Harz political history

The former border went through the Harz and splitted the Harz in two areas: East- and West Germany. Today you can see the monuments of the cold war that remains from 1998, the year where the wall comes down.

The Federal Republic of Germany or FRG (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland or BRD), informally known as West Germany, was a capitalist federal parliamentary democracy that existed from 1949 until 1990. It was proclaimed May 23, 1949 and included the post-World War II UK, US, and French occupation zones. West Germany was declared fully sovereign May 5th 1955, with Bonn as its capital, but US troops remained on the ground. It joined NATO on May 9th. The nation thus became a focus of the Cold War with its juxtaposition to Warsaw Pact member German Democratic Republic (GDR). The former capital, Berlin, was also divided but was completely within the GDR.

Formally the German Democratic Republic (GDR), German Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), was a Marxist state which existed from 1949 to 1990 in Germany (at the same time as West Germany). The GDR was proclaimed in the Soviet sector of Berlin on October 7, 1949, by native German communist leaders (many of whom had lived in exile in Moscow during the Second World War) with Soviet backing. It was declared fully sovereign in 1954, but Soviet troops remained on grounds of the four-power Potsdam agreement. East Germany was a member of the Warsaw Pact.