West Berlin was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1990, the territory was claimed by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) which was heavily disputed by the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. However, West Berlin de facto aligned itself politically with the FRG on 23 May 1949, was directly or indirectly represented in its federal institutions, and most of its residents were citizens of the FRG.
Emigration is the act of leaving a resident country or place of residence with the intent to settle elsewhere. Conversely, immigration describes the movement of people into one country from another. A migrant emigrates from their old country, and immigrates to their new country. Thus, both emigration and immigration describe migration, but from different countries' perspectives.
The history of Berlin starts with its foundation in the 14th century. It became the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1417, and later of Brandenburg-Prussia, and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia grew about rapidly in the 18th and 19th centuries and formed the basis of the German Empire in 1871. The empire would survive until 1918 when it was defeated in World War I.
The history of Germany from 1945–1990 spans the period following World War II, from the Berlin Declaration marking the Allied-occupied period in Germany on 5 June 1945 to German reunification on 3 October 1990.
Berlin Tempelhof Airport(IATA: THF, ICAO: EDDI) was one of the first airports in Berlin, Germany. Situated in the south-central Berlin borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg, the airport ceased operating in 2008 amid controversy, leaving Tegel and Schönefeld as the two main airports serving the city for another twelve years until both were replaced by Berlin Brandenburg Airport in 2020.
The Soviet Military Administration in Germany was the Soviet military government, headquartered in Berlin-Karlshorst, that directly ruled the Soviet occupation zone of Germany from the German surrender in May 1945 until after the establishment of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in October 1949.
Tempelhof is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg. It is the location of the former Tempelhof Airport, one of the earliest commercial airports in the world. The former airport and surroundings are now a park called Tempelhofer Feld, making it the largest inner city open space in the world.
Marienfelde is a locality in southwest Berlin, Germany, part of the Tempelhof-Schöneberg borough. The former village, incorporated according to the Greater Berlin Act of 1920, today is a mixed industrial and residential area.
The entirety of Germany was militarily occupied by the Allies from the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945 to the establishment of West Germany on 23 May 1949. After Nazi Germany (1933–1945) of the German Reich (1871–1945) surrendered to the Allies and collapsed on 8 May 1945, the four countries representing the Allies asserted joint authority and sovereignty with the Allied Control Council (ACC) at the 1945 Berlin Declaration. At first, defining Allied-occupied Germany as all territories (1922–1938) of the former German Reich before the Nazi annexing of Austria and later at the 1945 Potsdam Conference of the Allies themselves, the Potsdam Agreement on 1 August decided the new eastern German border by giving Poland and the Soviet Union all regions of Germany east of the Oder–Neisse line and divided the remaining "Germany as a whole" into the four occupation zones for administrative purposes under the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union. Although the three of Allies agreed about the occupation, division, and border of Germany in the 1943 Tehran Conference in Iran before, the four occupied zones located in Germany were only agreed by the three Allies at the February 1945 Yalta Conference.
On August 7, 1953, President Eisenhower signed the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, also known as the Emergency Migration Act, into law to provide relief for certain refugees, orphans, and other purposes. This act was mainly intended for people from Southern Europe barred due to the numerical limits from the quotas under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, widely known as the McCarran-Walter Act.
Republikflucht was the colloquial term in the German Democratic Republic for illegal emigration to West Germany, West Berlin, and non-Warsaw Pact countries; the official term was Ungesetzlicher Grenzübertritt. Republikflucht applied to both the 3.5 million Germans who migrated legally from the Soviet occupation zone and East Germany before the Berlin Wall was built on 13 August 1961, and the thousands who migrated illegally across the Iron Curtain until 23 December 1989. It has been estimated that 30,000 people left the GDR per year between 1984 and 1988, and up to 300,000 per year before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.
Mariendorf is a locality in the southern Tempelhof-Schöneberg borough of Berlin.
The Border Troops of the German Democratic Republic was the border guard of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1946 to 1990.
The Berlin Crisis of 1961 occurred between 4 June – 9 November 1961, and was the last major European politico-military incident of the Cold War about the occupational status of the German capital city, Berlin, and of post–World War II Germany. The Berlin Crisis started when the USSR issued an ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of all armed forces from Berlin, including the Western armed forces in West Berlin. The crisis culminated in the city's de facto partition with the East German erection of the Berlin Wall.
After World War II, emigration restrictions were imposed by countries in the Eastern Bloc, which consisted of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. Legal emigration was in most cases only possible in order to reunite families or to allow members of minority ethnic groups to return to their homelands.
Berlin-Marienfelde station is a station and a freight yard in Berlin, Germany. It is located on the Berlin–Dresden railway line in the locality of Marienfelde, part of the Tempelhof-Schöneberg borough. The station is part of the Berlin S-Bahn rapid transit network.
Buckower Chaussee station is a station on the Berlin–Dresden railway in the locality of Marienfelde in the Berlin borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg. It is served by Berlin S-Bahn line S2.
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche Mark from West Berlin.
Lichtenrade is a German locality (Ortsteil) within the borough (Bezirk) of Tempelhof-Schöneberg, Berlin. Until 2001 it was part of the former borough of Tempelhof.
The Allied Museum is a museum in Berlin. It documents the political history and the military commitments and roles of the Western Allies in Germany – particularly Berlin – between 1945 and 1994 and their contribution to liberty in Berlin during the Cold War era.
