Quite a few educated East Germans have become West Germans as soon as they had the opportunity (or moved elsewhere in the world), but East Germany actually has a couple of high-tech 'hotspots' and good universities.

An East German state (Saxony) also consistently has the best education system among German states.

https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/201453/umfrag...

In general, East Germany (economically) mostly only does poorly when compared to West Germany, but not to the rest of Europe ;)