BERLIN, Sept 8 (AFP) - One in five Germans would like the Berlin Wall back, nearly 15 years after it was toppled in a peaceful revolution against the East German communist regime, a poll released Wednesday showed.
Twenty-one percent of the Germans polled said they would like to see the country divided into east and west again, the survey conducted by the Forsa independent opinion research institute for Stern newsweekly said.
More west Germans, who have paid more than one trillion dollars to rebuild the east since reunification in 1990, than easterners called for the border between the two sides of the country to be closed again -- 24 percent versus 12 percent.
The survey revealed further deep divisions between the depressed east and the more prosperous west, with 31 percent of easterners saying too little had been spent on reconstruction of the east, compared to nine percent of westerners.
Meanwhile 37 percent of those in the west said too much money had been committed versus just five percent of easterners.
But the largest number on both sides -- 46 percent in the east and 44 percent in the west -- said the amount of financial aid had been "just right".
Despite frustration about high unemployment and a lower degree of social security, 57 percent of east Germans acknowledged that their lives have improved since reunification.
A full 29 percent of east Germans, however, said that nothing had changed for them personally since 1990, compared to 56 percent of respondents in the west. Fourteen percent of easterners said their lives had worsened during the same time period, versus 24 percent of those in the west.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has launched unpopular cutbacks to the social welfare system in response to the enormous cost of national reunification and the demographic crunch caused by an aging population.
The measures have sparked a wave of weekly protests, mainly centered in the east of the country, and led to a string of electoral defeats for Schroeder's Social Democratic Party.