The future political culture of eastern Germany and, with it, the relationshipbetween unified Germany’s once divided populations willdepend heavily upon how all Germans respond to a distinctive factabout the east. The region experienced not one but, counting theGerman Democratic Republic (GDR), two separate eras of dictatorship.This fact can be, and has been, understood in two differentways, with significantly different implications in each case. The firstis the perspective of the victim. According to this view, the citizens ofthe GDR uniquely had to shoulder the burden of having been born,in effect, “in the wrong place.” Not only did they endure greaterhardships than their western counterparts, such as the rebuilding ofGermany after World War II, but they suffered by themselvesthrough the debilitating consequences of Soviet occupation and theirinability, until 1990, to act upon the right to “free self-determination”(to quote the original preamble of the Basic Law). As a result, accordingto this argument, easterners were owed special treatment afterunification because of their distinctive misfortunes.
Defining and Achieving Freedom from Hunger: A Rights-Based Approach
