The (Eastern) German

On November 9, 1989, thirty-five-year-old Angela Merkel went to an East Berlin sauna with a friend, just as they did every Thursday. But outside, the city was electric: The Berlin Wall had fallen, and Eastern Germans were rushing to freely cross into West Berlin for the first time in 28 years.

The next morning, Merkel, then a quantum chemist, went to work as usual. Sixteen years later, however—despite having no background in politics prior to 1989—Merkel would become the first eastern German chancellor.

When the Berlin Wall fell, it would have been unimaginable for an eastern German to lead a reunited Germany. Now, on the thirtieth anniversary of that night, Merkel has become one of the country’s longest standing chancellors. But she’s still one of very few eastern Germans to rise to the political elite—and as such, leaves behind a complicated legacy of her own chancellorship and of the limited political power eastern Germans hold today.

On August 23, 1990, the East German legislature voted to adopt the federal German constitution, replacing the former authoritarian state’s centrally-planned elections and economy with western German liberal democracy and capitalism. Largely unfamiliar with these new structures, eastern Germans entered reunification at a disadvantage. Westerners considered many Easterners unqualified for positions in the new political system, and both eastern and western Germans were skeptical of anyone connected to the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) government. As a result, western Germans held a disproportionate majority of state and federal positions during reunification—setting a precedent of western-led leadership that continues today.

As of 2016, only 7 percent of federal secretaries came from the East—although eastern Germans make up 17 percent of the national population and 87 percent within eastern states. At the state level, eastern Germans held just 70 percent of senior government positions and 13.3 percent of judgeships in top state courts in 2016. Today, only two members of Merkel’s sixteen-person cabinet lived under the GDR, including her.

Thus, Angela Merkel’s ascendance to chancellor in 2005 was a historic achievement for eastern Germans. The question then was how this would shape her governing.

Merkel’s approach to politics might suggest an eastern German-influenced persona: Her decision-making process is characterized by careful study and “tiny steps,” and she’s known for holding firm opinions once she’s made them—while keeping her thoughts essentially opaque. Many observers of Merkel have theorized that this scrupulousness is perhaps unsurprising for someone who grew up under a repressive government—one with restricted travel, mass citizen surveillance, and compulsory political participation.

But in her policies, Merkel has proven to be more of an internationally-focused chancellor than an eastern-focused one. Over the last fourteen years, Merkel has become the European Union’s “de facto leader,” navigating challenges such as Russian aggression towards Ukraine, the global recession, and the Greek bailout. By 2017, pundits were debating whether she stood not just as the German chancellor, but as the “leader of the free world.”

According to Irish Times journalist Derek Scally, many of her eastern constituents were initially satisfied with this leadership. But that changed in 2015, when over one million people fled conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Merkel’s decision to welcome refugees to Germany left some of her eastern German constituents feeling deeply betrayed: While the German government has invested over two trillion euros in the East since reunification (versus just 78 billion on migrant resettlement), many eastern Germans believe the government has reneged on its promise of an eastern economic miracle in favor of migrant interests.

For some, this reaction stems from xenophobic, racist, anti-immigrant nationalism. For others, it’s rooted in long-standing economic frustration. Twenty-nine years after the collapse of the GDR’s centrally-planned economy, eastern Germany’s economy still lags behind that of Western states. Today, the average eastern income is about 85 percent of a western income, and per 2015 data, poverty levels in all eastern states were above the national average. Merkel’s decision to shift Germany away from coal energy, which will eliminate 20,000 eastern jobs, has not reassured voters.

Earlier this year, Merkel acknowledged she hadn’t always prioritized eastern German concerns, bluntly stating that she couldn’t “deal with domestic living standards equity” while handling both the 2008 financial crisis and the 2015 refugee crisis. “My day has only 24 hours,” she said. This week, she asserted that she “[has] to serve all people in Germany.” To her, “the assumption that [she] should primarily deal with the concerns of the east Germans is, therefore, wrong.”

Merkel, then, can’t be accused of favoring the East as chancellor—and her political pragmatism reflects a general trend among successful eastern German politicians today. During reunification, eastern German politicians ”experienced profound, constant pressures to conform” and were rewarded for prioritizing national and European issues over regional ones. They were also explicitly cautioned against discussing the regional divide—in 2000, the minister president asked the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) speaker for Eastern parliamentary representatives not to play the “East card.”

According to George Packer, Merkel had “no political agenda at all” when she first entered German politics, adopting the CDU platform not out of ideological passion, but by studying the manual. She’s also been careful not to overemphasize her own eastern background, and with good reason: When she first became CDU chairwoman in 2004, some in her party suspected her of trying to recreate the GDR in reunited Germany. In other words, notes Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung political correspondent Karl Feldmeyer, Merkel has a “perfect instinct for power.”

In short, Merkel has not always prioritized eastern German interests—and according to political scientist Jennifer Yoder, she also hasn’t “[prioritized] the integration of [other] eastern elites.” To Yoder, Merkel’s success is just another sign that reunification took place “according to western norms and experiences, with little actual synthesis or integration.”

Over time, the political distance practiced by Merkel and other eastern German politicians has yielded observable democratic consequences. As of 2010, there was a slight discrepancy between the ideologies and approaches to governance held by eastern German constituents and those favored by their eastern representatives. This is, of course, natural in every democracy—but the gap was nevertheless smaller between western German politicians and their voters.

This disconnect, then, may have provided a crucial opportunity for a party like the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). The AfD, which is much more successful in eastern states, recently won huge gains in Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia state elections with a campaign that—via their trademark xenophobic rhetoric—promised the reunification outcomes that politicians like Merkel have supposedly failed to deliver.

Last year, Merkel joked about her “efficient” appointment to then-chancellor Helmut Kohl’s “unity cabinet” in 1990. “I was still relatively young for politics … came from the East, and was a woman, so I ticked three [quota] boxes,” she said.

In many ways, her long political career since then has been an exercise in proving herself an individual, not someone who simply fulfills a quota. And, for better or worse, she has done just that.