Saxony-Anhalt? You don’t have to travel far to get puzzled looks from German or European neighbours. Where is this person from? Saxony? This question hits a sore spot with the people of Saxony-Anhalt. Because whatever they are – they are not Saxons! Not that they have anything against the Saxons – they like their neighbours and even admire them. But the people between Altmark and Zeitz have their pride, too. And for good reasons.

If you take a closer look at the places and people, you realize, of course, that you actually know the young, hyphenated state of Saxony-Anhalt quite well after all. For its relatively modest size, its wealth of cultural history seems almost shameless: Luther, Handel, Nietzsche, Gropius – these names alone demand respect.

And if all this doesn’t seem enough to give the little state the admiration it deserves, the Nebra Sky Disc, a wrought-iron-based jewel that archaeologists believe to be 3,600 years old, is not only highly sought-after in scientific circles – it has also attracted worldwide public interest.

In the midst of all this good fortune live the people of Saxony-Anhalt, who are still in the process of finding their identity after all the enormous changes and upheavals of the recent past. Although they share this experience with their neighbours in the rest of the former East Germany, they seem to find it more difficult to come to terms with.

There are honourable and understandable reasons for this that have to do with the structure of the state itself. Unlike the children of other states, people from Saxony-Anhalt cannot simply derive their identity from a largely unbroken, very old historical tradition like the populations of Thuringia or Saxony.

It’s all a little more complex in Saxony-Anhalt. The state only existed from 1947 to 1952 when, after the Second World War, the former Prussian province of Saxony with its main cities of Halle and Magdeburg were merged with the Free State of Anhalt with Dessau as its centre – only to be separated again shortly afterwards by the GDR government.

The state of Saxony-Anhalt was re-established in 1990 when Germany was reunified, and Magdeburg won the race to become its capital. Halle lost that race but kept its status as the self-appointed “culture capital”. In the meantime Anhalt’s stronghold Dessau sees the ambitions of its neighbours with steadfast equanimity.