MERSEBURG, Germany -- Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Lothar Drewitz has lost his job, his marriage and his hope in the future. Now, the 50-year-old engineer who once toiled for a state-owned metal firm in the rigid East German system fears he may never again find steady work in a unified Germany.

"I had huge expectations," Drewitz says. "I was full of euphoria. But I must tell you, I am very disappointed."

Drewitz is among the 1.29 million unemployed "Ossis" -- easterners -- who have discovered that freedom has brought hard economic times. Drewitz doesn't know which party he will vote for when Germany holds its national elections Sept. 27. But he does know which individual he will be voting against -- German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

After 16 years in power, Kohl and the Christian Democrats could be on their way out, replaced by left-leaning Gerhard Schroeder and the Social Democrats.

The easterners whose votes rescued Kohl in the 1994 election may be determined to bring him down in this one. To outsiders, that turn of electoral fate would seem the ultimate irony, for it was Kohl who presided over one of the 20th century's climactic moments -- the peaceful reunification in 1990 of Communist-backed East Germany with West Germany.

But Kohl's promise of creating "flowering landscapes" for the east has not yet been fulfilled. Since reunification, the German government has pumped more than $700 billion into the five eastern states and the city of Berlin. Roads, rails, buildings and telephone systems have been renovated. Environmental waste has been cleaned up. Private companies have invested billions more in new shopping malls and new factories.

The Trabant, the ugly, belching car that symbolized the creaking East German state, has been run off the road by drivers buying new BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes.

But many eastern workers have been left behind. Unemployment in the east averages 17 percent, compared with 9 percent in the larger west. Overall, 4.1 million Germans are out of work.

"I'm fatalistic," says Hilmar Schneider, an economist with the Halle Institute. "Things are not as bad as people feel they are. But the pressure to improve things is not yet high enough."

Divided for five decades following the end of World War II, Germany has found that reunification is a difficult process, made even harder by unfulfilled economic and social aspirations. Some westerners view the easterners as ungrateful anchors on the economy. Some easterners blanch at the perceived arrogance of western Germans who want to tell them how to run their lives and survive in a free market.

To many Germans, eastern politics have also grown more ominous -- and extremist. The right-wing German People's Union party won nearly 13 percent of the vote in state elections this year in Saxony-Anhalt. And the party didn't draw support just from neo-Nazi skinheads. It also struck a chord with unemployed workers who were drawn by an anti-immigrant slogans, such as "Jobs for Germans."

Even easterners who have succeeded, who hold steady jobs, own new cars and new refrigerators, are having difficulty adjusting to life in a Western economy. Some are even beginning view life under the old Communist regime with rose-colored glasses.

"It was cozier," says social worker Anja Kretschmer. "You talked a lot while lining up for bananas."

Hans-Joachim Maaz, a psychotherapist who has written and lectured extensively on the divisions between the two Germanys, says that it is difficult to say if people are happier and genuinely satisfied.

"I earn more money," he says. "I am more important. I travel a lot. All of that is good. But there is competition. You have to find your way. There is so much of everything. You have to concentrate on the essential things so you don't lose your way. There is a loss of intensity in relations. People move apart. And there is more stress in life."

That stress can be seen in a place like Merseburg, once in the heart of the former German Democratic Republic's old petrochemical triangle, southwest of Berlin. On the surface, all appears fine. Blocks of grim Communist-era housing have been spruced up. The roads are smoothly paved. At a gleaming mall, (( the parking lot is filled with shiny new cars.

Yet there is a sense of despondency. The unemployment rate has soared above 20 percent. Despite generous unemployment benefits, retraining programs, and even jobs programs, there is a fear for the future.

State-owned factories around here once provided tens of thousands of jobs, while poisoning the air and the earth. Now, they're shut. Western firms like Dow Chemical and Elf Aquitaine have opened new, cleaner plants, but they provide far fewer jobs.

For the unemployed, ground-zero of their job search starts at the local employment office, a brick-like fortress that once housed .. the dreaded East German internal security force, the Stasi. Where once police prowled the corridors, there are now women with strollers and middle-aged men with looks of desperation.

Drewitz, the engineer, tells a typical tale. For 17 years, he worked at a state-owned firm. When the East German state collapsed, the firm went bust and he was out on the street. Despite taking a course to learn new management skills, Drewitz hasn't worked in 1 1/2 years. His last steady job was selling insurance. That lasted six months.

Drewitz says times were tough in the old days, too. But at least there was a sense of community. And everybody -- men and women -- had jobs.

"A lot of people didn't have initiative," he admits while trying to find fault with the old system. "They used the state. It had to break down."

Tatjana Bohnenberger, 46, a divorced mother of two, is also in search of a brighter future. For 31 years, she worked at a refinery in nearby Leuna, rising in the ranks from dispatcher to investment planner and production accountant. She was fired in September 1997, after Elf transferred operations to a new refinery. Like nearly 5,000 other workers in the area, she is now in a temporary job paid for by the government.

Bohnenberger holds back tears as she ponders her fate in the job market when her assignment ends in a year.

"Compared to others, I'm lucky," she says. "I am still being paid. I've got a fairly good income. I've got no family problems and my children are healthy."

But professionally, she says, she feels "degraded."

"When I meet old colleagues or friends from university and see the good jobs they have, I feel inferior," she says.

Can an election -- and a change of government -- make a difference? "I fear that not a lot will change," she says. "Schroeder might even want to change the situation. But there is no money. No jobs. He can't get rid of the unemployed."

In the Merseburg region, even the head of the employment office, Nora George, says young people would be better off leaving the area to find work.

"I am ambivalent, though," says George, whose eldest son is among the unemployed. "I want to keep them here so we don't turn into an elderly society. We aim at keeping young people, but it would be better for them if they left. Some still believe or hold the illusion that they might come back. But I don't believe that. Living conditions are better in the older areas of Germany."

At a local youth center, a dozen teen-agers gather to discuss their future. Most want to stay in town. But a few aim to get out.

"Our parents are happy that we're growing up in a system where we are free, where we have more possibilities to make our way," says Niccolo Worbs, 19, whose mother is an unemployed economist. His father, a Cuban guest worker, left the family five years ago.

Madlen Bilkenroth, 17, is already making plans to leave town. She wants to join the border patrol, despite often feeling like a stranger in her country.

"I think the wall in the head is still alive," she says.

Yet Bilkenroth hopes that people in the two parts of Germany can learn from each other.

"You have to find a middle ground," she says. "You have to mix the new with the hold. Live a good life. Have enough food. Have a good place to live."

Pub Date: 9/19/98