Left really with no other option the bourgeoisie then decided to celebrate June 17, the day in 1953 when the workers in Berlin rose up against the East German Stalinist bureaucracy. The protests directed against the SED government, sparked off by an intensification of work norms, was subsequently revised into an uprising against communism as such. So finally the third of October was adopted as a national holiday. But, from the very start, any idea that the reunification could be so interpreted as to play the role of a national myth enjoying broad consent proved illusory. From an historical standpoint the era of the nation state as an instrument for progress has long since passed.
World economy dominates every aspect of national economic life.
This reality cannot be ignored by simply recalling the nation. In the epoch of globalisation the conjuring up of national values inevitably assumes reactionary, chauvinistic or xenophobic forms. The fact that the third of October has met with so little response amongst the public says more about reunification than all of the official speeches combined. Reunification overcame the borders between the two German states only to establish much deeper social divisions. It points not only to the end of the GDR, but also the post-war FRG based on politics of social equilibrium.