Generations can be viewed in three ways: there are generations within families, in educational relationships and in the historical social sense. Family generations exist based on ancestry and consist of children, parents, grandparents and, occasionally, great-grandparents (cf. Alexi, 2014). Generations in educational relationships include a mediating, older generation and an appropriating, younger generation. However, newer theories on this topic now emphasise mutual receptive learning between the generations, so that they can no longer be clearly separated into a mediating and an appropriating generation (cf. Ecarius, 2008).

The historical and social understanding of generations is based on the ideas of Karl Mannheim (1964) and describes generations as groups of people who, due to their year of birth and their spatial location, have had similar historical, cultural and social experiences and thus develop similar mentalities. In the context of the history of German division, Thomas Ahbe and Rainer Gries (2011) have undertaken a GDR-specific generation systematisation. It covers the birth years 1893 to 1986 and differentiates six different generations: the generation of the distrustful patriarchs (1893–1916), the reconstruction generation (core years 1925–1934), the functioning generation (core years 1935–1945), the integrated generation (core years 1949–1956), the de-bordered generation (core years 1960–1972) and the children of the fall of the Berlin Wall (1975–1986). The name-giving factors here are experiences in the respective political systems as well as in the development processes of the GDR that were respectively witnessed.