Official government assessments as well as countless social science research studies refer to the concept of inner unity in post-unification Germany. However, none of the inquiries into the transformation process actually offered a definition of the concept, nevertheless many suggest that such a state of an all-German consciousness is missing.

I therefore proceeded with the assumption that the notion must be linked with concepts of collective self-understanding and self-definition, in short, with ideas about identity. Studying the political culture of the two separated states confirmed my belief that the two societies had grown apart and developed distinct identities. Analyzing East-West newspaper articles around historically significant dates which mark collective memories and articulate changing self-definitions lent additional support to my theory about the connection between the notion of inner unity and the question of identity.

Theorizing the historical, sociological and philosophical dimensions of collective identity is almost exclusively the job of West German academics while East German writers are dominant in the realm of arts and letters as they conjecture the meaning and implications of post-unification identity.

After examining the learned community's analysis of Germany's collective state of mind, I concluded that “inner unity” is a misleading term, but “inner disunity”, understood as societal disorientation regarding identity, is evident both in the media as well as in the public discourse of the country's intellectuals.