FAREWELL RED STAR,
THE REST IS FOR THE WEST

30 years after the complete withdrawal of Soviet forces from East Germany and the dissolution of the Treuhandanstalt, the reserach took a twofold look back at the year 1994. Under the shattering impressions of the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine, which has been going on for almost a yearr, the research looked at the year 1994 and two events in the Federal Republic of Germany: on the one hand, the withdrawal of the 500,000-strong Russian military stationed in East Germany since 1945, which had been going on for three years, is coming to an end in the summer of 1994. Secondly, the scandal-ridden Treuhandanstalt (trust agency), which had been founded barely four years earlier and was entrusted with the restructuring of the East German economy and the redistribution of East German national property, was dissolved. While the decision-making process in September 1990 was still taking place in diplomatic secrecy, the resulting process of upheaval is taking place in full and clear visibility before the German public and will be documented in many media. In view of the assessment recently formulated in ARD and ZDF documentaries that, regardless of current Kremlin policy, East Germans cannot ignore their historical Soviet imprint in the former GDR in the current consideration of the events of the war, the events of 1994 will be re-examined in terms of their media treatment at the time. The question had beeen addressed as to the differentiation, sensitivity and political attitude with which they are reported and whether they are to be evaluated as shocks in the self-image of East Germans.