BERLIN — As Germany celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new study shows that some 1.3 trillion euros ($1.9 trillion) have been transferred from the west to rebuild the east.
The report by the Halle-based IWH research institute shows the net transfers from west to east — a sum equivalent to over half of Germany’s total economic output in 2008 — had “risen significantly” in the past decade, weekly Welt am Sonntag reported.
The east has cast off many shackles from its communist past, thanks partly to the transfers, but unemployment remains nearly double that of the west and economists say it is still years away from catching up with the richer part of the country.
The unpublished IWH report was originally commissioned by the government in 2006, but the Finance Ministry later withdrew its name from the project because of differences of opinion about how the figures were calculated, the newspaper said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was working as a scientific researcher in East Berlin at the time, said in her weekly podcast that the fall of the wall was “the happiest day in recent Germany history.”
She added that she went off to the sauna “as usual on Thursdays” when she heard that the East-West border was about to open, an event that proved a watershed in 20th-century history.
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