It's almost 25 years since the East German "communist" government and the Wall came down, and if you look closely there are intriguing cultural differences.
One such difference comes to light on a guided tour of a castle or palace in East Germany.
If you paused when you read this sentence, you had the same experience as our contributors.
Why would there be a notable difference almost 25 years after a social and political event so deep that few people in the West can really understand its magnitude?
Any palace tour in the West will prominently feature the history of the nobles who built the palace, lived there, ruled the land from it.
There will be extensive discussions of character, lots of anecdotes about the family, much ado about the relations with other rulers near and far. There will be descriptions of conflict and war, of sponsorship of the arts or of science.
None of this on our Eastern tour. Yes, the person who commissioned the current version of the edifice is mentioned, and so is a descendent who painted innumerable paintings of his horses.
They will mention when the rulers gave up the palace, in our example this was in 1918, with World War I coming to an end and the German Emperor first abdicating and then going into exile.
These mentions are presented as simple anchors of history and as an explanation for all the funky horse paintings. There are no anecdotes, nothing of the veneration that will shine through in your standard Western guided tour.
The tour is focused on the buildings, the styles, the explanation of the function of the various structures of the complex. The people who built the place are given more mention than the inhabitants. The architects, the craftsmen, the local builders thus are on an equal footing with the nobles. One set paid, the other worked.
So, the East German communists did not go on a Pol Pot or Taliban style rampage of destruction. They kept and maintained, albeit with not so much money, the heritage, including the delicate furniture and art.
Fun fact: there were many thousand small private enterprises in East Germany. Would you have known?
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