In the specific context of Germany, while its true that Germany has been a nation for quite a long time (long before it was a single state), but nations are just social identities, and both sides in the Cold War were quite active in actively using propaganda to build "us" vs. "them" identities, and its not that surprising that without strong organized active supporting for the old pan-German identity and with active efforts to create opposing identities to replace it over a couple of generations, that there is a gulf created which will take another couple of generations of active effort -- at least -- to erase.