Administrative divisions of East Germany

The administrative divisions of the German Democratic Republic (commonly referred to as East Germany) were constituted in two different forms during the country's history.

In May 1945, following its defeat in World War II, Germany was occupied by the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union.

All four occupation powers reorganised the territories by recreating the Länder (states), the constituting parts of federal Germany.

(The territories east of the Oder–Neisse line had been transferred from the Soviet occupation zone to the Polish authorities as agreed upon at the Potsdam Conference.)

As a nod to the legal fiction that East Berlin was still occupied territory, it was counted neither as part of Brandenburg, nor as a state in its own right.

The Bezirke were drawn without regard to the borders of the Länder and each named after their capitals, from north to south: Rostock, Neubrandenburg, Schwerin, Potsdam, Frankfurt (Oder), Magdeburg, Cottbus, Halle, Leipzig, Erfurt, Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt (named Chemnitz until 1953), Gera and Suhl.

Since changes to the boundaries of municipal districts were not reversed, and also due to considerations of expediency, the territorial make-up of the restored Länder differed somewhat from the borders before 1952.