[Modern History] During the reunification of Germany following the fall of Berlin wall, how was the distribution of assets and real estate formerly owned by state of DDR and the Communist party handled?

by saargrin

As opposed to the longer drawn-out process in USSR, German reunification was a rather sudden and unplanned move
As far as i know in DDR people did not hold individual property rights to industrial infrastructure,land or real estate
How was the transition handled, and how were the assets divided?
Suppose a regular german citizen living in a city flat, would he get ownership of that?
Or would somebody involved in agriculture be given some land rights?

confused_druze

The Treuhandgesellschaft was set up in March 1990 to with the stated aim of restructuring East Germany «to function in a free market economy». After the (first real) elections, however, the East German parliament came to be dominated by the conservative [as in pro-West German CDU] Alliance for Germany coalition which changed it's aim to auctioning everything off, in the Treuhandgesetz signed in June. That resulted in massive unemployment as the new owners would scrap and sell everything found on their new property. The Treuhand tried to counteract this by setting up contractual obligations for buyers in the beginning of 1991 but it was too late, the bulk of it was sold and the head of the Treuhand, Detlev Karsten, got assassinated in April same year. By December 1991 the Treuhand was abolished entirely and all it still owned was handed over to the West German «Federal Agency for Reunification» which was abolished, in turn, in 2003 handing everything over to the «Institute for Federal Real Estate».

Source: Routledge Encyclopedia for Contemporary German Culture of 1999. The article for Treuhand was written by Peter Barker.