I.

Introduction

East Germany, common name for a former republic of central Europe, bordered on the north by the Baltic Sea, on the east by Poland, on the south by the Czech Republic (at that time Czechoslovakia), and on the south and west by the former West Germany.

East Germany had an area of 108,178 sq km (41,768 sq mi). It was established officially as the German Democratic Republic (GDR; German, Deutsche Demokratische Republik) on October 7, 1949, as one of two successor states—West Germany (officially the Federal Republic of Germany, or the FRG) being the other—to the country of Germany after its defeat in World War II. East Germany ceased to exist when it was reunified with West Germany on October 3, 1990.

East Germany occupied the areas which are now the German states of Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. The republic named East Berlin as its capital, a decision that other powers refused to recognize. At the time of reunification, the republic had around 16 million inhabitants.

East Germany, established under Soviet auspices in 1949 in response to the Allied-sponsored founding of West Germany, insisted on international recognition as an independent communist state. Despite Soviet demands for heavy reparations, it developed a potent economy and held a key position in the Soviet bloc.

II.

The Ulbricht Years

Walter Ulbricht, a long-standing member of the German Communist party, presided over the destiny of East Germany for more than 25 years. He helped found the Socialist Unity Party (German, Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), a communist organization, in 1946 and was general secretary of the party from 1950 to 1971, first deputy premier of the republic from 1949 to 1950, and chairman of the Council of State from 1960 to 1973.

Determined to transform his country, ravaged by World War II, into a major communist power, Ulbricht designed a foreign policy to foster friendly relations with other communist states. In 1950 East Germany made a treaty with Poland ratifying the Oder-Neisse border, and joined other communist nations in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. In 1954 the republic’s stature grew when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) ended its demands for reparations and granted East Germany diplomatic recognition. The next year East Germany helped found the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet answer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and in 1956 East Germany formed an army. Ulbricht made a pact with the USSR in 1964 to maintain communism in Eastern Europe, and negotiated a trade agreement in 1965 in return for Soviet political support. In 1968, Ulbricht sent East German troops to help the Soviets crush the Prague Spring movement in Czechoslovakia.

In 1950 the Stasi (Staatssicherheit), East Germany’s ministry for state security, was formed. A repressive organization, it became infamous within the country and in the world at large for its surveillance tactics. The Stasi spied on East Germans and recruited many (estimates suggest 500,000) to spy on fellow citizens. The Stasi, aligned to the Soviet KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti), was finally disbanded in 1989. Many of its files have become the subject of historical interest.

III.

Relations with West Germany

In the 1950s East Germany’s relations with capitalist West Germany became strained after the West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer claimed that all Germans were one nation, and insisted on dealing with the Socialist Unity Party rather than with the East German government. Relations became even more strained with the division of Berlin into separate zones. Berlin lay deep within East German territory, but had been divided into east (communist) and west (non-communist) sectors. To stop the flow of dissatisfied East Germans to the West, a situation draining East Germany’s trained workforce, Ulbricht set up a well-guarded corridor along the country’s western frontier, leaving Berlin as the only practical escape route. Ulbricht finally blocked that exit in 1961 by ordering the construction of the Berlin Wall, a heavily fortified cement barrier that cut off East Berlin from West Berlin; in 1968, Ulbricht imposed new restrictions on already limited travel from West Germany to West Berlin.

IV.

Strict Party Control

In domestic affairs Ulbricht’s first concern was to rebuild the East German economy. After World War II, East Germany was left with only one-quarter of its pre-war resources, but was required by the USSR to pay three-quarters of overall German reparations to aid Soviet war recovery. Ulbricht attained his goal by imposing an iron discipline comparable to that of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The Socialist Unity Party completely controlled the government, which had already taken over all heavy industry and agriculture and which gradually acquired all smallholdings as well. Emphasis was on heavy industrial production to satisfy Soviet requirements. In 1953 increased production quotas and food shortages led to worker revolts, which were put down by Soviet troops.

With the New Economic System of 1963 economic recovery in East Germany progressed rapidly. As workers’ incomes and benefits improved, and many of them were given advanced technological education, they became somewhat more reconciled to the communist government. A new, fully socialist constitution was adopted in 1968.

V.

The Socialist Government

From 1968 to 1989 East Germany was governed under a constitution that defined the country as a sovereign socialist state in which all political power was exercised by the working people. In practice, power resided with the Socialist Unity Party. The 1968 constitution guaranteed the party a leading role in national affairs, and its general secretary, as head of the party’s political bureau, was the most powerful person in the country. East Germany’s unicameral parliament, the People’s Chamber (German, Volkskammer), consisting of 500 deputies, met only for short sessions. To carry out its functions at other times, the People’s Chamber elected a Council of State.

VI.

New Leadership

After 1971, when Ulbricht was succeeded by Erich Honecker as party leader (Honecker was subsequently president of East Germany from 1976 to 1989), no single figure dominated the East German government. Relations with West Germany improved after the West German chancellor Willy Brandt and East German premier Willi Stoph agreed to ease West German travel restrictions to West Berlin in 1972 and instituted formal diplomatic relations in 1973. New trade, aid, and travel agreements were signed with West Germany in 1984, and in 1987 Honecker became the first East German head of state to pay an official visit to West Germany.

VII.

The End of the GDR

Communist rule fell apart in 1989 after Hungary, suspending a 20-year-old agreement with East Germany, allowed thousands of East German citizens to cross the border from Hungary into Austria and thence to West Germany, where they were given political asylum. As the political crisis mounted in 1989, Honecker was forced out of the presidency in October, and Egon Krenz became president and party leader. In November the Berlin Wall was opened, other barriers to emigration dropped, and tens of thousands of East Germans streamed into West Berlin. Meanwhile, revelations of corruption among high officials during the Honecker era left the Socialist Unity Party in turmoil.

In the face of rising popular discontent, Krenz lost his state and party posts, and in December 1989 the Socialist Unity Party, bowing to demands by opposition groups, agreed to hold free elections for a new People’s Chamber, to consist of 400 members. This transitional body, freely elected in March 1990, was charged with working out the constitutional arrangements under which the GDR (East Germany) would merge with the FRG (West Germany). The two republics merged their financial systems in July 1990, and in October the GDR was dissolved.

The Christian Democratic coalition, led by the West German chancellor Helmut Kohl, scored a decisive victory in elections for the new German government in December 1990, and Kohl became chancellor of the unified Federal Republic of Germany. The newly elected Bundestag (the legislative body of the German parliament), representing both East and West, named Berlin the capital of Germany on June 20, 1991. The transfer of administration from Bonn, the capital of the former West Germany, was planned to take place over a 12-year period. The major phase of this process was largely completed by 1999, when the Bundestag moved into the symbolically renovated Reichstag building in Berlin.