East Germany



"Well, that's not good! That stinks! Germany has been divided again when the Russians 'liberated' the eastern parts of Germany since the start of Cold War... or probably the end of World War II! That's crazy! I won't let Merkel down now!"

--Su Ji-Hoon, Divided Again...

East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik pronounced [ˈdɔʏtʃə demoˈkʀaːtɪʃə ʀepuˈbliːk], DDR), was a communist state in central-western Europe, during the Cold War period. It described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state." From 1949 to 1990, it administered the portion of Germany that had been occupied by Soviet forces at the end of World War II—the Soviet Occupation Zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin, but did not include it; as a result, West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.