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Before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin. From there they could then travel to West Germany and other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989, the Wall prevented almost all such ...
On 13 October 1961, Westfälische Rundschau journalist Kurt Lichtenstein was shot on the border near the village of Zicherie after he attempted to speak with East German farm workers. His death aroused condemnation across the political spectrum in West Germany; he was a former parliamentary representative of the German Communist Party. [36]
At the Vienna summit on 4 June 1961, tensions rose. Meeting with US President John F. Kennedy, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reissued the Soviet ultimatum to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany and thus end the existing four-power agreements guaranteeing American, British, and French rights to access West Berlin and the occupation of East Berlin by Soviet forces. [1]
The German economist de:Bruno Gleitze from the German Institute for Economic Research estimated that included in the total of 7.1 million deaths by natural causes that there were 1,2 million excess deaths caused by an increase in mortality due to the harsh conditions in Germany during and after the war [151] In Allied occupied Germany the ...
The summary table in the West German government statistical office report uses a description giving total "post war losses" of 2.225 million persons, however the detailed analysis in the text lists 169,000 civilian deaths during the flight and evacuation during the war (128,000 pre-war Germany, 35,000 Czechoslovakia and 4,000 Hungary). [113]
On 15 August 1961, 19-year-old Schumann was sent to the corner of Ruppiner Straße and Bernauer Straße to guard what would become the Berlin Wall on its third day of construction. Schumann and his unit arrived at 4:30 a.m., where an officer ordered them to "take control and protect the border from the enemies of socialism."
The photo became a well-known image of the Cold War and won the Overseas Press Club Best Photograph award for 1961. [3] Leibing continued to work as a photographer, later as photo editor until retirement, both as a police photographer and reporter for the Hamburger Echo, the Hamburger Morgenpost, and Hamburger Abendblatt. [1]
An East German Grenzaufklärungszug (GAK) border trooper taking pictures of US Army activities across the inner German border Grenztruppen guarding maintenance workers on the western side of the inner German border fence. The red tape in the foreground, the so-called "death cord", marked the area the work detail was permitted to operate, and ...