The population has grown by about 3.8 million since reunification, lifting Germany to roughly 83.6 million by the end of 2024. Yet the gain is not evenly shared: the East fell about 16 percent to 12.4 million, while the West rose roughly 10 percent to 67.5 million. The strongest growth is in Bavaria (+16%), Baden-Württemberg (+14%), and Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein (each +13%), while the sharpest declines are in Saxony-Anhalt (−26%), Thuringia (−20%), and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (−18%). The East is on average older, and young people flee toward the West; about 1.2 million more people moved from East to West than in the opposite direction, Berlin excluded. The outflow was most pronounced in the first decade after reunification; between 2017 and 2022 there was a brief net influx to the East, which reversed again in 2023. In cities, Leipzig grew about 30% and Dresden about 20% despite Saxony losing roughly 15% of its population overall; in North Rhine-Westphalia, Bochum (−10%) and Essen (−7%) declined, while Cologne grew and surpassed one million residents since 2010. Since 1991, net migration to Germany has generally been positive, with a net gain around 600,000 in 1991 and about 430,000 in 2024; notable spikes occurred in 2015–2016 due to the Syrian war and in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

These numbers are a mirror held up to the nation’s priorities, and they speak with a certain, almost theatrical clarity. The East withers demographically and economically, the West swells with vitality and capital; the old order of where people want to live and work is rewritten in the ink of housing, wages, and opportunity. It is not merely a question of geography but of governance—about where one chooses to invest, educate, and cultivate the conditions that make a region feel like a home rather than a temporary stop. The bright spots in the East—Leipzig and Dresden—are luminous exceptions that prove the rule: you can bend the arc, but you must bend it with deliberate, expensive, and sustained policy, not with rhetoric about “cohesion” that never translates into bricks, trains, or schools. Meanwhile, the Western centers—Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Cologne—continue to radiate attractively, pulling talent and fortune into a self-reinforcing loop. If Germany wishes to remain the staging ground for Europe’s economy and culture, it must convert these trends from alarming broadcasts into purposeful strategy: expand housing and infrastructure, align regional incentives, and cultivate opportunities so that life in the East becomes not a reluctant compromise but a desirable choice. Otherwise the map will keep shifting under the weight of neglect, and the grandeur of the reunified nation will resemble a splendid estate kept in order by borrowed sums rather than a living, prosperous realm.