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Two additional paragraphs:
The reason why East Germany and pretty much the whole Eastern Block collapsed was in fact economy. Particularly in East Germany, you had the situation of security. There was literally no unemployment, so you had the perspective of going to school, getting a job, having free kindergarden and everything. No matter if you were the greatest slacker.
Now, if more people work than are needed (plus the wages) and a bad import/export situation with other countries, the companies or factories go bankrupt. But when the companies would have gone bankrupt, the government sponsored them, so they kept going and people stayed employed. Eventually the government had to go bankrupt, and this is what happened. East Germany was already bankrupt by 1988, which is why a few changes happened back then (cooperation with West German companies). This is why communism in East Europe failed, and this is why a lot of people thought “if we only change this and this, the idea of a society of equal people might work”. China is trying this today, staying communist and allowing a few things to change. But this effort is money-driven, with very little or no care for people and the environment. China is an example of how it cannot work.
So we did not change the failed system and we did not apply a new one. We applied an old system that seemed to work. The result was that the East German economy broke down almost entirely. Mass unemployment, the loss of what people believed in, the failure of the new system, all that led to depression. People had the security before (which was an illusion but still), now they were unemployed, lived in poverty and social welfare, started drinking and took it out on their families. History took their system away and gave them a new one that failed them. People could not and often still cannot cope with that. In changing the world, this is a serious side effect which must be considered.
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