Divided in Unity: Identity, Germany, and the Berlin Police

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the political unification of East and West Germany, the joy over unity quickly gave way to a profound sense of alienation between easterners and westerners. It was said that the Berlin Wall was simply replaced by the walls in the minds of people. The Berlin police force is one of the few organizations in united Germany in which easterners and westerners have been forced to work together, and Andreas Glaeser takes advantage of this unique opportunity to examine how the police officers relate to each other and to understand their expectations and hopes, their attitudes toward work and their understanding of democracy and morality. Accompanying East and West German police officers on their daily patrols through Berlin, Glaeser gathers firsthand accounts that help to illustrate why East and West Germans remain deeply divided. The result of his study is a theory of identity that moves beyond the dominant concerns with race, class and gender to describe how experiences of otherness and sameness are constructed in social interaction.