Germany Unity's Shadows

One year after the jolt of economic merger, a somber nation realizes that the east will be a burden for a long time to come

Finally it has come together for the Germans. After years of waiting and praying, Germany is one nation again, a people united. The Berlin Wall, once the ugliest scar on a wounded country, has been knocked down, its pieces carted off to a huge depot for resale as art or to be crushed for use as roadway ballast. The border fences marking the Iron Curtain that for so long divided Europe have been dismantled.

All across the country, families have been reunited and people have rediscovered homes they thought they would never see again. In the former German Democratic Republic, the...

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