In spring 1986, Labor Minister Norbert Blüm pasted up a poster himself on the market square in Bonn. It read: Denn eins ist sicher – die Rente. Because one thing is certain: the pension. The short form Die Rente ist sicher became almost a proverb, and Blüm was much smiled at and criticized for it. On 1 July 1990, the day the West German mark came to East Germany, Chancellor Helmut Kohl said in a television address that the eastern states would schon bald wieder in blühende Landschaften be transformed, soon into flourishing landscapes again. In 2021, an analysis in t-online found the statutory pension surprisingly robust. It also wrote that with the poster, Blüm had secured himself a place in the collective memory of the republic.