The German Democratic Republic (GDR), commonly known as East Germany, was a socialist state in Central Europe that existed from October 7, 1949, to October 3, 1990
Look at radio stations. We have SWR: Süd-West Rundfunk (south west) in Baden-Württemberg and Rheinland-Pfalz. We have WDR: Westdeutscher Rundfunk (west) in Nordrhein-Westfalen. We have NDR: Norddeutscher Rundfunk (north). In Niedersachsen, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Hamburg (not Bremen).
... and then we have Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (middle) in Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Thüringen.
And no one is in the east ...
Actually, if you look at the map of German regional public broadcasters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARD_(broadcaster)#/media/File:...) and squint a bit, the MDR is more or less in the middle: more on the north-south axis and less on the east-west axis (with only the RBB partly more east), but still...
There was the ORB - Ostdeutscher Rundfunk Brandenburg. Which later (2003) merged with SFB - Sender Freies Berlin to RBB - Rundfunk Berlin Brandeburg.
Thus the middle serves the middle. And while Saxonia (Part of MDR) indeed goes to the east most point of Germany it's at least middle in North-South. But the most middle point (depending a little on exact definition) is in Thuringa (also part of MDR)
This negative psychological disposition towards your own collective identity is a profound cultural disorder (at the level of mass psychology). It is wide-spread and even mainstream in Germany among the left-leaning. Significantly, it has never been the object of public debate, as public debate is strictly controlled by the adherents of this perverted ideology.
* "SBZ" -> Sowjetisch besetzte Zone -> sowjet occupied zone
* "Ost-Zone"
* "DDR"
* "Ost-Deutschland"
Almost no one spelled out "DDR" with "Deutsche Demokratische Republik", since that was a lie. There was little democracy there.
People that fled from east-germany early (e.g. before the wall) usually used "SBZ "or "Zone". And it was usually meant in a derogatory sense. "DDR" was more neutral, although few people in west-germany had a neutral view on the eastern regime.
And in the UK. Presumably because it was used in athletic meetings and on cars. Never seen 'GDR', we'd just use 'East Germany'.
Side note: I find it amusing that countries that have a need to put "Democratic" in their official name are never democratic. DR Congo, Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Deutsche Demokratische Republik. Why even bother, it's not like anyone is looking at the name and go: Yup, that's a democracy.
Lots of co-fermented specialty Vietnam-grown Robusta and Liberica at incredible prices, far cheaper than what people would find from roasters that import their beans from Colombia or any of the other big coffee-growing countries.
Robusta at least is substantially cheaper, because yields are better and it’s less affected by disease. I don’t know enough about Liberica to know how it yields.
Also, “co-fermented coffee” generally is just code for flavored pre-roast flavored these days, especially out of Colombia. Not sure if that’s made it to Vietnam, but I’m always going to raise an eyebrow with co ferments these days. Not that they can’t be tasty, but they shouldn’t command a price premium if it’s essentially just flavored coffee in my view.
And as for taste - I love the rough and tough flavours of Vietnamese Robusta coffees! The Australian roasted Arabicas are mild and gentle, almost to the point of blandness in comparison.
You brought up the people being displaced by settlements, but the film focuses on school teachers who get sent there against their will which completely changed the course of their lives. Back then almost everyone worked for the government and teachers, like soldiers, can be assigned to such outpost if they didn't have connections.
But what is not wellknown to me, why both parties forbid cross partnerships, where they agreed to a longterm economic partnership.
The first sentence is true, and is what I know. The second economical leg of this sentence is new to me.
Basically, Hallstein Doctrine was what "One China" politics is. The BRD assume that is is the sole legitimate (since democratically elected) government. For example, someone from east germany fleeing to west german already had the (west) germanship citizenship, no paperwork needed to get it.
However, Hallstein doctrine had --- to the best knowledge ... very unspecified reactions. Germany e.g. stop diplomatic relationships with Cuba. But not economical ties, I know that my father continued to smoke Havanna cigars (eeeek!). They stopped diplomatic ties with Yugoslavia ... but all the Winnetou Films were recorded there, and it even became a holiday destination for west germans. Also all payments continued, it was not an economical embargo.
In the case of Egypt it could be seen like that. When Egypt accepted the state-hood of east-germany, then West-Germany broke it's diplomatic ties AND stopped its economical aid. I'm not aware of it stopping buying oil from Egypt, thought.
Fan fact: there is also two inverses of the Hallstein doctrine. The first one is the Ulbricht Doctrine. That doctrine mandated that socialist countries mustn't normalize their diplimatic ties to west-germany until it recognized east-germany.
And the second inverse is that other countries only saw west-germany as the legal succession of the 3rd Reich and even the german empire. So it was West-Germany had hat to fulfill contracts of that time. Except for the reparations. The USSR took (or stole) more stuff from East Germany than the western allied forces took from West Germany. About 30% of the industrial infrastructure was removed, e.g. 11800 km of railway tracks. And even after they stopped removing the infrastructure itself, they still demanded a percentage of the production.
Moscow was surprisingly capitalist. They noticed they could sell their resources to the West for dollars or give them away to their communist "allies".
Also related fun fact: the GDR started to refurbish and use old steam locomotives again as a result of the oil crisis. I remembered seeing those regularly as a child, and then later wondered what caused this anachronism.
Remember: it was Russia which tried to blackmail Germany by shutting down the pipelines, and that was before the Ukrainians settled the matter once and for all by blowing up Nordstream (Russia had been shutting down the gas flow indefinitely by end of August 2022 after three months of back-and-forth, and the dry pipeline was finally blown up end of September 2022).
Although I don't know if that was more a case of "we really ought to take the grinder to that mould and stick something else on", or what.
Mind that that didn't only matter for GDR, but also East Prussia etc. which was important for all the displaced people from now-Poland, Sudeten Germans etc.
The region that was once East Prussia has now mostly been ruled by Russia since longer than almost anyone there has been alive.
Till then (West) Germany had quite inflspecific wordi g. The constitution says "German citizen is, who is German" and they kept the old Empire's citizen law to have continuity.
That's one of the reasons why reunification between East and West bad go be done so quickly (from falling Wall No. 9th 1989 to reunification October 3rd 1990) as East Germans could migrate to West easily as soon as the Wall fell and promise of quick unification was a key promise to prevent even bigger migration.
Edit: as a massive fan of industrial and engineering history, the spotty nature of good Soviet documentation does my head in!
It's not explicit in the article, but I would guess the USSR didn't have a strong enough coffee industry to be helping anymore.
The West wouldn't trade (or let developing countries under its influence do it) and I bet the USSR couldn't procure enough for itself and the DDR.
Vietnams surveillance system, population database and use of biometrics were all adopted from the GDR.
It has collected biometric information for a while and now has facial recognition in place for every single Vietnamese at this point. Combined with the camera coverage in Vietnam now I wouldn’t be surprised they can track anyone they wanted.
More insane is them also passing a law that forbid usages of the same footages for citizen journalism purposes. This came out after someone posted a footage from their home cam recording that controversial accident when a congressman hit and kill a high-schooler unprosecuted. You can look it up.
The GDR imported workers from Vietnam and even now there are sizeable Vietnamese communities e.g. in Leipzig.
I interviewed a few old men who fought in the Vietnam war as child soldier, for a school project I did as a kid.
Turned out: GDR did not treat this people well e.g. heavily encouraging abortion in case of a pregnancy, which was traumatic for the women.
https://www.projekte.hu-berlin.de/de/migrationddr/migration-...
I thought this was very clear already? Your link is "yet another cruel thing the gdr did" tho and is much appreciated.
Coffee wasn’t always easy to get hold of. You might have to visit several shops or draw on some connections to get hold of some, but it was still proper coffee and by and large available. Then the coffee crisis of 1977 hit the world."
Compare (cf.) and contrast with the U.S. of 2026 -- there's like what, 7 competing coffee shops on every block of the downtown of every major city, and in Seattle that number is at least doubled, to at least 14... in other words, we have no shortage of coffee in the U.S., quite the opposite!
(Possibly we have too much coffee, if such a thing is possible, and apparently, it is! :-))
There is a lot to learn and it's becoming more relevant in today's world about how states interact with each other.
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