East Germany opened the Berlin Wall and its other borders Thursday, and its cheering citizens crossed freely to the West for the first time since 1961. Hundreds of people danced on the wall.

In the northern outskirts of Berlin near Bernau once lay one of the most secretive and exclusive places of the former East ...

The story of Andreas Weidhaas' sex shop in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) or East Germany reveals a lot about reunification, big money and decline. But it also tells us a lot about life ...

Communist East Germany closed its border in Berlin on Aug. 13, 1961, when it erected a wall that eventually turned into an increasingly elaborate fortification snaking through the city and around ...

Photos held in a German archive reveal how barriers were tested to prevent East German citizens attempting to flee to freedom, even by killing them. 1 A vehicle smashes into a steel barrier at a ...

Victor Grossman, an outspoken critic of capitalism, was once an Army private named Stephen Wechsler. He has died at age 97.

Even after almost 35 years when the so-called German Reunification which was, in reality, a bit more like an Anschluss wherein West-Germany simply took over East-Germany occurred, a divided Germany ...

THE LATE summer sun is beating down on a merry crowd assembled in Neustadt an der Orla, a small town in the east German state of Thuringia. As children slurp ice cream and Thuringian Bratwürste warm ...

The Big Ideas: What Is History? After moments of great upheaval, scars can last for generations. By Jenny Erpenbeck Jenny Erpenbeck is a writer. This personal reflection is part of a series called The ...

Among casual observers of Eastern Europe’s people’s republics, East Germany retains a mistaken reputation for being an economic sad sack. Yet almost unnoticed, the country has risen to tenth place ...

Near the East German village of Wandlitz, nine miles to the east of Berlin, is a most unusual settlement. It is a walled-in compound of semi-forested land and wide lawns, within which sit some 20 ...

The core differences between the East German “National People’s Army” (NVA) and the Nazi German Wehrmacht that came before it were doctrinal in nature. Despite having a handful of outward similarities ...