Some people do not understand why some well-off middle-class people in East Germany fled to West Germany desperately during the Cold War, and many paid the price with their lives.
They critically talked about "Those people who have cars and houses still have to betray the motherland, they really have no conscience." If a person has never had enough to eat, he will never be able to understand those who would rather save money than pursue people of literature and art. Because in their value system, there is a car and a house, shouldn't the next step be to pursue a bigger house and a better car?
East Germany's highly centralized political and economic development model must limit the people's pursuit of life by limiting the value orientation, so as to ensure that everyone works and lives step by step according to the established track, and cannot pose a challenge to the vested interests. This mode may be suitable for people who are not well educated and lack independent thinking ability. But for intellectuals who have the ability to think independently and have been materially satisfied, it is tantamount to depriving them of higher-level pursuits.
They fled East Germany not because West Germany was so good, but because East Germany could no longer provide what they wanted. For example, East Germany is good everywhere, but West Germany allows it to be bad.
In the end, even though East Germany had a relatively high standard of living in the Soviet Eastern European bloc, it was still a lot worse than West Germany. In the late 1980s, the gap between the East German middle class and the West German middle class was not only material but also spiritual.
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