"Unity is good, everything is good": The long road to equality: A podcast about East Germans and their experiences

Even more than 30 years after the accession of the GDR to the FRG, there is no real unity between East and West.

"Unity is good, everything is good": The long road to equality: A podcast about East Germans and their experiences

Even more than 30 years after the accession of the GDR to the FRG, there is no real unity between East and West. There is still a wage gap, East Germans are severely underrepresented in leadership positions in politics and business - and West German identity is still the norm: anyone born in the old federal states is German without a prefix. All others are East Germans.

In his podcast "Unity is good, everything is good", Toni Welcome would like to explore the reasons for this. The media manager, born in Stolpen near Dresden in 1988, invites various guests with an East German past and talks to them about how their background has influenced them.

"If people don't see themselves represented appropriately with their thoughts, their desires, their attitudes and characteristics, then this has an impact on the functioning of our society," says Willkommen the stern. "I would like us not to lose sight of this dimension, which is so special for Germany, against the background of the discussions about diversity."

It's important to him to maintain a constructive attitude: "It's no use complaining and looking back - what we have in our hands is in front of us, not behind us."

This is immediately evident in the conversation with his first guest, the journalist and filmmaker Prof. Olaf Jacobs, who, as the editor of the study "The long way to the top", has dealt scientifically with the topic of integration in the top positions in society.

Jacobs keeps bringing new perspectives into the debate. He opposes the lament that is often expressed in the West that "the East chooses differently". One could also regard the new federal states as seismographs. The fragmentation of the party landscape and the formation of governments with more than two parties existed in East German states long before a three-party alliance was constituted with the traffic light coalition in the federal government. Here the East could even be a pioneer of social developments that will affect the whole country with a time delay.

In the second episode, Willkommen talks to the initiator and author Michael Bohmeyer, who is committed to the unconditional basic income. In an interview he describes it as "a synthesis between freedom and security, between East and West, between liberalism and socialism". If you listen to Bohmeyer's explanations, you quickly come across an advantage of East German identity: anyone who was born in the GDR has already undergone a system transformation - and is therefore more open to questioning the existing system and perhaps changing it.

The thought-provoking impulses gained through these discussions are therefore also suitable for getting Wessis to think as well. A podcast for every German. So the title fits perfectly: Unity good, all good.

The episodes are available at www.einheitgutallesgut.de and wherever there are podcasts

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