German Democratic Republic

German Democratic Republic ←   ← 1949–1990 → Flag Coat of arms Motto "Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt Euch!" ("Workers of all nations, unite !") Anthem "Auferstanden aus Ruinen" ("Risen from Ruins") Capital East Berlin Language(s) Official: German Unofficial minority languages: Sorbian Government Socialist republic Communist state Chairman of the Council of State  - 1949–60 Wilhelm Pieck (President)  - 1960–73 Walter Ulbricht  - 1973–76 Willi Stoph  - 1976–89 Erich Honecker  - 1989 Egon Krenz  - 1989–90 Manfred Gerlach Chairman of the Council of Ministers  - 1949–64 Otto Grotewohl  - 1964–73 Willi Stoph  - 1973–76 Horst Sindermann  - 1976–89 Willi Stoph  - 1989–90 Hans Modrow  - 1990 Lothar de Maizière Legislature Volkskammer Historical era Cold War  - Established 7 October 1949  - Final settlement 25 September 1990  - German reunification 3 October 1990 Area  - 1990 108,333 km2 (41,828 sq mi) Population  - 1990 est. 16,111,000       Density 148.7 /km2  (385.2 /sq mi) Currency Mark der DDR (M) until 30 June 1990, named: 1948–64 Deutsche Mark (DM) 1964–67 Mark der Deutschen Notenbank (MDN) Deutsche Mark (DM) as of 1 July 1990 Today part of Germany

The German Democratic Republic, abbreviated as GDR (in German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR), mistakenly known in English as East Germany, was a Communist state created by the Soviet Union in the western part of the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany and the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin. The GDR existed from 1949 until 1990, when its constituent states acceded to the adjacent Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), thus producing the current form of the state of Germany.

History

In the Palace of the Republic (Palast der Republik), the 11th Party Congress opened. The report of the Central Committee was delivered by Erich Honecker, the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party Central Committee and Chairman of the Council of State of the German Democratic Republic.

The name

The name East Germany was created after World War II by the occupiers of this part of Germany, the Soviet Union. The name is a forgery, since this area is historically the middle of Germany and not Eastern Germany (i.e: Pomerania, East Prussia, Silesia, West Prussia, Danzig, etc.). Patriotic Germans call this area Mitteldeutschland or Middle Germany.

Districts, not states

After the Second World War, five provisional German states were set up as administrative units in the Soviet occupation zone by order of the Soviet military administration in Germany. Until the dissolution of Prussia in 1947, Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg were also referred to as provinces. Sachsen-Anhalt, for example, was created on 21 July 1947 through the unification of the Free State of Anhalt with the Prussian provinces of Magdeburg and Halle-Merseburg, which the Free State of Prussia had created on 1 July 1944 by dividing its province of Saxony. The abolition of Prussia took place on 25 February 1947 through a decree of the Allied Control Council.

From 1949 onwards, the states of Mecklenburg (as of 25 February 1947 on order of the Soviets), Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, Thuringia (Land Thüringen) and Saxony formed the larger administrative units of the GDR. When the GDR was reorganized into districts (Bezirke) in 1952, the states lost their function. The districts formed the middle level of state administration between 1952 and 1990. The districts were comparable to the federal German government districts in terms of population, area and status. The districts had no political (sub-state) autonomy like a state of the Federal Republic of Germany and no self-government rights like a local authority. They had one purpose: To exercise central communist power from Berlin (in 1948 split into West Berlin and East Berlin) under the watchful eye of the Soviets. East Berlin was not officially a district, but had been given the function of a district since 1961. From north to south there were the following 14 districts:

1. Rostock
2. Schwerin
3. Neubrandenburg
4. Potsdam
5. Frankfurt (Oder)
6. Magdeburg
7. Cottbus
8. Halle
9. Leipzig
10. Erfurt
11. Dresden
12. Karl-Marx-Stadt
13. Gera
14. Suhl

On 22 July 1990, the freely elected People's Chamber (Volkskammer) of the GDR decided to form the new or re-established five states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Meckelnburg-Vorpommern), Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt (Saxon-Anhalt), Thuringia (Thüringen) and Saxony (Sachsen). East Berlin was to become part of the federal state (Bundesland) of Berlin (actually a city-state or Stadtstaat). With the formation of the new states, the GDR abolished a centralized state and transformed into a federal state. The structure therefore corresponds to the order of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz). On 3 October 1990, these "new states" (neue Bundesländer) [German partial unification were unified (through accession)] with the Federal Republic of Germany with its 10 (or eleven, when including West-Berlin) "old federal states" (alte Bundesländer), the country was now comprised of 16 German federal states or Bundesländer.

Politics

In 1955, the wholly communist German Democratic Republic was declared by the Soviet Union to be "fully sovereign"; however, Soviet troops remained. As NATO troops remained in West Berlin and West Germany, the DDR and Berlin in particular became focal points of Cold War tensions. Middle Germany (DDR) was a member of the Warsaw Pact and a puppet state of the Soviet Union.

The "Freie Deutsche Jugend" (FDJ, Free German Youth) was the youth movement of the GDR. It was founded on 13 December 1948 and dissolved in 1989. Many considered the FDJ as a "communist Hitler Youth".

STASI

One of the more notorious operations in the DDR was the Ministry for State Security's secret police force (STASI), which was a secret intelligence service and organ for criminal investigations'. These latter investigations were, however, primarily political. The MfS had its own detention centres (jails) and its own armed forces, mirroring the Soviet Union's NKVD and KGB. From 1957 until 1989 its head was Erich Mielke (de), responsible for the erection of the Berlin Wall and countless executions, etc.

Military

The army of the GDR was created in 1956 with the name of Nationale Volksarmee (NVA). After 1990, it was merged into the Bundeswehr (BW), although many officers were retired from German military service due to their strong communist and sovietophile background.

Railways

During the lifetime of the DDR its railways continued to use the pre-1945 name of the Deutsche Reichsbahn.

Fall of the Wall (Mauerfall)

Following the October demonstrations and the initial opening of small sections of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, new elections were held on 18 March, 1990, and the governing party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, lost its majority in the Volkskammer (the parliament of the DDR). On May 18, the two German states signed a treaty agreeing on monetary, economic, and social union. It came into force on July 1st, with the West German Deutsche Mark replacing the East German mark as the official currency.

Reunification

See also: German partial unification.

On 23 August 1990 the Volkskammer passed a resolution declaring the union, or accession (Beitritt), of the German Democratic Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany, and the extension of the field of application of the Federal Republic's Basic Law to the territory of East Germany as allowed by article 23 of the West German Basic Law, effective 3 October 1990. This Declaration of Accession (Beitrittserklärung) was formally presented by the President of the Volkskammer to the President of the West German Bundestag by means of a letter dated 25 August 1990. Thus, formally, the procedure of reunification by means of the union of so-called East Germany to West Germany, and of the former's acceptance of the Basic Law already in force in West Germany, was initiated as the unilateral, sovereign decision of the German Democratic Republic, as allowed by the provisions of article 23 of the West German Basic Law as it then existed. As a result of the part-unification on that date, the German Democratic Republic officially ceased to exist.

Population

Poster protesting against the illegal Oder border and the dismemberment of Germany

East Germans invading the Stasi headquarters in the Normannenstraße (Lichtenberg) on 16 January 1990. The placard says that the Stasi and the Communist Socialist Unity Party of Germany are "Nazistic dictators".

	Average population (thousand)	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
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
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