Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, the former East and West still maintain very different perceptions and opinions of the United States and the transatlantic network of relationships with its framework of values.

This fact is hardly surprising after 40 years of separate social history: After World War II, the West German view of the United States, both in economical and political terms, became strongly linked with notions of trust, dependability and even gratitude. On a political level, relations with the United States developed into a stable bond between two partners on equal footing.

In the states that once made up East Germany, however, views of the USA are more closely aligned with the former political system and tend to reflect 40 years of reservations against the USA, NATO and its member states. Trust and dependability were ascribed to the Soviet “brotherland,” and the Cold War made unequivocal enemies of the Warsaw Pact countries and the NATO Alliance.

Consequently, the perception of the USA as Germany’s most important ally and the transatlantic community of values (freedom, democracy and rule of law) is met with limited acceptance in the new federal states.

The Potsdamer Gesellschaft für transatlantischen Dialog – Gateway Brandenburg – Washington e.V. was founded in April 2009 in Potsdam with the objective of reaching out from one of the new federal states in the social, political and economic entity of a reunited Germany to facilitate contact between the new federal states and the USA, as well as strengthen relations within an enlarged Europe, and to give the people in the new federal states the opportunity to actively participate in forming their own opinion of our partner overseas.

The Potsdamer Gesellschaft für transatlantischen Dialog – Gateway Brandenburg – Washington e.V. is a non-partisan organization that is financed through grants and public funding.