The names may not mean much to people outside Germany, but they point to a remarkable trend in the 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down: All are familiar brands of the former Communist East that have found a niche in the West.

Many people feared it would take several decades for East to catch up with West after the wall collapsed on Nov. 9, 1989. But today, the economic output of eastern Germans has surpassed 70 percent of that of western Germans - up from a third in 1991. Surprisingly, some East German industries have found a market in rich and finicky cities such as Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich.

"When East Germany joined the Federal Republic of Germany, its infrastructure was completely dilapidated. Their state combine companies produced products that were unfit to be sold," said Michael Huether, director of the German Economic Institute. "Today, the five eastern states can no longer be called an industrial wasteland."

Saxony-Anhalt-based Rotkaeppchen has become the nation's market leader, overtaking rivals produced in Germany's western wine-growing Rheingau region.

It has become a popular drink at restaurants and nightclubs, enjoyed by both "Ossis" (those raised in the East) and "Wessis" (those from the West).

Hans-Joachim Prier, 71, said he and his wife still buy some of the brands they did when living in East Germany, including Rotkaeppchen, Florena, and Spee.

"We don't buy products because they're from the East," Prier said. "For us, the quality has to be good, and the price has to be good. Beyond that, I don't look much further. When the price and the quality are the same, then I take the eastern product."

Supermarket chains in the West, from Cologne to Hamburg, carry East German products like the popular Bautzner Senf mustard and Spreewald Gurken pickles.

The popularity of East German products across the country comes amid a phenomenon in recent years known as Ostalgie, or fascination with life in the former East Germany.

Ostalgie is a play on the German words for east and nostalgia, and it encompasses films celebrating life under communism; a fascination with the Trabant, the tiny East German car; retro-chic Ossi furniture; and East German motorcycles such as the Schwalbe and the MZ.

East Germany's economy grew twice as fast in the last 20 years as was estimated, according to the Cologne-based German Economic Institute. In 12 years, it projects, the eastern states will have caught up economically with the poorest western states.

But Huether warned that the eastern states would probably never reach the same level of economic performance as the West, because they don't have financial and industrial power-hubs such as Munich, Hamburg, or Frankfurt am Main.

"In the end, one will have to accept that there will be permanent regional differences," Huether said.

Not all western Germans are happy with the strides made by the East - and what they have cost.

Patrick Rustler, 25, a BMW AG worker in Frankfurt, said while unification made sense because the two German nations "belonged together," it has been expensive, collectively and personally.

"When you go over there [to the East], the cities sparkle, as opposed to over here," he said. "But despite the fact that they're sparkling, there's not much else to show for it."

East Germans, on the other hand, are also not overwhelmingly convinced that they have come out ahead. Only 38 percent see themselves as winners of the unification, while 30 percent say Germany's development since 1989 has brought them benefits as well as losses, according to a poll by the Sozialverbund Volkssolidaritaet in June.

..Unemployment, though it has declined, still plagues the East. Despite the better-than-expected economic upswing, joblessness in the East is far higher than in the West - 11.8 percent compared with 7.7 percent.

Tipping off the Festivities

Colorful dominoes painted by German students were placed yesterday along the former path of the Berlin Wall to mark the 20th anniversary of its opening.

Many of the upright 7-foot-high plastic foam dominoes carried messages, including "We are one people." The approximately 1,000 dominoes, stretching for one mile, are to be toppled tomorrow as part of wider celebrations.

One, labeled "bleeding heart," showed a sword cutting through the city of Berlin, starting a crimson flow of blood speckled with crosses.

Former Polish leader Lech Walesa, whose Solidarity movement played a key role in ending communism in Eastern Europe, is to tip the first domino.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and Russian President Dimitry A. Medvedev also are expected to be on hand tomorrow for the commemorations of the wall's opening on Nov. 9, 1989.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, herself a resident of East Germany when the wall fell, said in her weekly podcast yesterday that it was a day that "changed the lives of many people, including me."

- Associated Press