After World War II, during the Postdam Conference, Germany was divided between the Allied Powers and the Soviet Union.
In 1949, the country was formally divided giving rise to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the Federal German Republic (West Germany).
THE Oriental Germany it was under socialist and Soviet influence, with capital in Berlin. In turn, the western part lived under a capitalist and American orbit, whose capital was Bonn.
This division followed the logic of Cold War that dominated the world order until 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Berlin
The former German capital did not escape this division. Berlin was located in the middle of East Germany and there coexisted two systems of government and two currencies in the same city.
First, it was subtly divided into neighborhoods and zones destined for the capitalist side and the socialist side. However, starting in 1961, in physical form, with the construction of the Berlin Wall.
In 1953, several East German workers marched in Berlin asking for better living conditions and more freedom. They are harshly repressed by the police who fired on the unarmed crowd, in addition to arresting 13,000 to 15,000 people. Faced with this coercion, around 3 million Germans move to the Western side.
The more the Soviet regime dominated and repressed the population of East Germany, the more people became dissatisfied and fled to the West.
East German authorities are looking for a solution to stop Berlin citizens from fleeing to the capitalist side and building the Wall.
Read more about the Berlin Wall.
Politics
The political system in the German Democratic Republic was inspired by the Soviet socialist organization. In this way, there was a large party, the socialist and other minorities with little representation. There were no direct elections.
Opposition political parties were formally banned. The population was co-opted through social and cultural associations and groupings in order to build the new socialist man.
East German flag with hammer and square in the center.
Political Repression: Stasi
THE Stasi it was the body responsible for watching over citizens who had ideas contrary to socialism. Listening to rock music, missing the May Day demonstration, wearing Western clothes, questioning authority, all these could be seen as suspicious by the Stasi.
Artists, students, politicians, could all be targets of investigation which also included arbitrary arrests, violent interrogations, isolation and torture.
Economy
The East German economy was based on the Soviet socialist model. Thus, the Germans adopted the planned economy model through the Five-Year Plans. Private property did not exist and everything belonged and was administered by the State. The military and heavy industries were privileged in this model.
Even though the basic needs of the population were covered, such as education, housing and health, there was no political or individual freedom. Likewise, the variety of products was minimal.
Culture
Cultural production should be designed to exalt socialist ideals and denigrate the capitalist world. Many productions were directly influenced by Soviet realism.
Theater, cinema and book works should have as their theme the struggle of the working class and its effort to build an egalitarian society. Artistic avant-gardes, such as abstractionism, were viewed with suspicion.
Furthermore, any artistic production needed authorization to be reproduced.
Lifestyle
In order to build a society where everyone was equal, there was a generalized standardization that ranged from housing to clothing. The apartments were the same for everyone, and the variety of wallpapers, decorations and furniture was minimal.
German clothes were always standardized, except for those who could pay more. Fabrics were few and stores sold virtually the same designs to the common people. The way was for women to learn to sew their own dresses and make their accessories to differentiate themselves.
The best example of this standardization was the automobile industry. There was only one car model, the Trabant, which East Germans would have had to wait years and years to obtain. The model was simple and outdated, but everyone wanted to own it.
The Trabant car
End of the German Democratic Republic
In the 1980s, the Soviet model showed clear signs of economic exhaustion. Unable to keep pace with capitalist industry, the industrialized products of the socialist world were outdated and had a reduced consumer market.
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev he is elected as general secretary of the Communist Party in the USSR and promises political and economic openness. Encouraged by this example, several countries that were under the "Iron Curtain" feel they can claim more freedoms.
In East Germany, young students gathered in churches to listen to music and then went out on demonstrations to ask for more rights. They were constantly watched and repressed by the police, but even so, the marches continued.
In November 1989, a German politician declared to TV that the Wall would be opened immediately. Despite wanting to say that it would be within a few days, the population understood that the opening would take place that same night.
In this way, thousands of Berliners took to the streets to destroy the Wall and reunify the city and the country.
Despite the differences between the two countries, Germany was reunited in record time. The Western part assumed all the economic, political and economic burdens of the German Democratic Republic.
THE Fall of the wall it marked the end of the Cold War and accelerated the disintegration of the USSR.
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