Abstract
Three years have now elapsed since the two German states were reunited. Reunited they may have been, but they have not grown together — indeed, they will not be able to do so as long as the process of reunification is merely regarded as the problem of the economic and financial transformation of a planned economy into a free market. It was probably only in 1992 that the sheer scale of this task was completely understood by German politicians, which explains why the complicated reunification process has been accompanied by complaints about the sluggish progress of the privatization of state-owned companies, unforeseen problems of adjustment and a lack of economic theory to back up political decisions. As eastern German economists began to fill in the large gaps in their knowledge by studying the founders of the social market economy such as Wilhelm Röpke, Walter Eucken, Alfred Müller-Armack and Ludwig Erhardt, they were doubtless astounded to find that the „fathers of the social market economy“ repeatedly emphasised that the establishment of a social market economy is more than just the installation of an economic system — it means the formation of a whole social set-up, which needs to consider not only economic conditions but also cultural and historical conditions. „Initially the situation is different in every country, the constellations of power and the possibilities of economic policy vary and there are different individual tasks.
Published Version
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