Press Review: What They Said About 15 Years of a United Germany

Fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin wall, which divided Germany for nearly 30 years, the papers were able to find little to celebrate.

"Most people remember the unbelievable astonishment and the great joy of that historical event," said Sven Siebert in the Sächsische Zeitung. "Today there is no trace of that exuberance and joy. And that is no surprise." One of the "biggest sociological experiments in history" had ended up creating huge problems between east and west that would take a long time, maybe even two generations, to disappear, Siebert reckoned.

"More and more people are attracted by the idea that each should go its own way," said Henryk Broder, a columnist for the influential news weekly Der Spiegel, writing in the Wall Street Journal Europe. "People in the east feel 'colonised' because they earn somewhat less ... People in the west feel exploited because the west has spent over €1.5 trillion on rebuilding the east."

"Germans were and still are far apart," agreed an editorial in the Kölnische Rundschau. "In spite of supposed economic and democratic strengths we haven't made any progress." Instead of investing in job creation, too much money had been spent on "foolish investments". Now, however, it was time for German politics to put an end to this, though it was not a problem the chancellor could solve on his own.

Germany was in a kind of twilight zone, said Andrea Seibel in Die Welt. "Both sides have woken up in a place where the mattress is harder and the global wind of change blows through the overheated rooms. It is not the old Federal Republic and not the new one in which we live."

In the Times, Roger Boyes reported on a 200-metre-long replica wall, which was also dividing the German capital. "It is jogging memories and stirring useful controversy in the country that is trying to pretend it was not split down the middle," said Boyes. The current situation condemned Germany "to long-term economic weakness and political frailty within the EU". So while rebuilding the wall was an "absurdity", a "reordering of the federal German system has become essential".