Comments by "Holger P." (@holger_p) on "Is there still a divide between EAST u0026 WEST GERMANY? #askagerman Series Pt. 4 | Feli from Germany" video.

The simpler word is: "Little boring .. by time". Life was pretty good .. but kind of everyday the same. What you experience in an old marriage also ;-) You feel like you want to break free, but actually it's not that bad anyway.
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Even the unemployed worked hard ;-) Actually everyone pretended to work hard, you could not been fired anyway ;-) And in case of low level emergency, people tend to help each other more. It's still the case today in case of floodings etc. If you can go and by a driller in the hardware store, you don't need to ask the neighbor for one. So people ask less for help, it does not mean they would not get it any more, if they ask.
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Well, it may have been this way in places. Don't generalize it too much with. Steel cutlery existed, even silverware. Usually for visitors from the west, you got out the good stuff.
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Differences are not bigger, than between the "flyover-states" and the coastal states in USA. It will never become totally equal, industrial cores will not move. Also a paygap of maybe 20% is normal to different US-states. But you cannot change peoples background, you cannot modify people, so this will just "grow out", by change of generations. People who experienced East worklife, and were 30 when the wall came down, are now in the age to retire.
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This is due to resettlements. Dialects develope if a group of people stay among themselve, if they don't travel. While in Russia the huge parts of siberia never have been areas working by themselves, there always was huge exchange of people and good. Also by banning people, same way Australia was populated. So I think before year 1900 people have moved less in Germany. Vladiwostok was founded 1860, that's pretty bad example I think, of course it's all just (west-)russian "expats" there. And smaller but older communities like Irkutsk may have lost their dialect, they hadn't have enough speakers. Today, dialects in Germany are getting lost too.
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@f800gt76 This TV effect and more mobility you can find worldwide. Switzerland is kind of the worse, even if they have the same language, people hardly understand each other from valley to valley. But now with TV and all the tunnels, it's going to vanish. In Germany, a dialect speaker younger than 40 must be from a rural area and never left his village. That's why this is associated with some kind of primitivity or missing education.
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We are missing some year-numbers, to understand this story. What do you consider a "russian line" ? The war was over 1945, the wall was build 1963, so this does not really fit together. Maybe you describe something else as east-germany, the area today belonging to Poland maybe ? This was a topic after 1945, but has nothing to do with German division. The time after 1945 is more known as resettlement or expulsion.
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@StereoSpace I guess so. So the term "east german escapee" is completly wrong. He is a dislocated person. There have been two steps in moving german borders, first was in 1945, by contract of the allied (Stalin, Eisenhower, Churchill). Russia as the winner wanted to have more land. So Russia got something from Poland and Poland got something from Germany. All the Germans in this had to leave. That are the dislocated persons. They did not escape, they were forced to leave. After that, Germany existed in todays borders. But it was divided, administrativly immediatly, but by the Iron curtain , the Berlin Wall, in 1963-1989. This is was this video is about, and the eastern part of this, is today considered an east german refugee (If one made to cross the wall in the 1970ies or 80ies). Maybe you know, or you can google where it is: Kalaningrad, today Russia, was a german city and is just russian since 1945. Today an enclave with no land-connection to Russia. This is, how far east germany reached out, up to 1945. But the iron curtain was just 50 miles east of Hamburg and Hannover, with Berlin as an island completly surrounded by "the east".
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But you could have gone in 1980 also. The iron curtain was not closed for you, it was only closed for the easterners.
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@hartmutholzgraefe I see, this is all just experience the East Germans never had, they never saw any border. And sure as a tourist destination it's not that fascinating. I was in eastern military service when the wall came down. Since you had to deposit your passport for this, you could not go anywhere abroad. So my first visit to the west was a few weeks later, I think around christmas. Actually the east germans have been paid to come over (It's a strange way to describe this, I know). So even people with less intention for a visit, went to the west.
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