The Berlin Wall “will be standing in 50 and even in 100 years”, Erich Honecker, the leader of socialist East Germany, prophesied in January 1989. Not for the first time, he was spectacularly wrong. The wall fell just 10 months later, in November 1989. But not all barriers to German unity fell with it. Honecker’s German Democratic Republic (GDR) may have been wiped off the map by subsequent events, but like an afterimage that won’t fade, its contours remain etched on Germany’s cultural, economic and political landscape.

In 2024, the east of the country remains in sharp focus as the heartland of anti-establishment movements. Three of the five states that once formed the GDR will hold regional elections in September, the outcomes of which are anxiously anticipated ahead of the general election set for next year. The far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is leading the polls in all three, while also being the second-strongest party nationwide. In the frantic search for answers that might help explain and combat the rise of extremism, many ask: what is wrong in the east?

It’s not a new question. East Germans, nicknamed Ossis, have long been viewed with suspicion by a media landscape that is overwhelmingly dominated by west Germans, or Wessis. Even the majority of regional papers in the east are run by western editorial staff, and this has consequences for the way people are seen and portrayed. Mathias Döpfner, the boss of one of Europe’s largest media groups, Axel Springer, had to apologise last year after some correspondence was leaked in which he claimed: “Ossis are either communists or fascists … disgusting.”

He is not the only one to feel that there is little point engaging with east Germans. During the last........

© The Guardian