BERLIN — After the Berlin Wall came down, the West Germans liked to call the East Germans Ossis, or, better still, Jammer-Ossis. It was a derogatory term, meant to characterize East Germans as whiney and ungrateful. The East Germans, for their part, called the West Germans Besser-Wessis, a pun on the word Besserwisser, which means ‘know-it-all’. But they felt inferior to the West Germans, so when they said Besser-Wessis, they usually sounded disgruntled rather than condescending.
Nowadays, name calling isn’t so common, and some would argue that the process of reunification has run its course. East Germany, they say, has largely …read more
Source: European Voice
