German Angst: After the Honeymoon

Abstract

Transformation became a scientific term in the 1990s to describe and name the means for a good end. On the one hand, transformation meant a transfer of institutions, elites, finances, and legal structures from West to East; on the other hand, more than one million people migrated from East Germany to West Germany between 1989 and 2012. From West Germany came the political, economic and scientific advisors and consultants who tried to show and tell the East Germans where and how to use the above mentioned means for the good end. A joke made the rounds in East Germany at that time: The West rooster rolled a huge ostrich egg into the East henhouse and set up in front of the hens: „Ladies, I don’t want to grumble, but I wanted to show you how we work!”