East Germany
This article may require copy editing for awkward phrasing and excessive passive voice. (August 2023) |
German Democratic Republic Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German) | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1949–1990 | |||||||||
Motto: "Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt Euch!" (" SED Leader[b] | | ||||||||
• 1946–1950[c] | Wilhelm Pieck and Otto Grotewohl[d] | ||||||||
• 1950–1971 | Walter Ulbricht | ||||||||
• 1971–1989 | Erich Honecker | ||||||||
• 1989[e] | Egon Krenz | ||||||||
Head of State | |||||||||
• 1949–1960 (first) | Wilhelm Pieck | ||||||||
• 1990 (last) | Sabine Bergmann-Pohl | ||||||||
Head of Government | |||||||||
• 1949–1964 (first) | Otto Grotewohl | ||||||||
• 1990 (last) | Lothar de Maizière | ||||||||
Legislature | Volkskammer | ||||||||
Länderkammer[f] | |||||||||
Historical era | Cold War | ||||||||
7 October 1949 | |||||||||
16 June 1953 | |||||||||
14 May 1955 | |||||||||
4 June 1961 | |||||||||
9 April 1968 | |||||||||
• Basic Treaty with the FRG | 21 December 1972 | ||||||||
18 September 1973 | |||||||||
13 October 1989 | |||||||||
9 November 1989 | |||||||||
12 September 1990 | |||||||||
3 October 1990 | |||||||||
Area | |||||||||
• Total | 108,875 km2 (42,037 sq mi) | ||||||||
Population | |||||||||
• 1950 | 18,388,000[g][1] | ||||||||
• 1970 | 17,068,000 | ||||||||
• 1990 | 16,111,000 | ||||||||
• Density | 149/km2 (385.9/sq mi) | ||||||||
GDP (PPP) | 1989 estimate | ||||||||
• Total | $525.29 billion[2] | ||||||||
• Per capita | $26,631[2] | ||||||||
HDI (1990 formula) | 0.953[3] very high | ||||||||
Currency |
| ||||||||
Time zone | ( +37 | ||||||||
Internet TLD | .dd[h][4] | ||||||||
| |||||||||
Today part of | Germany | ||||||||
The initial Flag of East Germany (GDR) adopted in 1949 was identical to that of West Germany (FRG). In 1959, the government of this country issued a new version of the flag bearing the national emblem, serving to distinguish East from West. |
East Germany (
Before its establishment, the country's territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the
Geographically the GDR bordered the
In 1989 numerous social, economic, and political forces in the GDR and abroad, one of the most notable being peaceful protests starting in the city of Leipzig, led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the establishment of a government committed to liberalization. The following year, a free and fair election was held in the country,[15] and international negotiations between the four former Allied countries and the two German states commenced. The negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty, which replaced the Potsdam Agreement on the status and borders of a future, reunited Germany. The GDR ceased to exist when its five states ("Länder") joined the Federal Republic of Germany under Article 23 of the Basic Law, and its capital East Berlin united with West Berlin on 3 October 1990. Several of the GDR's leaders, notably its last communist leader Egon Krenz, were later prosecuted for offenses committed during the GDR era.[16][17]
Naming conventions
The official name was Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic), usually abbreviated to DDR (GDR). Both terms were used in East Germany, with increasing usage of the abbreviated form, especially since East Germany considered West Germans and West Berliners to be foreigners following the promulgation of its
The centre of political power in East Berlin was – in the West – referred to as Pankow (the seat of command of the Soviet forces in Germany was in Karlshorst, a district in the East of Berlin.).[18] Over time, however, the abbreviation "DDR" was also increasingly used colloquially by West Germans and West German media.[i]
When used by West Germans, Westdeutschland (
History
Explaining the internal impact of the GDR government from the perspective of German history in the long term, historian
On the other hand, the new regime made relatively few changes in the historically independent domains of the sciences, the engineering professions,[28]: 185–189 the Protestant churches,[28]: 190 and in many bourgeois lifestyles.[28]: 190 Social policy, says Ritter, became a critical legitimization tool in the last decades and mixed socialist and traditional elements about equally.[28]
Origins
At the Yalta Conference during World War II, the Allies, i.e., the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), and the Soviet Union (USSR), agreed on dividing a defeated Nazi Germany into occupation zones,[29] and on dividing Berlin, the German capital, among the Allied powers as well. Initially, this meant the formation of three zones of occupation, i.e., American, British, and Soviet. Later, a French zone was carved out of the US and British zones.[30]
1949 establishment
Eastern Bloc |
---|
The ruling communist party, known as the
As West Germany was reorganized and gained independence from its occupiers (1945–1949), the GDR was established in East Germany in October 1949. The emergence of the two sovereign states solidified the 1945 division of Germany.[33] On 10 March 1952, (in what would become known as the "Stalin Note") the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, issued a proposal to reunify Germany with a policy of neutrality, with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for "the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction, and assembly" and free activity of democratic parties and organizations.[34] The West demurred; reunification was not then a priority for the leadership of West Germany, and the NATO powers declined the proposal, asserting that Germany should be able to join NATO and that such a negotiation with the Soviet Union would be seen as a capitulation.
In 1949 the Soviets turned control of East Germany over to the
The government of East Germany denounced West German failures in accomplishing
Zones of occupation
In the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945, the Allies established their joint military occupation and administration of Germany via the Allied Control Council (ACC), a four-power (US, UK, USSR, France) military government effective until the restoration of German sovereignty. In eastern Germany, the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ – Sowjetische Besatzungszone) comprised the five states (Länder) of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia.[38] Disagreements over the policies to be followed in the occupied zones quickly led to a breakdown in cooperation between the four powers, and the Soviets administered their zone without regard to the policies implemented in the other zones. The Soviets withdrew from the ACC in 1948; subsequently, as the other three zones were increasingly unified and granted self-government, the Soviet administration instituted a separate socialist government in its zone.[39][40]
Seven years after the Allies' 1945
East Germany regarded East Berlin as its capital, and the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc diplomatically recognized East Berlin as the capital. However, the Western Allies disputed this recognition, considering the entire city of Berlin to be occupied territory governed by the Allied Control Council. According to Margarete Feinstein, East Berlin's status as the capital was largely unrecognized by the West and by most Third World countries.[42] In practice, the ACC's authority was rendered moot by the Cold War, East Berlin's status as occupied territory largely became a legal fiction, and the Soviet sector of Berlin became fully integrated into the GDR.[43]
The deepening Cold War conflict between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union over the unresolved status of West Berlin led to the
Partition
History of Germany |
---|
On 21 April 1946 the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands – KPD) and the part of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands – SPD) in the Soviet zone merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED – Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), which then won the elections of October 1946. The SED government nationalised infrastructure and industrial plants.
In March 1948 the German Economic Commission (Deutsche Wirtschaftskomission–DWK) under its chairman Heinrich Rau assumed administrative authority in the Soviet occupation zone, thus becoming the predecessor of an East German government.[45][46]
On 7 October 1949 the SED established the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic – GDR), based on a socialist political constitution establishing its control of the
On 16 June 1953, workers constructing the new
The German
In 1971, Ulbricht was removed from leadership after Soviet leader
Initially, East Germany claimed an
In the early 1970s, the
This assessment of the Basic Treaty was confirmed in a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1973;[55]
the German Democratic Republic is in the international-law sense a State and as such a subject of international law. This finding is independent of recognition in international law of the German Democratic Republic by the Federal Republic of Germany. Such recognition has not only never been formally pronounced by the Federal Republic of Germany but on the contrary repeatedly explicitly rejected. If the conduct of the Federal Republic of Germany towards the German Democratic Republic is assessed in the light of its détente policy, in particular, the conclusion of the Treaty as de facto recognition, then it can only be understood as de facto recognition of a special kind. The special feature of this Treaty is that while it is a bilateral Treaty between two States, to which the rules of international law apply and which like any other international treaty possesses validity, it is between two States that are parts of a still existing, albeit incapable of action as not being reorganized, comprehensive State of the Whole of Germany with a single body politic.[56]
Travel between the GDR and Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary became visa-free from 1972.[57]
GDR identity
From the beginning, the newly formed GDR tried to establish its own separate identity.
Remembrance of the Third Reich
The communist regime of the GDR based its legitimacy on the struggle of anti-fascist militants. A form of resistance "cult" was established in the Buchenwald camp memorial site, with the creation of a museum in 1958, and the annual celebration of the Buchenwald oath taken on 19 April 1945 by the prisoners who pledged to fight for peace and freedom. In the 1990s, the 'state anti-fascism' of the GDR gave way to the 'state anti-communism' of the FRG. From then on, the dominant interpretation of GDR history, based on the concept of totalitarianism, led to the equivalence of communism and Nazism.[59] Historian Anne-Kathleen Tillack-Graf shows, with the help of the newspaper Neues Deutschland, how the national memorials of Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück were politically instrumentalised
This article may be too technical for most readers to understand.(September 2024) |
in the GDR, particularly during the celebrations of the liberation of the concentration camps.[60]
Although officially built in opposition to the 'fascist world' in West Germany, in 1954, 32% of public administration employees were former members of the Nazi Party. However, in 1961, the share of former NSDAP members among the senior Interior Ministry administration staff was less than 10% in the GDR, compared to 67% in the FRG.[61] While in West Germany, a work of memory on the resurgence of Nazism was carried out, this was not the case in the East. Indeed, as Axel Dossmann, professor of history at the University of Jena, notes, "this phenomenon was completely hidden. For the state-SED (the East German communist party), it was impossible to admit the existence of neo-Nazis, since the foundation of the GDR was to be an anti-fascist state. The Stasi kept an eye on them, but they were considered to be outsiders or thick-skinned bullies. These young people grew up hearing double talk. At school, it was forbidden to talk about the Third Reich and, at home, their grandparents told them how, thanks to Hitler, we had the first motorways." On 17 October 1987, thirty or so skinheads violently threw themselves into a crowd of 2,000 people at a rock concert in the Zionskirche without the police intervening.[62] In 1990, the writer Freya Klier received a death threat for writing an essay on antisemitism and xenophobia in the GDR. SPDA Vice President Wolfgang Thierse, for his part, complained in Die Welt about the rise of the extreme right in the everyday life of the inhabitants of the former GDR, in particular the terrorist group NSU, with the German journalist Odile Benyahia-Kouider explaining that "it is no coincidence that the neo-Nazi party NPD has experienced a renaissance via the East".[63]
The historian Sonia Combe observes that until the 1990s, the majority of West German historians described the Normandy landings in June 1944 as an "invasion", exonerated the Wehrmacht of its responsibility for the genocide of the Jews and fabricated the myth of a diplomatic corps that "did not know". On the contrary, Auschwitz was never a taboo in the GDR. The Nazis' crimes were the subject of extensive film, theatre and literary productions. In 1991, 16% of the population in West Germany and 6% in East Germany had antisemitic prejudices. In 1994, 40% of West Germans and 22% of East Germans felt that too much emphasis was placed on the genocide of the Jews.[61]
Historian Ulrich Pfeil, nevertheless, recalls the fact that anti-fascist commemoration in the GDR had "a hagiographic and indoctrination character".[64] As in the case of the memory of the protagonists of the German labour movement and the victims of the camps, it was "staged, censored, ordered" and, during the 40 years of the regime, was an instrument of legitimisation, repression and maintenance of power.[64]
Die Wende (German reunification)
In May 1989, following widespread public anger over the faking of results of local government elections, many GDR citizens applied for exit visas or left the country contrary to GDR laws. The impetus for this exodus of East Germans was the removal of the electrified fence along Hungary's border with Austria on 2 May 1989. Although formally the Hungarian frontier was still closed, many East Germans took the opportunity to enter Hungary via Czechoslovakia, and then make the illegal crossing from Hungary to Austria and to West Germany beyond.[65] By July, 25,000 East Germans had crossed into Hungary;[66] most of them did not attempt the risky crossing into Austria but remained instead in Hungary or claimed asylum in West German embassies in Prague or Budapest.
The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a chain reaction leading to the end of the GDR and disintegration of the Eastern Bloc. It was the largest mass escape from East Germany since the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The idea of opening the border at a ceremony came from Otto von Habsburg, who proposed it to Miklós Németh, then Hungarian Prime Minister, who promoted the idea.[67] The patrons of the picnic, Habsburg and Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay, who did not attend the event, saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev's reaction to an opening of the border on the Iron Curtain. In particular, it tested whether Moscow would give the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary the command to intervene. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by the Paneuropean Union through posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union, which was then headed by Karl von Habsburg, distributed thousands of brochures inviting GDR citizens to a picnic near the border at Sopron (near Hungary's border with Austria).[68][69][70] The local Sopron organizers knew nothing of possible GDR refugees, but envisaged a local party with Austrian and Hungarian participation.[71] But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Thus the barrier of the Eastern Bloc was broken. Tens of thousands of East Germans, alerted by the media, made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or force its border troops to open fire on escapees. The GDR leadership in East Berlin did not dare to completely lock down their own country's borders.[68][70][72][73]
The next major turning point in the exodus came on 10 September 1989, when Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn announced that his country would no longer restrict movement from Hungary into Austria. Within two days, 22,000 East Germans crossed into Austria; tens of thousands more did so in the following weeks.[65]
Many other GDR citizens demonstrated against the ruling party, especially in the city of Leipzig. The Leipzig demonstrations became a weekly occurrence, with a turnout of 10,000 people at the first demonstration on 2 October, peaking at an estimated 300,000 by the end of the month.[74] The protests were surpassed in East Berlin, where half a million demonstrators turned out against the regime on 4 November.[74] Kurt Masur, conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, led local negotiations with the government and held town meetings in the concert hall.[75] The demonstrations eventually led Erich Honecker to resign in October; he was replaced by a slightly more moderate communist, Egon Krenz.[76]
The massive demonstration in East Berlin on 4 November coincided with Czechoslovakia formally opening its border to West Germany.[77] With the West more accessible than ever before, 30,000 East Germans made the crossing via Czechoslovakia in the first two days alone. To try to stem the outward flow of the population, the SED proposed a law loosening travel restrictions. When the Volkskammer rejected it on 5 November, the Cabinet and Politburo of the GDR resigned.[77] This left only one avenue open for Krenz and the SED: completely abolishing travel restrictions between East and West.
On 9 November 1989, a few sections of the Berlin Wall were opened, resulting in thousands of East Germans crossing freely into West Berlin and West Germany for the first time in nearly 30 years. Krenz resigned a month later, and the SED opened negotiations with the leaders of the incipient Democratic movement,
East Germany held
Although the Volkskammer's declaration of accession to the Federal Republic had initiated the process of reunification, the act of reunification itself (with its many specific terms, conditions and qualifications, some of which involved amendments to the West German Basic Law) was achieved constitutionally by the subsequent Unification Treaty of 31 August 1990 – that is, through a binding agreement between the former Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic, now recognising each other as separate sovereign states in international law.[79] The treaty was then voted into effect prior to the agreed date for Unification by both the Volkskammer and the Bundestag by the constitutionally required two-thirds majorities, effecting on the one hand the extinction of the GDR, and on the other the agreed amendments to the Basic Law of the Federal Republic.
The great economic and socio-political inequalities between the former Germanies required government subsidies for the full integration of the German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of the resulting
Government and politics
This section needs additional citations for verification. (June 2024) |
There were four periods in East German political history.
Organization
The ruling political party in East Germany was the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED). It was created in 1946 through the Soviet-directed merger of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet-controlled zone. However, the SED quickly transformed into a full-fledged Communist party as the more independent-minded Social Democrats were pushed out.[81]
The Potsdam Agreement committed the Soviets to support a democratic form of government in Germany, though the Soviets' understanding of democracy was radically different from that of the West.
- Christlich-Demokratische Union Deutschlands (Christian Democratic Union of Germany, CDU), which merged with the West German CDU after reunification.
- Demokratische Bauernpartei Deutschlands (Democratic Farmers' Party of Germany, DBD). The party merged with the West German CDU after reunification.
- Liberal-Demokratische Partei Deutschlands (FDPafter reunification.
- Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (FDP after reunification.[81]
The member parties were almost completely subservient to the SED and had to accept its "
The Volkskammer also included representatives from the
Important non-parliamentary mass organisations in East German society included the German Gymnastics and Sports Association (Deutscher Turn- und Sportbund or
After the fall of Socialism, the SED was renamed the "
State symbols
The flag of the German Democratic Republic consisted of three horizontal stripes in the traditional German-democratic colors black-red-gold with the national coat of arms of the GDR in the middle, consisting of hammer and compass, surrounded by a wreath of corn as a symbol of the alliance of workers, peasants and intelligentsia. First drafts of Fritz Behrendt's coat of arms contained only a hammer and wreath of corn, as an expression of the workers' and peasants' state. The final version was mainly based on the work of Heinz Behling.
By law of 26 September 1955, the state coat of arms with hammer, compass and wreath of corn was determined, as the state flag continues black-red-gold. By law of 1 October 1959, the coat of arms was inserted into the state flag. Until the end of the 1960s, the public display of this flag in the Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin was regarded as a violation of the constitution and public order and prevented by police measures (cf. the Declaration of the Interior Ministers of the Federation and the Länder, October 1959). It was not until 1969 that the Federal Government decreed "that the police should no longer intervene anywhere against the use of the flag and coat of arms of the GDR."
At the request of the DSU, the first freely elected People's Chamber of the GDR decided on 31 May 1990 that the GDR state coat of arms should be removed within a week in and on public buildings. Nevertheless, until the official end of the republic, it continued to be used in a variety of ways, for example on documents.
The text Resurrected from Ruins of the National Anthem of the GDR is by Johannes R. Becher, the melody by Hanns Eisler. From the beginning of the 1970s to the end of 1989, however, the text of the anthem was no longer sung due to the passage "Deutschland einig Vaterland".
-
Provisional coat of arms of the GDR
(12 January 1950 to 28 May 1953) -
Provisional coat of arms of the GDR
(28 May 1953 to 26 September 1955) -
Coat of arms of the GDR
(26 September 1955 to 2 October 1990) -
Flag of the GDR
(7 October 1949 to 1 October 1959) -
Commercial flag
(1959–1973) -
Flag of the GDR
(1 October 1959 to 3 October 1990)
Presidential standard
The first standard of the president had the shape of a rectangular flag in the colors black-red-gold with the inscription "President" in yellow in the red stripe, as well as "D.D.R." (contrary to the official abbreviation with dots) in the stripe below in black letters. The flag was surrounded by a stripe of yellow color. An original of the standard is in the German Historical Museum in Berlin.
-
Presidential standard 1951–1953
(The emblem was already introduced on 12 January 1950, the standard was adopted on 29 January 1951.) -
Presidential standard 1953–1955
(The emblem of the GDR was changed on 28 May 1953 and already resembled the final coat of arms of 1955.) -
Standard of the president 1955–1960
(The standard was maintained until 7 September 1960, when Wilhelm Pieck died and the presidency was abolished.) -
Standard of the chairman of the Council of State 1960–1990
War and service flags and symbols
The flags of the military units of the GDR bore the national coat of arms with a wreath of two olive branches on a red background in the black-red-gold flag.
The flags of the People's Navy for combat ships and boats bore the coat of arms with olive branch wreath on red, for auxiliary ships and boats on blue flag cloth with a narrow and centrally arranged black-red-gold band. As Gösch, the state flag was used in a reduced form.
The ships and boats of the Border Brigade Coast on the Baltic Sea and the boats of the border troops of the GDR on the Elbe and Oder carried a green bar on the Liekjust like the service flag of the border troops.
-
Service flag of the National People's Army
-
Service flag for combat ships and boats of the People's Navy
-
Service flag for auxiliary ships and boats of the People's Navy
-
Deutsche Post (1955–1973)
-
Service flag for ships and boats of the Border Brigade Coast
-
Service flag of the border troops
-
Flag of the Ministry of State Security (Stasi), East Germany, until 1990
-
Emblem of the Ministry of State Security (MfS) (Stasi) of the GDR (until 1990)
-
Coat of arms of National People's Army of the German Democratic Republic (from 1956 until 1990)
-
Emblem of the Ground Forces of National People's Army (1956–1990)
-
The coat of arms of the People's Navy with the Order of Karl Marx (between 1956 and 1990)
-
Emblem of Air Force of the National People's Army of the German Democratic Republic before 1959 (until 1956 the People's Police Air of the GDR)
-
Emblem of aircraft of National People's Army of the German Democratic Republic (1959–1990)
-
Emblem of the Grenztruppen used for vehicles (1949–1990)
-
The national ensign of the GDR Volkspolizei-Bereitschaften (from 1962 to 1990)
-
Combat Groups of the Working Class coat of arms of the fighting groups of the working class, without oak leaves (between 1953 and 1990)
-
Logo of the Warsaw Treaty Organization or "Warsaw Pact" (14 May 1955)
Political and social emblems
After being a member of the Thälmann Pioneers, which was for schoolchildren ages 6 to 14, East German youths would usually join the FDJ.
-
Emblem of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (1950–1990)
-
Flag of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (1950–1990)
-
Emblem of the Free German Youth
-
Flag of the Free German Youth
-
Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation Emblem (13 December 1948 – August 1990)
-
Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation Flag (13 December 1948 – August 1990)
Young Pioneer programs
Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation
Young Pioneers and the Thälmann Pioneers, was a youth organisation of schoolchildren aged 6 to 14 in East Germany.[85] They were named after Ernst Thälmann, the former leader of the Communist Party of Germany, who was executed at the Buchenwald concentration camp.[86]
The group was a subdivision of the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ,
The pioneer group was loosely based on Scouting, but organised in such a way as to teach schoolchildren aged 6 – 14 socialist ideology and prepare them for the Freie Deutsche Jugend, the FDJ.[88]
The program was designed to follow the
Both Pioneer groups would often have massive parades, honoring and celebrating the
Membership
Membership in the Young Pioneers and the Thälmann Pioneers was formally voluntary. On the other hand, it was taken for granted by the state and thus by the school as well as by many parents. In practice, the initiative for the admission of all students in a class came from the school. As the membership quota of up to 98 percent of the students (in the later years of the GDR) shows, the six- or ten-year-olds (or their parents) had to become active on their own in order not to become members. Nevertheless, there were also children who did not become members. Rarely, students were not admitted because of poor academic performance or bad behavior "as a punishment" or excluded from further membership.
Uniform
The pioneers' uniform consisted of white shirts and blouses bought by their parents, along with blue trousers or skirts until the 1970s and on special occasions. But often the only thing worn was the most important sign of the future socialist – the triangular necktie. At first this was blue, but from 1973, the Thälmann pioneers wore a red necktie like the pioneers in the Soviet Union, while the Young Pioneers kept the blue one. Pioneers wore their uniforms at political events and state holidays such as the workers' demonstrations on May Day, as well as at school festivals and pioneer events.[88]
The pioneer clothing consisted of white blouses and shirts that could be purchased in sporting goods stores. On the left sleeve there was a patch with the embroidered emblem of the pioneer organization and, if necessary, a rank badge with stripes in the color of the scarf. These rank badges were three stripes for Friendship Council Chairmen, two stripes for Group Council Chairmen and Friendship Council members, one stripe for all other Group Council members. In some cases, symbols for special functions were also sewn on at this point, for example a red cross for a boy paramedic. Dark blue trousers or skirts were worn and a dark blue cap served as a headgear with the pioneer emblem as a cockade. At the beginning of the 1970s, a windbreaker/blouson and a dark red leisure blouse were added.
However, the pioneer clothing was only worn completely on special occasions, such as flag appeals, commemoration days or festive school events, but it was usually not prescribed.
From the 1960s, the requirement of trousers/skirt was dispensed with in many places, and the dress code was also relaxed with regard to the cap. For pioneer afternoons or other activities, often only the triangular scarf was worn. In contrast to the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries, a blue scarf was common in the GDR. It was not until 1973, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the organization, that the red scarf was introduced for the Thälmann pioneers, while the young pioneers remained with the blue scarf. The change of color of the scarf was solemnly designed in the pioneer organization.
From 1988 there was an extended clothing range, consisting of a Nicki in the colors white, light yellow, turquoise or pink (with an imprint of the symbol of the pioneer organization), long and short trousers with a snap belt and, for the colder months, a lined windbreaker in red for girls and gray for boys.
Suitable pioneers were trained as paramedics; after their training, they wore the badge "Young Paramedic".
Music
The Pioneer songs were sung at any opportunity, including the following titles:
- "Wir tragen die Blaue Fahne" – "We Carry the Blue Flag"
- "Unser kleiner Trompeter" – "Our Little Trumpeter"
- "Thälmann-Lied" – "Thälmann Song"
- "Pioniermarsch" – "Pioneers' March"
- "Der Volkspolizist" – " The People's Policeman"
- "Jetzt bin ich Junger Pionier" – "Now I Am a Young Pioneer"
- "Unsere Heimat" – "Our Heimat"
- "Die Heimat hat sich schön gemacht" – "Our Homeland Has Smartened Itself Up"
- "Auf zum Sozialismus" – "Onwards to Socialism"
- "Kleine weiße Friedenstaube" – "Little White Dove of Peace"
- "Lied der jungen Naturforscher" – "Song of the Young Nature Researchers"
- "Wenn Mutti früh zur Arbeit geht" – "When Mother Goes to Work in the Morning"
- "Gute Freunde" – "Good Friends"
- "Hab'n Se nicht noch Altpapier" – "Got Any Waste Paper?"
- "Pioniere voran!" – "Onwards, Pioneers!"
- "Laßt Euch grüßen, Pioniere" – "Greetings, Pioneers"
- "Immer lebe die Sonne" – "May There Always Be Sunshine"
- "Friede auf unserer Erde" – "Peace on Our Earth"
Free German Youth
Freie Deutsche Jugend, organization was meant for young people, both male and female, between the ages of 14 and 25 and comprised about 75% of the young population of former East Germany.[90] In 1981–1982, this meant 2.3 million members.[91] After being a member of the Thälmann Pioneers, which was for schoolchildren ages 6 to 14, East German youths would usually join the FDJ.[92]
The FDJ increasingly developed into an instrument of communist rule and became a member of the 'democratic bloc' in 1950.[89] However, the FDJ's focus of 'happy youth life', which had characterised the 1940s, was increasingly marginalised following Walter Ulbricht's emphasis of the 'accelerated construction of socialism' at the 4th Parliament and a radicalisation of SED policy in July 1952.[93] In turn, a more severe anti-religious agenda, whose aim was to obstruct the Church youths' work, grew within the FDJ, ultimately reaching a high point in mid-April 1953 when the FDJ newspaper Junge Welt reported on details of the 'criminal' activities of the 'illegal' Junge Gemeinden FDJ gangs were sent to church meetings to heckle those inside and school tribunals interrogated or expelled students who refused to join the FDJ for religious reasons.[94]
Membership
Upon request, the young people were admitted to the FDJ from the age of 14. Membership was voluntary according to the statutes, but non-members had to fear considerable disadvantages in admission to secondary schools as well as in the choice of studies and careers and were also exposed to strong pressure from line-loyal teachers to join the organization. By the end of 1949, around one million young people had joined it, which corresponded to almost a third of the young people. Only in Berlin, where other youth organizations were also admitted due to the four-power status, the proportion of FDJ members in youth was limited to just under 5 percent in 1949. In 1985, the organization had about 2.3 million members, corresponding to about 80 percent of all GDR youths between the ages of 14 and 25. Most young people tacitly ended their FDJ membership after completing their apprenticeship or studies when they entered the workforce. However, during the period of military service in the NVA, those responsible (political officer, FDJ secretary) attached great importance to reviving FDJ membership. The degree of organisation was much higher in urban areas than in rural areas.
The FDJ clothing was the blue FDJ shirt ("blue shirt") – for girls the blue FDJ blouse – with the FDJ emblem of the rising sun on the left sleeve. The greeting of the FDJers was "friendship". Until the end of the GDR, the income-dependent membership fee was between 0.30 and 5.00 marks per month.
Music
The Festival of Political Songs (German: Festival des politischen Liedes) was one of the largest music events in East Germany, held between 1970 and 1990. It was hosted by the Free German Youth and featured international artists.
Uniform
The blue shirt (also: FDJ shirt or FDJ blouse) was since 1948 the official organizational clothing of the GDR youth organization Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ). On official occasions, FDJ members had to wear their blue shirts. The FDJ shirt – an FDJ blouse for girls – was a long-sleeved shirt of blue color with a folding collar, epaulettes and chest pockets. On the left sleeve was the FDJ symbol of the rising sun sewn up. Until the 1970s, the blue shirts were only made of cotton, later there was a cheaper variant made of polyester mixture.
The epaulettes of the blue shirt, in contrast to epaulettes on military uniforms, did not serve to make visible rank or unit membership, but were used at most to put a beret through. Official functions in the FDJ, for example FDJ secretary of a school or apprentice class, had no rank badges and could not be read on the FDJ shirt. However, the members of the FDJ order groups officially wore the FDJ shirt together with a red armband during their missions.
From the 1970s onwards, official patches and pins were issued for certain events, which could be worn on the FDJ shirt. There was no fixed wearing style. The orders and decorations that ordinary FDJ members received until the end of their membership at the age of 19 to 24 – usually the badge of good knowledge – were usually not worn. As a rule, only full-time FDJ members on the way to the nomenklatura at an older age achieved awards, which were also worn.
Administrative districts
Until 1952, East Germany comprised the capital,
The
East Berlin was made the country's 15th Bezirk in 1961 but retained special legal status until 1968, when the residents approved the new (draft) constitution. Despite the city as a whole being legally under the control of the Allied Control Council, and diplomatic objections of the Allied governments, the GDR administered the Bezirk of Berlin as part of its territory.
Foreign relations
Support of Third World socialist countries
After receiving wider international diplomatic recognition in 1972–73, the GDR began active cooperation with Third World socialist governments and national liberation movements. While the USSR was in control of the overall strategy and Cuban armed forces were involved in the actual combat (mostly in the People's Republic of Angola and socialist Ethiopia), the GDR provided experts for military hardware maintenance and personnel training, and oversaw creation of secret security agencies based on its own Stasi model.
Already in the 1960s, contacts were established with Angola's MPLA, Mozambique's FRELIMO and the PAIGC in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. In the 1970s official cooperation was established with other socialist states, such as the People's Republic of the Congo, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, Somali Democratic Republic, Libya, and the People's Republic of Benin.
The first military agreement was signed in 1973 with the People's Republic of the Congo. In 1979 friendship treaties were signed with Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia.
It was estimated that altogether, 2,000–4,000 DDR military and security experts were dispatched to Africa. In addition, representatives from African and Arab countries and liberation movements underwent military training in the GDR.[95]
East Germany and the Middle East conflict
East Germany pursued an
Ba'athist Iraq, due to its wealth of unexploited natural resources, was sought out as an ally of East Germany, with Iraq being the first Arab country to recognise East Germany on 10 May 1969, paving the way for other Arab League states to later do the same. East Germany attempted to play a decisive role in mediating the conflict between the Iraqi Communist Party and the Ba'ath Party and supported the creation of the National Progressive Front. The East German government also attempted to foster close relations with the Ba'athist regime of Hafez al-Assad during the early years of Assad's regime and, as it did in Iraq, used its influence to minimise tensions between the Syrian Communist Party and the Ba'athist regime.[101]
Western Europe
During the Cold War, especially during its early years, the East German government attempted to build closer diplomatic relations and trade links between Iceland and East Germany. By the 1950s, East Germany had become Iceland's fifth largest trading partner. East German influence in Iceland significantly declined in the 1970s and 1980s following a schism between the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and the Icelandic Socialist Party over the Prague Spring, along with free market economic reforms implemented by Iceland during the 1960s.[102]
Soviet military occupation
Military
This section needs additional citations for verification. (November 2023) |
The government of East Germany had control over a large number of military and paramilitary organisations through various ministries. Chief among these was the Ministry of National Defence. Because of East Germany's proximity to the West during the Cold War (1945–92), its military forces were among the most advanced of the Warsaw Pact. Defining what was a military force and what was not is a matter of some dispute.
National People's Army
The Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) was the largest military organisation in East Germany. It was formed in 1956 from the Kasernierte Volkspolizei (Barracked People's Police), the military units of the regular police (Volkspolizei), when East Germany joined the Warsaw Pact. From its creation, it was controlled by the Ministry of National Defence (East Germany). It was an all-volunteer force until an eighteen-month conscription period was introduced in 1962.[103][104] It was regarded by NATO officers as the best military in the Warsaw Pact.[105] The NVA consisted of the following branches:
- Land Forces of the National People's Army
- Volksmarine – People's Navy
- Air Forces of the National People's Army
Border troops
The border troops of the Eastern sector were originally organised as a police force, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei, similar to the Bundesgrenzschutz in West Germany. It was controlled by the Ministry of the Interior. Following the remilitarisation of East Germany in 1956, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei was transformed into a military force in 1961, modeled after the Soviet Border Troops, and transferred to the Ministry of National Defense, as part of the National People's Army. In 1973, it was separated from the NVA, but it remained under the same ministry. At its peak, it numbered approximately 47,000 men.
Volkspolizei-Bereitschaft
After the NVA was separated from the Volkspolizei in 1956, the Ministry of the Interior maintained its own public order barracked reserve, known as the Volkspolizei-Bereitschaften (VPB). These units were, like the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, equipped as motorised infantry, and they numbered between 12,000 and 15,000 men.
Stasi
The Ministry of State Security (Stasi) included the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment, which was mainly involved with facilities security and plain clothes events security. They were the only public-facing wing of the Stasi. The Stasi numbered around 90,000 men, the Guards Regiment around 11,000–12,000 men.[106][107]
Combat groups of the working class
The
Conscientious objection
Every man was required to serve eighteen months of
Totalitarianism and repression
There is general consensus among academics that the GDR fulfilled most of the criteria to be considered a totalitarian state.[108] There is, however, ongoing debate as to whether the more positive aspects of the regime can sufficiently dilute the harsher aspects so as to make the totalitarian tag seem excessive. According to the historian Mary Fulbrook:
Even those who are most critical of the concept admit that the regime possessed most, if not all, of the objective traits associated with the term, i.e., rule by a single party or elite that dominated the state machinery; that centrally directed and controlled the economy; mass communication, and all forms of social and cultural organisation; that espoused an official, all-encompassing, utopian (or, depending on one's point of view, dystopian) ideology; and that used physical and mental terror and repression to achieve its goals, mobilise the masses, and silence opposition- all of which was made possible by the buildup of a vast state security service.[109]
The state security service (SSD) was commonly known as the Stasi, and it was fundamental to the socialist leadership's attempts to reach their historical goal. It was an open secret in the GDR that the Stasi read people's mail and tapped phone calls.[110] They also employed a vast network of unofficial informers who would spy on people more directly and report to their Stasi handlers. These collaborators were hired in all walks of life and had access to nearly every organisation in the country. At the end of the GDR in 1990 there were approximately 109,000 still active informants at every grade.[111] Repressive measures carried out by the Stasi can be roughly divided into two main chronological groupings: pre and post 1971, when Honecker came to power. According to the historian Nessim Ghouas, "There was a change in how the Stasi operated under Honecker in 1971. The more brutal aspects of repression seen in the Stalinist era (torture, executions, and physical repression descending from the GDR's earlier days) was changed with a more selective use of power."[112]
The more direct forms of repression such as arrest and torture could mean significant international condemnation for the GDR. However, the Stasi still needed to paralyse and disrupt what it considered to be 'hostile-negative'[113] forces (internal domestic enemies) if the socialist goal was to be properly realised. A person could be targeted by the Stasi for expressing politically, culturally, or religiously incorrect views; for performing hostile acts; or for being a member of a group which was considered sufficiently counter-productive to the socialist state to warrant intervention. As such, writers, artists, youth sub-cultures, and members of the church were often targeted.[114] If after preliminary research the Stasi found an individual warranted action against them then they would open an 'operational case'[114] in regard to them. There were two desirable outcomes for each case: that the person was either arrested, tried, and imprisoned for an ostensibly justified reason, or if this could not be achieved that they were debilitated through the application of Zersetzung (in German, "decomposition") methods.[115] In the Honecker era, Zersetzung became the primary method of Stasi repression, due in large part to an ambition to avoid political fallout from wrongful arrest.[k] Historian Mike Dennis says "Between 1985–1988, the Stasi conducted about 4,500 to 5,000 OVs (operational cases) per year."[114]
Zersetzung methods varied and were tailored depending on the individual being targeted. They are known to have included sending offensive mail to a person's house, the spreading of malicious rumours, banning them from traveling, sabotaging their career, breaking into their house and moving objects around etc. These acts frequently led to unemployment, social isolation, and poor mental health. Many people had various forms of mental or nervous breakdown. Similarly to physical imprisonment, Zersetzung methods had the effect of paralysing a person's ability to operate but with the advantage of the source being unknown or at least unprovable. There is ongoing debate as to whether weaponised directed energy devices, such as X-ray transmitters, were used in combination with the psychological warfare methods of Zersetzung.[116] About 135,000 children were educated in special residential homes; the worst of them was Torgau penal institution (till 1975).[117] The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims considers that there are between 300,000 and 500,000 victims of direct physical torture, Zersetzung, and gross human rights violations due to the Stasi.[118] Victims of historical Zersetzung can now draw a special pension from the German state.[119]
Economy
The East German economy began poorly because of the devastation caused by the Second World War, the loss of so many young soldiers, the disruption of business and transportation, the allied bombing campaigns that decimated cities, and reparations owed to the USSR. The Red Army dismantled and transported to Russia the infrastructure and industrial plants of the Soviet Zone of Occupation. By the early 1950s, the reparations were paid in agricultural and industrial products; and Lower Silesia, with its coal mines and Szczecin, an important natural port, were given to Poland by the decision of Stalin and in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement.[49]
The socialist
Notable East German exports were photographic cameras, under the Praktica brand; automobiles under the Trabant, Wartburg, and the IFA brands; hunting rifles, sextants, typewriters and wristwatches.
Until the 1960s, East Germans endured shortages of basic foodstuffs such as
The government used money and prices as political devices, providing highly subsidised prices for a wide range of basic goods and services, in what was known as "the second pay packet".[120] At the production level, artificial prices made for a system of semi-barter and resource hoarding. For the consumer, it led to the substitution of GDR money with time, barter, and hard currencies. The socialist economy became steadily more dependent on financial infusions from hard-currency loans from West Germany. East Germans, meanwhile, came to see their soft currency as worthless relative to the Deutsche Mark (DM).[121] Economic issues would also persist in East Germany after the reunification of the west and the east. According to the federal office of political education (23 June 2009) 'In 1991 alone, 153 billion Deutschmarks had to be transferred to eastern Germany to secure incomes, support businesses and improve infrastructure... by 1999 the total had amounted to 1.634 trillion Marks net... The sums were so large that public debt in Germany more than doubled.'[122]
Consumption and jobs
East Germany | West Germany | |
1945–1960 | 6.2 | 10.9 |
1950–1960 | 6.7 | 8.0 |
1960–1970 | 2.7 | 4.4 |
1970–1980 | 2.6 | 2.8 |
1980–1989 | 0.3 | 1.9 |
Total 1950–1989 | 3.1 | 4.3 |
Loyalty to the SED was a primary criterion for getting a good job – professionalism was secondary to political criteria in personnel recruitment and development.[124]
Beginning in 1963 with a series of secret international agreements, East Germany recruited workers from
Transportation
Telecommunications
By the mid-1980s, East Germany possessed a well-developed communications system. There were approximately 3.6 million telephones in usage (21.8 for every 100 inhabitants), and 16,476
An unusual feature of the telephone network was that, in most cases,
In 1976 East Germany inaugurated the operation of a ground-based radio station at Fürstenwalde for the purpose of relaying and receiving communications from Soviet satellites and to serve as a participant in the international telecommunications organization established by the Soviet government, Intersputnik.
Demographics
Year | Pop. | ±% |
---|---|---|
1950 | 18,388,000 | — |
1960 | 17,188,000 | −6.5% |
1970 | 17,068,000 | −0.7% |
1980 | 16,740,000 | −1.9% |
1990 | 16,028,000 | −4.3% |
Source: DESTATIS |
The East German population declined by three million people throughout its forty-one year history, from 19 million in 1948 to 16 million in 1990; of the 1948 population, some four million
Vital statistics
Average population (thousand)[130] | Live births | Deaths | Natural change | Crude birth rate (per 1,000) | Crude death rate (per 1,000) | Natural change (per 1,000) | Total fertility rate | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1946 | 188,679 | 413,240 | −224,561 | 10.2 | 22.4 | −12.1 | 1.30 | |
1947 | 247,275 | 358,035 | −110,760 | 13.1 | 19.0 | −5.9 | 1.75 | |
1948 | 243,311 | 289,747 | −46,436 | 12.7 | 15.2 | −2.4 | 1.76 | |
1949 | 274,022 | 253,658 | 20,364 | 14.5 | 13.4 | 1.1 | 2.03 | |
1950 | 18,388 | 303,866 | 219,582 | 84,284 | 16.5 | 11.9 | 4.6 | 2.35 |
1951 | 18,350 | 310,772 | 208,800 | 101,972 | 16.9 | 11.4 | 5.6 | 2.46 |
1952 | 18,300 | 306,004 | 221,676 | 84,328 | 16.6 | 12.1 | 4.6 | 2.42 |
1953 | 18,112 | 298,933 | 212,627 | 86,306 | 16.4 | 11.7 | 4.7 | 2.40 |
1954 | 18,002 | 293,715 | 219,832 | 73,883 | 16.3 | 12.2 | 4.1 | 2.38 |
1955 | 17,832 | 293,280 | 214,066 | 79,215 | 16.3 | 11.9 | 4.4 | 2.38 |
1956 | 17,604 | 281,282 | 212,698 | 68,584 | 15.8 | 12.0 | 3.9 | 2.30 |
1957 | 17,411 | 273,327 | 225,179 | 48,148 | 15.6 | 12.9 | 2.7 | 2.24 |
1958 | 17,312 | 271,405 | 221,113 | 50,292 | 15.6 | 12.7 | 2.9 | 2.22 |
1959 | 17,286 | 291,980 | 229,898 | 62,082 | 16.9 | 13.3 | 3.6 | 2.37 |
1960 | 17,188 | 292,985 | 233,759 | 59,226 | 16.9 | 13.5 | 3.4 | 2.35 |
1961 | 17,079 | 300,818 | 222,739 | 78,079 | 17.6 | 13.0 | 4.6 | 2.42 |
1962 | 17,136 | 297,982 | 233,995 | 63,987 | 17.4 | 13.7 | 3.7 | 2.42 |
1963 | 17,181 | 301,472 | 222,001 | 79,471 | 17.6 | 12.9 | 4.6 | 2.47 |
1964 | 17,004 | 291,867 | 226,191 | 65,676 | 17.1 | 13.3 | 3.9 | 2.48 |
1965 | 17,040 | 281,058 | 230,254 | 50,804 | 16.5 | 13.5 | 3.0 | 2.48 |
1966 | 17,071 | 267,958 | 225,663 | 42,295 | 15.7 | 13.2 | 2.5 | 2.43 |
1967 | 17,090 | 252,817 | 227,068 | 25,749 | 14.8 | 13.3 | 1.5 | 2.34 |
1968 | 17,087 | 245,143 | 242,473 | 2,670 | 14.3 | 14.2 | 0.1 | 2.30 |
1969 | 17,075 | 238,910 | 243,732 | −4,822 | 14.0 | 14.3 | −0.3 | 2.24 |
1970 | 17,068 | 236,929 | 240,821 | −3,892 | 13.9 | 14.1 | −0.2 | 2.19 |
1971 | 17,054 | 234,870 | 234,953 | −83 | 13.8 | 13.8 | −0.0 | 2.13 |
1972 | 17,011 | 200,443 | 234,425 | −33,982 | 11.7 | 13.7 | −2.0 | 1.79 |
1973 | 16,951 | 180,336 | 231,960 | −51,624 | 10.6 | 13.7 | −3.0 | 1.58 |
1974 | 16,891 | 179,127 | 229,062 | −49,935 | 10.6 | 13.5 | −3.0 | 1.54 |
1975 | 16,820 | 181,798 | 240,389 | −58,591 | 10.8 | 14.3 | −3.5 | 1.54 |
1976 | 16,767 | 195,483 | 233,733 | −38,250 | 11.6 | 13.9 | −2.3 | 1.64 |
1977 | 16,758 | 223,152 | 226,233 | −3,081 | 13.3 | 13.5 | −0.2 | 1.85 |
1978 | 16,751 | 232,151 | 232,332 | −181 | 13.9 | 13.9 | −0.0 | 1.90 |
1979 | 16,740 | 235,233 | 232,742 | 2,491 | 14.0 | 13.9 | 0.1 | 1.90 |
1980 | 16,740 | 245,132 | 238,254 | 6,878 | 14.6 | 14.2 | 0.4 | 1.94 |
1981 | 16,706 | 237,543 | 232,244 | 5,299 | 14.2 | 13.9 | 0.3 | 1.85 |
1982 | 16,702 | 240,102 | 227,975 | 12,127 | 14.4 | 13.7 | 0.7 | 1.86 |
1983 | 16,701 | 233,756 | 222,695 | 11,061 | 14.0 | 13.3 | 0.7 | 1.79 |
1984 | 16,660 | 228,135 | 221,181 | 6,954 | 13.6 | 13.2 | 0.4 | 1.74 |
1985 | 16,640 | 227,648 | 225,353 | 2,295 | 13.7 | 13.5 | 0.2 | 1.73 |
1986 | 16,640 | 222,269 | 223,536 | −1,267 | 13.4 | 13.5 | −0.1 | 1.70 |
1987 | 16,661 | 225,959 | 213,872 | 12,087 | 13.6 | 12.8 | 0.8 | 1.74 |
1988 | 16,675 | 215,734 | 213,111 | 2,623 | 12.9 | 12.8 | 0.1 | 1.67 |
1989 | 16,434 | 198,992 | 205,711 | −6,789 | 12.0 | 12.4 | −0.4 | 1.56 |
1990 | 16,028 | 178,476 | 208,110 | −29,634 | 11.1 | 12.9 | −1.8 | 1.51 |
Source:[131] |
Major cities
(1988 populations)
- East Berlin (1,200,000)
- Leipzig[132] (556,000)
- Dresden[133] (520,000)
- Karl-Marx-Stadt[134](314,437) (Chemnitz until 1953, reverted to original name in 1990)
- Magdeburg[134] (290,579)
- Rostock[134] (253,990)
- Halle (Saale)[134](236,044)
- Erfurt[134] (220,016)
- Potsdam[134] (142,862)
- Gera[134] (134,834)
- Schwerin[134] (130,685)
- Cottbus[134] (128,639)
- Zwickau[134] (121,749)
- Jena[134] (108,010)
- Dessau[134] (103,867)
Religion
Religion became contested ground in the GDR, with the governing communists promoting state atheism, although some people remained loyal to Christian communities.[135] In 1957, the state authorities established a State Secretariat for Church Affairs to handle the government's contact with churches and with religious groups;[136] the SED remained officially atheist.[137]
In 1950, 85% of the GDR citizens were
State atheism
When it first came to power, the Communist party asserted the compatibility of Christianity and Marxism–Leninism and sought Christian participation in the building of socialism. At first, the promotion of Marxist–Leninist atheism received little official attention. In the mid-1950s, as the Cold War heated up, atheism became a topic of major interest for the state, in both domestic and foreign contexts. University chairs and departments devoted to the study of scientific atheism were founded and much literature (scholarly and popular) on the subject was produced. This activity subsided in the late 1960s amid perceptions that it had started to become counterproductive. Official and scholarly attention to atheism renewed beginning in 1973, though this time with more emphasis on scholarship and on the training of cadres than on propaganda. Throughout, the attention paid to atheism in East Germany was never intended to jeopardise the cooperation that was desired from those East Germans who were religious.[139]
Protestantism
East Germany, historically, was majority
In 1969, the regional Protestant churches in East Germany and East Berlin[l] broke away from the EKD and formed the Federation of Protestant Churches in the German Democratic Republic (German: Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR, BEK), in 1970 also joined by the Moravian Herrnhuter Brüdergemeinde. In June 1991, following the German reunification, the BEK churches again merged with the EKD ones.
Between 1956 and 1971, the leadership of the East German Lutheran churches gradually changed its relations with the state from hostility to cooperation.[140] From the founding of the GDR in 1949, the Socialist Unity Party sought to weaken the influence of the church on the rising generation. The church adopted an attitude of confrontation and distance toward the state. Around 1956 this began to develop into a more neutral stance accommodating conditional loyalty. The government was no longer regarded as illegitimate; instead, the church leaders started viewing the authorities as installed by God and, therefore, deserving of obedience by Christians. But on matters where the state demanded something which the churches felt was not in accordance with the will of God, the churches reserved their right to say no. There were both structural and intentional causes behind this development. Structural causes included the hardening of Cold War tensions in Europe in the mid-1950s, which made it clear that the East German state was not temporary. The loss of church members also made it clear to the leaders of the church that they had to come into some kind of dialogue with the state. The intentions behind the change of attitude varied from a traditional liberal Lutheran acceptance of secular power to a positive attitude toward socialist ideas.[141]
Manfred Stolpe became a lawyer for the Brandenburg Protestant Church in 1959 before taking up a position at church headquarters in Berlin. In 1969 he helped found the Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR (BEK), where he negotiated with the government while at the same time working within the institutions of this Protestant body. He won the regional elections for the Brandenburg state assembly at the head of the SPD list in 1990. Stolpe remained in the Brandenburg government until he joined the federal government in 2002.[142][143]
Apart from the Protestant state churches (German:
Catholicism
The smaller Catholic Church in eastern Germany had a fully functioning episcopal hierarchy in full accord with the Vatican. During the early postwar years, tensions were high. The Catholic Church as a whole (and particularly the bishops) resisted both the East German state and Marxist–Leninist ideology. The state allowed the bishops to lodge protests, which they did on issues such as abortion.[141]
After 1945, the Church did fairly well in integrating Catholic exiles from lands to the east (which mostly became part of Poland) and in adjusting its institutional structures to meet the needs of a church within an officially atheist society. This meant an increasingly hierarchical church structure, whereas in the area of religious education, press, and youth organisations, a system of temporary staff was developed, one that took into account the special situation of Caritas, a Catholic charity organisation. By 1950, therefore, there existed a Catholic subsociety that was well adjusted to prevailing specific conditions and capable of maintaining Catholic identity.[144][page needed]
With a generational change in the episcopacy taking place in the early 1980s, the state hoped for better relations with the new bishops, but the new bishops instead began holding unauthorised mass meetings, promoting international ties in discussions with theologians abroad, and hosting ecumenical conferences. The new bishops became less politically oriented and more involved in pastoral care and attention to spiritual concerns. The government responded by limiting international contacts for bishops.[145][need quotation to verify]
List of apostolic administrators:
- Erfurt-Meiningen
- Görlitz
- Magdeburg
- Schwerin
Education
Child care system
About 600,000 children and youth were subordinate to East German residential child care system.
Culture
This section needs additional citations for verification. (June 2015) |
East Germany's culture was strongly influenced by communist thought and was marked by an attempt to define itself in opposition to the west, particularly West Germany and the United States. Critics of the East German state[
GDR culture and politics were limited by the harsh censorship.[147] Compared to the music of the FRG, the freedom of art was less restricted by private-sector guidelines, but by guidelines from the state and the SED. Nevertheless, many musicians strove to explore the existing boundaries. Despite the state's support for music education, there were politically motivated conflicts with the state, especially among rock, blues and folk musicians and songwriters, as well as composers of so-called serious music.
Music
A special feature of GDR culture is the broad spectrum of German rock bands. The
Schlager, which was very popular in the west, also gained a foothold early on in East Germany, and numerous musicians, such as Gerd Christian , Uwe Jensen , and Hartmut Schulze-Gerlach gained national fame. From 1962 to 1976, an international schlager festival was held in Rostock, garnering participants from between 18 and 22 countries each year.[148] The city of Dresden held a similar international festival for schlager musicians from 1971 until shortly before reunification.[149] There was a national schlager contest hosted yearly in Magdeburg from 1966 to 1971 as well.[150]
Bands and singers from other socialist countries were popular, e.g. Czerwone Gitary from Poland known as the Rote Gitarren.[151][152] Czech Karel Gott, the Golden Voice from Prague, was beloved in both German states.[153] Hungarian band Omega performed in both German states, and Yugoslavian band Korni Grupa toured East Germany in the 1970s.[154][155]
West German television and radio could be received in many parts of the East. The Western influence led to the formation of more "underground" groups with a decisively western-oriented sound. A few of these bands – the so-called
The government of the GDR was invested in both promoting the tradition of German classical music, and in supporting composers to write new works in that tradition. Notable East German composers include Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Ernst Hermann Meyer, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny, and Kurt Schwaen.
The birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Eisenach, was rendered as a museum about him, featuring more than three hundred instruments, which, in 1980, received some 70,000 visitors. In Leipzig, the Bach archive contains his compositions and correspondence and recordings of his music.[158]
Governmental support of classical music maintained some 168 publicly funded concert, opera, chamber, and radio orchestras, such as
Censorship in the music sector
All productions were subject to censorship. Texts had to be submitted and shows approved in advance; performances were watched. No one was exempt from this, not even famous artists with connections to the highest circles of the SED government. Under this pressure, strategies were developed to bring critical texts to the audience despite censorship. For example, Heinz Quermann always deliberately built an extreme gag into his entertainment programme so that the censors would have something to cut and the other gags would be less critically scrutinised. Tamara Danz of Silly founded the term "green elephant" (grüner Elefant) for such passages.
At the beginning of the 1960s, the youth of the GDR were also under the influence of the Beatles and their music. In the beginning, this music was still tolerated and supported by the GDR leadership, especially with the help of the FDJ. The high point of this era was 1965, when GDR bands not only got radio and television appearances, but were even allowed to make recordings. However, the SED realised that it could not control this movement, which was basically rebellious and oriented towards the West, and steer it in a direction it liked. The Leipzig Beat Revolt was a response, that most of the bands were therefore simply banned, the others were strictly controlled. For example, Thomas Natschinski's band had to change its English name "Team 4" to the German name "Thomas Natschinski and his group". Other bands were not so conformist. Renft in particular was repeatedly banned from performing and later also the blues rock band Freygang, whose members went into hiding and then played under pseudonyms.
Even convinced socialists like the singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann were banned from performing because they had different ideas of socialism than the SED realised. In 1976, Wolf Biermann was allowed to tour in the West and this was immediately taken as an opportunity to denaturalise him and refuse him permission to return. Numerous artists protested against this and were forced to leave the country – some after serving prison sentences – including members of Renft, as well as Manfred Krug and Nina Hagen. Other artists left voluntarily. Veronika Fischer, for example, did not return from a performance in West Berlin in 1981, whereupon her songs were no longer allowed to be played by GDR radio stations.
West German productions were also subject to censorship in East Germany. For example, the song by Udo Jürgens Es war einmal ein Luftballon (Once Upon a Time There Was a Balloon) was put on the Index because of the line, "They know no borders, the balloons of the world". It was not until 1987 that Udo Jürgens was allowed to perform again in the GDR. Udo Lindenberg, for example, had similar problems. Despite all his efforts (such as his song Sonderzug nach Pankow (Special Train to Pankow)), he was only allowed to perform once before the fall of the Wall, at the Palast der Republik on the occasion of the event "Rock für den Frieden" (Rock for Peace) on 25 October 1983.
In the 1980s, censorship seemed to loosen up. Lyrics about the longing for freedom (including Albatros by Karat) became possible. But it was only in the course of the peaceful revolution that songs by Veronika Fischer were heard on the radio again in October 1989.
Theatre
East German theatre was originally dominated by Bertolt Brecht, who brought back many artists out of exile and reopened the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm with his Berliner Ensemble.[161] Alternatively, other influences tried to establish a "working-class theatre", played for the working class by the working class.[citation needed]
After Brecht's death, conflicts began to arise between his family (around Helene Weigel) and other artists about Brecht's legacy, including Slatan Dudow,[162] Erwin Geschonneck,[163] Erwin Strittmatter, Peter Hacks, Benno Besson,[164] Peter Palitzsch[165] and Ekkehard Schall.[166]
In the 1950s, the Swiss director Benno Besson with the Deutsches Theater successfully toured Europe and Asia including Japan with The Dragon by Evgeny Schwartz. In the 1960s, he became the Intendant of the Volksbühne often working with Heiner Müller.[167]
In the 1970s, a parallel theatre scene sprung up, creating theatre "outside of Berlin" in which artists played at provincial theatres. For example,
]Theatre and cabaret had high status in the GDR, which allowed it to be very proactive. This often brought it into confrontation with the state. Benno Besson once said, "In contrast to artists in the west, they took us seriously, we had a bearing."[168][m]
The Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin is the last major building erected by the GDR, making it an exceptional architectural testimony to how Germany overcame its former division. Here, Berlin's great revue tradition lives on, today bringing viewers state-of-the-art shows.[169]
Important theatres include the
Television and radio
Television and radio in East Germany were state-run industries; the Rundfunk der DDR was the official radio broadcasting organisation from 1952 until unification. The organization was based in the Funkhaus Nalepastraße in East Berlin. Deutscher Fernsehfunk (DFF), from 1972 to 1990 known as Fernsehen der DDR or DDR-FS, was the state television broadcaster from 1952. Reception of Western broadcasts was widespread.[174]
Cinema
The prolific cinema of East Germany was headed by the
Films about daily life, such as Die Legende von Paul und Paula, by Heiner Carow, and Solo Sunny, directed by Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase, were very popular.[178]
The film industry was remarkable for its production of Ostern, or Western-like movies. Amerindians in these films often took the role of displaced people who fight for their rights, in contrast to the North American westerns of the time, where they were often either not mentioned at all or are portrayed as the villains. Yugoslavs were often cast as Native Americans because of the small number of Native Americans in Europe. Gojko Mitić was well known in these roles, often playing the righteous, kindhearted and charming chief (Die Söhne der großen Bärin directed by Josef Mach). He became an honorary Sioux chief when he visited the United States in the 1990s, and the television crew accompanying him showed the tribe one of his movies. American actor and singer Dean Reed, an expatriate who lived in East Germany, also starred in several films. These films were part of the phenomenon of Europe producing alternative films about the colonization of the Americas.[citation needed]
Cinemas in the GDR also showed foreign films. Czechoslovak and Polish productions were more common, but certain western movies were shown, though the numbers of these were limited because it cost foreign exchange to buy the licences. Further, films representing or glorifying what the state viewed as capitalist ideology were not bought. Comedies enjoyed great popularity, such as the Danish
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, several films depicting life in the GDR have been critically acclaimed.
Sport
East Germany was very successful in the sports of cycling, weight-lifting, swimming, gymnastics, track and field, boxing, ice skating, and winter sports. The success is largely attributed to doping under the direction of Manfred Höppner, a sports doctor, described as the architect of East Germany's state-sponsored drug program.[183]
Sports clubs were highly subsidized, especially sports in which it was possible to get international fame. For example, the major leagues for ice hockey and basketball just included 2 teams each.
The East and the West also competed via sport. GDR athletes dominated several Olympic sports; the
Official and public holidays
Date | English name | German name | Remarks |
---|---|---|---|
1 January | New Year's Day | Neujahr | |
March–April | Good Friday | Karfreitag | |
March–April | Easter Sunday
|
Ostersonntag | |
March–April | Easter Monday | Ostermontag | Was not an official holiday after 1967. |
1 May | International Workers' Day/May Day | Tag der Arbeit (name in FRG )
|
The official name was Internationaler Kampf- und Feiertag der Werktätigen (approx. 'International Day of the Struggle and Celebration of the Workers') |
8 May | Victory in Europe Day | Tag der Befreiung | The translation means "Day of Liberation" |
April–June | Ascension Day
|
Vatertag/Christi Himmelfahrt | Thursday after the 5th Sunday after Easter. Was not an official holiday after 1967. |
May–June | Whit Monday | Pfingstmontag | 50 days after Easter Sunday |
7 October | Republic Day | Tag der Republik | National holiday |
November | Day of Repentance and Prayer | Buß- und Bettag | Wednesday before Totensonntag. Originally a Protestant feast day, it was demoted as an official holiday in 1967. |
25 December | First Day of Christmas | 1. Weihnachtsfeiertag | |
26 December | Second Day of Christmas | 2. Weihnachtsfeiertag |
Legacy
Decrepit infrastructure
Almost all East German highways, railroads, sewage systems and public buildings were in a state of disrepair at the time of reunification, as little was done to maintain infrastructure in the GDR's last decades. Unified German public spending has had to pour more than $2 trillion into the former East Germany, to make up for the region's neglect and malaise and bring it up to a minimal standard.[188]
The Greifswald Nuclear Power Plant narrowly avoided a Chernobyl-scale meltdown in 1976.[189] All East German nuclear power plants had to be shut down after reunification, because they did not meet Western safety standards.[190]
Authoritarianism
German historian Jürgen Kocka in 2010 summarized the consensus of most recent scholarship:
Conceptualizing the GDR as a dictatorship has become widely accepted, while the meaning of the concept dictatorship varies. Massive evidence has been collected that proves the repressive, undemocratic, illiberal, nonpluralistic character of the GDR regime and its ruling party.[9]
Ostalgie
Many East Germans initially regarded the dissolution of the GDR positively,[191] but this reaction partly turned sour.[192] West Germans often acted as if they had "won" and East Germans had "lost" in unification, leading many East Germans (Ossis) to resent West Germans (Wessis).[193] In 2004, Deborah Ascher Barnstone wrote, "East Germans resent the wealth possessed by West Germans; West Germans see the East Germans as lazy opportunists who want something for nothing. East Germans find 'Wessis' arrogant and pushy, West Germans think the 'Ossis' are lazy good-for-nothings."[194]
In addition, many East German women found the West more appealing, and left the region never to return, leaving behind an underclass of poorly educated and jobless men.[195]
For the people who stayed in East Germany, a majority of them (57%) defend the GDR,[196] with 49% of those polled saying that "The GDR had more good sides than bad sides. There were some problems, but life was good there", while 8% oppose all criticism of East Germany and say that "Life there was happier and better than in reunified Germany today".[196]
As of 2014, the vast majority of residents in the former GDR prefer to live in a unified Germany. However, a feeling of nostalgia persists among some, termed "
In 2023, a poll found that 40% of Germans living in the former East Germany identify as East Germans rather than German, which 52% identified as.[199][200]
Electoral consequences
The divide between the East and the West can be seen in contemporary German elections. The left-wing populist Die Linke party (which has roots in the SED) continues to have a stronghold and occasionally wins a plurality in the East, such as in the German State of Thuringia where it remains one of the major parties.[201] The region also sees disproportionate support for the Alternative for Germany, a right-wing populist party, particularly in the state of Saxony and Thuringia. This is in stark distinction from the West where the more centrist parties such as the CDU/CSU, SPD, The Greens, and the FDP dominate.
The far-right
Demographics
There are more migrants in former West Germany than in former East Germany.[202][203][204]
All of the new states have populations where 90-95% of people do not have a migrant background.[202][203][204]
Religion
As of 2009, more Germans are non-believers in
See also
- Leadership of East Germany
- History of Germany (1945–1990)
- Inner German relations
- Economic history of the German reunification
- Scotland-GDR Society
Explanatory notes
- ^ Partially recognised
- ^ The SED's leaders went by different names. Until 1950, there were two co-chairmen, after which the office of General Secretary, titled First Secretary between 1953 and 1976, was established.
- Soviet occupation zone of Germany, before the GDR's foundation.
- ^ Jointly as Chairmen.
- ^ October–December
- ^ Dissolved by the Volkskammer on 8 December 1958.
- Statistisches Bundesamt.
- ^ Although .dd was reserved as corresponding ISO code for East Germany, it was not entered to the root before the country was reunited with the west.
- ^ The use of the abbreviation BRD (FRG) for West Germany, the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany), on the other hand, was never accepted in West Germany since it was considered a political statement. Thus BRD (FRG) was a term used by East Germans, or by West Germans who held a pro-East-German view. Colloquially, West Germans called West Germany simply Germany (reflecting West Germany's claim to represent the whole of Germany), or alternatively the Bundesrepublik or Bundesgebiet (Federal Republic or Federal Territory, respectively), referring to the country and Bundesbürger (Federal citizen) for its citizens, with the adjective bundesdeutsch (Federal German).
- Jahrbuch für Forschungen zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, No. II/2010, pp. 5–24.
- ^ 'In the age of detente, the Stasi's main method of combating subversive activity was 'operational decomposition' (operative Zersetzung) which was the central element in what Hubertus Knabe has called a system of 'quiet repression' (lautlose Unterdrukung). This was not a new departure as 'dirty tricks' had been widely used in the 1950s and 1960s. The distinctive feature was the primacy of operational decomposition over other methods of repression in a system to which historians have attached labels such as post-totalitarianism and modern dictatorship.'cite book
- Evangelical Church of the Union(East Region, for EKiBB-East Ambit, Görlitz, Greifswald and KPS, and since 1970 for Anhalt too).
- ISBN 978-1-107-05979-5.
References
Citations
- Statistisches Bundesamt. Archived from the originalon 13 November 2013.
- ^ a b "GDR". World Inequality Database.
- ^ "Human Development Report 1990" (PDF). hdr.undp.org. January 1990. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 February 2014.
- ^ "Top-Level-Domain .DD" (in German). Archived from the original on 4 November 2015.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7190-6289-6.
- ^ Peter E. Quint. The Imperfect Union: Constitutional Structures of German Unification, Princeton University Press, 2012, pp. 125–126.
- ^ a b "Business America. (27 February 1989). German Democratic Republic: long history of sustained economic growth continues; 1989 may be an advantageous year to consider this market – Business Outlook Abroad: Current Reports from the Foreign Service". Business America. 1989. Archived from the original on 9 November 2007. Retrieved 2 October 2007.
- Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Agnes Blänsdorf . Towards a Global Community of Historians: the International Historical Congresses and the International Committee of Historical Sciences 1898–2000. Berghahn Books, 2005, p. 314. ("However the collapse of the Soviet empire, associated with the disintegration of the Soviet satellite regimes in East-Central Europe, including the German Democratic Republic, brought about a dramatic change of agenda.")
- ^ ISBN 978-1-58465-866-5. Archivedfrom the original on 20 March 2015. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
- Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 19–31.
- ^ "Three Top Commies Flee East Germany". Sarasota Herald-Tribune. 23 January 1953. pp. 1–2. Retrieved 21 November 2019 – via Google News.
- Toledo Blade. 31 May 1963. Retrieved 21 November 2019 – via Google News.
- ^ "Eugene Register-Guard – Google News Archive Search". news.google.com. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
- ^ "Files: 350 dies trying to flee East Germany". The Victoria Advocate. 28 July 1992. Retrieved 21 November 2019 – via Google News.
- ISBN 0-415-11063-7.
- The New Worker. 29 August 1997. Retrieved 5 September 2011.
- ^ "Krenz, Schabowski und Kleiber hatten sich nichts mehr zu sagen" [Krenz, Schabowski and Kleiber had nothing more to say to each other]. Berliner Zeitung (in German). 31 May 2008. Archived from the original on 19 July 2012. Retrieved 5 September 2011.
- ^ a b Berlin Korrespondent (June 1949). "Nationale Front in der Ostzone" [National Front in the Eastern Zone]. Die Zeit (in German). Archived from the original on 11 November 2013. Retrieved 10 May 2013.
- ^ "Vom Sogenannten". Der Spiegel. 21 October 1968. p. 65. Archived from the original on 3 February 2016.
- ^ Facts about Germany: The Federal Republic of Germany, 1959 – Germany (West). 1959. p. 20. Archived from the original on 21 December 2019. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
- ^ Wildenthal, Lora. The Language of Human Rights in West Germany. p. 210.
- ISBN 0-306-46605-8.
- S2CID 147022466.
- ISBN 978-0-19-536166-7. Archivedfrom the original on 1 December 2019. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
- ISBN 978-1-351-49869-2. Archivedfrom the original on 23 December 2019. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
- ^ "Each spring, millions of workmen from all parts of western Russia arrived in eastern Germany, which, in political language, is called East Elbia." from The Stronghold of Junkerdom, by George Sylvester Viereck. Viereck's, Volume 8. Fatherland Corporation, 1918.
- ^ Compare: Ritter, Gerhard A. (April 2002). "Die DDR in der deutschen Geschichte" [The GDR in German history] (PDF). Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (in German). 50 (2): 171–172. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 November 2019. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
Die Geschichte der DDR ist im wesentlichen zwischen zwei Polen einzubetten. Den einen Pol bildet die Sowjetisierung [...] Den anderen Pol bildeten deutsche Traditionen, vor allem die Vorstellungen der kommunistischen Arbeiterbewegung.
[The history of the GDR is essentially embedded between two poles. Sovietization formed one pole [...] German traditions formed the other pole, above all the ideas of the communist workers' movement.] - ^ a b c d Ritter, Gerhard A. (April 2002). "Die DDR in der deutschen Geschichte" [The GDR in German history] (PDF). Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (in German). 50 (2): 171–200. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 November 2019. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
In der Sozialpolitik hielten sich die Kontinuitäten und die Brüche mit der deutschen Tradition etwa die Waage. [...] Seit Mitte der sechziger Jahre, vor allem aber in der Ära Honecker, in der die 'Einheit von Wirtschafts- und Sozialpolitik' zum Leitprinzip erhoben wurde, wurde die Sozialpolitik die wohl wichtigste Legitimationsgrundlage des Staates.
- ^ "Yalta Conference". spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk. Archived from the original on 14 May 2011. Retrieved 25 September 2010.
- ^ Department Of State. The Office of Electronic Information, Bureau of Public Affairs (18 July 2008). "Allied Occupation of Germany, 1945-52". 2001-2009.state.gov. Retrieved 22 September 2024.
- Jahrbuch für Forschungen zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, No. I/2004.[date missing]
- ^ Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. "LeMO Kapitel: Zwangsvereinigung zur SED" [LeMO Chapter: Forced Association to the SED]. hdg.de (in German). Archived from the original on 14 June 2012. Retrieved 15 July 2012.
- ^ See Anna M. Cienciala "History 557 Lecture Notes" Archived 20 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Steininger, Rolf (1990). The German Question: The Stalin Note of 1952 and the Problem of Reunification. New York: Columbia University Press.
- ^ Roth, Gary. "Review of Hoffmann, Dierk: Otto Grotewohl (1894–1964): Eine politische Biographie" H-German, H-Net Reviews. November 2010. online Archived 17 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Gomez Gutiérrez, J.J. & Bruschi, V. (2003). "Socialist Unity Party of Germany". In N. Schlager (Ed.), St. James Encyclopedia of Labor History Worldwide: Major Events in Labor History and Their Impact. St. James Press.
- ^ "Political prisoners in the German Democratic Republic". Political prisoners in the German Democratic Republic | Communist Crimes. Retrieved 24 November 2020.
- OCLC 38207545.
- OCLC 38207545.
- OCLC 51480817.
- JSTOR 26924047.
- ISBN 9780391041035.
... claims of East Berlin as the capital of the GDR, ... East Berlin was not recognized by the West and most Third World countries.
- ISBN 9780857459756.
- ^ Haydock, Michael D. (2000). City Under Siege: The Berlin Blockade and Airlift, 1948–1949.
- ^ Weitz 1997, p. 350 Following a Soviet order in February 1948, the German Economic Commission became a nascent state structure for all intents and purposes, with competence far beyond the economy proper; it gained the power to issue orders and directives to all German organs within the Soviet Occupation Zone.
- ^ McCauley 1983, p. 38 The DWK had become the de facto government of the Soviet zone. Its chairman was Heinrich Rau (SED), and four of his six deputies were also SED members.
- ^ East Berlin 17 June 1953: Stones Against Tanks Archived 23 January 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 16 May 2007.
- .
- ^ ISBN 0-674-78405-7pp. 167–169.
- ISBN 9780060786137.
- ISBN 978-1-317-87977-0. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
- .
- ^ a b "East Germany: The Price of Recognition". TIME. 1 January 1973. Archived from the original on 18 December 2011. Retrieved 21 October 2011.
- ^ Quint, Peter E. (1991), The Imperfect Union; Constitutional Structures for German Unification, Princeton University Press, p. 14
- ^ Kommers, Donald P. (2012), The Constitutional Jursiprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany, Duke University Press, p. 308
- University of Texas. Archivedfrom the original on 20 December 2016. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
- ISBN 978-0-7546-6656-1.
- ^ David Priestland, Red Flag: A History of Communism, New York: Grove Press, 2009.
- ^ Combe, Sonia (April 2020). "À Buchenwald, les antifascistes ont perdu la guerre mémorielle" [In Buchenwald, the anti-fascists have lost the memory war]. Le Monde diplomatique (in French).
- ISBN 978-3-631-63678-7.
- ^ a b Combe, Sonia (January 2021). "Antisémite, l'Allemagne de l'Est ?" [Anti-Semite, East Germany?]. Le Monde diplomatique (in French).
- ^ Benyahia-Kouider, Odile (2013). L'Allemagne paiera [Germany will pay] (in French). pp. 166–167.
- ^ Benyahia-Kouider, Odile (2013). L'Allemagne paiera [Germany Will Pay] (in French). p. 179.
- ^ Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung(in German).
- ^ a b Judt 2005, p. 612
- ^ "The Berlin Wall (1961–89)". German Notes. Archived from the original on 19 April 2005. Retrieved 24 October 2006.
- ^ Miklós Németh in Interview, Austrian TV – ORF "Report", 25 June 2019.
- ^ a b Szabo, Hilde (16 August 1999). "Die Berliner Mauer begann im Burgenland zu bröckeln" [The Berlin Wall began to crumble in Burgenland]. Wiener Zeitung (in German).
- ^ Lahodynsky, Otmar (9 August 2014). "Paneuropäisches Picknick: Die Generalprobe für den Mauerfall" [Pan-European picnic: the Dress Rehearsal for the Fall of the Berlin Wall]. profil (in German).
- ^ a b Greven, Ludwig (19 August 2014). "Und dann ging das Tor auf" [And then the Gate Opened]. Die Zeit.
- ^ Lahodynsky, Otmar (13 June 2019). "Eiserner Vorhang: Picknick an der Grenze" [Iron curtain: Picnic at the Border]. profil (in German).
- ^ Roser, Thomas (17 August 2014). "DDR-Massenflucht: Ein Picknick hebt die Welt aus den Angeln" [Mass exodus of the GDR: A picnic clears the world]. Die Presse (in German). Vienna.
- ^ Frank, Michael (journalist) "Paneuropäisches Picknick – Mit dem Picknickkorb in die Freiheit" [Pan-European picnic – With the picnic basket to freedom]. Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German). 17 May 2010.
- ^ a b Judt 2005, p. 613
- ^ Darnton, Robert (1992). Berlin Journal. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 98–99.
- ^ ISBN 9780465064946.
- ^ a b Judt 2005, p. 614
- ^ Judt 2005, p. 615.
- ^ Kommers, Donald P. (2012). The Constitutional Jursiprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany. Duke University Press. p. 309.
- ^ Conradt, David P. (2008). The German Polity. p. 20.
- ^ a b Weitz 1997, p. [page needed]
- ^ "The Potsdam Conference, 1945". history.state.gov. Retrieved 6 October 2024.
- ^ "1949-89: Volkskammer of the GDR (East-Germany)". webarchiv.bundestag.de. Retrieved 6 October 2024.
- ^ Sarotte, Mary Elise (2014). 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- OCLC 39633454.
- OCLC 822668120.
- JSTOR 1431716.
- ^ OCLC 63683865.
- ^ a b Fulbrook, Mary (1995). Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949–1989. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 60.
- ^ "Free German Youth 1949–1990 (East Germany)". Flagspot.net. Retrieved 9 February 2013.
- ISBN 3825898938.
- ^ "The Rules of the Thälmann Pioneers". Calvin.edu. Retrieved 9 February 2013.
- Clarendon Press. pp. 37–38.
- Clarendon Press. pp. 43–45.
- ISBN 0-691-02332-8. Archivedfrom the original on 1 December 2019. Retrieved 26 August 2017.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-107-08986-0.
- S2CID 57566994.
- ISBN 978-0-02-568360-0.
- ^ Israel's struggle in the UN
- ^ "The GDR and the PLO: East Germany's Palestine Policy". Archived from the original on 5 May 2018. Retrieved 28 April 2018.
- S2CID 218576332. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
- S2CID 153852878. Retrieved 13 February 2023.
- ISBN 9781789205558. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
- ^ Solsten, Eric; et al. (Library of Congress. Federal Research Division) (1996). Germany: A country study. Washington, DC: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress: Library of Congress. Federal Research Division. pp. 169–170.
- ^ Trainor, Bernard E. (8 November 1988). "East German Military: Warsaw Pact's Finest". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 1 August 2018. Retrieved 31 July 2018.
- ^ Goehler, Laura (7 November 2014). "The Stasi files: Germany's 600-million-piece puzzle". CNN. Retrieved 4 June 2024.
- ^ Koehler, John O. "Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police". The New York Times Archive.
- ISBN 9781785330278.
- ISBN 9781785330278.
- ISBN 3898739880.
- .
- ISBN 3898739880.
- ISBN 0582414229.
- ^ ISBN 0582414229.
- ISBN 978-0226297941.
- ISBN 9780300144246.
- ^ The East German penal system in Torgau from 1950 to 1990
- ^ "After the fall: The hidden trauma behind the Berlin Wall". irct.org. IRCT. Archived from the original on 9 September 2021. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
- ^ Oltermann, Philip (6 November 2019). "'I've been shafted twice': Stasi victims and their quest for compensation". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
- ^ Boroch, Wilfried (1996). "Social policy as an institutional transformation problem". Transition Economies. 31 (3): 139–146.
- ^ Zatlin, Jonathan R. (2007). The Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany.[page needed]
- ^ The shortest history of Germany, James Hawes (2018), federal office of political education [ISBN missing][page needed]
- ISBN 9783050085395 – via Google Books.
- ISBN 978-0-275-97565-4. Archivedfrom the original on 16 May 2016. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
- ^ "Ich liebe Thüringen, ich liebe Deutschland" [I love Thuringia, I love Germany] (in German). Archived from the original on 1 February 2017. Retrieved 20 January 2017.
- ^ "East Germany: country population". Populstat.info. Archived from the original on 11 August 2010. Retrieved 28 March 2010.
- ^ Laar, Mart (2010). The Power of Freedom: Central and Eastern Europe After 1945 (PDF). Centre for European Studies. p. 58. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 November 2013. Retrieved 5 April 2012.
In the period between the Second World War and 1961, a total of 3.8 million people emigrated from East to West Germany.
- ^ "Germany Population – Historical Background". Country-studies.com. Archived from the original on 1 November 2009. Retrieved 28 March 2010.
- ^ Destatis.de Archived 13 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine page 17
- ^ "Population by area in 1,000". DESTATIS – Statistisches Bundesamt. Archived from the original on 11 August 2018. Retrieved 11 August 2018.
- ^ "Zusammenfassende Übersichten – Eheschließungen, Geborene und Gestorbene 1946 bis 2015". DESTATIS – Statistisches Bundesamt. Archived from the original on 11 August 2018. Retrieved 11 August 2018.
- ^ "Leipzig, Germany Population 1950–2019". www.macrotrends.net. Archived from the original on 28 September 2019. Retrieved 28 September 2019.
- ^ "Dresden, Germany Population 1950–2019". www.macrotrends.net. Archived from the original on 28 September 2019. Retrieved 28 September 2019.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-230-27119-7.
- S2CID 162448768.
- ^ Toth, Helena. "Dialogue as a Strategy of Struggle: Religious Politics in East Germany, 1957–1968" (PDF). Contemporary European History. Cambridge University Press. p. 174.
- ISBN 978-90-420-0579-2. Archived from the original on 3 June 2016. Retrieved 21 September 2015 – via Google Books.
The SED will refrain from talks with the churches, since it must be seen as an 'atheistic party against the Church'. Thus, negotiations must be led by the State, which is understood to be non-partisan, namely by the state Secretary for Church Affairs. But decisions on Church policies are to be made exclusively 'in the party' [...].
- ^ Paul Tillich. Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), p. 20.
- ^ Fulbrook, The Limits Of Totalitarianism: God, State and Society in the GDR [ISBN missing] [page needed]
- ^ Martin Onnasch, "Konflikt und Kompromiss: Die Haltung der evangelischen Kirchen zu den gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen in der DDR am Anfang der fünfziger Jahre," ["Conflict and compromise: the position of the Protestant churches with regard to social changes in the GDR at the beginning of the 1950s"], Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte / Halbjahresschrift für Theologie und Geschichtswisseschaft, 1990, Vol. 3 Issue 1, pp. 152–165.
- ^ a b Bowers, Stephen R. (Spring 1982). "Private Institutions in Service to the State: The German Democratic Republic's Church in Socialism". East European Quarterly. 16 (1): 73–86.
- ^ "Startseite - Manfred Stolpe" (in German). 29 December 2020. Retrieved 7 October 2024.
- JSTOR 4140983.
- ISBN 978-1-84545-852-2. Archivedfrom the original on 3 June 2016. Retrieved 14 October 2015. ch 1
- ISBN 978-0-203-92817-2. Archivedfrom the original on 27 April 2016. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
- ^ Pence and Betts, Socialist modern: East German everyday culture and politics. p. 37 for Maaz, 58.
- ^ "The Secret of East German Censorship – Who's Watching Who?". blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 16 December 2017. Retrieved 15 December 2017.
- ^ Bericht auf wdr4.de vom 22. Juli 2007 Archived 27 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 30 September 2014.
- ISBN 3-89602-303-9, Eintrag zum Internationalen Schlagerfestival Dresden
- ^ Informationen zu Chris Doerk Archived 28 April 2016 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 23 December 2010.
- ^ "ROTE GITARREN – Die Offizielle Homepage" [ROTE GITARREN – The official homepage]. rote-gitarren.de (in German). Archived from the original on 19 October 2017. Retrieved 15 December 2017.
- ^ "Rote Gitarren". Deutsche Mugge (in German). Archived from the original on 19 October 2017. Retrieved 15 December 2017.
- ^ "Karel Gott". DDR-Tanzmusik (in German). Archived from the original on 19 October 2017. Retrieved 15 December 2017.
- ^ "Omega". Deutsche Mugge (in German). Archived from the original on 19 October 2017. Retrieved 15 December 2017.
- ^ "Biografija: Muzičar Dado Topić". Opusteno.rs. Archived from the original on 12 April 2017. Retrieved 19 December 2017.
- ^ Brown, Timothy S. "'Keeping it Real' in a Different 'Hood: (African-) Americanization and Hip-hop in Germany." In The Vinyl Ain't Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, pp. 137–150. London
- ISSN 0261-1430.
- ISBN 978-0-7190-0666-1.
- ISBN 978-1-57113-980-1.
- ^ "Interview With Conductor Kurt Masur: 'The Spirit of 1989 Has Been Exhausted'". Spiegel Online. 12 October 2010. Archived from the original on 19 October 2017. Retrieved 15 December 2017.
- ^ Tynan, Kenneth (11 January 1976). "Brecht Would Not Applaud His Theater Today". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 14 September 2016. Retrieved 1 September 2016.
- ISBN 978-0-8078-5385-6
- ISBN 978-1-57113-492-9.
- ISBN 978-1-64014-024-0.
- ISBN 978-1-136-70911-1.
- ISBN 978-0-19-928658-4.
- ^ Rockwell, John (25 February 2006). "Benno Besson, 83, Director of Plays and Brecht Disciple, Is Dead". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 June 2024.
- ^ "Berlin East germany". www.berlinstory-andtravels.info. Archived from the original on 22 December 2017. Retrieved 19 December 2017.
- ^ "Friedrichstadt-Palast". Archived from the original on 4 March 2018. Retrieved 8 February 2018.
- ^ "Das BE – ein Theater für Zeitgenossen". Berliner-ensemble.de. Archived from the original on 30 May 2010. Retrieved 28 March 2010.
- ^ "Deutsches Theater: Home". Deutsches-theater.de. Archived from the original on 26 March 2010. Retrieved 28 March 2010.
- ^ "Gorki.de". Gorki.de. Archived from the original on 23 March 2010. Retrieved 28 March 2010.
- ^ "Volksbühne Berlin". Volksbuehne-berlin.de. Archived from the original on 23 March 2010. Retrieved 28 March 2010.
- ISBN 978-1-84520-189-0. Archivedfrom the original on 26 March 2015. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
- ^ "DEFA – Stiftung – Home". Defa-stiftung.de. Archived from the original on 26 April 2008. Retrieved 28 March 2010.
- ^ LISUM, Filmernst-Kinobüro im. "Filmdatenbank | Das Schulgespenst | Inhalt". Filmernst | Das Kompetenzzentrum für Film – Schule – Kino im Land Brandenburg (in German). Retrieved 7 October 2022.
- ISBN 978-3-484-35110-3.
- ISBN 978-1-137-32232-6. Retrieved 21 January 2022.
- ^ Scott, Sheena (5 November 2019). "Films And The Fall Of The Berlin Wall: A Cinematic History, Post-1989". Forbes.
- S2CID 201759614.
- ^ 2006 Academy Award for "The Lives of Others" Archived 10 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine,
- ISSN 0036-9543.
- ^ Helmstaedt, Karin (19 July 2000). "East German Doping Trial". The Globe and Mail. Berlin. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
- ^ Hartgens and Kuipers (2004), p. 515
- S2CID 24339701. Archived from the originalon 29 June 2012.
- ^
Sources:
- Tagilabue, John (12 February 1991). "Political Pressure Dismantles East German Sports Machine". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 20 November 2018. Retrieved 16 October 2018.
- Janofsky, Michael (3 December 1991). "Olympics; Coaches Concede That Steroids Fueled East Germany's Success in Swimming". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 20 November 2018. Retrieved 16 October 2018.
- Kirschbaum, Erik (15 September 2000). "East German Dope Still Leaves Tracks". Archived from the original on 3 June 2008. Retrieved 12 May 2008.
- ISBN 0-312-26977-3.
- "Sports Doping Statistics Reach Plateau in Germany". Deutsche Welle. 26 February 2003. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 16 October 2018.
- Longman, Jere (26 January 2004). "Drug Testing; East German Steroids' Toll: 'They Killed Heidi'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 16 October 2018.
- ^ "1974 FIFA World Cup Germany, Germany FR". FIFA.com. Archived from the original on 27 January 2017. Retrieved 27 January 2017.
- ^ Beard, Stephen (4 November 2019). "30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany recalls the economic gulf between East and West". NPR/Marketplace.
- ^ "'76 E. German Nuclear Incident Described". Los Angeles Times. 21 January 1990.
- ^ Grotelüschen, Frank "East German nuclear plant demolition proves challenging". Deutsche Welle. 13 January 2010.
- Journal of Popular Culture. 34 (3): 229–54.
- ISBN 978-0-472-08888-1. Archivedfrom the original on 21 May 2016. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
- ISBN 978-0-8047-7396-6. Archivedfrom the original on 27 April 2016. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
- ISBN 978-0-203-79988-8. Archivedfrom the original on 7 May 2016. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
- ^ Connolly, Kate (31 May 2007). "Educated women leave east German men behind". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 17 November 2018. Retrieved 16 November 2018.
- ^ ISSN 2195-1349.
Today, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, 57 percent, or an absolute majority, of eastern Germans defend the former East Germany.' The GDR had more good sides than bad sides. There were some problems, but life was good there,' say 49 percent of those polled. Eight percent of eastern Germans flatly oppose all criticism of their former home and agree with the statement: 'The GDR had, for the most part, good sides. Life there was happier and better than in reunified Germany today."'
- ^ Hou, Yushi (2 October 2017). "Rewriting ideal history: The Ostalgie expression in Goodbye, Lenin (2003)". University of Southampton Centre for International Film Research. Retrieved 9 July 2020.
- ^ Dick, Wolfgang (3 October 2013). "Ostalgia: Romanticizing the GDR". Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 19 March 2021.
- ^ "33 Jahre Wiedervereinigung".
- ^ Hoyer, Katja (7 March 2024). "What's 'wrong' with east Germany? Look to its long neglect by the wealthy west". The Guardian.
- ^ Welle (www.dw.com), Deutsche (6 February 2020). "Why is everyone in Germany talking about Thuringia and AfD?". Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 18 March 2021.
- ^ a b "Die Rechten ziehen in den Osten, Ausländer in den Westen". KATAPULT-Magazin. 3 April 2016. Archived from the original on 9 June 2023. Retrieved 29 June 2023.
- ^ a b "Ausländische Bevölkerung nach Ländern – bpb". Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Archived from the original on 7 May 2019. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
- ^ a b "Ausländeranteil in Deutschland nach Bundesländern". www.laenderdaten.de. Archived from the original on 12 July 2018. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
- ^ "Only the Old Embrace God in Former East Germany". Spiegel. Retrieved 2 July 2012.
- ^ "East Germany world's most godless area". The Local. 20 April 2012. Retrieved 31 December 2021.
- ^ Kamann, Matthias , Facius, Gernot "Why Eastern Germany is the Most Godless Place On Earth". Die Welt. 2012. Archived from the original on 26 August 2012. Retrieved 24 May 2009.
- ^ "East Germany the 'most atheistic' of any region". Dialog International. 2012. Retrieved 24 May 2009.
- ^ "Eastern Germany: the most godless place on Earth". The Guardian. 2012. Archived from the original on 26 August 2012. Retrieved 24 May 2009.
- ^ "Only the Old embrace God in former East-Germany". Spiegel Online. 2012. Retrieved 24 May 2009.
Sources
- ISBN 9780434015757.
- ISBN 978-0-333-26219-1.
- ISBN 9780691025940.
Further reading
General
- ISBN 9780719055546.
- Anon. (1986). The German Democratic Republic. Dresden: Zeit im Bild. OCLC 221026743.
- Dolores, Augustine (2007). Red Prometheus: Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany, 1945–1990. ISBN 9780262012362.
- Baylis, Thomas A.; Childs, David H.; Collier, Erwin L.; Rueschemeyer, Marilyn, eds. (1989). East Germany in Comparative Perspective. Routledge.
- ISBN 9783896394859.
- ISBN 9781845456979. online review
- Berghoff, Hartmut; Balbier, Uta Andrea, eds. (2013). The East German Economy, 1945–2010: Falling Behind Or Catching Up?. ISBN 9781107030138.
- Betts, Paul (2013). Within Walls: Private Life in the German Democratic Republic. Oxford University Press.
- ISBN 9780582315693. Archived from the originalon 22 February 2012. Retrieved 19 December 2016.
- ISBN 9780333630945. Archived from the originalon 10 March 2012. Retrieved 3 June 2016.
- ISBN 9780043540299.
- Childs, David H. (2000). The Two Red Flags: European Social Democracy & Soviet Communism Since 1945. Routledge.
- De La Motte, Bruni; Green, John (2015). Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It. Artery Publications. ISBN 9780955822865.
- ISBN 0300108842.
- Fulbrook, Mary (1995). Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949–1989. Oxford University Press.
- Berghahn.
- Funke, Mark (2021). "Hall of Mirrors: The Antiquarian Book Trade in Communist Germany". The Book Collector. Vol. 70, no. 4 (Winter). pp. 603–617.
- Gray, William Glenn (2003). Germany's Cold War: The Global Campaign to Isolate East Germany, 1949–1969. University of North Carolina Press.
- Grieder, Peter (2012). The German Democratic Republic. Palgrave Macmillan.
- Grix, Jonathan (2000). The Role of the Masses in the Collapse of the GDR. Macmillan.
- OCLC 1081050618.
- Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949–1990. Random House.
- Jarausch, Konrad H.; Duffy, Eve (1999). Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR. Berghahn Books.
- Kupferberg, Feiwel (2002). The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Republic. online review
- McAdams, A. James (1985). East Germany and Détente. Cambridge University Press.
- McAdams, A. James (1992). Germany Divided: From the Wall to Reunification. Princeton University Press.
- McLellan, Josie (2011). Love in the Time of Communism: Intimacy and Sexuality in the GDR. Cambridge University Press.
- Naimark, Norman M. (1997). The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949. excerpt and text search
- Pence, Katherine; Betts, Paul (2008). Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
- Port, Andrew I. (2007). Conflict and Stability in the German Democratic Republic. Cambridge University Press.
- Preuss, Evelyn I. (2005). "The Wall You Will Never Know". Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal. 36: 19–31.
- Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte(in German). 50 (2): 171–300.
- Pritchard, Gareth (2000). The Making of the GDR 1945–53: From Antifascism to Stalinism.
- Pucci, M. (2020). Security Empire: The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe. Yale-Hoover Series on Authoritarian Regimes. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Steiner, André (2010). The Plans That Failed: An Economic History of East Germany, 1945–1989.
- Sarotte, Mary Elise (2014). Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall. New York: Basic Books.
- Spilker, Dirk (2006). The East German Leadership and the Division of Germany: Patriotism and Propaganda 1945–1953. online review
- Stokes, Raymond G. (2000). Constructing Socialism: Technology and Change in East Germany, 1945–1990.
- Zatlin, Jonathan R (2007). The Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany. online review
Historiography and memory
- Bridge, Helen (2002). Women's Writing and Historiography in the GDR. Oxford University Press.
- Hodgin, Nick; Pearce, Caroline, eds. (2011). The GDR Remembered: Representations of the East German State since 1989. Camden House. excerpt
- .
- Port, Andrew I. (2013). "The Banalities of East German Historiography" (PDF). In ISBN 978-0-85745-974-9.
- Port, Andrew I. (2015). "Central European History since 1989: Historiographical Trends and Post-Wende 'Turns'". Central European History. Vol. 48. pp. 238–248. S2CID 151405931.
- Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte(in German). 50 (2): 171–300.
- Ross, Corey (2002). The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of the GDR. Oxford University Press.
- Saunders, Anna; Pinfold, Debbie, eds. (2012). Remembering and Rethinking the GDR: Multiple Perspectives and Plural Authenticities. Springer.
- Steding, Elizabeth Priester (2014). "Losing Literature: The Reduction of the GDR to History". . Argues the history of East Germany is taught in 21st-century German schools, but not its literature.
External links
- Border Museum at Schifflersgrund
- DDR Museum Berlin – Culture of GDR
- AHF – Nationale Volksarmee : NVA
- That was the GDR at the Wayback Machine (archived 8 April 2010) (in German)
- East German Propaganda, Calvin University
- "Scenes from Behind the Wall: Images of East Germany 1989/90" Exhibit Collection C0235, Special Collections Research Center, George Mason University Libraries.
- Geschichte des ostdeutschen Designs – history of east German design (in German)
- East Berlin, past and present at the Wayback Machine (archived 28 September 2007)
- Pictures of the GDR 1949–1973
- RFE/RL East German Subject Files, Blinken Open Society Archives, Budapest
- Stamps Catalog of the German Democratic Republic at archive.today (archived 2 January 2013)
- East German anthem with English and German lyrics
- Map – Europe 1949: NATO and the Two Germanys (omniatlas.com)
- Mauerkarte – Detailed interactive map of the border between East and West Germany