I lived in the GDR for about 41 years and can now look back on 37 years as a citizen of the Federal Republic. I may therefore allow myself a comparison between these two systems. For that I want to use a method that the English at WRc suggested right at the start of my tenure as managing director of EnviaTec GmbH. The advantages and disadvantages of two alternatives in business are then compared in the following matrix:

I can shorten this matrix insofar as the “Threats” for the GDR had already become the death blow and thus the “Opportunities” were gone.

The table thus simplifies to

This is simple, but also immediately understandable. My comparison of the GDR and West Germany in the two tables of the tabular comparison follows this straightforward approach. The evaluation covers 19 different aspects of politics and the economy that have a particular influence on the lives of citizens. The selection of the aspects considered is shaped by my personal impressions and it is incomplete. For example, I did not even list freedom of travel or the rule of law, because here the question of the better social system answers itself.

In two respects I had to retract my originally positive assessment of West Germany: regarding ÖPNV and energy.

With regard to the ÖPNV of the Federal Republic I still saw, at the beginning of the 90er Jahre, a slight backlog in the maintenance of the track infrastructure and stations. But this turned into the opposite after Deutsche Bahn was run into the ground over ten years under the aegis of H. Mehdorn, because he wanted with all his might to make it fit for the stock market. The mocking phrase "Save at all costs" describes it best ... customers of the railway feel this today above all in trains that run late or are cancelled altogether.

A similarly unfavorable development can be observed in the energy supply. For many years it was based on a constantly adjusted mix of oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear power and renewable energies. Two ruptures changed it: the 2011 decision by Chancellor Merkel to phase out nuclear power and the end of Russian gas deliveries in 2022. The second was not a German decision but the consequence of the war: Russia throttled supplies via Nord Stream 1 from mid-2022 and completely stopped them on 2. September; on 26. September the two lines of Nord Stream 1 and a pipeline of Nord Stream 2 were destroyed by explosive attacks. Russian oil was embargoed by the EU for seaborne shipments; Germany additionally and voluntarily stopped supplies via the Druschba pipeline on 1. January 2023. Germany thus lost its cheapest energy source. The nuclear phase-out exacerbated the situation. As a result of these twin cuts — and the failure to prepare for them — more or less the entire economy and all citizens are affected by exorbitant energy prices, and the once-prosperous chemical industry is faltering (z.B. DOMO Caproleuna GmbH, PCK Raffinerie Schwedt).

Nevertheless, my conclusion today from the East-West comparison is that the capitalist economic system of West Germany is clearly superior to the socialist system of the GDR in everyday life. Only in education and upbringing and in culture do I see the GDR ahead. For ÖPNV and energy it's a tie. All other aspects go to West Germany. In all of this, however, the different starting position after 1945 must not be overlooked: West Germany had Marshall Plan aid, a hard currency, access to the world market and the security umbrella; the GDR was sealed off, had no access to capital markets and paid reparations.

In the table for the GDR a low fee often appears as a plus and decay as a minus. These are essentially two sides of the same coin: Prices set too low mean inadequate financing – and that in turn leads to neglected maintenance/repairs and thus deterioration of the assets. An economy without hard currency, with state-administered prices and without sanctions for poor performance destroys its own assets.

What in the GDR was price controls, in West Germany is competitive pressure: In Table 2 some positives are only the flip side of the negatives. Not everything that glitters is gold in West Germany either! What bothers me most about present-day Germany, however, are some things that don't fit into the context of Table 1 and Table 2 and were therefore left out:

• the growing wealth gap between rich and poor,
• the ever-increasing selfishness

and

• the almost reflexive allegiance to a transatlantic line that is directed against Russia and China, without anyone here seriously asking whose interests it actually serves.

Added to this is that Israeli government policy in Germany can hardly be criticized objectively anymore without one being accused of antisemitism.

Some friends and acquaintances with whom I discussed the pros and cons of the GDR and West Germany see the GDR ahead when it comes to social security. That cannot be denied. But: social security without sanctions encourages – as repeatedly observed in the GDR – complacency. For that reason I see it more as a disadvantage than as an advantage.

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