Germany’s nostalgia problem

The FT has a useful explanation for why interpreting Saxony-Anhalt simply as “angry easterners” misses something. Eastern Germany really did experience extraordinary post-reunification economic disruption, population loss and persistent wealth disparities. But the cultural split now contains competing nostalgias: Ostalgie for a lost eastern social world and western nostalgia for the seemingly stable pre-1990 Federal Republic.

That matters because each side increasingly sees the other as ungrateful: some eastern Germans see reunification as western takeover; some western Germans point to roughly €2tn of transfers and wonder what could possibly satisfy eastern grievances. The AfD is exceptionally effective at turning that unresolved historical identity dispute into contemporary politics.

The AfD’s eastern strength is not just a temporary response to migration or inflation; some of its foundations are generational and identity-based, making them substantially harder for ordinary economic improvement to erase.