A Bitter Berlin

Twenty years ago the world celebrated as the Berlin wall came tumbling down. But now some Germans want the bricks put back together.

According to a new survey one in seven Germans want the Berlin wall back, saying they were better off when the country was divided. The survey of a thousand now-unified Germans shows 15 percent of the country’s 82 million citizens long for the old days of two Germanys. This revelation comes just weeks ahead of the twentieth anniversary on the fall on November 9th.

The survey found that many respondents who had been westerners when the wall was intact are bitter about the higher taxes they must pay to rebuild what was the communist controlled east. Since the wall came down about one thousand seven hundred and sixty two billion dollars of their state funds have been transferred over to help.

And those who resided in eastern Germany are upset about their lower income levels and declining population rate, which has dropped by two million in the past ten years.

But I vividly recall an interview I conducted in Berlin right after the fall with a former Stassi prison camp victim. He showed me around the prison where he had been tortured and held in solitary confinement for months at a time. That prison camp was in East Berlin, not far from the Checkpoint Charlie border with the West.

Democracy certainly comes at a high price. But freedom still beats fear.

(Brian Banmiller is a national Business Correspondent for CBS News Radio, free lance writer and public speaker. The former television business news anchor in San Francisco can be reached at brian@banmilleronbusiness.com .)