“German Unity”; We are not celebrating.
About the enormous suffering that accompanied German reunification, and how its mistakes still shape Germany today.
With our article “Everyone is voting for the AfD, why actually?” we explore some sociopolitical consequences of the mistakes of reunification in more depth.
Today, on October 3rd, 35 years ago, it was the end of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) – After 45 years of a divided Germany, 28 of them with a wall, Germany was one nation again.
Today, like every year, winner’s Germany delights in the images of the fall of the Wall and its export product “democracy” – we are not celebrating.
The German Unity, or the “German Question”, was of course a topic long before 1990, or 1949:
The German Question arose with the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 – The Congress of Vienna in 1815 created a loose confederation with the German Confederation, but the national and liberal strivings for unity remained unresolved. In the 19th century, the Greater German solution with Austria and the Lesser German solution under Prussia stood opposed: After the failure of the March Revolution and the end of the alliance between the working class and the fresh bourgeoisie against the feudal lords in 1848, Bismarck, appealing to the princely states to unite against France, pushed through the Lesser German solution – in 1871, the German Empire emerged as the first German nation-state.
With the transition from feudalism to capitalism, monopolies, trusts, and financial oligarchies developed in all European nation-states by 1914, whose competition for colonies and resources ended in the first imperialist world war.
After defeat and the Treaty of Versailles, the question of Germany’s role remained unresolved. German capital, due to the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles and the rise of the workers’ movement, had placed its bets on the most reactionary representative of its capital interests; Hitler. With the crushing of National Socialism in 1945, Germany disintegrated into occupation zones – the German Question entered a new phase, marked by division and the Cold War.
Berlin Crisis and the Wall
The division into East and West Germany, later the GDR and the Federal Republic (FRG), was the ultimate expression of the new enmity for the now hostile former Allies. The Soviet Union wanted to completely demilitarize Berlin as a “free city”[1] as a buffer between the two states and keep it as an “independent political entity” non-aligned – the Western powers did not.
The “Berlin Ultimatum” (1958), in which Khrushchev threatened that if the Western powers did not agree to declare Berlin a free city, the Soviet Union would sever the connection routes between West Berlin and the FRG, ultimately led to the (second) Berlin Crisis. The FRG began on a large scale to poach skilled workers from the GDR and many more decided, amidst the West German “economic miracle” stationed by the Marshall Plan following the binding of West Germany to American capital, to seek work in the FRG.[2]
Emigration from the GDR, the declaration that West Berlin was a NATO protection area, the rejection of the demilitarization of Berlin by the Western Allies – the consequence was the endless arms buildup of both sides of Berlin:
The Soviet Union and the United States placed nuclear weapons within firing range, Soviet and American tanks faced each other barrel-to-barrel on the streets of Berlin – In the words of US Senator Fulbright: “I don’t understand why the East Germans don’t close their border.” Thus, the decision was made by the GDR with Soviet approval and silent American consent to build a wall – In Kennedy’s words, that was “not a very nice solution, but still better than war!”[3]
The first sections of the wall stood within a few days, by the end of August 1961 it stood in its entirety. Thus, it encompassed about 156 kilometers, 112 kilometers of it in the known concrete and stone manner. In height, it reached between 3.40 and 4.20 meters, in width about 1.20 meters[4]. Behind the wall was a control strip between five and 100 meters wide, on which a series of border security installations were erected, including watchtowers with 3-5 NVA soldiers each, a total of approx. 1.3 million landmines, and a series of electric fences. Away from Berlin, i.e., along the remaining 1244 kilometers of the inner-German border, there was no wall; here the “green border” was mostly secured simply by fence, ditch, and control zone.
So now the wall stood and Berlin was quiet – and it is not the purpose of this article to focus on Berlin or the GDR beyond that – but on what came after the wall.
A Brief Note on the GDR
To keep it brief regarding the GDR itself: The GDR was a state that created massive successes in the education, health, and employment sectors. There was no homelessness, (de jure) no unemployment, and no hunger – rent, if one can call it that, averaged 2.4% of the monthly household income (1986). Life in the GDR was not financed by profits from the Global South and any possibility of capital accumulation was non-existent. The GDR did not wage a single war throughout its existence, as the necessity for it was also absent due to the end of capital accumulation. Women, who in West Germany were still subjected to largely patriarchal conditions, were freed from every form of structural discrimination; 49.1% of the entire workforce were women[5] (1986), who worked for equal pay and under the same conditions as their male counterparts – women had twice as many orgasms in the GDR as women in the FRG.[6] The Nazi paragraph § 175 criminalizing deviant sexual orientations was repealed in the GDR in 1958 and homosexuality decriminalized – in the FRG it remained until 1994, in 1958 alone 1727 people were convicted in the FRG because of their sexual orientation.[7]
The GDR maintained close friendly relations with the socialist and progressive states of its time, including through massive humanitarian deliveries to fighting socialist Vietnam, Cuba, FRELIMO in Mozambique, the Angolan MPLA in its resistance against their Portuguese colonial masters, and the PLO in its institutionalization of Palestinian resistance and international recognition. As the only “Western” state, they voted for UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 (1975), which recognized Zionism as a form of racism.
At the same time, the continuity of living standards in the course of the GDR increasingly contradicted the development of the consumer goods industry; although the basic need for food was always met, “luxury goods” such as cars, televisions, and stereo systems (and bananas) were scarce due to the bureaucratization of the planned economy. Thus, the average waiting time for a car was 15 years[8]. The purchasing power, which was high anyway due to minimal expenses for rent etc., thus often lost its actual value; what one wanted to buy was frequently not available. The contradiction between the development of heavy industry and agriculture after reconstruction and the needed consumer goods could never be fully resolved, despite prioritization from the 1970s onwards. The Ministry for State Security (MfS, “Stasi”), while understandable in its existence, used terrible methods with the complete surveillance of deviant opinions, extrajudicial imprisonments, solitary confinement, and psychological and physical violence against prisoners, causing a lasting alienation of the GDR population from the state.
Censorship of art, science, and opinion was omnipresent. The same applies to border security; the erection “of the Wall” was not an atrocity of the GDR, as it is often portrayed in bourgeois historical narrative, but a comprehensible consequence of the Berlin Crisis (see above) for both sides – nonetheless, 140 people[9] died crossing the border between East and West, partly due to automatic firing devices, mines, and rifle fire.
Sabotage among friends
In the course of the 1980s, the GDR leadership increasingly positioned itself openly against the fatal Perestroika policy of the Soviet leadership, Honecker himself saw it as an “attack on the socialist state of workers and peasants”[10].
So it is of course true that the GDR economy, due to the factors mentioned above, entered periodic crises as early as the beginning of the 1980s, but was in a much better situation than the USSR at the beginning of Perestroika. By 1990, the GDR had developed into a “modern industrial state” with higher living standards than any other Eastern Bloc state. With an export rate of 39% (cf. 32.4% in the FRG) in 1990[11], it reached 9th place in the world ranking of “major industrial nations” by the 1980s.[12] In terms of labor productivity, it was among the 15 most productive countries in the world and at the top of the Eastern Bloc[13] and achieved massive social achievements until Perestroika with the doctrine of the “Unity of Economic and Social Policy”, including the doubling of child benefits in 1987, the introduction of the paid baby year in 1986, furthermore massive subsidies for basic foodstuffs, rent, energy, and transport, a housing construction program with over three million new builds and modernizations for half the population, massive rent subsidies, and repeatedly increased pensions. [14]
The course against the Gorbachev line, which would have led to massive social cuts in the GDR (as in the USSR), came from Moscow along with an isolation of the GDR within the Eastern Bloc. The GDR was heavily dependent on raw material deliveries from the Soviet Union, but suffered from unreliable deliveries, unfavorable trade conditions, and the necessity to make disproportionate contributions to the development of poorer partner countries within the Comecon. The increasing deterioration of terms of trade as well as the lack of competitiveness of the industry within the Comecon framework massively exacerbated the structural problems.
“the reduction of Soviet crude oil deliveries at the beginning of the 80s forced the GDR economy to expand exports to an unforeseen extent, to further expand the use of lignite, and to save energy and raw materials. According to calculations by the State Planning Commission, the GDR had to bear additional price burdens in the amount of 31.4 billion rubles (currency equivalent 145 billion Mark) in trade with the USSR from 1975 to 1985, that was 63% of the export volume of these years at effective prices.”[15]
As early as 1981, the USSR reduced oil deliveries to the GDR from 19 million tonnes to 16.8 million tonnes, this development continued through the eighties and intensified after the start of Perestroika. Oil deliveries from the NSW (“Non-Socialist Economic Area”), which were of crucial importance for the GDR economy, cost more hard currency “than was planned for the entire import of the GDR in 1982 against convertible hard currency (445 million VM).”[16] This was followed by a massive increase in the already “too large” national debt, partial isolation within the socialist bloc, and a forced economic restructuring in favor of hard currency acquisition, which in turn worsened the situation of consumer goods production.
GDR Broken, Germany Whole
With November 9, 1989, the developments in the GDR in the 1980s came to their synthesis; the wall was gone. Within a few months, the SED system disintegrated, free elections to the Volkskammer in March 1990 brought a government to power that aimed for rapid accession to the Federal Republic, i.e., a reunification of the two German states.
In parallel, inter-German negotiations as well as talks with the victorious powers of the Second World War began within the framework of the “Two Plus Four Talks”, which created the foreign policy prerequisites for the “United Germany” – The treaty encompassed “to agree on the final settlement with respect to Germany”, concretely the withdrawal of Soviet occupation troops (NATO troops were allowed to remain limited), the reduction of the combined armed forces to 370,000, the renunciation of nuclear weapons, and the “full sovereignty” of the “United Germany” internally and externally.[17] Federal Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher also assured the Soviet leadership that there was “no intention of extending the NATO defense area […] This by the way applies not only in relation to the GDR, which we do not want to annex, but it applies quite generally”[18] – that turned out to be nothing.
Article 146
A few weeks later, the Unification Treaty, drafted in August 1990 between the two German states, came into force – the GDR was now history; the GDR acceded to the Federal Republic with the enactment of the Basic Law on October 3rd. The Unification Treaty swept all previous ideas of a truly united Germany, in the sense of a political, economic, social fusion of both systems, off the table.
And this was unconstitutional: The German Basic Law was already defined by its name as “Basic Law”, instead of “Constitution”, since its enactment in 1949 as a provisional arrangement, which was to remain in force until the Germans in the Saarland and East Germany could decide on a common constitution upon accession to the united nation. Thus, Article 146 read until 1990 as follows:
“This Basic Law shall cease to apply on the day on which a constitution adopted by a free decision of the German people comes into force.” (Art. 146 GG, 1959-1990)
After reunification and broad discussion in the German Bundestag, whereby the simple incorporation of the GDR into the area of application of the Basic Law was considered and rejected as “annexation” by the majority of parliamentary Social Democrats[19], the CDU/FDP government decided after an “eight-hour war of words in the Bundestag”[20] to de facto annex the GDR via Article 23 GG and not to adopt a new, legitimized constitution.
Via Article 23 GG, not the GDR directly, but its states as “new federal states” were integrated into the FRG, thus circumventing the necessity of constitutional amendments.
To make this possible, Article 146 GG also had to be changed, since 1990 Article 146 GG reads as follows:
“This Basic Law, which since the achievement of the unity and freedom of Germany applies to the entire German people, shall cease to apply on the day on which a constitution adopted by a free decision of the German people comes into force.”
So a common constitution had been clarified – Article 146 GG now essentially only stated that it was fundamentally possible to choose a new constitution.
And of course, the Federal Republic could not allow itself a democratically legitimized constitution involving the former citizens of the GDR. Some basic rights of the GDR constitution, such as the right to housing and work, would have been unavoidable in an all-German constitution with democratic participation of the people of East Germany – but not possible for the calculus of the Federal Republic.
The Treuhand; Unconditional Surrender
On June 1, 1990, the Monetary and Economic Union introduced the West Mark in the GDR at an exchange rate of 1:1. Due to the sudden connection to the world market and the instantaneous revaluation of the currency, industrial production collapsed to one third of its 1989 value by 1991. At the beginning of the Monetary and Economic Union, Chancellor Kohl assured; “No one will be worse off than before – but many will be better.”
The enterprises of the former GDR, which were not designed for profit anyway and thus “unproductive” by capitalist standards, collapsed in on themselves. For West German investors, the collapse of industrial production was to prove a suitable means for a bargain.
Thus, the federal government decided in July 1990 to massively expand the Treuhandanstalt (THA), which had actually been founded to manage the assets of the GDR “in the interest of the general public”[21], and to replace its leadership level, which until then consisted largely of former East German plant managers, with West German economists and business administrators. At its head; Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, who was previously CEO of the stock corporation Hoesch. Thus, on June 17, 1990, the purpose of the THA changed:
“The preamble of the [Treuhand Law] passed on June 17, 1990 states: «Driven by the intention to reduce state entrepreneurial activity through privatization as quickly and as far as possible, to restore the competitiveness of as many companies as possible and thus secure jobs and create new ones [and] to provide land for economic purposes […] the following law is enacted.” [22]
When asked whether Lothar Späth, Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg and a significant wire-puller behind the sell-off of East Germany, demanded the “unconditional economic surrender of the GDR”, he answered; “I’ll say quite brutally, yes.”
Thus, the THA became quasi overnight the owner of 8000 formerly publicly owned enterprises (VEBs), of 17.2 billion square meters of agricultural land, of 19.6 billion square meters of forest area, of 25 billion square meters of real estate, of about 40,000 retail shops and restaurants, of 14 department stores, thousands of bookstores, hundreds of cinemas and hotels, and several thousand pharmacies – and approx. 3.6 million employees.[23]
Over the next four years, the Treuhandanstalt was to stain the now “united” Germany, which one thinks to cherish on October 3rd, with this unity until today.
On February 13, 1990, the “net fixed assets” of the GDR were still approx. 1.4 trillion DM, due to the shock of the Monetary and Economic Union, Economics Minister Christa Luft spoke in May 1990 of only 900 billion – In August, Treuhand chief Rohwedder spoke of 600 billion. In 1994, Rohwedder’s successor, Treuhand President Breuel, put the fixed assets at minus 275 billion. Minus.
The privatized publicly owned enterprises went 85% to West German capitalists, nine percent to foreign ones, and only 5% to East German owners.[24] The East German enterprises were sold at bargain prices to push the privatizations “as quickly as possible” – it is known in numerous cases that West German companies “used the liquidation of the VEB plants to cannibalize potential competitors”.
In these four years after the turn, 2.5 million jobs were completely destroyed – Four million lost their jobs entirely by 1994, 1.45 million people were on short-time work. In agriculture, the number of employees shrank from 703,108 (1989) to approx. 159,000 persons (1996):
“These figures would be even more dramatic if 566,000 had not retired as early retirees and if 280,000 East Germans had not found refuge in employment and qualification companies and thus relieved the unemployment statistics.”[25]
The sell-off of the GDR enterprises went hand in hand with the dismantling of the social infrastructure; thus, women with 59% of the unemployed (1991) were structurally disadvantaged for the first time since 1949:
“Because the almost seamless network of crèches, which was denser nowhere else in the world than in the former GDR, [became] increasingly wide-meshed, because previously company-financed crèches were closed without replacement.”[26]
Around one million East Germans were dependent on social assistance by 1991 – in two thirds of these cases due to unemployment. [27]
The tax assistant Regina Mainzer tells of her experience of the turn in “The Other Life”:
“With the turn, the vita of so many people was destroyed, mine too. Where I had worked diligently, very honestly, and full of enthusiasm before, I was supposed to fall in line and say: My life was worth nothing until now? […] I also had a beautiful life before, I lived, laughed, loved, cried in the GDR – everything that a person has in their life, I also had in the GDR. […] With great heartache I must say that [the turn] many work colleagues, also friends, did not make it and took their own lives. And that really, really hurts me, those who didn’t make it. Well, I hadn’t planned to sell wine over the phone for 18 years, that didn’t fit my life plan at all – but that was forced upon me after the turn.”
How many people of the former GDR took their own lives as a result of the turn cannot be proven statistically. However, it is certain; the death rate in East Germany rose by 20% (women) and 30% (men) between 1989 and 1991. The birth rate in East Germany fell by 50% between 1989 and mid-1993.[28]
The first reckoning for the destruction of so many lives was received by the Treuhand, and with it the FRG, with the murder of THA chief Rohwedder on April 1, 1991. The exact perpetrators are unknown to this day; however, it is clear that they were no friends of the Treuhand policy. The confession letter stated:
“Rohwedder was even then one of those desk perpetrators who walk over corpses daily and who plan misery and need for millions of people in the interest of power and profit. […] The crowning of Rohwedder’s career was to be his function as Bonn’s governor in East Berlin. Since its annexation, the ex-GDR is de facto a colony of the Federal Republic: The political, economic, and military decision-making centers lie in Bonn or with West German corporations. This colonial status is planned as temporary, because the Federal Republic needs the ex-GDR as a functioning capitalist part for its great power plans – after all, the main pillar on which political power here is based is economic potency. Before that, the economy of the ex-GDR as well as the social structures there (from the health sector to the crèches) are to be systematically destroyed, so that afterwards capital can organize the reconstruction according to its standards on free ground and with uprooted people. That is the plan, and the Treuhandanstalt is to organize this collapse.”[29]
By large parts of the West German media coverage, and this until today, the misery of the people in East Germany after the turn, if treated at all, was portrayed as their “laziness” due to socialist upbringing[30], “false East German victim narrative”[31] (DF) or simply as a necessity, because the GDR infrastructure simply had to be developed.
And with the latter, one can probably only agree with them. The absolute subordination of the people of the former GDR, the panicked privatization and rehabilitation of almost every East German enterprise, and the plunge of millions into poverty – that was necessary to subordinate the East German subject to the West German calculus and to make the East German soil profitable for that calculus.
It is also of course true that the enterprises of the GDR were naturally decrepit for the purpose of an enterprise in the FRG; because the enterprise in the GDR did not serve competition, it did not serve profit.
Therefore, we do not want to claim here that the whole thing could have been done better, because in terms of the purpose of the matter, namely the competitiveness of the former GDR, it was all correct as it was.
Afterlife of the Whole Thing
If you look at a map of Germany today with the respective election results of the federal states, it seems as if Germany is still divided. Bourgeois right, social democratic and Green in the West, far-right in the East.
Bourgeois political scientists like to explain this with the “dictatorship flaw” of the East Germans through their (generation-spanning) socialization in the GDR, there is “in large parts hardly any understanding for democratic participation or the responsibility that the citizen as a citoyen bears for the democratic community” writes Christoph Becker, managing director at the Center for Liberal Modernity, at T-Online.
Becker appeals here for an “East German ’68, a societal debate about the structural violence in GDR society and the personal entanglement with this history” in order to “finally overcome the authoritarian legacy of the GDR (and ultimately also of the NS) and open up the possibility for a democratic renewal and liberal re-foundation of East German society.”[32]
One wonders if these political scientists have ever set foot in East Germany. According to a study by the University of Leipzig, “Two thirds of the total 3,500 East Germans surveyed stated in a survey that they yearn for the GDR again”, 37% of East Germans state that they feel perceived as “second-class citizens”.
In our article “Everyone is voting for the AfD, why actually?” we write the whole thing as follows:
The development of right-wing extremism in the East is vulgarly idealistically portrayed by bourgeois political scientists as above as a personal problem of the East, since the people there are “partly socialized in a form of dictatorship that even after 30 years they have not arrived in democracy” (Marco Wanderwitz, ex-Commissioner for the East)
Without asking; what has this democracy brought the people in the East?
The arrogance towards the people in East Germany, which is expressed precisely through this lack of understanding on the part of bourgeois political science (as above), fundamentally cannot explain the success of the AfD.
Thus, supposedly left-wing media also repeatedly publish articles highlighting the “lower education level” of the AfD voters, as if educational attainment were some kind of political exclusion criterion.
Although the success of right-wing populism in the East, as well as in Germany as a whole, is a phenomenon that is simple to understand materially.
In the 2025 federal election, 54% of AfD voters voted for the AfD because they are “convinced of the party”, i.e., conversely, that 44% of the electorate still vote for them purely out of disappointment with the “old parties”.
“No other electorate evaluates government performance at the federal and state levels, the work of representatives of traditional parties, as well as the practice of German democracy as a whole, as negatively as that of the AfD.” (Roberto Heinrich, Infratest dimap)
The “old parties” stand for the Treuhand for the people in the East, which cost two thirds of all VEB-employed GDR citizens their jobs after the turn, they stand for 34 years of incomplete rectification of the East-West disparity and mockery of East Germans, among other things as “dictatorship-socialized”.
From this marginalized position arises an incredible pride, a nationalism that often even limits Germany to East Germany, and conversely East Germany to Germany.
“East East East Germany” is in an abstract, vulgar way even a parallel to the national pride that imperialized populations in the Global South often exhibit.
In this form, nationalism is the political manifesto of the anger, which concentrates on the antagonist – in the case of the AfD in the East, that is the FRG and its politics – and can one blame them for that?
The people of East Germany were screwed over so badly by their new rulers through the privatization of over 50% of all enterprises, the cutting of 3 million of the 4 million jobs, and the shutdown of a third of all enterprises in the same year of the turn, that more than a third of the adult population felt that they were “no longer needed in this society” (Zeit).
In the five years after the turn, 80% of working East Germans temporarily or permanently lost their jobs.
This holds true today: 39 percent of the permanently income-poor in Germany live in the new states, although only one fifth of the total population lives there. (HBS).
So wouldn’t the talk of “Treuhand-socialized” East Germans be more accurate? Because unlike an apparent dictatorship socialization, the material conditions in East Germany are still much worse than in the West.
And of course it is the case, as Wilhelm Reich already knew, “Economic hardship increases the disciplining of children. Anxious parents demand strict obedience, and thus the authoritarian character is passed on from generation to generation.”
On this feeling of injustice, which is based on the material conditions of East Germany, the resentment against migrants on the part of many people in the East also arose; expressed polemically, they don’t want to accept why “they” are being helped, but “we” are not. On the real, precarious existence of the homeland, the desire for an improvement in living conditions is tied to time periods that are ideally long enough ago to be nostalgically idealized.
[1] https://germanhistorydocs.org/de/die-besatzungszeit-und-die-entstehung-zweier-staaten-1945-1961/ansprache-des-sowjetischen-ministerpraesidenten-nikita-s-chruschtschow-auf-einem-sowjetisch-polnischen-treffen-in-moskau-10-november-1958#:~:text=Im%20November%201958%20wirft%20der%20sowjetische%20Regierungschef,nutzen%2C%20die%20Integrit%C3%A4t%20der%20DDR%20zu%20untergraben
[2] https://einheit-interkulturell.de/themen/beginn-arbeitsmigration/#:~:text=Zum%20Studium%20in%20die%20DDR,1.)
[3] https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ddr/mauer-grenze/mauerbau-proteste-kennedy-chruschtschow-100.html
[4] https://www.planet-wissen.de/geschichte/deutsche_geschichte/die_berliner_mauer/ddr-der-ausbauder-mauer-100.html
[5] https://d-d-r.de/ddr-politisches-system-berufstaetigkeit-von-frauen.html
[6] https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/warum-ddr-frauen-den-besseren-sex-hatten-887563131525
[7]https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C2%A7_175_Strafgesetzbuch_(Deutschland)#Entwicklung_in_den_Westzonen_und_der_Bundesrepublik_bis_1990
[8] https://www.hdg.de/lemo/kapitel/geteiltes-deutschland-krisenmanagement/niedergang-der-ddr/mangelwirtschaft.html
[9] Determining the number of “wall deaths” is complicated and varies depending on the scope, in this regard. we recommend the Wikipedia article “Todesopfer an der Berliner Mauer”. We follow the information of the “Stiftung Berliner Mauer”.
[10] https://www.bundesarchiv.de/themen-entdecken/online-entdecken/themenbeitraege/sed-und-stasi-zum-reformplenum-der-kpdsu-im-januar-1987/
[11] Köhler, O., 2011. Die große Enteignung: Wie die Treuhand eine Volkswirtschaft liquidierte, p. 123.
[12] Köhler, O., 2011. Die große Enteignung: Wie die Treuhand eine Volkswirtschaft liquidierte, p. 125.
[13] Kuhrt, E., 2000. Am Ende des realen Sozialismus. Vol. 3, Opposition in der DDR von den 70er Jahren bis zum Zusammenbruch der SED-Herrschaft, p.72.
[14] Kuhrt, E., 2000. Am Ende des realen Sozialismus. Vol. 3, Opposition in der DDR von den 70er Jahren bis zum Zusammenbruch der SED-Herrschaft, p.87 ff.
[15] Kuhrt, E., 2000. Am Ende des realen Sozialismus. Vol. 3, Opposition in der DDR von den 70er Jahren bis zum Zusammenbruch der SED-Herrschaft, p.87 ff.
[16] Kuhrt, E., 2000. Am Ende des realen Sozialismus. Vol. 3, Opposition in der DDR von den 70er Jahren bis zum Zusammenbruch der SED-Herrschaft, p.197.
[17] https://www.bpb.de/themen/deutsche-einheit/zwei-plus-vier-vertrag/
[18] https://www.swr.de/kultur/geschichte/gab-es-zusagen-an-moskau-die-nato-nicht-nach-osten-zu-erweitern-116.html
[19] https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/deutsche-einheit-202098
[20] https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/deutsche-einheit-202098
[21] Christ, P. & Neubauer, R., 1991. Kolonie im eigenen Land. Die Treuhand, Bonn und die Wirtschaftskatastrophe der fünf neuen Länder, p. 116.
[22] Christ, P. & Neubauer, R., 1991. Kolonie im eigenen Land. Die Treuhand, Bonn und die Wirtschaftskatastrophe der fünf neuen Länder, p. 121.
[23] Christ, P. & Neubauer, R., 1991. Kolonie im eigenen Land. Die Treuhand, Bonn und die Wirtschaftskatastrophe der fünf neuen Länder, p. 21.
[24] Kuhrt, E., 2000. Am Ende des realen Sozialismus. Vol. 3, Opposition in der DDR von den 70er Jahren bis zum Zusammenbruch der SED-Herrschaft, p.96.
[25] Christ, P. & Neubauer, R., 1991. Kolonie im eigenen Land. Die Treuhand, Bonn und die Wirtschaftskatastrophe der fünf neuen Länder, p. 110.
[26] Christ, P. & Neubauer, R., 1991. Kolonie im eigenen Land. Die Treuhand, Bonn und die Wirtschaftskatastrophe der fünf neuen Länder, p. 244.
[27] Christ, P. & Neubauer, R., 1991. Kolonie im eigenen Land. Die Treuhand, Bonn und die Wirtschaftskatastrophe der fünf neuen Länder, p. 245.
[28] Köhler, O., 2011. Die große Enteignung: Wie die Treuhand eine Volkswirtschaft liquidierte, p. 226.
[29] https://www.rafinfo.de/archiv/raf/raf-4-4-91.php
[30] Christ, P. & Neubauer, R., 1991. Kolonie im eigenen Land. Die Treuhand, Bonn und die Wirtschaftskatastrophe der fünf neuen Länder, p. 245.
[31] https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/norbert-f-poetzl-der-treuhand-komplex-warum-die-treuhand-100.html
[32] https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/panorama/wissen/geschichte/id_100938176/tag-der-deutschen-einheit-die-ddr-war-eine-permanente-demuetigung-.html
