Talk:East Germany

What's the de jure capital of East Germany?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Just wondering. Patriciogetsongettingridofhiswiki (talk) 21:15, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

it doesn't have one. It no longer exists as a separate state. See German reunification. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:45, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

I meant to say "What was East Germany's de jure capital when it existed" Patriciogetsongettingridofhiswiki (talk) 19:09, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

East Berlin was the capital, period. The NATO trolls maintaining this article added that garbage footnote because Amerikkka and its two older brothers England and France (the original NATO trolls) all refused to recognize GDR's capital. Crybabies. 142.198.135.212 (talk) 12:29, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Was the Soviet Sector ever recognized as part of the GDR and its capital? Incidentally, the GDR referred to it as Berlin Haupstadt der DDR. TFD (talk) 15:29, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Not even the Soviets fully recognized East Berlin as the formal capital. 84.216.156.210 (talk) 08:56, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

The Soviet Union and other Communist countries refused to recognize West Berlin as even being part of West Germany, let alone as West Germany's de jure capital.

Communist countries, however, did not recognise West Berlin as part of West Germany and usually described it as a "third" German jurisdiction, called to "independent political unit" (German: selbständige politische Einheit). On maps of East Berlin, West Berlin often did not appear as an adjacent urban area but as a monochrome terra incognita, sometimes showing the letters WB, meaning "Westberlin" (German: Westberlin) or overlaid with a legend or pictures. It was often labelled "Westberlin special political area" (German: Besonderes politisches Gebiet Westberlin).

West_Berlin#Legal_status

Carney333 (talk) 03:51, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Just to reinforce my point, see this excerpt from page 88 of an official 1986 publication of the East German government describing the GDR to foreign readers. It says:

In its relations with West Berlin the GDR is guided by strict adherence to the Quadripartite Agreement, notably its central provision that West Berlin continues not to be a constituent part of the Federal Republic and may not be governed by it.

Carney333 (talk) 00:35, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

West Berlin was never internationally recognized as part of the Federal Republic of Germany, even though it was treated as one of the Lander. The FRG chose Bonn, not West Berlin, as its capital.

OTOH, the FRG claimed sovereignty over all of the former Soviet Sector, all of Berlin and half of Poland, until renouncing these claims as part of Ostpolitik. TFD (talk) 01:28, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

West Germany never recognized the GDR as sovereign country, as opposed to parts of today’s Poland. There was no GDR citizenship, according to West German law, and West Germany didn’t have an embassy in the GDR. Andif1 (talk) 19:35, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Minor typos in the Ostalgie subsection

The final paragraph in the "Ostalgie" subsection reads

"In 2023, a poll found that 40% of East Germans identify as East Germans rather then German which was 52%."

I think that it should be changed to something more grammatically correct like

"In 2023, a poll found that 40% of Germans living in the former East Germany identify as East Germans rather than German, which 52% identified as." JonathanArbuckle (talk) 06:49, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

I have changed this for you. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:01, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 August 2024

To the mods of Wikipedia, greetings. I would like to add the audio file for the national anthem of East Germany, Auferstanden aus Ruinen. I feel it would be useful to future readers of East Germany's page to listen to their national anthem. All other country pages have their national anthem's sound file, so we should bring it to East Germany. Have a good day. Zechchuber (talk) 20:10, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

 Not done for now: If you are aware of a file already on Wikipedia, please link it here and I'll be happy to add it. Otherwise, if you know of a file compatible with Wikipedia's copyright requirements, you can make a request to upload it at WP:FFU, then reopen this request once the file has been accepted. If you don't know of either, I and others can't really help, unfortunately. Tollens (talk) 21:11, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Richer than West Germany?

According to the numbers given here, the GDR was considerably richer than West Germany in PPP terms in 1990. The GDR had a GDP of $529bn in 1989 and a population of 16.1m. This works out as a GDP per capita at PPP of $32,600 (despite the article saying $42,000). By contrast West Germany had a GDP of $1tn in 1990 and a population of 63.25m, which gives a GDP per capita at PPP of $15,800. Therefore in PPP terms the GDR was more than twice as rich as West Germany. Can this really be the case? LastDodo (talk) 19:52, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

East German currency was worthless in the real world and had no "international" value, so there was no great way to measure the East Germany economy nor the performance of it's currency, communist economist just made numbers up out of thin air RomanGrandpa (talk) 13:30, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

The 1990 CIA Factbook shows a GNP of $9.679, compared with a GDP of %15,300 for West Germany.[1] But determining a GNP or GDP for non-market economies is always problematic.

The Ostmark was not worthless. The purchasing power for necessities was higher than the Deutschmark, but luxury goods usually could only be bought with Deutschmarks, which were traded at 5:1 to 10:1. Furthermore, the quality of goods in East Germany was usually lower, unless imported.

TFD (talk) 18:17, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

What westerner would want to be paid in Ostmark's? .....Even the Soviet Union had to trade war ships to buy Pepsi........no company would accept the Ruble, because it had no value outside the Soviet Union. RomanGrandpa (talk) 13:29, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

CIA Factbook is a standard source for such info so I would suggest that data replace the existing data which comes from the 'World Inequality Database'. LastDodo (talk) 10:31, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Westerners visiting East Germany would buy Ostmark either through official sources or the black market which they would then use to buy goods and services there. So it wasn't actually worthless in the sense that Confederate money was after the war, just that the market value was far less than the official exchange rate and the currency was not trade in FX markets.

Since the actual method of calculating the value of the Ostmark and the GNP of a non-market economy is disputed, I would like to see a source that explains how it derives its figures.

TFD (talk) 16:12, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

That's reasonable but since the World Inequality Database doesn't offer any such explanation either, I would still suggest replacing that number with the CIA one for now. LastDodo (talk) 08:51, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

All these values are heavily dependent on estimates and assumptions which don't stand up too well to scrutiny, but they continue to be important because there are too many occasions when the need to discuss their implications cannot be circumvented. Something is better than nothing. For many purposes "nominal GDP" is more appropriate than "PPP GDP". Your discussion would be more complete if someone were to add and populate the following fields to the infobox:

"| GDP_nominal = $00,000 billion | GDP_nominal_rank = xxst | GDP_nominal_year = 1989 | GDP_nominal_per_capita = $000| GDP_nominal_per_capita_rank = xxst"

That has already been done for most countries. For the infoboxes on East Germany and West Germany in wiki-en those fields are missing, presumably because the data needed to populate them are not so accessible. But if you do have relatively easy access to an appropriate source, how about it? Regards Charles01 (talk) 09:05, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't I'm afraid. When I google it it comes up with the Wikisource page https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook_(1990)/German_Democratic_Republic and a site called 'theodora.com' that I'm not familiar with. LastDodo (talk) 13:36, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

I revived this discussion because it remains unresolved. LastDodo (talk) 12:55, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Government type

The type of government that ruled East Germany should be labeled as “Marxist-Leninist one party socialist republic” rather than simply “socialist republic” due to “socialist republic” being too broad a term and not descriptive enough to describe the government. WildRaptor777 (talk) 01:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Per MOS:IBP, information is meant to be presented in a short format; if you compare the examples in the template documentation for former countries, that's consistent there. The article text exists to provide a more fulsome explanation. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I disagree. This is too short of a format and doesn't actually showcase the government type properly WildRaptor777 (talk) 02:20, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Lengthening it would not be consistent with the guideline - the more detailed information should be discussed in the body. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:53, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly disagree with your assessment here. This much of a shortening of type of government would serve nothing but to limit information presented. On every other Marxist-Leninist state, the government type is stated as such and I see no good reason as to shorten this one specifically. WildRaptor777 (talk) 00:38, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

The existence of other articles with problems is not a reason to introduce problems here. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:59, 5 November 2024 (UTC)