Important milestones of the gradual demarcation were the US-led Marshall Plan in 1947 as well as the Western currency reform and the Berlin blockade in 1948.

While Chancellor Konrad Adenauer succeeded in gradually bringing the Federal Republic of Germany closer to the West, reconciling the country with its European neighbors and finding a close partner in France, the citizens of the Federal Republic benefited from the Wirtschaftswunder, the upswing brought about by the market economy and integration in the Western European economy.

In this way, the GDR put a temporary end to the increasing exodus of its highly educated population and to any lingering hopes of reunification in the near future.

Therefore, no ambassadors were sent, but permanent representatives based with the respective governments in Bonn and East Berlin were exchanged, to whom the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations applied accordingly.

[8] The policy of normalization nevertheless served to defuse the international East-West conflict and set the stage for the 1975 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and the talks on troop limitations.

However, the "regulated coexistence" achieved cemented the status quo to such an extent that after more than 20 years in both German states, few still believed in the feasibility of reunification.

The fact that too much independence could also lead to conflict with the Soviet Union had already been felt in 1971 by Walter Ulbricht, who had been replaced in his position as first secretary of the SED by Erich Honecker because of his refusal to reform.

Emerging opposition groups were repressed by the state security's tightly meshed network of informers in order to maintain political stability in the country.

In the meantime, Inner German relations were strained by a new wave of international rearmament, culminating in the NATO Double-Track Decision and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979.

Erich Honecker's visit to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1987, which had been planned for years, was seen by both states as an important step in the development of German-German relations.

Gorbachev's reform policy of Perestroika and Glasnost, along with the noticeable defusing of the international East-West conflict through binding disarmament agreements between the USSR and the USA, ultimately led to the revolutions in 1989 in the individual states of the Eastern Bloc as well.

On November 9, 1989, Günter Schabowski, a member of the Politburo of the SED, declared at a press conference that East German citizens were free to travel, whereupon all inner-German border crossings were opened.

The "window of history" that was now open for reunification moved all parties to act quickly: The SED offered the opposition roundtable talks, and Helmut Kohl single-handedly presented his ten-point program for overcoming the division of Germany.

On May 18, 1990, the East German government under Lothar de Maizière, which had emerged from the People's Chamber elections on March 18, 1990, concluded the Treaty on the Creation of a Monetary, Economic and Social Union.

[10] Taking into account the agreements and decisions of the victorious powers from the wartime and postwar periods, the Two-plus-Four Treaty of September 12, 1990, made final arrangements with regard to Germany.

On August 23, 1990, the People's Chamber decided on the East German's accession to the Federal Republic of Germany in accordance with Article 23 of the Basic Law.

[16][17] Article 7 of the Basic Treaty provided for agreements in the fields of economics, science and technology, transportation, legal relations, postal and telecommunications services, health care, culture, sports, environmental protection and other areas.

Exports of machinery and equipment to the West were limited because products manufactured in the GDR were not competitive enough in the Western capital goods market.

[33] The benefits that the GDR derived from intra-German trade in the form of interest and customs duty savings and VAT reductions were estimated at around DM 750 million for the 1980s.

Only in cases where there was "a justified state, social or cultural interest" could a renewed application be made to the Ministry of the Interior (Headquarters of the German People's Police).

Travel was to be prevented "where there is no absolute necessity or where there is reasonable suspicion that it is intended to be exploited to leave the German Democratic Republic illegally."

[44] The Transport Treaty of May 26, 1972, then regulated traffic into and through the respective territories on roads, railways, and waterways "in accordance with customary international practice on the basis of reciprocity and nondiscrimination.

Travel on the occasion of births, marriages, life-threatening illnesses, and deaths of grandparents, parents, children, and siblings could be approved thereafter once or several times up to a total duration of 30 days per year.

"[45] In many cases, personal meetings took place at transit highway rest stops, even though travelers there had to reckon with surveillance by the Ministry for State Security.

As a result of the travel facilitations for West Germans that came with the Transit agreement and the Basic Treaty (including residence in the entire GDR, free choice of border crossing, visits also to acquaintances and not only to relatives, trips several times a year, tourist trips, permission for car traffic, opening of new road crossings, traffic close to the border), travel with the GDR then "increased by leaps and bounds in the further course of the 1970s.

[54][55] Until the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, there was a "lively exchange on questions of art, national unity and political concepts" between West and East German artists outside of official cultural policy.

In November 1986, both sides agreed "that cultural property belonging to public owners in the other part of Germany would be returned to its original location.

"[59] Even without an overarching agreement, there had already been concerts by GDR musicians such as Wolf Biermann in the Federal Republic since the mid-1970s; in 1983, Udo Lindenberg had performed at the Palace of the Republic;[60] GDR artists had taken part in Documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977, There were performances by the Berlin Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan in Dresden, guest appearances by the West Berlin Schaubühne in Chemnitz, retrospectives of Willi Sitte, Wolfgang Mattheuer or Bernhard Heisig in the West and films from both states where shown at film weeks.

[62] On the very day the border was opened, November 9, 1989, the then Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Johannes Rau, organized the exhibition "Zeitzeichen.