Hannah Lee
Expo E42B: Writing in the Social Sciences
December 17, 2021
Abstract
This study explores the political, social, and economic effects of German reunification through the lens of the U.S. press representation of these industries as part of the larger discourse on reunification. I argue that East and West German reunification came at a dire cost to East Germans. Though it comes at a financial toll to West Germans, simply being subsumed by Western ideologies and market led to trauma for the East whose reverberations are being felt to this day. The respective vehicles represent that the East simply could not stand up to Western competition; indeed, it would have been better for the psyche of East Germany for the Trabant to remain a subsidiary of an existing German car company rather than the Trabant and Wartburg being completely and totally eradicated and replaced by Mercedes and Volkswagen. Lost with the culture of Eigen-sinn is a well-roundedness and gumption and imaginative, creative intelligence, and a confidence in ones capabilities.
Keywords: Trabant, Wartburg, Volkswagen, Mercedes, German Reunification
In a letter by Anton S to the “Prisma” Programming Office of GDR Television, he writes
“On February 8, 1989, my family was fortunate enough, after waiting 15 and a half years to buy a Wartburg 1.3. Expectantly, we went to the car dealership. After a four-hour wait, we were shown a car, a Wartburg 1.3. With the words: “This is your car; have a look. In the meantime, I’ll get the paper’s ready!” The process of “purchasing a car” was over and done with.”[1] But Anton begins to list the numerous problems with the car as soon as he begins driving, starting with the air vents “blowing directly in” his face.[2] The battery drained after a few days of driving because “the light in the trunk had been burning since the day” he bought the car.[3] “The latching mechanism for the trunk only worked on the left side,” and the windshield wiper didn’t work.[4] He fixed all these problems on his own. After a while, the transmission began making strange noises, so it had to be sent back to the factory for a new one to be installed, and the doors were to be realigned (they stuck). After 6-8 weeks rust begins to emerge from all the “Wartburg 1.3’s seams.”[5]
“After remarking that my family and I deserved a good product for the good money we earned through our labor, I was told that this wasn’t [the factory representative’s] problem and that, after all, I didn’t have to buy this car”[6]
In describing the terrible attitudes and service of the Wartburg factory representatives as well as the shoddy engineering and manufacturing of the Wartburg, this East German citizen exposes the tip of an iceberg that is the condition of every facet of East German society.
Through my research, I seek to explore the political, social, and economic effects of German reunification through the lens of the U.S. press representation of these industries as part of the larger discourse on reunification. I argue that East and West German reunification came at a dire cost to East Germans. Though it comes at a financial toll to West Germans, simply being subsumed by Western ideologies and market led to trauma for the East whose reverberations are being felt to this day. The respective vehicles represent that the East simply could not stand up to Western competition; indeed, it would have been better for the psyche of East Germany for the Trabant to remain a subsidiary of an existing German car company rather than the Trabant and Wartburg being completely and totally eradicated and replaced by Mercedes and Volkswagen. Lost with the culture of Eigen-sinn is a well-roundedness and gumption and imaginative, creative intelligence, and a confidence in ones capabilities. Moreover, modern post-industrial capitalist society rewards specialization of labor and applauds repetitive, niche tasks as well as commercial industries such as finance over physical labor. The collaborative spirit of the Eastern bloc has been replaced by collective “distrust” and competition instead.[7]Not to mention the ills of industrialization such as illicit drug use, homelessness, and car accidents began to plague Eastern Germany. I chose to focus on US press coverage (with one Latin American article) to see how objective and accurate they were in depicting the then current situation unfolding with Germany’s reunification. Did they harbor a bias toward capitalism and democracy? In the long run, did they make accurate predictions about the economy? I also looked at secondary sources looking at the current unfolding, mostly fiscal, situation in the aftermath of reunification.
Literature Review
The Volkswagen vehicle became a symbol of West German financial, social, and economic recovery from the false promises and constant belligerence under National Socialism. The car came to represent the effects of changes enacted by economic minister Ludwig Erhard’s “vision of the social market economy” wherein healthy competition fostered a robust market while still providing economic safety nets for the most vulnerable in society.[8] The VW Beetle drove West Germans toward the future and away from its Nazi past– the minimal design of the VW meant to exude “honest dependability.”[9] “Improvements” to the car’s design were restricted to “invisible” engineering developments; thus its iconic body style remained unchanged for fifty-eight years.[10] “Against the backdrop of recent existential hardship and insecurity, the solid and reliable Volkswagen appeared as the epitome of trustworthiness.”[11]
The VW represented individual liberties in opposition to the “collectivist ethos” of the Socialist bloc.[12]Automotive writers described driving as the “essence of one’s personal freedom,” which Rieger argues utilizes a “key term of West Germany’s political language” and thus aligns the car with the Federal Republic’s liberal values.”[13]
The Trabant, on the other hand, represented East Germany’s attempt to maneuver both a competition with West Germany and a meeting with “Moscow’s demands.”[14] The use of plastics, which could be produced “entirely domestically”[15] grew out of necessity: a uniquely socialist product that stands up against the Federal Republic’s “economic miracle”[16] and does not depend on the embargoed imports of material with potential military use, such as sheet metal.
Moreover, the shortage of cars like the Trabant in East Germany stemmed from Communist ideas (borrowed from Stalin) of curtailing supply of necessities, including foodstuffs, to keep their subjects in a constant state of want. Zatlin describes how the “squalor of the socialist present” was ultimately meant to be sacrifice for the greater promised good of society.[17] Manufactured restrictions on consumer goods served to reorganize society to become more Proletarian by “building up massive heavy industry” and place ideological controls by granting certain groups of people rewards for political loyalty.[18] However, the shortage of consumer goods only “sharpened” their desire which led to political insurrection against the government.[19] Not only were there a lack of products, the service sector of East German economy was “virtually nonexistent,”[20] so citizens relied on their own gumption and know-how, fixing cars, TV’s, leaky roofs, etc on their own in this era of “Eigen Sinn” or “dogged and creative self-reliance.”[21]
Rieger, Rubin, and Zatlin all write about the Trabant/ VW industries but are not looking at the symbolism of the cars at the moment of the GDR’s demise. By looking at this era, we can further extend the symbols of the fate of these cars and ask the question: what was lost in the complete and total replacement of these cars? Not only did the complete take-over damage the psyche of the East, but jobs were lost as were all the positive aspects of communist East Germany, most notably, the socialist safety net for the most vulnerable in society.
Reunification: American Press coverage 1989-1991
It is interesting to read press articles like Marc Fisher’s “VW, E. German Automaker Race to Sign Deal” written December 23, 1989 in The Washington Post describing how “private sector leaders have stepped in with striking speed,” and that “about 40 percent of West German companies have already expressed interest in investing in the East.”[22] He describes how the VW-IFA (the company that makes Trabants) contract was the largest “joint venture,” and that both companies benefit, as VW could increase its market share and IFA would have access to “advanced technology” and “training for its workers.”[23] Fisher writes that “IFA managers are confident that it will always be an independent car maker” and “the question of being swallowed up does not exist for us”[24] The optimism and naivete, in retrospect, of the East German automakers shines through in the verbiage of this article, as two years later the car conglomerate IFA ceased to exist. While East Germans looked forward to a partnership and doubted they would simply be taken over, what they did not even fear, could not even fathom, did occur.
In Michael Meyer’s February 26, 1990 Newsweek article “The Hollow Society: East Germany Empties as Reunification Nears,” the focus is on the “rot” of East Germany and on the fact that the west is “offering everything the country needs to rebuild: construction materials, telecommunications equipment, medical supplies”[25] He describes the pollution in the cities of East Germany and ends his article with “if a unified Deutschland has long been a West German dream, for East Germany it may be awakening from a nightmare.”[26] Focusing on the destitution of East Germany with its poisoned rivers and air, with houses being “shabby” and “falling into disrepair,” Meyer focuses solely on East Germany as a country in distress, needing a hero that is West Germany. Meyer is not wrong but depicting the East as totally helpless and inept creates a vacuum for West Germany to fill, instead of a country with its own agency that has some value to offer the West.
Karen Breslau writes in her May 28, 1990 Newsweek article “The Lemons of Reunification”: Will anyone in the new Germany buy a Trabant?” she refers to the “smoke-belching” Trabant as the ultimate “symbol of East Germany’s economic failure”[27] She quotes a consultant for East Germany companies who says East Germans are “trying to turn around 40 years of economic practice in a matter of days. The trick is to break the free fall.”[28] She ends the article with a quote from Helmut Kohl: “Don’t forget…that we worked to reap prosperity in the Federal Republic.” She interprets his “message: East Germany won’t get a free ride forever.”[29]
Carl Hahn’s East German Homecoming, a New York Times article by Steven Greenhouse September 23, 1990 says there was much to celebrate in the investments of West Germany into factories of East Germany. Steven Greenhouse explores the “homecoming” of Volkswagen A.G. chairman, Carl Hahn, who built the foundations of what was to be a “$1.9 billion assembly plant” in 1990.[30] He describes how Carl Hahn had vowed to return to his homeland in the East to help rebuild it “and its painfully obsolete auto plants”; he said “East Germans had to wait 15 years for a car that was below human dignity”.[31]
Streetwise by Maryann H. Keller “The New Kids on the Bloc” in April 1991’s edition of Motor Trend says “the automobile provided a dramatic contrast of the differences between East and West. It was soon clear that the Trabant had no future once the borders came down and East Germans converted their money into West German marks.”[32] She states that the East Germans have been on a buying spree of Western cars, including Golfs, Passats, and Audis. “In 1990, about 300,000 new cars were sold in East Germany.”[33]
Both “End of an era: Last East German Trabant rolls off assembly line” by Leon Mangasarian in UPI and “Last ‘Little Stinker’ Signals End of an East German Era: Unification: Trabant car production ends today. The demise points to failures of Communist technology” by Tyler Marshall in the Los Angeles Times were published on April 30, 1991. Mangasarian also describes East Germans rejecting their “faithful little car” and abandoning their Trabis by the thousands; “abandoned and burned-out Trabis” littered the eastern German countryside.[34] The over “3 million Trabis produced in 1964” were headed to junkyards.[35] Tyler Marshall says the “funny little car helped foment the revolution that destroyed Europe’s barbed-wire divide and then became a de facto symbol of national identity for the eastern Germans who effectively lost their nation with October’s unification.”[36]
Reunification of the two Germanies signaled a new era of conjoined companies where East Germans no longer had to rely on the Trabant, nicknamed the Trabi, with its “26-horsepower motor” that “produces roughly the same amount of emissions as 30 large Mercedes-Benzes”.[37] The Trabi was an unreliable and potentially dangerous car when it came to collisions, as “crash tests” “using plastic dummies often left the dummies destroyed.”[38] Authorities often “insisted the Trabi was good enough as it was” and Marshall notes “as long as there was no competition, the authorities were right”[39]. The Trabant could only exist in a controlled economy where there were no adversaries to sharpen and hone the engineering and design of the car. The Trabant and Wartburg, whose design was only a little better than the Trabant, were highly sought-after vehicles whose waiting list could span fifteen years. But in a world of Benzes, Porsches, and Audis, the Trabant and Wartburg would not stand a chance.
In Roger Thurow’s article “Tale of Two Cities: Volkswagen Brings Hope to a Community in Eastern Germany—VW’s Home of Wolfsburg is Model to Ex-Communists Getting a Western Plant—Good Riddance to Trabant” in The Wall Street Journal says harshly, that the “world loved the Beetle; it laughed at the Trabi. Like car, like city, like country”[40]
The American press focused on the financial aspects of reunification, focusing on the cost the West would incur and depicting the West as a life-saving duex-ex-machina to a bleak, polluted, and flailing East.
In a 1998 book review of The Imperfect Union: Constitutional Structures of German Reunification by Peter E. Quint, Mathias Reimann describes the turning point for Germans in 1990. He begins his book review with an anecdote: his “first personal experience with the unification of” his “home country” in an “unlikely encounter in an unlikely place.”[41] He describes how he was on a stroll in Florence where he saw something “so bizzare” it stopped him “in his tracks”: a Trabbi, in the middle of a tourist crowd, occupied by “four obviously disoriented people.”[42] It was then he realized that “the political landscape of Europe as” he had known “no longer existed.”[43] Prior to the fall of the Berlin wall, Trabbi’s simply did not exist on “this side of the iron curtain.”[44] No one was allowed to drive out of Eastern Europe, and they “didn’t have the Western currency” to pay for the trip.[45] But as soon as Western currency was introduced to the GDR, these people “drove across the previously impassable border” with the “first Deutschmarks available,” braved the Western freeways with their two-stroke engines, and drove to Italy.[46]
The Aftermath: Looking Back
Reimann uses this anecdote to segue-way into his 1998 book review of The Imperfect Union, which describes “legal and institutional aspects of German Reunification.”[47] In his book review, Reimann describes how “the fundamental challenge was to merge two very different countries. After four decades of membership in opposing European blocs, the two Germanies had different political, constitutional, and legal systems; different administrative and educational structures; different economies; and different societies.”[48] He goes on to describe the specific attributes of the two sides: the FRG with its democracy and capitalism, “driven by competition and demanded performance.”[49] In contrast, the GDR was an “undemocratic, almost dictatorial, regime with a single-party monopoly, sham elections, and a practically meaningless constitution.”[50] Nonetheless, “the social system was more highly developed than in the West, virtually guaranteeing everyone a job, a roof over the head, and the basic means of existence.”[51]
Reimann describes how there were two options in reunification: one, for the two countries to reach a compromise, a happy medium, or two, for the East to be swallowed up by the West. The latter is what occurred, as “FRG’s Basic Law simply became the constitution of the East.”[52]
“Extending Western structures eastward was undoubtedly the simplest, fastest, and surest way of accomplishing unification.”[53] “Yet takeovers come at a cost…the shock therapy applied to the Eastern economy, exposing it to market forces with next-to-no adjustment period, has turned out to be a massive failure, resulting in the loss of almost half of all jobs. Almost a decade later, unemployment continues to be as high as productivity is low…Western taxpayers continue to pour billions of Deutschmarks into an East that looks more and more like a bottomless pit.”[54] He describes the take-over as largely a success but a missed opportunity for politicians to rethink reform.
In 2014, Terence Roth of The Wall Street Journal wrote of the aftermath: it costing a running tab that had reached between $1.5 trillion and $2.5 trillion and was still climbing”[55] No one in the west had an entire picture of how dire conditions were in the East, and “closer inspection in ensuing months revealed aging facilities, crumbling infrastructure, and unfolding environmental hazards.”
A Latin American article entitled “The Fall of the Berlin Wall: 30 Years after Germany’s Reunification, from Freedom to Painful Effects” describes how reunification ended up in people experiencing “terrible personal setback,” as West Germany’s economy was “devoured by the West” “resulting in the dismantling of some 3,700 companies and the privatization with layoffs of another 5,000, resulting in around three million East Germans losing their jobs”[56] The article quotes President Steinmeier referring to the “traumatic consequences of the liquidation of entire companies, and what meant for East Germans the dissolution of the social and cultural facilities associated with these companies”; the article attributes the discontent resulting from the “pain caused by this socio-economic process” as contributing to the votes going toward the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Just as Trabants and Wartbergs were abandoned in favor of Mercedes Benzes and VWs, the ways of the East were usurped by the West with no consideration for the customs and social mentality of the East. This has resulted in socio-political inequality and discontent that has persisted 30 years after reunification.
Bibliography
Breslau, Karen. “The lemons of reunification: will anyone in the new Germany buy a Trabant?” Newsweek, Vol. 115 (22), p. 48 May 28, 1990. https://hollis.harvard.edu/permalink/f/1mdq5o5/TN_cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_1883556856(accessed November 17, 2021).
“Brief Anton S. am Redaktion ‘Prisma’ des Fernsehens der DDR” [Letter by Anton S. to ‘Prisma’ Programming Office of GDR Television”], April 24, 1989. In A GDR Citizen’s Experience of Buying a New Wartburg, Volume 9. Two Germanies, 1961-1989, German History in Documents and Images. Translated by Allison Brown. https://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=843
“The Fall of the Berlin Wall: 30 Years After Germany’s Reunification, from Freedom to Painful Effects.” Translated by ContentEngine, L. L. C. CE Noticias Financieras. Oct 05, 2020, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/wire-feeds/fall-berlin-wall-30-years-after-germanys/docview/2448800022/se-2?accountid=11311(accessed December 16, 2021).
Fisher, Marc. “VW, E. German Automaker Race to Sign Deal.” The Washington Post.December 23, 1989. http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/historical-newspapers/vw-e-german-automaker-race-sign-deal/docview/139890046/se-2?accountid=11311 (accessed September 21, 2021).
German History in Documents and Images. Volume 9. Two Germanies, 1961-1989. Motorization of the FRG and the GDR (1960-1990). Federal Office of Statistics [Statistisches Bundesamt], ed., Datenreport 1992. Zahlen und Fakten über die Bundesrepublik Deutschland [Data Report 1992. Numbers and Facts about the Federal Republic of Germany]. Bonn, 1992, pp. 376-77. Translated by Allison Brown.
Greenhouse, Steven. “Carl Hahn’s East German Homecoming.” The New York Times. September 23, 1990. https://www.proquest.com/docview/108478098/D5DC268F4ECC4F6EPQ/1?accountid=11311. (accessed September 21, 2021).
Keller, Maryann N. “The New Kids on the Bloc.” Motor Trend Volume 43, Issue 4 (1991): 122. https://illiad.hul.harvard.edu/illbasicauth/HUL/pdf/6028694.pdf (accessed November 17, 2021).
Mangasarian, Leon. “End of an Era: Last East German Trabant Rolls Off Assembly Line.” April 30, 1991. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/04/30/End-of-an-era-Last-East-German-Trabant-rolls-off-assembly-line/9826672984000/ (accessed September 21, 2021).
Marshall, Tyler. “Last ‘Little Stinker’ Signals End of an East German Era : Unification: Trabant Car Production Ends Today. The Demise Points to Failures of Communist Technology.” Los Angeles Times.April 30, 1991. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-04-30-mn-967-story.html (Links to an external site.) (accessed September 21, 2021).
Meyer, Michael, “The Hollow Society: East Germany Empties as Reunification Nears.” Newsweek, February 26, 1990. http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/magazines/hollow-society/docview/1879163303/se-2?accountid=11311
Reimann, Mathias. “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass.” Review of The Imperfect Union, by Peter E. Quint, Michigan Law Review 96, no. 6 (May 1998): 1988-99. https://doi.org/10.2307/1290114.
Rieger, Bernhard. “Icon of the Early Federal Republic.” In The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagon Beetle, 123-87. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/lib/harvard-ebooks/reader.action?docID=3301270&ppg=187.
Roth, Terence. “After Fall of Berlin Wall, German Reunification Came With a Big Price Tag; Officials Scrambled for a Plan to Annex a Bankrupt State 25 Years Ago.” The Wall Street Journal. Eastern Edition. November 7, 2014. https://hollis.harvard.edu/permalink/f/1mdq5o5/TN_cdi_proquest_newspapers_1621183417 (accessed December 16, 2021).
Rubin, Eli. “The Trabant: Consumption, Eigen-Sinn, and Movement.” History Workshop Journal 68, no. 1 (2009): 27-44. https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbp016.
Thurow, Roger. “Tale of Two Cities: Volkswagen Brings Hope to a Community In Eastern Germany — VW’s Home of Wolfsburg is Model to Ex-Communists Getting a Western Plant—Good Riddance to Trabant.” The Wall Street Journal. December 12, 1991. https://hollis.harvard.edu/permalink/f/1mdq5o5/TN_cdi_proquest_newspapers_398267001 (accessed November 16, 2021).
“Volkswagen Beetle.” Autoevolution. Last modified October 16, 2020. https://www.autoevolution.com/volkswagen/beetle/
Zatlin, Jonathan R. “The Vehicle of Desire: The Trabant, the Wartburg, and the End of the GDR.” Germany History 15, no. 3 (1997): 358-380. https://doi-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1093/gh/15.3.358.
[1] “Brief Anton S. am Redaktion ‘Prisma’ des Fernsehens der DDR” [“Letter by Anton S. to the ‘Prisma’ Programming Office of GDR Television”], April 14, 1989, in A GDR Citizen’s Experience of Buying a New Wartburg. German History in Documents and Images. Volume 9. Two Germanies, 1961-1989, trans. Allison Brown, https://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=843.
[2] German History in Documents and Images, “Letter by Anton S. to the ‘Prisma’ Programming Office of GDR Television”
[3] German History in Documents and Images, “Letter by Anton S. to the ‘Prisma’ Programming Office of GDR Television”
[4] German History in Documents and Images, “Letter by Anton S. to the ‘Prisma’ Programming Office of GDR Television”
[5] German History in Documents and Images, “Letter by Anton S. to the ‘Prisma’ Programming Office of GDR Television”
[6] German History in Documents and Images, “Letter by Anton S. to the ‘Prisma’ Programming Office of GDR Television”
[7] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” 1994.
[8] Bernhard Rieger, “Icon of the Early Federal Republic.” In The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 129, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/lib/harvard-ebooks/reader.action?docID=3301270&ppg=187.
[9] Volkswagen Beetle,” autoevolution, Last modified October 16, 2020, https://www.autoevolution.com/volkswagen/beetle/.
[10] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 159
[11] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 184-185
[12] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 175
[13] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 176
[14] Eli Rubin, “The Trabant: Consumption, Eigen-Sinn, and Movement.” History Workshop Journal 68, no. 1 (2009): 34, https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbp016.
[15] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 34
[16] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 33
[17] Jonathan R. Zatlin, “The Vehicle of Desire: The Trabant, the Wartburg, and he End of the GDR,” German History 15, no. 3 (1997): 360, https://doi-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1093/gh/15.3.358.
[18] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 32
[19] Zatlin, “The Vehicle of Desire,” 373
[20] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 37
[21] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 28
[22] Fisher, Marc, “VW, E. German Automaker Race to Sign Deal,” The Washington Post, December 23, 1989, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/historical-newspapers/vw-e-german-automaker-race-sign-deal/docview/139890046/se-2?accountid=11311 (accessed September 21, 2021).
[23] Fisher, “VW, E. German Automaker Race to Sign Deal”
[24] Fisher, “VW, E. German Automaker Race to Sign Deal”
[25] Meyer, Michael, “The Hollow Society: East Germany Empties as Reunification Nears,” Newsweek, February 26, 1990, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/magazines/hollow-society/docview/1879163303/se-2?accountid=11311
[26] Meyer, “The Hollow Society”
[27] Karen Breslau, “The Lemons of Reunification: Will Anyone in the New Germany Buy a Trabant?” Newsweek, May 28, 1990. https://hollis.harvard.edu/permalink/f/1mdq5o5/TN_cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_1883556856 (accessed November 17, 2021).
[28] Breslau, “The Lemons of Reunification”
[29] Breslau, “The Lemons of Reunification”
[30] Steven Greenhouse, “Carl Hahn’s East German Homecoming,” The New York Times, September 23, 1990. https://www.proquest.com/docview/108478098/D5DC268F4ECC4F6EPQ/1?accountid=11311. (accessed September 21, 2021).
[31] Greenhouse, “Carl Hahn’s East German Homecoming.”
[32] Maryann N. Keller, “The New Kids on the Bloc.” Motor Trend 1991. https://illiad.hul.harvard.edu/illbasicauth/HUL/pdf/6028694.pdf (accessed November 17, 2021).
[33] Keller, “The New Kids on the Bloc.”
[34] Leon Mangasarian, “End of an Era: Last East German Trabant Rolls Off Assembly Line,” April 30, 1991. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/04/30/End-of-an-era-Last-East-German-Trabant-rolls-off-assembly-line/9826672984000/ (accessed September 21, 2021).
[35] Mangasarian, “End of an Era.”
[36] Tyler Marshall, “Last ‘Little Stinker’ Signals End of an East German Era : Unification: Trabant Car Production Ends Today. The Demise Points to Failures of Communist Technology,” Los Angeles Times,April 30, 1991. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-04-30-mn-967-story.html (Links to an external site.) (accessed September 21, 2021).
[37] Marshall, “Last ‘Little Stinker’ Signals End of an East German Era”
[38] Marshall, “Last ‘Little Stinker’ Signals End of an East German Era”
[39] Marshall, “Last ‘Little Stinker’ Signals End of an East German Era”
[40] Roger Thurow, “Tale of Two Cities: Volkswagen Brings Hope to a Community In Eastern Germany — VW’s Home of Wolfsburg is Model to Ex-Communists Getting a Western Plant—Good Riddance to Trabant,” The Wall Street Journal, December 12, 1991, https://hollis.harvard.edu/permalink/f/1mdq5o5/TN_cdi_proquest_newspapers_398267001 (accessed November 16, 2021).
[41] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” Review of The Imperfect Union, by Peter E. Quint, Michigan Law Review 96, no. 6 (May 1998): 1988, https://doi.org/10.2307/1290114.
[42] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” 1988.
[43] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” 1988.
[44] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” 1988.
[45] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” 1988.
[46] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” 1988.
[47] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” 1993.
[48] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” 1994.
[49] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” 1994.
[50] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” 1994.
[51] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” 1994.
[52] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” 1996.
[53] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” 1998.
[54] Reimann, Mathias, “Takeover: German Reunification Under a Magnifying Glass,” 1998-1999.
[55] Terence Roth, “After Fall of Berlin Wall, German Reunification Came With a Big Price Tag; Officials Scrambled for a Plan to Annex a Bankrupt State 25 Years Ago,” The Wall Street Journal. Eastern Edition, November 7, 2014. https://hollis.harvard.edu/permalink/f/1mdq5o5/TN_cdi_proquest_newspapers_1621183417 (accessed December 16, 2021).
[56] “The Fall of the Berlin Wall: 30 Years After Germany’s Reunification, from Freedom to Painful Effects,” Translated by ContentEngine, L. L. C, CE Noticias Financieras, Oct 05, 2020, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/wire-feeds/fall-berlin-wall-30-years-after-germanys/docview/2448800022/se-2?accountid=11311 (accessed December 16, 2021).