Since many Germans are upset about the fact that some researchers sat down and tallied the cost of German re-unification, we could not resist and decided to call it "The East Germany Purchase".
Like the Louisiana Purchase, you can see German re-unification in part as taking over assets from a state in need of lots of money. In more recent terms, you can call nation-building.
Buying up an East German villa or castle for 1 Deutschmark, that's just the spirit of entrepreneurs.
Like a Mastercard commercial, many reader comments go: Reunification? Priceless.
Why would researchers go and try to figure out how much the venture cost?
To learn how to do it better in the future?
Most certainly not - some neighboring countries would cringe at the thought.
Scientists are a curious bunch, they go and investigate, and then historians can use the findings and write books, with or without ample unquoted help from Wikipedia. Like the recent book about Great Naval Battles, withdrawn after it turned out to be not all that much more than a paper version of Wikipedia entries, stitched together with some own stuff and nice illustrations.
Historically, the 2 trillion are really nothing but another war debt, get over it.
Note: If you do check the German sources, you may think they talk about 2 billion. It ain't so. The math wizards who brought the U.S. the unit "billion" failed to mention that one thousand million is "Milliarde" in German.
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