Unemployment has gradually converged with the West—in October, it was 6.1% versus 4.6%. But wages are still about 20% lower than they are in the West and the post-reunification exodus has left behind a rapidly ageing society that’s suspicious of being caught on the wrong side of history all over again.

An earlier generation of easterners watched the Red Army ship their factory machinery back to the Soviet Union after World War II, while the West was rebuilt with funds from the Marshall Plan.

The current one has seen billions of euros handed to banks in Frankfurt, the government in Greece and refugees arriving from Syria while the 1.5 trillion euros ($1.7 trillion) spent on rebuilding their economy has faded. The government has rolled back the so-called solidarity tax this year, drawing a line under its rebuilding efforts.

With Donald Trump insisting it’s “America First” while the Brexiteers in London and the nationalists in Budapest tug at either end of the European Union, many in the east feel their government is too quick to help out foreigners or the rich while they are being left behind.

In last months’s state election in Thuringia, the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won 23%, doubling its share of the vote to leave the legislature gridlocked. Lehmann’s Social Democrats trailed in fourth place with just 8%.

“These trends exist throughout the world,” said Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, a historian from East Berlin and the author of a book on reunification. “But they’re happening faster and more dramatically in East Germany.”

For the past 15 years, easterners have had Angela Merkel, the communist-trained physicist who became chancellor of all Germany, as a symbol that their views are represented at the highest level. But that chapter is drawing to a close.

Merkel is retreating from the tussles of day-to-day politics and her ministers are increasingly flouting her authority at the tail end of her career.

Merkel herself has become increasingly bleak in the twilight of her chancellorship. Speaking privately to those around her, she expresses little confidence in the next generation of German leaders and sees the world sinking further into chaos once she’s gone.

Bjoern Hoecke, the AfD’s victorious leader in Thuringia, embodies Merkel’s fears. He has said that Germany is “crippled” by its practice of commemorating Nazi crimes and called the Berlin Holocaust memorial near Brandenburg Gate a “monument of shame.” His party was the most popular among voters under 45—that is to say those coming of age in a united Germany.