East and West Germans Forever? On Perceptions of Differences and Conflicts Between Eastern and Western Germans

The differences and inequalities between the former East and West Germany were understood as a transitional stage after German unification; in particular, differences in mentality were expected to converge over the years. The aim of this article is to use new data to examine cohort differences in how Germans living in the former East and West perceive each other. Conceptually, we distinguish three central hypotheses, each suggesting its own empirical patterns. The socialization hypothesis assumes that growing up in a divided country-and in particular for the former East Germans who experienced state socialism and the transformation-has led to attitudes that lose their relevance for subsequent cohorts. The othering hypothesis states that East-West differences are constantly renewed through reactance to (discursive) dominance of the Western German majority society and thus remain salient for all age groups in the East and the West. Finally, the thesis of East German persistence and hardening assumes that it is not necessarily important to have lived in the German Democratic Republic oneself, but that an East German narrative is passed on in families and social networks. The salience of the topic should therefore still be high in the East. With original survey data from 2022, we can show that the German-German dividing lines in the cohort sequence fade among young Western Germans, whereas among young Eastern Germans a persistence of perceptions of difference and conflict is discernible. The results point to the thesis of East German persistence and hardening, whereas for Western Germans the pattern of the socialization hypothesis is plausible.