Two cities suffer contrasting fate after Berlin Wall

Children look through a hole of the former Berlin Wall border at the memorial site in Bernauer Strasse in Berlin, November 5, 2014. Germany will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall on November 9. [Photo/Agencies]

Important subsidies

The millions in subsidies were important to the city's revival, Hilbert said, but they weren't everything.

"Here in the east, we made harder cuts than they were ever willing to make in the west," he said. Hilbert referred to privatizations of former municipal property, staff cuts of more than 1,000 city employees and reductions in public assistance benefits.

One undeniable role of the solidarity money: helping to turn Dresden into an international tourist magnet.

Guettler, a prominent trumpet soloist, was a leading promoter of the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche church.

"I'm grateful and happy for what we have reached in the last 25 years," he said. "That there are problems elsewhere is logical. ... But we didn't receive any of this as a present."

That view is not widely shared in Dortmund. Once an industrial powerhouse in Germany's western Ruhr Valley, its unemployment rate today is 12.4 percent, nearly double the national average. The city is millions of euros in debt. It's such a shocking contrast to Dresden that Dortmund Mayor Ulrich Sierau said he can no longer explain to his city's residents why they must pay the solidarity fees.

"The 'soli' should no longer be given according to cardinal direction," he said, referring to the fee by its slang term. "It should go to whoever needs it most."