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The Deutsche Mark, abbreviated "DM" or "D-Mark" ( ), was the official currency of West Germany from 1948 until 1990 and later the unified Germany from 1990 until the adoption of the euro in 2002. In English, it was typically called the "Deutschmark". One Deutsche Mark was divided into 100 pfennigs.
The Deutsche Bundesbank is the German member of the Eurosystem and has been the monetary authority for Germany from 1957 to 1998, issuing the Deutsche Mark (DM). It succeeded the Bank deutscher Länder, which had introduced the DM on 20 June 1948.
The East German mark, commonly called the eastern mark in West Germany and after reunification), in East Germany only Mark, was the currency of the German Democratic Republic. Its ISO 4217 currency code was DDM. The currency was known officially as the Deutsche Mark from 1948 to 1964, Mark der Deutschen Notenbank from 1964 to 1967, and from 1968 to 1990 as the Mark der DDR. The mark (M) was divided into 100 Pfennig (pf).
Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski was a politician and trader in the German Democratic Republic. He was director of a main department ('Hauptverwaltungsleiter') in the Ministry for Foreign Trade and German Domestic Trade (1956–62), the Deputy Minister for External Trade (1967–75), and head of the GDR's Kommerzielle Koordinierung.
Intershop was a chain of government-owned and operated retail stores in the German Democratic Republic in which only hard currencies could be used to purchase high-quality goods, usually from or associated with Western countries. The East German mark was not accepted as payment. Intershop was originally oriented towards visitors from Western countries, and later became an outlet where East Germans could purchase goods they could not otherwise obtain. An unintended consequence was that ordinary East Germans had some insight into the selection of goods available in the West, which they could then compare with the rather limited offerings available in their own country.
East Germany had a command economy, similar to the economic system in the Soviet Union and other Comecon member states — in contrast to the market economies or mixed economies or other capitalist states. The state established production targets, set prices, and also allocated resources, codifying these decisions in comprehensive plans. The means of production were almost entirely state-owned. The GDR had an above-average standard of living compared to other Eastern Bloc countries or the Soviet Union, and enjoyed favorable duty and tariff terms with the West German market; in 1989, it was estimated that 50 to 60% of its trade was with Western countries. However by the mid-1980s its economy had reached a state of stagnation.
The Order of Karl Marx was the most important order in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The award of the order also included a prize of 20,000 East German marks.
The Deutsche Reichsbahn or DR(German Reich Railways) was the operating name of state owned railways in the German Democratic Republic, and after German reunification until 1 January 1994.
The Berlin border crossings were border crossings created as a result of the post-World War II division of Germany. Prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, travel between the Eastern and Western sectors of Berlin was completely uncontrolled, although restrictions were increasingly introduced by the Soviet and East German authorities at major crossings between the sectors. This free access, especially after the closure of the Inner German border, allowed the Eastern Bloc emigration and defection to occur. East German officials, humiliated by this mass defection, subsequently chose to erect the Berlin Wall in order to prevent residents from leaving East Germany.
The Main Directorate for Reconnaissance was the foreign intelligence service of the Ministry of State Security (Stasi), the main security agency of the German Democratic Republic, from 1955 to 1990.
The German Democratic Republic (GDR), German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), often known in English as East Germany, existed from 1949 to 1990. It covered the area of the present-day German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Berlin, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, and Thüringen. This area was occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II excluding the former eastern lands annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union, with the remaining German territory to the west occupied by the British, American, and French armies. Following the economic and political unification of the three western occupation zones under a single administration and the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany in May 1949, the German Democratic Republic was founded on 7 October 1949 as a sovereign nation.
Begrüßungsgeld was, from 1970 until 29 December 1989, a gift from the government of the Federal Republic of Germany to visitors from the German Democratic Republic. This situation originated with the policy of the GDR government restricting the amount of East German Marks (M) that could be exchanged into Deutsche Marks (DM) by GDR citizens when on approved travel to the West. At first, the GDR allowed the exchange of 70 M annually into DM, however by 1989, this sum was reduced to 15 M annually, which greatly restricted the ability of GDR citizens to travel to the West, even if they were approved to do so.
Hyperinflation affected the German Papiermark, the currency of the Weimar Republic, between 1921 and 1923, primarily in 1923. It caused considerable internal political instability in the country and led to the occupation of the Ruhr by France and Belgium after Germany defaulted on its war reparations.
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Häftlingsfreikauf is the term used in Germany for an informal, and for many years, secret, series of transactions between the German Democratic Republic and the German Federal Republic between 1962 and 1989. Over this period nearly 34,000 East German political prisoners were "freigekauft" (ransomed). West Germany paid East Germany, generally in cash or goods, an average of approximately 40,000 Deutsche Marks per person. Political prisoners whose freedom had been purchased could choose to be expelled directly from their place of detention to West Germany, and frequently were given no notice or opportunity to communicate with their families, nor to say goodbye to fellow prisoners, before being transferred to the West.
Gerhard Schürer was a leading politician in East Germany.
The East German coffee crisis was a shortage of coffee in the late 1970s in East Germany caused by a poor harvest and unstable commodity prices, severely limiting the government's ability to buy coffee on the world markets. As a consequence, the East German government increased its engagement in Africa and Asia, exporting weapons and equipment to coffee-producing nations.
Christa Luft is a German economist and politician of the SED/PDS. Luft joined the SED in 1958. From 18 November 1989 to 18 March 1990, she was the Minister of Economics in the Modrow government. From 1994 to 2002 she was member of the Bundestag for the PDS.
Relations between East Germany and the United States formally began in 1974 until the former's collapse in 1990. The relationship between the two nations was among the most hostile during the Cold War as both sides were mutually suspicious of each other. Both sides conducted routine espionage against each other and conducted prisoner exchanges for their respective citizens which included spies for both the Americans and Soviets.
Inner German relations, also known as the FRG-GDR relations, East Germany-West Germanyrelations or German-German relations, were the political, diplomatic, economic, cultural and personal contacts between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, at the period of the West-East division in German history from the founding of East Germany on 7 October 1949 to Germany's reunification on 3 October 1990.
References
- ↑ Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence
- ↑ Ghost Strasse: Germany's East Trapped Between Past and Present
- ↑ "DDR - Volkspolizei" (in German). Archived from the original on 2013-12-07. Retrieved 2014-04-28.