East Germany facts
While investigating facts about East Germany Map and East Germany Cities, I found out little known, but curios details like:
A small town in West Virginia asked the Soviet Union and East Germany for help with replacing a bridge after being ignored by the West Virginian goverment. The Soviets sent a journalist to investigate and within one hour the state finally agreed to pay for it.
how east germany and west germany unified?
In 2012 a study in East Germany was unable to find a single person under 28 who believed in god.
What was life like in east germany?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what event helped unite east and west germany. Here are 50 of the best facts about East Germany Vs West Germany and East Germany Today I managed to collect.
what was the capital of east germany?
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West Germany fully decriminalised homosexual acts between males only in 1994 after criminal law needed reconciliation with law in East Germany, where it had been decriminalised since 1968
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After reuniting East and West Germany, East Germans protested the removal of their Ampelmännchen (little traffic men) resulting in one of the few positive things preserved from East German culture.
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In 1975 Ingo Bethke escaped from East Germany by floating on an air mattress across the Elbe. 8 years later his brother Holger fled East Berlin by firing an arrow with a rope tied to it and zip lining accross. The two then flew their brother Egbert over the wall on a homemade ultralight in 1989.
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East Germany created its own cola drink. Vita-Cola's sales almost disappeared after the fall of the Berlin Wall brought Coke and Pepsi into the East. It is still the most popular cola in Thuringia, making the German state one of the few places in the world where Coca-Cola is not the leader.
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"Kevin" is seen in Germany as a low-class name. In a phenomenon known as "Kevinismus", those with the name reportedly experience discrimination; a joke claims that "Only druggies and East Germans are named Kevin".
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The Berlin Wall was a wall that encircled ALL of West Berlin; it didn't just bisect Berlin. Also, West Berlin was surrounded by East Germany for over 100 miles in all directions
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The divide between West Germany and East Germany was so sharply defined it lead to houses and buildings being split down the middle
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Cuba gifted East Germany a small island during the Cold War as a symbol of friendship. Many have claimed that the island is now the last official territory of East Germany as it was not mentioned in the Treaty which united East and West Germany in 1990
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The last leader of East Germany is still alive and still defends his former country despite serving in prison for several years over Cold War crimes
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In 1982 900 children from Mozambique went to East Germany to complete their secondary education and become the new socialist elite leaders of Mozambique. Problem was, when they returned in 1988, the Mozambique was no longer a socialist country
East Germany data charts
For your convenience take a look at East Germany figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.
Why east germany was formed?
You can easily fact check why east germany was poor by examining the linked well-known sources.
Richard Kruspe, one of the members of the Band Rammstein, was an escapee from East Germany.
East Germany lives on - as a tiny island off Cuba. In 1972, Fidel Castro gifted the island to East Germany. The island was not addressed in the 1990 reunification, and as such is still technically East German territory, even though the nation no longer exists. - source
When visiting West Germany after the border opened, many East Germans spent their free 100DM 'welcome money' buying massive amounts of bananas, a highly prized rarity in the East.
In 1984, East Germany gave 5000 fake gas masks to Iran - source
When east germany and west germany reunite?
A man escaped East Germany by driving a sports car, with the windshield removed, at max speed under the gates of Checkpoint Charlie with his future wife and mother in-law hiding in the trunk
How east germany was formed?
At its height, the Dutch East India Company was worth roughly the same amount as the GDPs of modern-day Japan ($4.8T) and Germany ($3.4T) added together.
Between 1977 and 1978, Ethiopia and Somalia (both communist at the time) fought a massive tank war in the Ogaden desert. The USSR, East Germany, North Korea, Cuba and South Yemen backed Ethiopia while China and Romania supported Somalia in one of the most bizarre wars of the 20th century.
In 1989 a Soviet Mig-23 pilot flying a training mission over Poland bailed out, thinking his engines had failed. The plane actually continued on autopilot for 900km, crossing Poland, East and West Germany before finally crashing in Belgium and killing a man at his home.
No where was the Marshall Plan's effects more evident than in Germany. After Germany was partitioned into West and East and after Stalin refused to allow the new communist regimes of eastern Europe to participate in the Marshall Plan, the two Germanys developed quite differently. Thanks in part to the Marshall Plan, West Germany's economy was booming by the late 1950s while large parts of East Germany still looked like the war had just ended.
East German streets during the Soviet Era had a friendly "man-in-hat" pedestrian signal. When East Germany collapsed, the capitalist reunification threatened to get rid of them, only to have the previous easterners fight to have them back.