselves, for example, through education or moving for opportunities.
with all that brewing, the men are ripe for manipulation.
1
@Karl Napp
"Frustrated people confronted with hate speech are willing to sacrifice democracy and freedom."
Might the hate speech have less impact if policy makers and governments gave more serious thought to some of the causes of their frustration and how to better address them? Did they do a good job of this in the last 25-30 years?
1
Great article, clarifies a lot happening in Germany
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Two thirds of men in east Germany did NOT vote for AfD. It would be nice to hear more about what they think and feel. Their voices and experiences matter, too.
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@DavidDC - Of course, the people who didn't vote for the AfD will be represented to a greater or lesser extent by Merkel and the other politicians of the established parties.
However, similar anti-establishment parties more or less won in Italy, and then of course, there's Trump. It's ridiculously complacent not to try and understand those who are disaffected. Would you act all shocked and incensed if they win next time around?
It's a good article. It would be better to engage with what's it's trying to say.
1
@Londoner The AfD's influence can be measure less by number of actual votes the receive than by the extent to which the center right feels the need to co-opt many of their ideas.
2
"There is a gender element to the rise of the far right that is not sufficiently acknowledged and studied.”
You can say that again!
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They are part of the EU and can literally work anywhere within it. Perhaps the German government should incentivize these young men to leave for greener pastures where they won't turn into rabid "Incels" rioting and attacking migrants. The women who left for the west are not coming back, and what woman would want to move there now and get harassed?
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@KennethHarder for men whose credentials are rejected by west Germans. Most of the firms in eastern Germany are west German owned, lower levels staffed by immigrant labor who works cheaper. Use the same arguments as to why unemployed miners don’t leave Kentucky and West Virginia.
5
@ellie k. The East Germans are not unemployed, just unmarried.
This pustulation of fascism seems to be happening almost everywhere, including here.
These aggrieved men won't unite across borders. That could be a blessing, but ultranationalism will probably prevail, and fascists will be fighting fascists. In Europe, old grievances will come to the fore, and national borders will be contested.
Actually, I think these men got a raw deal in many ways. But the way they are handling their plight probably won't turn out well for anyone, very much including themselves.
23
I actually have to disagree with this article: The idea that the right wing organisations developed after the exodus of many from the the east to the west sounds convincing but is ignoring the fact that the rise of racial violence happened almost immediately after the reunification. The immigrant crisis and Merkel's influence came way later. It was obvious for everyone who traveled to east Germany that the residuals of the white supremacy thinking fostered by the NAZI managed to survive in the isolation of the communist part of Germany way longer and more visible than in the West - but it was deemed "political incorrect" to address this issue. It was partially absurd to the extent that i was told that the "real" german language had only survived in the East and that foreign influences had undermined the purity of the german culture in the West - in 1990! The main issue was that none of the big political parties was willing to address the problem as that was it was: old fashioned white supremacy ideology. Merkel's mistake was that she did not further resist the attempts of some parts of her own party to integrate these forces into the mainstream party she is leading. As anywhere else in the world and especially right now here in the USA: the only way to control racism and white supremacy tendencies is through permanent and relentless exposure - otherwise these infectious ideas will spread through all levels of society.
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@Thorsten FleiterHuh? Not my experience with my east Germany relatives located in the heart of skinhead territory - Thüringen.
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lol dating sites are rather borderless these days and certainly males in a first world countries offer a strong attraction. If d & d is the source of a political problem in Germany if I was in power i would be putting the soft word out to this simple solution. For the finger pointing to this being perhaps a similar issue in the US I guess the official anti immigrant stance makes this idea a little more problematic. To complete the picture here in Australia the imported partner (generally female) is big business ask any retail worker in Western Sydney.
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I am noticing a continuous theme and language throughout the article as it relates to women being a possession and we are not something to own and perhaps these men need to grow up and “pick themselves up by their bootstraps.”
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@MH unfortunately, many men, when faced with a challenge to their power, rather than become better, decide that doubling down on being hard headed is the way to go. I think it is an attribute born out of priveledge.
6
The answer is simple and obvious! Men have dominated politics since the beginning of time and have caused war, destruction and mayhem. Women must rule. Men are too emotional to be allowed to participate in politics...
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@Vanreuter it sounds good to me, being a woman. However, there are some women who will be just a as bad as some of the men that have abused their power. But I do have hope that one day I will see a woman president of the US.
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@Vanreuter You are totally right,I have always thought that men were far more emotional than women.The difference is that men express it in brutal and destructive ways.
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By the reasoning presented here the AfD should’ve been resurgent long before Merkel let in a million, because the East’s economic situation long predates the AfD.
Let’s be wary of assuming that our political opponents hold their positions simply because they are losers.
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@Tark Marg
Perhaps a delayed response hoping that the reconstruction/unification funds from the West would create parity. Being in Germany 85-88, and East Germany 89-90 there were some very optimistic people in the East and a infusion of funds. But I may be wrong.
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@Tark Marg Perhaps due to the rise of extreme right-wing social media?
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@Tark Marg
In fact, right-wing parties (DVU, Republikaner or NPD), some even more extreme than the AfD, have long prospered in east-German state elections. Back in 1998, the DVU, running a hard-line neo-nazi platform, received almost 13% of the vote in the Saxony state parliamentary election.
The difference with the AfD seems to be that their messaging is better tailored to the different shades of right-wing rage: There are AfD politicians like Bjoern Hoecke who stop just very short of Holocaust denial (which would be a federal crime in Germany, so he thinly veils his ideas in codes which are understood by the intended audience). But there are also AfD guys simply playing the anti-elitist card or focusing on law-and-order politics, increasing this parties appeal beyond the neo-nazi underbelly of (not only east) German society.
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Globalization has diminished the future of working class men in many countries and this push toward the right appears to be the inevitable outcome. Short term greed by large corporations drove globalization without any thought or care for the repercussions.
Now the world we have known is being torn apart and these same corporations and their wealthy owners shrug and look for their next profit center. But I don't see a prosperous business environment in a world which is broken apart by hate, fear and division, so they will lose as well. As ordinary citizens lose wealth the overall economies will suffer and decline, since the 1% can't consume enough to take up the slack.
I don't really see a cure for this trend and I wonder where it will all end. Judging by the US under Trump it is hard to see it ending well.
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This is not Merkel's legacy, but instead seems to be a common theme among white men around the world any time they are asked to share power and space with anyone not white or male. They believe sharing is, in fact, diminishing their own power and place. White male anger is epidemic.
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It is fascinating that concerns of all other groups are met with something like "Well if this or that group is feeling it, there must be some validity to their perceptions." Except for men, who are widely denigrated and dismissed. Although I am by nature very liberal and progressive, I observe widespread and deep-seated intolerance on the part of the Left. (The Right, too.)
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@MHW
I think the article does recognize their perceptions but resentment need not be validated. As other commentators have noted, AfD is a minority and not all AfD supporters seem to be older displaced factory workers. If scapegoating is at work we do not have to affirm it.
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@MHW I find it hard to bear complaints from white men that they're being treated unfairly as a group. As a white man, I can easily see all the advantages I've had for those reasons: being automatically picked for leadership roles, science and math, often without showing evidence that I should be in those roles first. One big difference though between myself and many less fortunate than I is that my family focused heavily on education and made clear to me throughout my life that I live in a world that is quickly changing - and that I need to be ready to change with it. What's happening to some groups of white men who are finding themselves with decreasing power is not any systemic oppression of men, but a world that is generally changing quickly, and these men were never prepared for that.
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This is a fascinating and perceptive article. The reporter has taken time to listen and understand people's feelings. She's the anguish that is behind so many tensions in modern society - and she has resisted blaming the victims. (Sadly, many commenters here have fallen into exactly that trap.)
This is a problem which is certainly not confined to Eastern Germany. Trump supporters in rural America and fishermen in depressed coastal regions of the UK have similar problems. Members of ISIS too, and gangs of rapists in India may also have similar motivations.
A culture in which the man is the bread winner has evolved over thousands of years - they men did the hunting and fighting and the heavy work and women respected that. A younger less experienced woman would marry an older man who had had time to garner the respect of his peers.
Over the last few years we have empowered women, redressed the balance, and made them economically independent. Work now more often depends on persuasion rather than muscle - intuition rather than abstraction.
What have not done - maybe we cannot do - is address the expectations - both those of men and of women. This might take generations. A woman still looks (maybe subconsciously) for an older, more respected partner. If there aren't such partners to hand she might move to the big city. And the men feel a sense of inadequacy - and an added unwillingness to accept a lower status job.
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@Londoner I tried older - traded him in for a younger model - much better outcome.
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I disagree with you basic premise, that these men are 'victims'. They are not. They have every opportunity to make a better life for themselves but they choose not to. Rather than blame women or immigrants for their lot in life, if they see these two groups becoming successful, then follow their lead. Trying to tear down women or immigrants to bring them back to their level does no individual or culture any good. And no, I do not believe that the majority of women are looking for an older 'protector'. That is another word for enslavement, even if it is in a gilded cage.
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@Karen W I find younger men a lot more adaptable and flexible than their older counterpart. Men have to realize that muscle mass is totally irrelevant today. They should be very happy to leave being a beast of burden in the past.
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Starting in the 1980s, Germany, like many others, became a Zwei-Drittel-Gesellschaft (society of two thirds), ie a society where one third of the population is poor, disenfranchised and without opportunities for advancement.
These people feel left behind and they are. They look for scapegoats, strong identities and easy solutions. Right-wing politicians promise all of this, but they won´t create opportunities.
That´s why they will fail ultimately, if we are lucky before pushing the world over the brink. um, at least that´s what I hope for...
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I see many similarities to our rural male population in America. They are left behind. A college bound male will have opportunities exposed to them when at school. Not only jobs but being exposed to other cultures and beliefs. I often say that college is partly finding out what and who you want to be. Just as important is finding out who you don't want to be. Traveling back to my small town between semesters to friends who did not leave town, made me realize how lucky I was to be exposed to so many opportunities. Too few opportunities for non college bound rural males causes multiple psychological, financial, drug, and family problems. The feral rural youth are speaking out. Trump, and far right groups are exposing a vulnerability that is caused by few opportunities to succeed in the American system.
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@Pawel Wargan. Check out the article called 'The Beginning of for Poland's Populists' in this same edition of the NYT's. Apparently in the recent election the opposition mobilized and turned the tables on the Law and Justice Party. All the big cities and even smaller towns decided they didn't want to turn back the clock to authoritarianism and fascism after all. Things can evolve.
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Merkel pursued an idealistic, not to say crazy, policy of Open Borders For All of Africa and Arabia.
She acted like one of these fringe Communists, not in the tradition of the CDU. That is why AfD got so many votes.
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Could you elaborate? What do you mean by "open border policy" and at what point did Merkel pursue this?
Also, who do you mean in German mainstream politics when you refer to "fringe communists"?
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@Alfredo RodriguezThose Communists were very restrictive about who was let in. Outrageous visa requirements. Perhaps a bit more research?
2
I am an expat living in the former East Germany with my German born wife. In the three years I have made a lot of observations and comparisons. I find similarities between the people here and ours in states like W. Virginia and Kentucky, there is a stubborn resistance to change and learning new things among many. People who learned their occupations under the former communist government and whose jobs have disappeared are like our coal is king people back home. They want somehow their jobs to comeback. Ain't gonna happen! In some fields the jobs like in healthcare go begging. My wife is also an example of this story, she left to work in the west were I met her.
Here in the countryside towns are emptying out and becoming God's waiting room communities. A lot of it is also attitude people just are reluctant to get off their butts and start moving into today and the future. The question I have for these East German men is why didn't they follow the women?
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@Robert Keller
This is the fallacy of "make America great again."
Times have changed, jobs come and go, ways of life alter. It is very hard for many, especially those in one industry communities, to change with the times.
But we do need to ensure those "left behind" are treated sympathetically, if for no reason than our own security, to forestall the swing to fascism.
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@Robert Keller You hit the proverbial nail on the head, Robert. I was visiting Dresden in October, 2016 when Germany celebrated the 25th anniversary of Reunification. Chancellor Merkel and many prominent members of Parliament were in attendance. The city was swarming with police drawn from all over Germany as a security precaution. A fire bomb had been tossed into the doorway of a local mosque a few days before. There were a lot of organized protests from AfD nationalists but no violence.
I recently returned from another trip to visit German friends in Hesse and again the country celebrated Reunification Day. The analogy of comparing the East to the western half of the country to rural Appalachia makes sense. Returning coal jobs are as much a fairy tale as are massive industrial works returning to the East. These Eastern Men need to find the courage to pull up stakes and head west to where the jobs, and women are.
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@Robert Keller
Your comment about "get off their butts" is a good example of the arrogant and insulting attitude toward displaced workers that professionals have towards the working class, which led to Trump in the US. Being a member of the volunteer fire department is not sitting on your butt.
Loyal, hard-working workers see their industries destroyed through no fault of their own, often because of political decisions (like H1-B visas), not changing technology. "Retraining" programs only work for a fraction of those workers. They've given their lives to their employers and to society, and they deserve the same loyalty back.
When companies moved from mainframe computers to PCs in the 1990s, many of the old COBOL programmers in their 50s said, "I've learned new technoloy all my life. I can learn this new software." But the companies fired them anyway. The problem was age discrimination, not laziness, as subsequent lawsuits established.
West Germany wanted to absorb the East. They got it. Now fulfill the responsibilities you assumed.
20
So there are incels in Germany too?
15
Why is it so strange that an area dominated by two totalitarian regimes prefers a nationalistic path? Same thing happened in the US during & after the Revolutionary war. East Germany was swindled out of many promised investments such as VW factories providing jobs ,just to take advantage of tax deferments . Sound familiar? Look at what happened in Indiana ,was it Foxconn? What an appropriate name. So they are saying they are tired of being taken advantage of & blaming immigrants ,not the likes of VW.
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Could you elaborate on what you mean by "two totalitarian regimes"?
Can't help but draw parallels to our own situation, white privilege and grievance have no boundaries it seems. One big difference is the fact that in our country the far right is also the ground zero of the gun culture. The message sent is "hey, you smarty pants liberals, we're taking control of our country by force if necessary". These people do not care that their views are held by a distinct minority or that their , Trump is there to legitimize their conspiracy theories.
28
The US too has seen the rise of the fascist right and a male/female split at the polls.
Articles like this often take a patronizing attitude towards the men who have been left behind. But they are often victims of social decisions that were made at a very high level, in particular, trade with low-wage countries and massive immigration from the third world.
In the US, an astounding 5% of jobs are now held by illegal immigrants alone.
And so these men lose their jobs to foreign competition, and then hear only patronizing remarks about how women are superior because they take a different kind of job.
Rarely do I see a suggestion from my fellow liberals that we change social policies to protect these forgotten men. As Kellyanne Conway said of the Clinton campaign, "“Their message is Donald Trump is bad, and we’re not Donald Trump. The rest of the message was race, gender, LGBT.”
And then we wonder why the left has lost the white working class.
Surely, the resurgence of fascism in Europe and the US is sufficient reason to do this, if basic decency isn't?
26
If you check out what jobs comprise that 5% of jobs held by immigrants here without visas, I think you’ll find they are jobs no Americans will take. For example, every year tons of fruit go unpicked in places like CA because there are not enough migrant workers, and Americans won’t do it. This has been the case for years now.
25
@LJ Rather, American's won't do it for slave labor wages under slave labor conditions. Importing unfortunates to labor at criminal rates of remuneration is not a good thing.
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@Josh Hill
The forgotten men who support Trump oppose the very "changes in social policies" that you suggest. They have voted for people (GOP) who are against social programs that were helping these forgotten. .
13
Hi all. As an American who lives in Germany (in the former east of Berlin) I just want to say that this article ignores the extraordinarily racist rhetoric of the AfD. White nationalists will always frame themselves as victims and will always hold that they deserve a certain privileged position in society that others have undeservedly received in their stead. If AfDers have a problem with how German unification has gone, perhaps they shouldn't so easily blame that almost 30-year problem on the refugees of 2015. The concerns of AfD voters hold no validity and require no compassion as long as they reduce themselves to the mindless and bigoted pitfall of blaming all their middle class woes on families fleeing the atrocities of war.
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Thanks for the first-hand view and assessment.
20
These trends recur throughout the former Soviet Union and the ex-communist world, where the transition from communism to free-market capitalism represented a failure in both economic and ideological terms. For many, the central promises that free-market capitalism would bring prosperity and choice never materialised. Or, if they did, they did so more slowly for the poor than for the wealthy. In my native Poland, the rural poor gained much less than the new urban middle classes, who in turn gained much less than their peers in Germany. At the same time, new political and economic elites formed and came to reap much of the benefits. As the cliche goes: under Soviet-style communism, everyone was equally poor. But under western-style capitalism, everyone was individually to blame for their failure to become rich. The competitive, relativistic world into which people were thrust broke down the powerful community bonds that formed around public opposition to (or even support for) communism. The processes that are now evident throughout the western world--the alienation of workers, the breaking down of communities into atomised and disenfranchised units, the growing economic inequalities, the concentration of market power in the hands of oligopolies and monopolies--happened in the post-communist world at an accelerated rate. The gradual political breakdown of these regions, then, may augur a similar fate for the capitalist world order more broadly.
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Under Soviet-style communism, everyone was equally poor -- except the oligarchs.
10
@SP Morten The whole point is that "the oligarchs" only emerged *after* the collapse of the Soviet Union. The rampant privatisations, the doctrines of economic "shock therapy" and the extreme, unregulated free marketeerism of the 1990s created them. There were privileged elites in the Soviet Union, no doubt, but not oligarchs as we see them today.
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@Pawel Wargan
Excellent, very perceptive comment, Pawel. Much more illuminating than others that have gotten more recommendations. It should have been made a NYT Pick.
About 1987 I had a student from West Germany working for me. She was immigrating to America. Ironic isn't that in later years as Eastern women moved West, perhaps Western women moved father West into UK, Canada, America. I do agree that an angry tide of hormonal men will cause unrest. Tragically as police will tell you two percent of any population cause 25% of the problems. And these numbers are way beyond two percent.
17
There is a time to mend relations. In Canada, the government has taken a stand to integrate and support those (tax payers) previously marginalized. Priority consideration for First Nations, French, people of collar and the disabled means those who enjoyed the luxuries of support take a back seat for a while.
Better than tearing the system down and pushing them further and further back.
The "men" of East Germany need compassionate support and time to build their communities to catch up after Russian oppressive and backward rule. The fact that Merkel didn't instigate programs to do this is costing the country its unification.
11
A microcosm of a more general phenomenon. The displacement of men does seem to connect the rise of fear, guns, isolationism, gender conflict, and drugs.
If you want peace, work for justice, not just role reversal.
14
Kudos for broaching the topic, but as in other related nytimes pieces that venture empathy towards men today, we can't escape blame and shame.
This article highlights the quote referencing the men's 'failures'--the shame/blame--THREE times.
Empathy? Nope: we're in the neo-liberal frame of winner-take-all.
The article later accuses these men of being undynamic, undetermined, etc. The upshot to the reader: know that these men have feelings, but have little sympathy for these "losers."
We must be more constructive in setting ourselves up for solutions within social justice traditions.
16
@GenXBK293 Personally I think this is a well written article that high lights an issue that I have not ever really given much thought to. I did not find it to be biased towards or against any particular group nor do I find it to be unsympathetic towards these men. I certainly agree that we must be more constructive and creative in setting ourselves up for solutions within social justice traditions.
15
@Amanda Kennedy Fair enough and i do think it is a great discussion.
My perspective is more speaking to cultural assumptions. What are the ideological implications of casting the situation in terms of failure, etc? Why was this specific message highlighted three times?
As a consequence, it keeps the guys on the ropes, and but for that the article would appear to legitimize resentment of female leadership.
Although unique in terms of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the forces driving the rise of the far right in eastern Germany resemble those that drove the rise of National Socialism in the late 1920s and early 1930s. For those who wish to understand than to be told what to believe read The Making of A Stormtrooper by Peter Merkl. Though written in 1980, Merkl, then a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, describes the common themes that brought men of diverse backgrounds together behind National Socialism. Like these men today, unemployment, loss of social status, feelings of abandonment drove the early twentieth eastern German to the right. Merkl's book is instructive and should be resurrected in learning about modern Germany.
11
What a great article thank you very much, it sheds so much light on events in Europe. The parallels between the men in East Germany and those in the American heartland are striking. Left behind, pitied, and at sea in the 21st century economy.
Europe is in trouble. Mrs. Merkel's coalition is crumbling, which leaves German politics in chaos. Meanwhile, the right rises across Eastern Europe, and the southern nations chafe under their oppressive debt burdens.
The media elites and neoliberal thought leaders denigrate Britain for its choice to leave the EU. It could be that before long many millions will look west across the Channel in envy.
13
My wife and I lived in West Germany from 1985 to 1995. When we first arrived in Monchengladbach (on the edge of the Ruhr region), it struck me how many immigrants lived in that area. Having grown up in Columbus, Ohio, all the foreigners I knew there had something to do with the university. The foreigners in West Germany were all guest workers and their families, from all over the worlds; their restaurants, their languages, their customs had a definite, positive impact on West German society. Being originally from Chile, I felt more comfortable, and fully accepted, in West Germany than I did in the US. After the wall came down in 1989, I traveled fairly often into Eastern Germany on business; it was another world. Even east Berlin was a dark and dreary place, unexposed to everything the foreign guest workers had brought to West Germany. When I took my mother to Berlin for a visit, she said she finally understood why Erich Honecker had left East Germany for Chile. That lack of exposure to the outside world is what happened to the men of East Germany. I will always remember West Germany; I felt at home and accepted by my friends, the society and the state.
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Living in Eastern Germany I can tell that this is a big topic around here for many years, even before the foundation of the AfD when they voted the NPD (nationalist).
Two notes though.
Firstly, it is indeed a regional phenomenon. Both Green (“Grüne”), that are left, and AfD, that are far right, win currently many votes. Greens in the West, AfD in the West, approx. 20-25 % of the vote/polls currently.
This is possible due to Merkel’s long regency. The opposition is gaining ground in such times, until a new chancellor is elected.
Secondly, my experience is that the political parties are not honest with Eastern Germans (I grew up in the West, but am living in Berlin and am half-American).
Instead of making sure that everybody understands that after decades of Russian occupation the East falls naturally behind the West, much like South vs North in the US, because it all happens to all ex-Soviet nations/satellites today, yet ex-GDR (ex-Eastern Germany state) politicians and the far right spread conspiracies about how Western Germany tricked, cheated and robbed the East. Far right voters watch Russian media, i.e. RT, surprisingly.
At the same time except for two, all regional far right leaders in the East are from West Germany. The loudest a far righters are in fact from Western German states.
My guess is that this all be over as soon as Merkel is replaced by someone else. And maybe the next generation will start to doubt the shiny stories about the Russian occupation etc.
98
This is a very thoughtful and interesting article.
I live in the USA since almost 30 years, a time in which I have been very much exposed to the immigrant population from Southern Asia to the US. Amongst those people who came, say, in the 30s or 40s, it was very often that the women found jobs first, were adaptive, and often quite successful. Very often, the husbands had great difficulties to find a job, and often enough suffered from very low self esteem.
For young immigrants from the area the situation was completely opposite. The young men and women have invariantly shown great drive and high adaptability and are very successful.
110
This is a fascinating article. Mostly because it zeroes in on a particular phenomenon that I never gave much thought to in terms of explaining the rise of Trumpism and populism--lonely men who can't get married and probably can't get sex as often as they'd like.
At first I was livid--"These men are destroying everything we've built!!! Argggghhhh!!!" It was the first time I got so angry with men that I started giving random men in the subway stink-eye. But then I kept reading and the populist backlash started to make a lot of sense. Now I wonder if similar dynamics are at work in Trump country--are all those declining towns and rural areas devoid of women? Are women fleeing those areas for better economic opportunities while the more hidebound, lazy men are left behind, stewing in their bitterness caused by loneliness? I really think some studies should be done on the gender imbalances in pro-Trump communities throughout the U.S.
More ominously, I also started to think of places with huge gender imbalances, where there is a massive dearth of women due to sex-selective abortions, like India and China. Right now right-wing authoritarianism is on the upswing in India. There are also rumblings of it in China (though there it's been authoritarian for so long that it's hard to tell).
Is gender imbalance leaving behind lonely, bitter men really a nice causal variable that explains this massive populist backlash we're now seeing throughout the world?
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@Luboman411 Take into account the relatively lower education level of men, especially in these areas, as well as the economic factors described in the article and in this comment section (and their interplay, naturally). There you have your recipe for populism. That goes for the US as well as for Europe or Asia.
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@Luboman411
China is far from an example of this phenomenon. Men who have not found wives throw themselves into making money in business ventures to make themselves desirable to women. They're not sitting around feeling sorry for themselves - as these men did and continue to do.
23
@Luboman411 rural America is different, for many reasons. It's more about job opportunities. I grew up in a small town in the midwest, where the majority of my high school class mates left town for better opportunities. My home town has a down town that is mostly empty, and the size of the town has also decreased. I would have left no matter what, even if there had been jobs available there. Now I live in a diversified part of NJ, where my husband found a job over 30 years ago. It took many years for me to get used to NJ, but now it would be difficult to leave. I would miss the diversity of cultures (and my many friends in NJ) if I had to return to my hometown now, but I do like to visit my family & friends there. And yes Trump is popular there, but he's becoming less popular every day as the farmers are unable to sell their crops.
17
The 'actually existing socialism' countries of central and eastern Europe were very sexist. Women were supposed to do all the house work and hold down a job. Sports were encouraged, pretty much any other leisure activity was given scant support or was treated with hostility. I have met many women who moved west and some of the men. They had the drive that allowed them to succeed in the west. These men in the east who have become professional victims should study a bit of German history to see the consequences of their votes - or simply their lives now- which are also a consequence of that mind set.
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Agreed. Men who say, “Find me a wife” and who see young women on the street as somehow “theirs” shouldn’t be too surprised when those women leave them behind when given a chance. As in America, the problem is not democracy. It is a populace whose social attitudes are frozen in a pre-modern fantasy in which White men rule effortlessly and unchallenged by “their” women or the world outside.
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@rt1 but if those women are so brilliant and industrious and deeply loving they should notice that moving back East is a bargain in many ways.
@JMJackson yeah, sure, as if West German men are somehow enlightened. They have more money thats all
I just returned from a visit to Dresden, Germany, where my son has lived for 13 years. While there we took a train trip which took us past small towns that are known Pegita strongholds. Most of these towns have no immigrants, nor do they see any, unless they go to big cities like Dresden.
My son is married to an East German woman who was 11 in 1991 when the wall came down. We have often discussed the difficulties that East Germans have had to face in the last 30 years in adjusting to reunification. I have gotten to know many East Germans on multiple trips to Dresden. This article articulates well the fears and anger of a minority, but not the majority,
I question men like the 70 year old former factory worker who cried when talking about when his factory closed in -maybe 1993. He was 42 at the time and received multiple opportunities to retrain. I wonder what I would think if I knew this man personally. Perhaps it is that he is unwilling, not unable to change.
Young people have lapped up the changes of reunification and love the opportunities and advantages it has afforded them, and so do many of their parents. Germany has one of the most democratic societies in the world and the majority of the people (statistically) are pro immigration, in spite of the emphasis in American media on the minority who is not. Most Germans appreciate how good they have it, and having lived through the horrors of Fascism and war in their past, have no desire to revisit it.
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Perhaps the age of the men when Communism collapsed is a factor. Under Communism, the state took care of you, made your decisions for you, gave you your identity. Suddenly a whole generation of men were cut adrift, and many didn't know how to forge a new identity for themselves. Women are socialized to be more adaptable.
20
I lived in Magdeburg in early 2000s. There were huge factory complexes that just been closed down directly after the Wall fell. It seemed like every second building was boarded up. At that point, about 15 years after the collapse of the DDR, Magdeburg had lost about 25% of its population. It was very striking how you only saw people either in their 20s or late 40s of above: younger people who could get jobs directly after the Wall fell had predominantly left for Western areas.
The sense of injustice was also very real. My wife who sat on a student Amnesty International table at the local market was constantly told by older people that they were the ones who were in need of help not people in Africa and elsewhere. This is despite Western Germany having pumped in about $1.7 Trillion dollars into the Eastern states since 1989. The equivalent of one Greek bailout every year.
I once got stuck between the police and a group of about 500 Neo-Nazi demonstrators for a few hours. At first I was pretty scared and then after a while I just felt they were sort of losers. It was obvious that the far right offered a social support network for them, gave them a sense of community, and made them feel important (look people fear us!). These groups have metastasized over the last 15 years into the modern AfD.
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I’m thinking all those young women left because they didn’t have to accept the limits of the previous generation. You would think that would tell the men something they need to know about how to treat women. Apparently it’s easier to blame Merkel for reminding them of failure, and I see something very similar in this country, where so many are rabidly anti-Hillary.
Two women have walked out on Trump thus far. I’m thinking that Melania is just waiting until 2020.
25
Interesting that two wives were/are Eastern European and one was a Southerner.
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@Eileen Because no woman with another choice would stay with him!
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Women are on a clear trend to becoming overall better educated, and economically better off than men. Many of these socially and financially independent women will have no use for an uneducated man, and certainly have no yearning to cook his meals and do his laundry. They will have no need for his financial support and no patience with his foibles. Unfortunately large numbers of frustrated men spells trouble.
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@ Don F. In Frankfurt, Germany. Just a note to say how much I appreciate your comment. I also want to say to you, and all other Germans, how much I admire you and your country. The active and open way that Germany has reconciled itself to it's painful Nazi past and come to be one of the most Democratic countries on earth (and a moral leader) is unique in human history.
I recently watched the documentary 'Germans and Jews' and was astonished to learn that Europe's fastest growing Jewish population is in Berlin. It's a wonderful doc. And a tribute to the tolerance and open mindedness, and spirit of inclusiveness that now infuses most of the collective German character.
I appreciate the many comments here from Germans that correct the erroneous perceptions of so many Americans about the pretty darn good integration of East and West post reunification .
I don't see right wing parties being able to make big inroads in Germany or other Northern Western European countries. Because of our great fear in America that WE are succumbing to Fascism, I think we tend project that fear onto Europe - which has NOT practiced unfettered capitalism and thus has countries that are prosperous but governed by policies and laws benefiting it's citizens.
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Has no one studied the relationship between the influence of communist cultural attitudes and this male inertia to resolve their personal issues? Women were obviously smart and flexible enough to move where the action and jobs were. Why not the men? Is communism, any authoritarianism for that matter, a negative influence on men? Or might it be that women are just plain smarter and more assertive than men, who are actually...well, I won't go there!
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Gunther Fritz says “we brought down one system we can do it again”. From none of these men profiled is there any sense of building - of creating with their own hands and minds something new that they would want to see, that would encourage their brightest and best, especially women, to stay and build with them.
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I was there when the Berlin wall came down. A memory that will last a life time. The cheers and smiles from both sides were deafening.
At days end we took the train back to a small town in West Germany that was filled with people to the max. The next morning we had breakfast and sat across from a family who resided in East Germany, they were glowing.
No words spoken but, we raised our coffee cups cheering. To this very day that moment brings tears of overwhelming joy.
What happened?? Who and what are these Far Right people? What frightens me is that is sounds too close to the debacle of our government is facing.
joy
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An interesting read. While I concur that the men-to-women ratio is a factor in political viewpoints, the most important issue from my perspective is a sense of injustice.
We have seen a number of horrific crimes committed by migrants in Germany and in virtually all of these cases, the perpetrators were known to police before or were even set to be deported as no grounds for asylum existed. Only deportation was never done due to a myriad of reasons. Meanwhile, everyone is aware that these people's lives are entirely financed by Germans.
Throw in reporting on young migrants acting without respect towards Germans - towards teachers, the police, women, ... - and then contrast that picture to some German male who is shelling out a lot of money off his paycheck for social security, taxes and so on. That male faces punishments if he doesn't comply with the rules, be it a failure to pay taxes in time or not paying mandatory public TV fees. That contrast, which is fueled by the populist right, Russian-run news channels and other players, is what gives these young males a notion of injustice. Maybe if the women were still there, these frustrations wouldn't grow unchecked, but the root of the problems lie deeper than what the article implies.
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I am an African-American living in Germany and the notion that immigrants have fundamentally changed the fabric of the country is completely false. I have lived in Bavaria for 15 years, and it is rare that I come across someone in my daily travels that is not a white, European. The article does raise interesting points on the lack of women in the east, which gives rise to deep resentment, much like we see with the "incel" phenomenon, which has lead to violence the states. Fact is that Germany has and will continue to expel many migrants and less are arriving, so this 2016 problem will not be there in 2021 when Merkel leaves office. Who will the angry eastern man find to blame for his plight after that?
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@Daniel
Bavaria and Saxony are 2 complet different boots.
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Worth to remember that imposing a 1 to 1 exchange rate between western and eastern mark (the unofficial exchange rate was around 1 to 4) the eastern industry was rendered not competitive overnight. In 1990, in less than 1 year the GDP of the East had a 40% contraction, worse than a war.
All the money poured in by the west went in consumption of western products.
The liquidation of the assets of the former East Germany state carried on by the infamous Treuhand is another interesting story, but too long for a comment.
What do you expect? Gratitude?
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An answer, perhaps, is foreign women. If the men were to head to Eastern Europe or Asia, they just might find women willing to relocate to the relatively prosperous region of Eastern Germany. It would be worth a try . . .
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The elite minders have been so focused on globalism they ignored what is happening in their own backward. Things are going to get ugly in Germany in the coming years.
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@Ed ... and in the U.S. it's already happening. Favoring so-called "asylum seekers" over rural Americans will only lead to Trump in 2020.
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@Ed So where is the solution? The future of the coming years is shaped by real people and what we chose to do.
It is possible to have strong global institutions and maintain the rules-based order while addressing this situation with empathy for men like us. That's what I think about this...
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@Ed: Based on what? these generalisations without a single piece of factual content are normally not worth even ignoring, but seen as you make a statement: back it up.
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This is a great article for showing why the AfD is doomed. Hardly any women support the AfD and the reporter had to travel to a remote Eastern outpost to drum up yet another story about a party that has no real agenda except spreading hate. The AfD has been unable to increase its percentages in any of the recent state elections, yet the influence of the Greens is on the rise. Why not report on that instead?
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The people who most experience hardship which leads to radicalization generally are the most resistant to changing their economy with the times... they resist progress... then their community falls into ruins as the economy moves to where the progress is... then some authoritarian comes along and blames outsiders for their own failings, and promises to bring them back to glory which only takes them back even further...
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@J 'Resistance to change' implies active agency. While these people aren't purely victims either, it's not as if it is easy for an Eastern European ex-factory worker to 'change with the times' and become an IT-specialist. Especially if they don't have access to the necessary education and resources.
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So is a Shrinking US middle class is progress? progress for who?
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Very good that you have moved beyond the notion that AfD supporters are deplorables, less sentient beings because they were formed by the Communist system, as opposed to the open society of the West - the usual story we hear. Very good to have called out the gender issue. BUT you have missed the dimension of colonization of the GDR following its annexation by the West. Lustration decapitated not only the Communist Party and the Stasi but also all cultural, educational and other local elites and brought in carpetbaggers, opportunists of second and third quality from the West. Here is a powerful source of resentment against the centrist parties from the West.
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Men and their equal rights have been treated as disposable for far too long. This is only a taste of a long overdue course correction occurring worldwide.
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And then what happens?
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@W Smith
Not sure what equal rights you're talking about W. Smith. Aren't the rights you speak of simply human rights?
4
@W Smith - It's hard to equate your lament of the loss of equal rights for men with the fact that men have overwhelmingly dominated American politics and business for, oh, 242 years. Exactly what "equal rights" have men lost here in The Land of The Free (old white men)?
1
Fascinating-really good insights-much to think about here, and not limited to Eastern Germany. Thank you!
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The report demonstrates the German integration has failed miserably. And it also tells why alt-right movements, which powers Donald Trump in the States, is on the rise.
Wealth distribution is important. And that is the obligation of the government, not the businesses.
The first fifth of the twenty-first century is marked with polarization, not only in the political perspective, but also economic perspective. The rich is getting richer, and the poor is getting poorer.
In reality the injustice of wealth distribution fuels the alt-right movements worldwide.
The economic policies of Republicans and Democrats have been in favor of the rich for the past forty years. And Republicans have been doing worse starting from Ronald Regan's trickle-down to Donald Trump's recent tax cut for the rich.
The wealth has never raised boat for the average people, but only for the rich. David Leonhardt's "Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart" tells all, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html.
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@Yu-Tai Chia, looks like you're mostly talking of Taiwan and not Germany.
"The report demonstrates the German integration has failed miserably. And it also tells why alt-right movements, which powers Donald Trump in the States, is on the rise. "
Nonsense. The right is on the rise on places with literally no foreigners, not in places where immigrants are actually, you know, present.
As to integration, Germany isn't perfect but it has been pretty successful to integrate foreigners since it got the influx of Turkish starting in the '70s.
"Wealth distribution is important. And that is the obligation of the government, not the businesses."
Yes, and Germany's poor-rich divide is still a lot smaller than for other countries, inlcuding the U.S.
"The wealth has never raised boat for the average people, but only for the rich."
Welath rises the boat for those that have it. Globalization has risen the boat for lots of people, especially in poorer countries. Shipping simple jobs abroad is not a problem is the savings are used to retrain your local workforce so they are equipped to do better-paying higher level jobs. Unfortunately many companies just pocketed the savings instead, especially in the US with full government support.
6
@Yu-Tai Chia: you obiousy never took the tome to research how the process of redistributing walth from West to East was started and continues: The Government has done more than its share - as have business.
If you would take the time to visit Leipzig, Dresden as two examples, you would see the booming citie that they are.
The failures who seek their consolation from rightwing radicals are simply too lazy to make use of the opportunities afforded.
6
Please keep in mind that German Political System is allocated other than in the US. From my perception, Merkel as German conservative leader would be Center/Left democrats. Think yourself comparing AfD to Trump Politics.
11
Excellent article!
8
There are comparatively few asylum seekers located in eastern Germany. The problem is that the work ethic in eastern Germany is nowhere near that of the work ethic in the west. That’s presumably a relic of the communist system.
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@Imperato
There was a wise sage whose name I can't remember, who said of the communists:
"We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."
10
Excellent article, deprived of opinions, faithful and vivid descriptions.
It has been known for some time that East Germany was not integrated in West Germany, they were kept apart. It was easy for East Germans to migrate to the West than to fix the East. Now the problem has become clear for everybody to see. Lack of jobs and opportunities is a good stimulant for xenophobic attitudes everywhere. This is somehow similar to the rise of racists tendencies between Trump's voters in the Midwest and rural areas. Politicians are good at stoking these xenophobic attitudes, but economic and social conditions make them possible.
17
Everything is someone else's fault. The women left because there were no opportunities for their future, except to marry some man , be beholden , and carry the extra burden. Find me a wife, what an attitude that you are entitled for the opportunity .....attitudes that were acceptable years ago when they had a leader like ours....want to find a job.....start working....any work is admirable and then look for opportunities to advance. Blame the others.....remember what happened ....your leaders offered you work entitling you to just obey. Welcome to the new world, give up the fiction of what used to be, and move on. Stop blaming women who already know they have to take charge of their future and not be chattel. MENS opportunities are the same as WOMENS.
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@Mk Quite a bitter pill for the men to be simultaneously blamed for being "losers" while being spurned and looked down upon by potential wives who resent that the men's aren't more of a high-status provider.
4
They were raised in a authoritarian regime to start. This is not unlike people who were imprisoned for a long period of time end up going back to prison because freedom and open society scare them more than the loss of freedom and independence
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@Bos
Comparing people in the East with prison inmates,
shows how little you know about the people of the East.
1
@Kai
This is an analogy. If I say you are as loyal as a dog, it is certainly not derogatory.
Overnight freedom is as dangerous as life long confinement. It can be bewildering. There are cases of N Koreans who escaped to S Korea chose to repatriate themselves back to N Korea, especially they didn't get proper support and indoctrination. Look at many S American countries, oscillating between communism and dictatorship, two sides of the same coin. Same phenomenon.
China has started its opening in the late 70s, it is still evolving, two steps forward and one step back. Humans take a long time to reprogram, if you will
3
Wonderful reporting. I wonder how much the rise of the alt-right in places like Silicon Valley and in some rural areas of the US has to do with a demographic imbalance.
18
In essence, Merkel governed as if (former) East Germany did not exist. Ignoring the cultural divide made the resentments stronger, and the pushback harder. then, after a couple of decades of ignoring her former fellow citizen, she floods the country with more than a million asylum-seeking men who made prove much harder to integrate than the former East Germans.
But Merkel would not be deterred and now her country is paying the price. Is this good leadership, really?
32
@Kai, Merkel did not flood the country with a million immigrants. Why this kind of nonsense gets repeated by otherwise intelligent people is beyond understanding.
The East Germans never went thru the phase of facing their Nazi past like the West Germans did - albeit only after the youth forced it.
We run offices in Frankfurt, Berlin, Stuttgart and Essen. We employ people who came to Germany as refugees and they work side by side with East Germans with no conflict at all.
The isolation mentality of the east German men, and the utter failure of those who join and support rightwing radical parties is nothing more than own abject failure to face reality. Blaming "someone else" is the standard response of failing people. This time Merkel happens to be there to scream at, previously it was Kohl or Schröder.
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@Kai
Eastern Germans had opportunity shoveled at them after the Mauerfall. I worked with many East German men and their sense of their own greatness was breathtaking compared to Westerners. They could be irritating in their need to convince you of their superior intelligence etc. One tried to understand their need to process being taken over by a system whose rules were very different. But you couldn’t “tell” them anything. The women were much tougher and adapted. Those men are living in a time-warp to the day. And blaming Merkel, like some all-powerful goddess, is pathetic. But typical.
As for the migrants/refugees, it will, in fact, be handled. That Merkel intentionally flooded the country with them is a ridiculous statement. No one I know is particularly happy they’ve come but it’s being worked through. In southern Germany some may even find a home because their labor is needed. I think those who end up staying will mostly integrate more successfully than the eastern German Ewiggestrigen (“eternal yesterdays”).
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@Don
"The East Germans never went thru the phase of facing their Nazi past like the West Germans did - albeit only after the youth forced it."
I know that not only "West Germans" have faced their past.
Generalizations like these do not get us any further.
2
The article illustrates the unintended consequences of the free-market capitalist merger of two, largely unequal societies, west and east Germany, and how the west's vastly superior resources essentially destroyed economies and an entire generation of men. Unregulated capitalism frequently claims its victims, but the results aren't satisfactory and the long-term consequences are devastating for many. This is an illustration, yet again, of the law of unintended consequences. No one quite understood the long-term impacts of allowing a culturally and financially superior "conquerer" to usurp the east's resources and even its women. Welcome to the far-right voting bloc. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Even in Germany.
17
Germany has anything but 'unregulated' capitalism. Public transfers are at a level unheard of in places like the US. The total of government transfers from West to East since reunification are estimated at 2 trillion €. That's 125,000€ _per capita_ in the East. And it worked - the GDP of States like Sachsen tripled in that time. Yes, there's still a gap to the West. But it's shrunk enormously since the days people had to queue for fruit.
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@Ben
What should be added to the transfers:
The economic imbalance between West and East Germany was counteracted with tax payments. In the first years after reunification, people in East Germany paid products from West Germany with West German taxpayers' money. This money flowed back to West Germany as turnover and profit.
4
Social isolationism is a problem governments across Western society are starting to confront and that primarily only deals with Senior Citizens. Another fascinating case study, but is the opposite situation is Russia after World War II, when eight million Russian men died in World War II. Globalization has been taught as a way to keep peace from country to country, but seems to be tearing countries apart internally. Social media is adding gasoline to the fire.
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And the liberals just keep believing they can do this and no expect any sort of repercussions. This is only the beginning of what's to come. Liberal democracy is dying, must die. It's an untenable and unrealistic system that can not last.
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So what's your alternative - authoritarian democracy?
If so, sit tight. Should Trump, McConnell, and McCarthy remain in charge, your wish will be granted.
But as they say, be careful what you wish for.
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@Sparky
To be replaced by what--fascism?
That was already tried. Didn't end well.
27
You do understand that Chancellor Merkel actually represents the conservatives, right? @Sparky
8
Oh yes, the crisis of white male masculinity. In America, white men blame Obama, black people, immigrants and women . In Germany, this sun-blotting burden of raging East German white maledom -- and your reporter -- blame Merkel.
Where are all the exhortations about pulling yourself up by your proverbial boot straps? I guess it's one thing to scream them at others, another thing entirely to take your own advice.
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@Angela
Not entirely. They should not have been forced to foot the bill for one million people from another culture. It took Merkel long enough to fade away.. but she won't be soon forgotten, and I hope Germany remembers this for longer than one generation. It seems to me they are doing very well, indeed, thank you very much.
21
@Angela Yes, it would have been a better article if it had examined how well, and why, the eastern women seem to have adapted well after the fall of the wall.
These men, and their cohorts in the States, seem less able to adapt and unwilling to move/change and have a sense of entitlement that blinds them to the possibilities available to them.
I'm also befuddled by how they seem to see women as objects to be procured. It is no wonder the eastern women have fled.
Lastly, I don't know what they think they will achieve if they elect far right politicians. Do they want the government telling them what to do with their lives 24/7? To have permission to squash the opportunities of minorities? Trickle down economics as espoused by Trump and the GOP? Their thoughts and actions are simply not well thought out.
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@Angela I understand why you feel this way, but there may come a time when we need get off our high horses and start taking the collateral damage from massive cultural disruption more seriously. I don’t like their solutions any more than you do but the problems are real, and the left has been too ideologically blinkered to come up with solutions. I share your values, but we may need to try something besides blame-and-shame.
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Merkel is a to easy scapegoat.
I was in the german army 1994-96 when i was garrisoned in the small town of Stavenhagen 160 km north of Berlin, i never would have gone there on my own. It was a getaway of the young people in full display. The few young people left behind were bonded by family ties or were just to insecure to bail out. The next highway was Berlin-Rostock 60miles away. And the federal highways (bundesstraßen) sometimes were just cobblestones. There were no cinemas, but a lot of alcohol and soccer.
These people ganged together, and it became their way of life. I can imagine it is something similar in the rural areas of america.
The reunion was no convergent evolution, it was a segregating process. And we were to slow to understand and counter it. The mobility of young people seeking opportunities has a devastating effect on those left behind. All we had was the hope that it will somehow turn around - it never did.
There is a lesson that applies not just to east germany, but to the rural areas all over the industrial world. If you don't provide opportunities in the places where people life, especially young people will move, and this is not a good thing. It will create a disappointed bitter tribalism of those staying behind. We indeed have failed to integrate our own people. All these fantasies of a libertarian world, of people seeking opportunities elsewhere, now face the downsides. I hope politician will understand, fascism is a payback.
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@Mathias Weitz
The essence of capitalism is the free movement of capital and labor. Is it possible when East Germany went from socialism to capitalism that some segment of the population (and gender) simply didn't have the drive or ambition to adapt? I don't know why this is linked to the Y chromosome but it seems inevitable to me that some portion of the population will always fall on the wrong side of the bell curve and will take out its failures in antisocial behavior. The article doesn't mention how much West Germany spent over the years in integrating the East.....billions of marks and Euros......paid for by the taxpayers in the West. The comparison one commentator makes with the residents of West Virginia and Kentucky seems apt.
14
@Jsailor
Capitalism still needs a society, it needs skilled workers and above all, affluent consumers. But capitalism doesn't care for maintaining a sustainable base. We need a sound political environment for capitalism to flourish. And that means more often than many conservative americans would like to acknowledge to socialize some of the gains of fat cats.
Always keep in mind, germany is top-exporter of the world, even beating china by a large margin. America is at this list on the bottom-end. But germany also have nearly 50% business tax, universal healthcare and powerful trade unions. Despite our "socialistic" antics, we are an economic powerhouse.
And looking at this dog-eat-dog capitalism in america i am quite sure, caring for your people and leaving no one behind especially in times of unravelling is an obligation, that defines your economy model. But pushing an economic model, that leaves people behind creates populism. And in time this carelessness will cripple your economy.
15
@Mathias Weitz
Germans have free healthcare and generous educational programs. Here in the richest country on earth, one illness can leave you bankrupt, with no job, no education, and certainly no wife. The heavy industries are simply not there anymore like they used to be. Everything has a narrative and there is always someone to blame. Our mid-westerners here were never going to see those jobs come back but Trump can lie better than anyone, and Ms. Merkel has integrity. But, in both countries, allowing huge increases in immigrants, with large numbers of disgruntled workers already here, is a recipe for upheaval. Question, why didn’t Merkel see this coming with her immigration policy?
2