How have those affected experienced and processed the turning point and its consequences? Documented through descriptions of the social environment of Guben, a small town on the Brandenburg-Polish border, residents of the town share their perspectives, particularly those who have "caught the thin end of the sausage" in the prevailing unequal living conditions in the Federal Republic. There is a prevailing feeling of being written off by the "big" politics shaped by the West. The perceived rejection and the relegation to second-class Germans are met with isolation. This reversal of the exclusion movement gives rise to a form of identity that can be described with a term from Manuel Castells as "resistance identity." It fills the gap created by the disappearance of identity as a citizen of the GDR. For the democratic development in the Federal Republic of Germany, this could present an opportunity for a new societal discourse and thus necessary social changes instead of the current "business as usual!".