ABSTRACT
This chapter examines important cultural differences between East and West Germans which had evolved prior to unity. It argues that by the mid-1980s a broad majority of Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) citizens had come to accept national division as a normal state of affairs, and therefore viewed the unity mandate embedded in the “provisional” constitution as an historical relic, not as an active agenda item. The degree of interest in East German developments displayed by average FRG citizens has long been a function of “current events” and levels of international tension. Many FRG scholars struggled to present a balanced or even positive picture of policy ebbs and flows in the East, while a second school sought distance in more historical treatments; others concentrated almost exclusively on the repressive elements of German Democratic Republic (GDR) existence. By the mid-1970s, wealthier FRG-souls began to encounter a revolution of rising expectations among les misembles of the GDR, also rooted in cultural misunderstanding.
