A Third of Easterners Miss the GDR

Every third person from Germany’s former communist eastern states regrets that little remains of East German everyday life. In a Forsa survey carried out for Stern magazine, 34 percent of those asked said they missed the way of life in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). A further 23 percent said they partly missed the GDR and 43 percent didn’t had no regrets at all about the demise of the East German way of life. The poll of 802 people comes as another wave of “Ostalgie” or “eastern nostalgia” makes the rounds in Germany. Besides films and television specials celebrating East German lifestyles, several bars and restaurants throughout Germany now offer GDR-themed parties. But critics claim making the GDR trendy glosses over the darker side of the totalitarian state.