They have more self-confidence. To Wessis, she explains that Ossis feel ignored or misunderstood. Ernst Wackernagel, a former West German border policeman who guided us around the Luebeck area 10 years ago and again last month, sounds exasperated that people are so fixated on what they DON'T have. The roofs are tiled, the walls are painted, the sidewalks paved, and still they mumble and grumble. In Poetenitz, a little town across the border from Luebeck dominated by a derelict collective farm headquarters, we drive past attractive new cottages.
Money is one way of closing the gap.
Another is to stress shared history. But recent history still entails unfinished business. In Schlagsdorf, Wilfried Krause, the Lutheran pastor, showed us the 180-page file the East German secret police kept on him. The snooping was obsessive. Pastor rang church bells for world peace in 1985.