German-German History

On August 13, 1961, the leadership of the former German Democratic Republic began building the Berlin Wall.More ...

The phrase describing the GDR as a “footnote in history” was coined by Stefan Heym in 1989. In the public debate the GDR is still very much alive.More ...

The end of the GDR also brought about a sea change for the scientific community in the East of Germany.More ...

The Friedrich Ebert Foundation is digitalising the photographic work of the distinguished Bonn journalist Josef Heinrich Darchinger. A newly established department in the Foundation’s archives is ensuring that the valuable material from the days of analogue photography will be preserved for future generations.More ...

2009 is the year of big memorial days. One of these of course is the “twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall”. Berlin in particular is looking for new perspectives of commemoration.More ...

Stefan Koppelkamm photographed the same buildings and streets in East Berlin and Eastern Germany twice: in 1990–91 and 2002–2003. A conversation about nostalgia, “romanticized ruins” and coming
                                      to grips with history.More ...

Hubertus Knabe is considered to be one of the most high-profile experts on the SED dictatorship. He is manager of the Stasi memorial in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. His latest book Die Täter sind unter uns (The perpetrators are amongst us) deals with coming to terms with the GDR past, which in his view has been inadequate. After almost 20 years since the fall of the Wall, the GDR is being romanticised, he says.More ...

Only one in two schoolchildren in Germany knows which year the Wall was built.More ...

The Stasi Records Authority, headed by Marianne Birthler, the Federal Commissioner for the Files of the State Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic, will remain independent for the time being. By Volker ThomasMore ...

2009 marks the twentieth anniversary of the political changes which took place in the annus mirabilis of 1989. At the time, there was a fundamental shift in the coordinates in which post-war generations had grown up. There was no longer an East or a West, but something in between – Central Europe.More ...

The new volume in the “Zeitbilder” (Pictures of an Age) series The Berlin Wall tells the story of t h e monument of the Cold War in a compact, scenic and moving style – a documentation lest we forget.More ...

Interview with the historian, Dr. Uta Balbier, on the history of German-German sport.More ...

For decades the government bunker in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler was the most secret building complex in the Federal Republic of Germany. The end of the East-West conflict sounded the death-knell of the monstrous complex. It is now being converted into a museum.More ...

The year before German unification in 1990, the communist state security service of the decaying "German Democratic Republic" (GDR) attempted to erase all traces of its history by destroying its files. It left thousands of sacks full of shredded records. Now they are being reconstructed by computer.More ...

Photographer Roger Melis paints a sober and critical picture of everyday life in the GDR in his book In einem stillen Land (i.e. In a silent land).More ...

What was the GDR? Why was it, how did its people live? David Ensikat reports of the history and everyday life of the vanished state in a well-written book.More ...

The East German past has been awarded a very much more prominent place in German history lessons over the last few years, with the main focus switching to the history of daily life.More ...

The Stiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur (the foundation devoted to the examination and reappraisal of the SED dictatorship in East Germany) draws attention to the Communist past of Eastern Germany and the entire former "Eastern Bloc". Giving the perspective of the victims exposes false myths and serves as a reminder to later generations.More ...

In East Berlin the main former prison of the “Stasi” still exists.More ...

There were two, very moving developments that led to the reunification of Germany: the democratisation of the east, especially made possible by Mikhail Gorbachev, and the courage of thousands of people who fought for their freedom. At the end of 1989 these events came together and ended up a new state - the Federal Republic as we know it today.More ...