I spent 5 years in a small city in the former East Germany and I am still spending a lot of time there. The "Ostalgie" is especially the nostalgia of full employment and social bonding. People basically say, we went from communism to hard capitalism without the paternalism social democracy West Germany enjoyed. In 1994, 80% of the jobs in the industry were cut with a few emblematic cases of West German companies buying back the companies, removing the hardware, shipping it in China and resuming the production there. It was not a reunification, it was a take-over without respect for the good things in the East. For example everything with respect to employment of women, women/men pay equality, etc. Nowadays, Germany is figuring out that it was not that bad.
I was not able to find a single person saying, please send back the STASI, it was better with.
You must only accept that early 2000, the bubble crashed, the complete economy went out of track and that just 10 years after the reunification. They did not had the time to taste the good working capitalism.
My father lived in various bits of East Germany during the communist era. He had nothing to say but good things about the situation, until he pissed off a couple of Stasi in the late 1970s that was and was deported to the West after a fairly light telling off (fortunately versus locked up). The main thing that pissed him off about this is that he had just bought a new Robotron TV that he spent two years saving up for and had to leave it behind. He is bitter about this to the day :)
If it wasn't for the Stasi, it would have been a modern Utopia. Stable employment, manufacturing oriented economy (value added everywhere) and could pretty much stand alone. They even pushed family values and equality for all over conspicuous consumption, which is pretty much the entire facade of capitalism these days.
This ALL went down the shitter at reunification.
Perhaps someone should try it again (without the Stasi that is).
Some Ostalgie: I have three bottles of Vita Cola in the cupboard (that stuff rocks) and a Praktica MTL 5 camera which I use regularly - I find these to be the essence of the good bits of the GDR :)
A Utopia? Perhaps you are setting the Utopian bar a bit too low?
There was very little, if any freedom of expression or freedom of speech. Not very utopian.
Average citizens had their exposure to the outside world limited. Not very utopian.
Citizens lived in a very tightly controlled society. A society controlled by the government and secret police. Not my idea of utopia.
Even if the modern internet had existed then, it's doubtful that a citizen would even be allowed to come to a site like this and even have this discussion.
As far as the Stasi go, you can't just say "without them it would have been fine" because they are completely intertwined with that society. That society required very little or no dissent to continue and that is why the Stasi existed: To crush dissent and keep everyone thinking how wonderful their "utopian" existence was....
Your next door neighbour to the left (Netherlands) here. You're forgetting the part where under the commies you were not allowed to be a free indivudual. No creativity unless within the State's rules. Added value? Stolen / copied tech from the West, low quality stuff with no luxery. Everybody worked for the same pay. No incentive to become more. You're everybody's slave basically.
Versus socialist Britain for example? (where I live).
Dragged through the courts for using Facebook and Twitter, held indefinitely without trial under the Terrorism Act, all the technology is imported from the communist far East, low quality things with a contract attached, luxury as a form of class ego via conspicuous consumption, everyone works for the minimum wage in service industries, no incentive to do anything but live on state handouts.
Really? thats why a lot of young people move to GB right? I agree with you we (the west) are heading in the wrong direction but (thankfully) we're not a commi State (yet).
I was actually referring to talented young people from other european states (France, etc) that are seen as startup/business unfriendly, but I get your point. GB -thankfully- is not a commi country but it is showing a socialist trend. If it were a communist State they would have shot Nigel Farrage years ago ;-)
I was not able to find a single person saying, please send back the STASI, it was better with.
You must only accept that early 2000, the bubble crashed, the complete economy went out of track and that just 10 years after the reunification. They did not had the time to taste the good working capitalism.