In conversation with Romy Straßenburg, Robert Ide talks about his own experiences of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of East and West, and the political uncertainty in the new federal states.
Robert, you belong to a generation that grew up in East Germany but has spent its entire adult life in reunified Germany. What sets your generation apart from others?What’s interesting is that in former East Germany, people just five years apart in age experienced things in completely different ways. I was fourteen when the Wall fell, and I was getting into trouble at school for speaking out politically. I was told I might not be allowed to do my “Abitur” exams because of it. Had I been a few years older, I probably would have had to volunteer for the East German border troops to get a place at university. So, although everything changed overnight for everyone in 1989, it made a huge difference what stage of life you were in. My parents, for example, had to start an entirely new life at the age of 50. They lost their jobs, and even the way they had lived their lives no longer seemed to count for much.
In 1990, when German reunification was completed and the GDR officially became part of the Federal Republic, the adults around me were completely disoriented. This also meant that I was able to start all over again without having to ask anyone, which was incredibly exciting. That freedom really spurred me on. But at the same time, I saw how anxious my parents were about the future – whether they would still be able to afford their apartment, whether they would find work. That was when the sense of “togetherness” began to disappear, because everyone suddenly had to figure out how to move forwards on their own.
What expectations did most East Germans have at the time of reunification?
I remember the moment my family and I crossed over into the Wedding district of West Berlin via Bornholmer Straße on 9 November 1989. We saw run-down buildings with paint peeling off the walls, and my mother said, “So, where is the West? This looks just like where we come from.” That’s where it all began, because this wasn’t how we’d imagined the West – the place where everyone was doing well. One experience in particular stayed with me. We bought a kiwi from a Turkish greengrocer and we asked him how to prepare it – whether you had to cook it. The shopkeeper burst out laughing, but there was something deeply warm in his reaction. It carried a promise: “We’re just as interested in you as you are in us.” But as the years went by, East Germans realised that while they had always looked westwards, towards the promised land, West Germans were looking elsewhere – to France, Italy and America. In that sense, we never really saw each other, never truly looked one another in the eye, even when we were standing opposite each other. And then came all these “helpers” from West Germany to build democracy, but in practice, they simply built it according to the model of the Federal Republic. There was no place for East Germans. And that is still very painful for many East Germans today.
What differences between East and West Germany do you still notice particularly strongly today?
For one thing, there is simply less wealth in eastern Germany, which is a major social issue. People in the East had very little that they could pass on to their children. And because people had little opportunity to build up private pensions savings, pension levels are lower today. Other issues that originate in the East are often initially dismissed, until they eventually reach the West – sometimes years later – and become political issues. We can see this with all the questions surrounding structural change. For two decades, healthcare in rural areas has been a major issue in eastern Germany. Many hospitals outside the cities can no longer cover their costs or are struggling to find doctors. The same problem is now affecting rural areas in western Germany, including North Rhine-Westphalia, and suddenly it has become a major political issue.
We could frame the changes more positively and ask: Haven’t East Germans, because of their life experiences, developed a greater ability to adapt to change?
I do think this experience of change is an advantage. Eastern Germany has had to reinvent itself and has undergone a profound transformation. Former mining regions are being turned into recreational areas, biotechnology clusters are emerging and companies are establishing themselves in eastern Germany. I firmly believe in this capacity for change, because in a state like the GDR, you often had to muddle through and make do. For a long time, that was something East Germans were better at than West Germans. The problem, though, is that change has now become so constant that everything is happening at once, and that overwhelms people. Everyone is afraid of artificial intelligence and the consequences of climate change; they’re afraid of losing their jobs, and in rural areas many see few prospects for the future. And then people shut themselves off, even if they are capable of adapting. They say to themselves, “I’ve already been through three major transformations: I can’t handle a fourth, fifth or sixth. I don’t want to. It’s all just too much.”
How do you explain the rise of the far right in eastern Germany?
I think that most people in the eastern German states that have recently held elections are actually doing quite well: they own houses, have cars, regularly go on holiday and most of them now have jobs. It’s very different from the first years after reunification. But people are deeply afraid that the same thing will happen to them as in 1990: that they could lose overnight everything they have built up over the years. That fear is definitely stronger in eastern Germany.
The AfD is very clever, using nostalgic symbols of East Germany, like the Simson mopeds, and saying: “Now we’re riding back to freedom. Nobody can tell us what to do.” What they forget, of course, is that East Germany was a dictatorship and that people were shot at the border. But you can sense that beneath this distorted perception lies a deep sadness, bitterness and disappointment, and that this sentiment is reproduced and passed on to younger generations. I find that pretty shocking. I would never have expected it after 36 years.
But I also think that East and West are culturally much closer to each other than people might think. These days, the bigger divide is between people in economically and socially deprived rural areas and those in more prosperous regions.
Will the East-West divide continue to shape Germany for years to come, or will it gradually lose its significance?
I’ve been preoccupied with this whole subject for 36 years now, and at the moment I’m looking at it particularly closely again. What I’m seeing is that many young people who never experienced the GDR themselves are becoming interested in it, especially if their parents come from eastern Germany – even if they themselves have long since moved elsewhere. They say that it still means something to them. I notice this with my own parents and grandparents, too. There are still feelings of pain, longing and disappointment. In my work, I want to explore this further and understand why a very young generation is developing a fresh – and hopefully critical – perspective on East Germany, while still viewing it with empathy.
I hope people will still be talking about this in 30 or 40 years’ time, because it’s important to keep the GDR in our collective memory, in all its complexity. Different people found different ways of getting through life under a dictatorship and making something of their circumstances, always asking themselves: “How much do I adapt? And how much do I resist?” Those are questions I still ask myself today. Of course, I hope that the social disparities will eventually level off. But as long as existing wealth remains largely untouched, social divisions will persist. And because eastern Germany started out at a disadvantage, it will never be able to fully catch up. The idea that living conditions would one day be completely equal was an illusion, a false promise that many East Germans were all too willing to believe.
October 2026