The images of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the words of the former German Chancellor Willy Brandt: “Jetzt wächst zusammen, was zusammengehört,” still have the power to move us, despite the fact that more than ten years have passed since the events themselves. Amidst the euphoria of 1989/90, indeed, nothing seemed farther from the mark than the SED's claim that the two different states had become different nations and had developed separate identities, in particular, in East Germany, a “Socialist GDR identity.” Although the notion that there might exist a separate GDR identity had been raised before 1989, even in the West, what East and West Germany seemed to share nonetheless appeared to be more significant. The continued existence of a German national culture, avowed by many people on both sides of the border, seemed to justify the hope that the two states might be quickly melded, especially considering that the people in East and West were — thus the hyperbole of the time — “brothers and sisters.”

As a result of apparently ever worsening “growing pains” after unification in 1990, however, Brandt's image of “growing together” soon became an often-satirized figure of speech. It came to be replaced by other images, such as the metaphor of the “Mauer im Kopf,” coined in the early eighties by Peter Schneider, or by the characterisation of the East German population as “Fremde in ihrem eigenen Land.”