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East Germany (German: Ostdeutschland, [ˈɔstˌdɔʏtʃlant] ⓘ), officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR; Deutsche Demokratische Republik, [ˈdɔʏtʃə demoˈkʁaːtɪʃə ʁepuˈbliːk] ⓘ, DDR), was a country in Central Europe from its formation on 7 October 1949 until its reunification with West Germany on 3 October 1990.
East Germany's political and economic system reflected its status as a part of the Eastern Bloc of Soviet-allied Communist countries, with the nation ruled by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and operating with a command economy for 41 years until 3 October 1990 when East and West Germany were unified with the former being absorbed ...
After the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, border stations between East Berlin (regarded as East Germany's capital by the German Democratic Republic but unrecognized by the Western Allies) and the sectors controlled by those three Western Allies were created. Although there were few crossings at first, more sites were built over the ...
Czechoslovakia's hardline communist government agreed to close its border with East Germany to choke off the exodus. The closure produced uproar across East Germany [160] and the GDR government's bid to humiliate refugees by expelling them from the country in sealed trains backfired disastrously. Torn-up identity papers and East German ...
Crossing points on the inner German border, 1982 [1]. Crossing the inner German border between East and West Germany remained possible throughout the Cold War; it was never entirely sealed in the fashion of the border between the two Koreas, though there were severe restrictions on the movement of East German citizens. [2]
In present-day Germany, the former eastern territories of Germany (German: ehemalige deutsche Ostgebiete) refer to those territories east of the current eastern border of Germany, i.e. the Oder–Neisse line, which historically had been considered German and which were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union after World War II.
However, escapees were never more than a small minority of the total number of emigrants from East Germany. Far more people left the country after being granted official permits, by fleeing through third countries or by being ransomed to the West German government. During the 1980s, only about 1% of those who left East Germany did so by ...
The Berlin Crisis of 1961 (German: Berlin-Krise) was the last major European political and military incident of the Cold War concerning the status of the German capital city, Berlin, and of post–World War II Germany. The crisis culminated in the city's de facto partition with the East German erection of the Berlin Wall.