The Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, but Germany is still divided • Hacker News Board

Re: The Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, but Germany is still divided

#71

Post by AnonymousPlanet » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 12:00 AM UTC

jboynyc wrote: post #60

emsy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nation is not defined by borders and politics.

Yes, it is. National ism as a political ideology just likes to pretend as though it weren't.

Ok, since we're kind of nitpicking over the word "nation": what do you suppose was the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation?

I'm aware that you were referring to the idea of a nation as it was established around the time of the French revolution. However, "Germany" as some kind of coherent construct is not just a recent concept.

Re: The Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, but Germany is still divided

#72

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 12:20 AM UTC

emsy wrote: post #44

jboynyc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Enormous timespan"? I think if you take some history into account you will reconsider that. We tend to project the existence of a construct called Germany backward in time, but Germany did not really come into existence until a bunch of small states were united under Prussian leadership in 1871, and even then it remained a pretty fragile construct. Lots of tribalisms remained. Still, if you count the timespan betwee…

A nation is not defined by borders and politics.

I think you are confusing nation with state, which is an easy to mistake to make when the nation-state -- the idea of state tightly coupled to nations -- has been a norm for several centuries, but while nation-states might be the current norm, nations and states remain distinct concepts.

In the specific context of Germany, while its true that Germany has been a nation for quite a long time (long before it was a single state), but nations are just social identities, and both sides in the Cold War were quite active in actively using propaganda to build "us" vs. "them" identities, and its not that surprising that without strong organized active supporting for the old pan-German identity and with active efforts to create opposing identities to replace it over a couple of generations, that there is a gulf created which will take another couple of generations of active effort -- at least -- to erase.

Re: The Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, but Germany is still divided

#73

Post by bildung » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 8:23 AM UTC

pinaceae wrote: post #55

bildung wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulties these regions face are a direct consequence of the exploitation done by the communist dictation (the SED). While that is an often repeated trope, you'll be hard pressed to find actual studies supporting it. In fact is seems that correcting for the different start positions of both economies (marshall plan in the west vs. reparations in the east) explains pretty much all the difference that was appear…

bullshit. as it takes a magnitude more energy to refute bullshit than to produce it, i'll be brief. 1., the complete soviet block collapsed due to its economic system and policies. growth, consistently from 50 to 80s, higher than in the west? are you delusional? 2., the "saurer regen" was a) never that bad and b) still tackled and fixed. what exactly did the east ever fix? as someone who travelled into the old easter…

bullshit.

Thanks for that insightful reply.