I’m reading a memoir about a man who grew up in the GDR (Red Love by Maxim Leo) and I’ve found myself becoming more and more interested in the GDR as a state and what it was like. I’m an American, so my education on the subject is probably a little biased, but I feel pretty confident in the knowledge that there were horrendous human rights breaches committed by the government and an astoundingly high level of surveillance on innocent citizens. However, I’m curious how anyone who knows about the subject or ideally has lived in East Germany before the wall fell would describe what the benefits of the GDR government were. I guess I’m curious about an ideally unbiased “man on the street” view of what benefits the government seemed to offer over capitalist or traditionally democratic governments. Was homelessness really lessened or eliminated? Unemployment? Was any aspect of economic life easier for people, and why?
Hey, East Germany (GDR) was, in certain aspects, more successful than West Germany (FRG). Overall the FRG was more successful than the GDR (better economy, more international trade, better civil rights, freedom of travel and speech, democracy), but there were somethings that the GDR was more successful in.
Recycling- In the GDR resources were scarce (they lost many resources following WW2 due to the USSR taking them), so recycling was a must. The government would pay it's citizens to recycle, ie if you brought a bin of X materials you would get Y ostmarks. This system made recycling extremely popular for citizens as they had a hard time getting money, so this was a quick and easy way to get some money. Following reunification they recycling rate in the former GDR came crashing down.
Education and healthcare- This was mostly due to their socialist system. The GDR had universal healthcare and universal post secondary education,to which the quality of both was outstanding (and still is to this day.) The education was incredibly competitive and set up so that only the top students would gain access to post secondary.
Economic security- If you lived in the GDR you were practically guaranteed a job, unless you weren't a member of the party, then it was hard (but not impossible) to find a job.
Daycare- There was a large number of daycare facilities in the GDR that allowed many mothers to have children and still work to have money to support a family.
Introduction
I know that this is an old question, but it's still a topic worth addressing. I'll go over a few areas in which the German Democratic Republic (GDR) - better known as East Germany - was as or more successful than the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), better known as West Germany.
Relative Economic Growth
While the FRG had an overall larger economy than the GDR, there is a real argument to be made that the GDR achieved a faster rate of growth. Perhaps the most extensive study on this topic was done by Gerhard Heske, published in the journal Historical Social Research in Germany; however, seeing as this study is about three-hundred pages long, I'll quote a summary article from the University of Bremen:
From 1951 to 1989, the GDR achieved an average GDP growth rate of 4.5%, the FRG 4.3%. From 1961 to 1985, these growth rates were higher in the GDR than in the FRG.
In other words, while the GDR's economy was still smaller than that of the FRG, growth was higher. The GDR's economic disadvantage was due primarily to its less-developed starting condition; according to a study in the European Journal of Economic History (published in 2014), "the major factor contributing to this early divergence were disproportions in industrial structure caused by the division of Germany." The study goes on to note:
The "Great Divergence" between East and West in industrial efficiency did not begin in 1948, when the institutional development of the two parts of the country took fundamentally different paths. The main factors contributing to this divergence were already present earlier.
In other words, despite the lower level of initial development (as well as other disadvantages, such as a greater reparations burden), the GDR did manage to grow a bit faster than the FRG.
Healthcare and Education
The available evidence indicates that the GDR provided healthcare that was comparable in quality to that of the FRG, and it did so at a much lower cost. A study published in the Health Care Financing Review (a US government-affiliated publication) in 1991 reports:
In terms of real resources devoted to health services and in terms of health service activities, the two countries [the GDR and FRG] seem to have been fairly similar... If the GDR enjoyed a similar volume of health services to the FRG but had much lower health expenditures per capita, then the prices of health services must have been much lower in the GDR... the former GDR had respectable health statistics for a country with its standard of living... Improvements to health status in eastern Germany seem to have kept up, more or less, with those in western Germany.
In addition, there is a real argument to be made that East Germany had a better educational system than West Germany. This left a legacy that has continued to this day; according to a 2015 article in the Guardian, despite Eastern Germans being poorer on average than West Germans, they tend to be better educated. While this cannot definitely be attributed to the communist era (Eastern Germany also received additional investment after unification), most commentators agree that the GDR's legacy has had an impact. To quote from the article:
[Eastern Germans] perform best in maths, natural sciences, biology, chemistry and physics. Some experts say this is a legacy of the robust education system of the GDR; others believe it is due to having fewer immigrants in east German schools as well as the amount of money that has been invested in the system since 1990.
Providing cheaper and more accessible social services is one of the traditional arguments in favor of socialism, and it certainly seems to have held true in the case of East Germany.
Conclusion
While the GDR lagged behind the FRG in some areas, it also had some real advantages, most notably in the areas of economic growth, healthcare, and education. I hope that this has answered the question; please let me know if I have omitted anything.