[14] 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 notable transformations instituted by the communist regime were particularly evident in the abolition of capitalism, the overhaul of industrial and agricultural sectors, the militarization of society, and the political orientation of both the educational system and the media.

[32] However, there is much evidence that the merger was more troubled than was commonly portrayed; that the Soviet occupation authorities applied great pressure on the SPD's eastern branch to merge with the KPD, and the communists, who held a majority, had virtually total control over policy.

[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.

[5] On 16 June 1953, workers constructing the new Stalinallee boulevard in East Berlin, according to the GDR's officially promulgated Sixteen Principles of Urban Design, rioted against a 10% production-quota increase.

Fearing anti-communist counter-revolution, on 18 June 1953 the government of the GDR enlisted the Soviet Occupation Forces to aid the police in ending the riot; some fifty people were killed and 10,000 were jailed (see Uprising of 1953 in East Germany).

[53] According to the Hallstein Doctrine (1955), West Germany did not establish (formal) diplomatic ties with any country – except the Soviets – that recognized East German sovereignty.

In the early 1970s, the Ostpolitik ('Eastern Policy') of "Change Through Rapprochement" of the pragmatic government of FRG Chancellor Willy Brandt, established normal diplomatic relations with the Eastern Bloc states.

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.

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".

[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.

The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then triggered a chain reaction leading to the end of the GDR and the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc.

[71] But with the mass exodus at the picnic, and the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union, broke the dams.

[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.

The new Bezirke, named after their district centres, were as follows: (i) Rostock, (ii) Neubrandenburg, and (iii) Schwerin created from the Land (state) of Mecklenburg; (iv) Potsdam, (v) Frankfurt (Oder), and (vii) Cottbus from Brandenburg; (vi) Magdeburg and (viii) Halle from Saxony-Anhalt; (ix) Leipzig, (xi) Dresden, and (xii) Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz until 1953 and again from 1990) from Saxony; and (x) Erfurt, (xiii) Gera, and (xiv) Suhl from Thuringia.

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.

[103] The NVA consisted of the following branches: The border troops of the Eastern sector were originally organised as a police force, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei, similar to the Bundesgrenzschutz in West Germany.

For the medically unqualified and conscientious objectors, there were the Baueinheiten (construction units) or the Volkshygienedienst (People's Sanitation Service), both established in 1964, two years after the introduction of conscription, in response to political pressure by the national Lutheran Protestant Church upon the GDR's government.

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.

[117] 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.

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.

[123] Beginning in 1963 with a series of secret international agreements, East Germany recruited workers from Poland, Hungary, Cuba, Albania, Mozambique, Angola, and North Vietnam.

In 1961, the renowned philosophical theologian Paul Tillich claimed that the Protestant population in East Germany had the most admirable Church in Protestantism, because the communists there had not been able to win a spiritual victory over them.

Notable East German composers include Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Ernst Hermann Meyer, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny, and Kurt Schwaen.

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.

[176] 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.

by Wolfgang Becker,[179] Das Leben der Anderen ("The Lives of Others") by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (which won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film) in 2006,[180] and Alles auf Zucker!

At the time of reunification, almost all East German highways, railroads, sewage systems, and public buildings were in a state of disrepair, as little was done to maintain infrastructure in the GDR's last decades.

Over the next 30 years, unified German public spending invested more than $2 trillion into former East Germany, to make up for the region's neglect and malaise and bring it up to a minimal standard.

"[193] 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.