I know we agree that there was only one true Germany but that wall obscured a lot more than just the view.

I had family on both sides of the wall and they were overjoyed at it coming down, even if for some it was only because it meant they got to see family and friends they hadn’t seen in decades. Many stayed with my my uncle in the west for weeks, even a couple of months. Some stayed permanently, others went back to the East.

The wall and the iron curtain had a dual effect for both sides. The grass could always be greener on the other side just as it could always be worse.

There were definitely family members who settled in the West after the wall came down to be with family or because while they had a baseline of security in the East they were still broke with few or no career prospects. Some of those came to regret what they left behind. Some of my family in the west were stunned at the realities of the East after only ever being fed tales of misery and secret police oppression.

The idea that there was “nothing left for them back home” was shared by at least one family member who was an ideological (if disillusioned by the time I knew him reasonably well) communist. Not because he didn’t understand the cruelties of the West, but because he knew the (Communist) party was over. Plenty of people sensed that the Soviet dream was over, defeated. They could go back to the East, what was about to be a newly Capitalist East to be governed vindictively by it’s former enemies, but what would be the point? Better to be with family in the more prosperous West if it was going to by the cruelties of capitalism either way.

And frankly, you look at the way that the German state has treated, mistreated, underfunded, and looked down on the former East over the years and it’s hard to argue that they weren’t right.