He, she, or it perhaps doth protest too much. The anecdotal information may or may not be correct, and the experience of one family, who seem to have been unusually blessed with higher educational opportunities,& may not be representative of East German society in general. All I know is anecdotal, too, if I except the MSM reports. My uncle’s family were from Dresden (in East Germany). He came to the US as a “male war bride.” The family property was destroyed in the bombing of Dresden, but even the bombed- out lot in the city center was of value. No end of effort before the fall of the wall recovered anything for him or his sister— the only survivors— and after the fall the claim was rejected for various reasons, mostly because he was dead, and his wife did not file this or that soon enough.
When I was a graduate student, one of my acquaintances was a fairly striking East German woman majoring in American Lit. She spoke flawless American English, spoke French much more beautifully than did I, Spanish at least as well as I did, and Italian well, also. I used to kid her about being raised to be a spy. She didn’t confirm or deny, but clearly the fall of the wall altered her life plans.
But then, we have long time West German friends who visit us every few years, and communicate fairly often, who say that the economic burden West Germany assumed on behalf of reunification was huge, and that the East Germans were just not ready to compete at the production level of the West.
Bottom line for me for now is that you are probably right, the author is and was probably one of the communist regime’s pampered elite.
I've always felt the West/East German experience was a perfect experiment in a communist versus Western state. It took just thirty years for communism to bring poverty and totalitarianism to half of what was once one of the most prosperous and sophisticated countries in the world, and in the West was once again.