The former East Germany is being drained of young educated women, who are choosing instead to head west in search of a better life. According to a Berlin report this is leaving behind many angry and disillusioned men.
Studies show that the lack of females is already causing the birth rate in the region to fall. But also that the men left behind are becoming easy prey for neo Nazi groups looking for recruits. “We found a connection between a lack of females in the area and a tendency to right-wing extremism among the male population there and we think this has to do with a devaluation of the traditional male role models, women are gone and men are alone and angry,” said Steffen Kroehnert from the Berlin Institute for Population and Development. Since communism collapsed in the 1990s more than 1.5 million Germans have left the former East, heading west or to foreign countries. And the majority of these have been women, aged between 18 and 29. For the young women, their journey west is hopefully leading to a future full of prospects, but they’re leaving some key problems in their tracks.