As of today, the Berlin Wall has now been gone for as long as it stood. Its fall embodied the promise of German reunification – “blossoming landscapes” of opportunity for all, as then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl said.

The years since have seen progress. Some $3 trillion in federal investment has cut east German unemployment in half and raised life expectancy to west German levels. But unemployment is still double the rate in the west, and east Germans resent a persistent sense of “cultural colonialism” by western elites. As of 2016, easterners occupied only 1.7 percent of Germany’s leadership positions in politics, business, and academia.

In truth, eastern Germany has never been like western Germany. “There is no more chance of Saxony becoming a cultural and political Rhineland … than there is of Mississippi turning into another Massachusetts,” writes a commentator in Handelsblatt. So amid enduring inequities, many easterners are losing faith in institutions and democracy and turning to far-right populism. “There is simply a lack of translators of cultural differences,” one eastern official tells Deutsche Welle.

That, perhaps, puts Germany’s next challenge in different terms: the need to tear down what many Germans call “the wall in the head.”

Today, veteran Monitor contributor Ned Temko will kick off a new feature that looks beyond the headlines to surface rhythms and patterns that defy a sense of tumult on the international stage. Watch for it on alternate Mondays. 

We’re also keeping an eye on stock market developments, with the Dow closing today down 4.6 percent – 1,175 points – in the steepest one-day drop in years. (More, for now, on our website.)