The GDR is an interesting example of a seemingly strong state that disappeared and left only ephemeral traces. The sudden dissolution of the GDR in 1990 shocked observers who a decade earlier had claimed that it was among the strongest and healthiest of the Warsaw Pact states. While it was clear the SED regime was not really popular, it had weathered various crises and there was something of a modus vivendi between the state and its population in the 1960s and 70s. The sudden collapse and dissolution of the GDR makes it hard to assess its actual impact as it often seems to have been a historical cul-de-sac of little relevance. But the idea of an erased GDR does not really bear out as there is a legacy within Germany of the departed GDR.

Some of this legacy is obvious in the form of Ostalgie whether in the forms like films like NVA, Trabi tours, Goldbroiler recipes, or Vita cola taste tests. Now some of this nostalgia is a mixture of ironic longing for a departed GDR and Ostalgie is highly selective in nature. In the latter case, the less than savory elements of the GDR- the Stasi surveillance, SED corruption, persistent shortages- are seldom the subjects of longing. Nonetheless, Ostalgie often does reflect a longing for seemingly simpler times in which there were stabilized rents (albeit housing shortages), a strong social safety network, and some highly localized community. Some of these positives of the GDR existed in symbiosis with the negative components of the dictatorship; the tightly-knit personal networks were necessary in an economy marked by persistent shortages where one needed friends to "arrange" for the little necessities to make life more bearable.

The legacy of the GDR is more though than the culture of Ostalgie. There are certain political palimpsests which the longer legacy of the GDR. Looking at the pattern of the 2017 German federal election, there are a number of interesting legacies of the GDR. Obviously, the SED successor party, the Linke, would have its bedrock of support within the borders of the former GDR, but so too does the far-right AfD party. The success of the anti-immigrant and nationalist party might seem at odds with the historical legacy of the GDR, but there were some elements of continuity. Despite the SED's official stance of antiracism, the fact was that racist ideas did percolate through GDR society. PoC guest workers from friendly socialist nations often found themselves discriminated against and segregated from wider GDR society. GDR hospitals often assigned African doctors to sundry duties like bedpan cleaning. The state's own declared antiracism provided a prophylactic against investigation into claims of racism against such people. More importantly for the wider racism within the GDR, the simple fact was that there were not all that many non-whites within the GDR. While the FRG became linked to the wider global diasporas and its citizens could go on holiday in exotic locales, the GDR's populace was quite inward-looking and had less exposure to the wider world. One of the truisms about the two Germanies that has more than a little merit to it was that during the Cold War West Germans became European while East Germans remained German. This does not mean racism did not exist within the FRG, but the average FRG citizen was exposed to a much more global world than their Eastern counterpart. The sudden exposure to various non-German peoples in the wake of unification was a shock in the "lost decade" after unification. So while there is not a straight line between the GDR and AfD voters in eastern Germany, there are crooked lines of continuity.

There were other social legacies of the GDR that became apparent after unification. When assessing the winners and losers of unification, one curious winner does emerge: women. As a whole, the GDR's women managed to manage the travails of the 1990s far better than their male cohorts. GDR women in post-unification Germany tended to have higher pay than their male counterparts and a more balanced work-home life than female counterparts in the West. Some of this socioeconomic trend was situational. GDR men did cluster in industries that were inefficient and often scrapped after 1990, but these gendered differences do reflect some of the social policies of the GDR. The GDR did invest considerable effort into gender equality in the workforce. This was partly a necessity given labor shortages and there was a very impermeable glass ceiling for political power. Nevertheless, women made up a very high percentage of the GDR's workforce and was one of the key differences between the FRG and GDR. The patriarchal order established by the Adenauer era had led to one of the lowest employment of women within Europe while the GDR's social policies led to one of the highest rates of female employment. This discrepancy remained until 1989 and arguably helped contribute to the larger success of GDR women within the post-unification environment.

The accomplishments of GDR women in a post-GDR world underscore some of the tangible, but subtle legacies of the GDR. Part of the problem with estimating these legacies though is tied up within the whole process of unification. In short, the weakness of the SED in 1989, both politically and internationally, meant that Bonn was able to call the shots over how unification proceeded. This meant that former elites within the GDR could find themselves out of a job and scapegoated (with some justification) for all the failures of the GDR. Such a process has skewed official memory of the GDR into emphasizing its repressive features at the expense of other experiences under the dictatorship. But the shadows of the SED state are still present and extend beyond repression.

Sources

Caldwell, Peter C., and Robert R. Shandley. German Unification: Expectations and Outcomes. German Unification. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Fulbrook, Mary. The People's State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

_. Dissonant Lives: Generations and Violence Through the German Dictatorships. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Landsman, Mark. Dictatorship and Demand: The Politics of Consumerism in East Germany. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Lippmann, Quentin, Alexandre Georgieff, and Claudia Senik. "Undoing Gender with Institutions. Lessons from the German Division and Reunification." (2016).

Ross, Corey. The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of the GDR. London: Arnold, 2002.

East Germany played a major role, but much like the other states of the Communist Bloc, it was largely a puppet of the Soviet Union, and only did what ordered to by Moscow. For most of its history it had no real independent foreign policy, and its internal matters were also heavily controlled by the Soviets, who had hundreds of thousands of soldiers stationed there to ensure that.

But you note that the East Germans had no impact on culture or history, and I will dispute that in one area: the Olympics. The East Germans were notorious for their state-sponsored doping schemes, and arguably a "meme" was formed around female East German women being very masculine (hairy legs, wide shoulders, etc).

This was done in order to directly show that this Germany was the better one, that it had a superior way of life, and was shown through their Olympic results: they were one of the most successful nations at the Olympics during their existence, routinely finishing near the top of the medal count. This was aided by a government policy to focus on "smaller" sports that needed little funding and had little completion, because the medal tally was far more important to them than anything else. Thus sports like soccer/football was largely neglected, despite the overt popularity of the sport in East Germany, while something like the shot put received support (not meant as a critique on shot put, but merely a random sport that the East Germans won a gold medal in), to say nothing of the swimming team (as noted above).

Of course once Germany reunified the program ended, and with more stringent controls on doping (or at least the IOC pretends there is), something like this doesn't happen (the Russians at the 2018 Winter Olympics proving this is wrong, of course), it was all kind of relegated to the background. That the East Germans spent their effort on smaller sports as well, and forgoing more mainstream sports, also probably didn't help, as people are far more interested in a winning soccer team than the Olympic champion in shot put. They don't care that it only took one athlete to win that medal, while soccer needs 17 (the number who won gold for East Germany, ironically enough, in 1976). So there was no long-term legacy in that regards, because suddenly there is a strong (West) German soccer team to support, and an equally strong Olympic team, sans doping. Thus all the efforts to promote socialism through sports were for nothing in East Germany, and quickly forgotten.