Maria Häfer Reflects on East German Identity 36 Years After Unity

In a first-person essay published by der Freitag, author Maria Häfer examines how growing up in the East shaped her sense of identity, 36 years after German reunification. Häfer, who was four years old when the Berlin Wall fell, describes the collapse of her mother's job in the Vogtland region and the chaotic 1990s that followed. She writes that she only came to understand herself as East German after first encountering the West. Born in a small Saxon town between Plauen and the Trabant factory in Zwickau, she also claims Mecklenburg heritage through her mother's family in the Müritz region, where some villages have barely 100 residents. Häfer rejects the label of a post-reunification child, noting she was already four when the Wall came down. She describes herself as equally Mecklenburger and Vogtländer, equally East German and German, and would prefer to see herself as European and a world citizen. The essay appears in the current print issue of der Freitag.