Post-Wende Generation: East German Identity in West German Prejudice

A 1995-born author, part of the 'Postwendekinder' generation, reflects on the persistent stigma of growing up in Berlin-Marzahn, an East German district. He never experienced the GDR but is constantly forced to justify his origins to West Germans. During a social sciences internship at a Bochum school, he was shocked to see students reduce the East to a failed planned economy, ignoring its culture and way of life. He notes that neither the students, their parents, nor their teachers had any firsthand knowledge of the East. His mother's smile, he says, refutes all East German clichés.