The German Democratic Republic (GDR; , DDR; commonly known in English as East Germany) was a socialist state created by the Soviet Union in the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany and the Soviet sector of occupied Berlin. East Germany existed from October 7, 1949 until October 3, 1990, when its re-established states acceded to the adjacent Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), thus producing the current form of the state of Germany.

Until 1952, the GDR consisted of the German states of Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Saxony and the capital, East Berlin. These divisions roughly corresponded to prewar states (Länder) and provinces (Provinzen) in the area of Eastern Germany administered by the Soviet Union under the terms of the postwar Potsdam Agreement. Two small remnants of states annexed by Poland after the war (Pomerania and Lower Silesia) remained in the GDR and were attached to neighboring territories.

In the administrative reform of 1952, the states were abolished and replaced with 14 smaller districts. The districts were named after their capitals: Rostock, Neubrandenburg, Schwerin, Potsdam, Frankfurt (Oder), Magdeburg, Cottbus, Halle, Leipzig, Erfurt, Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt (named Chemnitz until 1953 and again after 1990), Gera, and Suhl. East Berlin was recognized as a district in 1961.

In 1955, the Soviet Union declared that the Republic was fully sovereign; however, Soviet troops remained in GDR territory, based on the four-power Potsdam agreement, while British, Canadian, French and American forces remained in the Federal Republic of Germany in the West. Berlin, completely surrounded by GDR territory, was similarly divided with British, French and U.S. garrisons in West Berlin and Soviet forces in East Berlin. Berlin in particular became the focal point of Cold War tensions. East Germany was a member of the Warsaw Pact and a close ally of the Soviet Union.

Following the initial opening of sections of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, new elections were held on March 18, 1990, and the governing party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, lost its majority in the Volkskammer (the East German parliament) soon after. On August 23, the Volkskammer decided that the Republic would join the Federal Republic of Germany on October 3, 1990. As a result of the unification on that date, the German Democratic Republic officially ceased to exist.

History

See also History of Germany

Main: History of the German Democratic Republic [[image:Soviet Sector Germany.png|thumb|left|350px| Potsdam conference the Allies de-facto annexed the quarter of Germany east of the Oder-Neisse line.]] Before the end of World War II, the region that later would be known as East Germany was actually situated in the center of the German state and therefore was known as "Mitteldeutschland" (Middle Germany). To the east of the Oder and Neisse rivers were the extensive Prussian provinces of Pomerania, East Prussia, West Prussia, Posen, Upper Silesia and Lower Silesia, and the eastern Neumark of Brandenburg. During World War II, Allied leaders decided at the Yalta Conference that post-war Polish border would be moved westward to the Oder-Neisse line to compensate Poland for the loss of its eastern territories to the Soviet Union. As a result, Germany lost most of its eastern provinces, and the former "Middle Germany" was now the eastern limit of the German nation.