The Vicious circle of the Identity of the East German Masses - the Dilemma of the Construction of the German Common National Identity

Abstract

After the World War II, Germany was divided into two parts, the East and the West carried out social economy and national construction for half a century under the guidance of planned economy and market economy separately. The longer the division of Germany, the greater the gap between east and west in terms of economic system, political culture and so on. Now, Germany has been unified for more than 30 years, and the economic integration between the East and the West has achieved remarkable results. However, in terms of identity, there are still barriers between east and west that hinder the construction of a common German identity. In order to figure out what factors hinder the German identity forming, through reviewing history of the process of German economic integration, unequal economic developing structure was found that it could be origin of the barriers.