Abstract
The task of reconstructing political identity in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) is influenced by the former polity's unique transition experience of ‘democratization through unification’ with the pre‐existing Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1990. Special features of contemporary eastern German identity derive from a dual historical context consisting of the memory of life under state socialism and the memory and continuing experience of the FRG as reference culture. Various expressions of distinctive eastern German identity can be identified: the ‘third way’ socialism which originated with the ‘peaceful revolution’ of 1989; the ‘Trotzidentitat’ (identity of contrariness); ‘Ostalgia’ (nostalgia for the East Germany of the past) and ‘Ossi’ pride, a self‐aware, positive response to the derisive western stereotype of the ‘whingeing’ easterner. The last form has the greatest potential to sustain itself as a live and lasting expression of separate easternness within a united Germany.
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