197-602: In Europe (dark grey) East Germany ( German : Ostdeutschland , [ˈɔstˌdɔʏtʃlant] ), officially known as the German Democratic Republic ( GDR ; Deutsche Demokratische Republik , [ˈdɔʏtʃə demoˈkʁaːtɪʃə ʁepuˈbliːk] , DDR ), was a country in Central Europe from its formation on 7 October 1949 until its reunification with West Germany on 3 October 1990. Until 1989, it
394-561: A customs union . A large bloc of countries, the Schengen Area , have also abolished internal border and immigration controls. Regular popular elections take place every five years within the EU; they are considered to be the second-largest democratic elections in the world after India's . The EU is the third-largest economy in the world. The place name Evros was first used by the ancient Greeks to refer to their northernmost province, which bears
591-687: A legal fiction , and the Soviet sector of Berlin became fully integrated into the GDR. The deepening Cold War conflict between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union over the unresolved status of West Berlin led to the Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949). The Soviet army initiated the blockade by halting all Allied rail, road, and water traffic to and from West Berlin. The Allies countered
788-842: A German naturalist, Peter Simon Pallas , as a valley that once connected the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and subsequently was proposed as a natural boundary between continents. By the mid-19th century, there were three main conventions, one following the Don, the Volga–Don Canal and the Volga, the other following the Kuma–Manych Depression to the Caspian and then the Ural River, and the third abandoning
985-648: A NATO Foreign Ministers conference in Brussels, Belgium. After the subsequent 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine , the Founding Act has been considered by the NATO member states as definitively abrogated in its entirety by Russia, while the latter has been declared at the 2022 NATO Madrid summit "a direct threat" to Euro-Atlantic security. In the same year, Russia withdrew from the European Convention on Human Rights and
1182-631: A Semitic term for west , this being either Akkadian erebu meaning 'to go down, set' (said of the sun) or Phoenician 'ereb 'evening, west', which is at the origin of Arabic maghreb and Hebrew ma'arav . Martin Litchfield West stated that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor", while Beekes considers a connection to Semitic languages improbable. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to
1379-547: A binding statement on behalf of NATO. Russian claims of the alleged 1990 assurances on a non-expansion of NATO to Gorbachev were again raised on the occasions of the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014 and the 2021–2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis , during which the Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded a legal ban on Ukraine joining NATO, which both Ukraine and NATO refused, and
1576-736: A boundary along the Terek and Kuban rivers, so southwards from the Kuma and the Manych, but still with the Caucasus entirely in Asia. However, most geographers in the Soviet Union favoured the boundary along the Caucasus crest, and this became the common convention in the later 20th century, although the Kuma–Manych boundary remained in use in some 20th-century maps. Some view the separation of Eurasia into Asia and Europe as
1773-743: A critical legitimization tool in the last decades and mixed socialist and traditional elements about equally. At the Yalta Conference during World War II, the Allies , i.e., the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), and the Soviet Union (USSR), agreed on dividing a defeated Nazi Germany into occupation zones , and on dividing Berlin, the German capital, among the Allied powers as well. Initially, this meant
1970-500: A few sections of the Berlin Wall were opened, resulting in thousands of East Germans crossing freely into West Berlin and West Germany for the first time in nearly 30 years. Krenz resigned a month later, and the SED opened negotiations with the leaders of the incipient Democratic movement, Neues Forum , to schedule free elections and begin the process of democratization. As part of this process,
2167-522: A fully sovereign state the following year. Additionally, the two German states agreed to reconfirm the existing border with Poland in the German–Polish Border Treaty , accepting that German territory post-reunification would consist only of what was presently administered by West and East Germany—renouncing explicitly any possible claims to the former eastern territories of Germany including East Prussia , most of Silesia , as well as
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#17328374349192364-528: A gradual transformation to a fully professional force. By 1 July 2011, the date on which Germany voluntarily suspended conscription , the Bundeswehr retained fewer than 250,000 active duty personnel – barely two thirds of the country's treaty limit. The defence minister at the time, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg , said that a cut to 185,000 persons was on the horizon. Russia and the Western countries signed in 1990
2561-618: A labour protest, the action soon included the general populace, and on 17 June similar protests occurred throughout the GDR, with more than a million people striking in some 700 cities and towns. Fearing anti-communist counter-revolution , on 18 June 1953 the government of the GDR enlisted the Soviet Occupation Forces to aid the police in ending the riot; some fifty people were killed and 10,000 were jailed (see Uprising of 1953 in East Germany ). The German war reparations owed to
2758-406: A large land mass completely or almost completely surrounded by water at its borders. Prior to the adoption of the current convention that includes mountain divides, the border between Europe and Asia had been redefined several times since its first conception in classical antiquity , but always as a series of rivers, seas and straits that were believed to extend an unknown distance east and north from
2955-549: A memo classified as "secret" dated 6 March 1991 (approximately five months after the 2+4 negotiations). The memo is about a meeting of the directors of the US, UK, French and West German foreign ministries in Bonn. According to the memo, Jürgen Chrobog , the Western German representative, stated that "during the 2+4 negotiations we made it clear that we [Germany] would not expand NATO beyond
3152-685: A permanent Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone . The German Army could deploy conventional weapons systems with nonconventional capabilities, provided that they were equipped and designed for a purely conventional role. Germany also agreed to use military force only in accordance with the United Nations Charter . Another of the treaty's important provisions was Germany's confirmation of the by now internationally recognised border with Poland, and other territorial changes in Germany that had taken place since 1945, preventing any future claims to lost territory east of
3349-533: A picnic near the border at Sopron (near Hungary's border with Austria). The local Sopron organizers knew nothing of possible GDR refugees, but envisaged a local party with Austrian and Hungarian participation. But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Thus
3546-730: A precise eastern boundary of Europe arises in the Early Modern period, as the eastern extension of Muscovy began to include North Asia . Throughout the Middle Ages and into the 18th century, the traditional division of the landmass of Eurasia into two continents, Europe and Asia, followed Ptolemy, with the boundary following the Turkish Straits , the Black Sea , the Kerch Strait , the Sea of Azov and
3743-584: A primary goal of ridding East Germany of all traces of Nazism . It is estimated that between 180,000 and 250,000 people were sentenced to imprisonment on political grounds. In the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945, the Allies established their joint military occupation and administration of Germany via the Allied Control Council (ACC), a four-power (US, UK, USSR, France) military government effective until
3940-526: A range of national and regional cultures, which form the central roots of the wider Western civilisation , and together commonly reference ancient Greece and ancient Rome , particularly through their Christian successors , as crucial and shared roots. Beginning with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE, Christian consolidation of Europe in the wake of the Migration Period marked
4137-701: A residue of Eurocentrism : "In physical, cultural and historical diversity, China and India are comparable to the entire European landmass, not to a single European country. [...]." During the 2.5 million years of the Pleistocene , numerous cold phases called glacials ( Quaternary ice age ), or significant advances of continental ice sheets, in Europe and North America, occurred at intervals of approximately 40,000 to 100,000 years. The long glacial periods were separated by more temperate and shorter interglacials which lasted about 10,000–15,000 years. The last cold episode of
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#17328374349194334-661: A result, the Reconquista took the greater part of eight hundred years, in which period a long list of Alfonsos, Sanchos, Ordoños, Ramiros, Fernandos, and Bermudos would be fighting their Christian rivals as much as the Muslim invaders. During the Dark Ages, the Western Roman Empire fell under the control of various tribes. The Germanic and Slav tribes established their domains over Western and Eastern Europe, respectively. Eventually
4531-666: A socialist political constitution establishing its control of the Anti-Fascist National Front of the German Democratic Republic (NF, Nationale Front der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik ), an omnibus alliance of every party and mass organisation in East Germany. The NF was established to stand for election to the Volkskammer ( People's Chamber ), the East German parliament. The first and only president of
4728-486: Is a bilateral Treaty between two States, to which the rules of international law apply and which like any other international treaty possesses validity, it is between two States that are parts of a still existing, albeit incapable of action as not being reorganized, comprehensive State of the Whole of Germany with a single body politic. Travel between the GDR and Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary became visa-free from 1972. From
4925-401: Is also evidence that Homo sapiens arrived in Europe around 54,000 years ago, some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. The earliest sites in Europe dated 48,000 years ago are Riparo Mochi (Italy), Geissenklösterle (Germany) and Isturitz (France). The European Neolithic period—marked by the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock, increased numbers of settlements and
5122-798: Is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east. Europe shares the landmass of Eurasia with Asia, and of Afro-Eurasia with both Asia and Africa . Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed of the Ural Mountains , the Ural River , the Caspian Sea , the Greater Caucasus ,
5319-481: Is closest to Anatolia (or Asia Minor), but is considered part of Europe politically and it is a member state of the EU. Malta was considered an island of North-western Africa for centuries, but now it is considered to be part of Europe as well. "Europe", as used specifically in British English , may also refer to Continental Europe exclusively. The term "continent" usually implies the physical geography of
5516-556: Is generally considered a transcontinental country divided entirely by water, while Russia and Kazakhstan are only partly divided by waterways. France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain are also transcontinental (or more properly, intercontinental, when oceans or large seas are involved) in that their main land areas are in Europe while pockets of their territories are located on other continents separated from Europe by large bodies of water. Spain, for example, has territories south of
5713-470: Is sometimes considered to mark the end of antiquity; alternatively antiquity is considered to end with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE; the closure of the pagan Platonic Academy of Athens in 529 CE; or the rise of Islam in the early 7th century CE. During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe. During
5910-422: Is somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent compared to any clear-cut definition of the term "continent". The current division of Eurasia into two continents now reflects East-West cultural, linguistic and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The geographic border between Europe and Asia does not follow any state boundaries and now only follows a few bodies of water. Turkey
6107-564: The Republikflucht ("desertion from the republic") to West Germany, further weakening the GDR's economy. Western economic opportunities induced a brain drain . In response, the GDR closed the inner German border , and on the night of 12 August 1961, East German soldiers began erecting the Berlin Wall . In 1971, Ulbricht was removed from leadership after Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev supported his ouster; Erich Honecker replaced him. While
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6304-759: The Americas , almost all of Africa and Oceania , and the majority of Asia. The Age of Enlightenment , the French Revolution , and the Napoleonic Wars shaped the continent culturally, politically, and economically from the end of the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution , which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to radical economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe and eventually
6501-571: The Army and the Air Force . These limits would commence at the time that the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe would enter into force, and the treaty also took note that it was expected that the other participants in the negotiations would "render their contribution to enhancing security and stability in Europe, including measures to limit personnel strengths". Germany also reaffirmed its renunciation of
6698-563: The Baltic Sea to the north, Poland to the east, Czechoslovakia to the southeast, and West Germany to the southwest and west. Internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin , known as East Berlin , which was also administered as the country's de facto capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States , United Kingdom , and France known collectively as West Berlin ( de facto part of
6895-771: The Berlin Declaration abolishing German sovereignty in World War II . The Potsdam Agreement established the Soviet-occupied zone , bounded on the east by the Oder-Neiße line . The GDR was dominated by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), a communist party , before being democratized and liberalized in 1989 as a result of the pressure against communist governments brought by the Revolutions of 1989 . This paved
7092-410: The Black Sea , and the waterway of the Bosporus Strait . Europe covers about 10.18 million km (3.93 million sq mi), or 2% of Earth's surface (6.8% of land area), making it the second-smallest continent (using the seven-continent model ). Politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states , of which Russia is the largest and most populous , spanning 39% of
7289-527: The Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century. From that time, the term designated the sphere of influence of the Western Church , as opposed to both the Eastern Orthodox churches and to the Islamic world . A cultural definition of Europe as the lands of Latin Christendom coalesced in the 8th century, signifying the new cultural condominium created through the confluence of Germanic traditions and Christian-Latin culture, defined partly in contrast with Byzantium and Islam , and limited to northern Iberia ,
7486-414: The Don (ancient Tanais ). But maps produced during the 16th to 18th centuries tended to differ in how to continue the boundary beyond the Don bend at Kalach-na-Donu (where it is closest to the Volga, now joined with it by the Volga–Don Canal ), into territory not described in any detail by the ancient geographers. Around 1715, Herman Moll produced a map showing the northern part of the Ob River and
7683-407: The East . This divide ended with the Revolutions of 1989 , the fall of the Berlin Wall , and the dissolution of the Soviet Union , which allowed European integration to advance significantly. European integration is being advanced institutionally since 1948 with the founding of the Council of Europe , and significantly through the realisation of the European Union (EU), which represents today
7880-431: The East Bloc states. This policy saw the Treaty of Moscow (August 1970), the Treaty of Warsaw (December 1970), the Four Power Agreement on Berlin (September 1971), the Transit Agreement (May 1972), and the Basic Treaty (December 1972), which relinquished any separate claims to an exclusive mandate over Germany as a whole and established normal relations between the two Germanies. Both countries were admitted into
8077-439: The European population at the time. The plague had a devastating effect on Europe's social structure; it induced people to live for the moment as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron (1353). It was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church and led to increased persecution of Jews , beggars and lepers . The plague is thought to have returned every generation with varying virulence and mortalities until
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8274-481: The GDR in 1990): Czech Republic , Hungary , and Poland in 1999; Bulgaria , Estonia , Latvia , Lithuania , Romania , Slovakia , and Slovenia in 2004; Albania and Croatia in 2009; Montenegro in 2017; North Macedonia in 2020; Finland in 2023; and Sweden in 2024, five of them on the border with Russia. Russia–NATO relations started to deteriorate rapidly following the Ukrainian Orange Revolution in 2004–2005. In December 2006, Russia indicated that
8471-460: The Greeks and Phoenicians gave rise to early Mediterranean cities. Early Iron Age Italy and Greece from around the 8th century BCE gradually gave rise to historical Classical antiquity, whose beginning is sometimes dated to 776 BCE, the year of the first Olympic Games . Ancient Greece was the founding culture of Western civilisation. Western democratic and rationalist culture are often attributed to Ancient Greece. The Greek city-state,
8668-407: The Hallstein Doctrine (1955), West Germany did not establish (formal) diplomatic ties with any country – except the Soviets – that recognized East German sovereignty. In the early 1970s, the Ostpolitik ("Eastern Policy") of "Change Through Rapprochement" of the pragmatic government of FRG Chancellor Willy Brandt , established normal diplomatic relations with
8865-400: The Inquisition against heretics. In the Iberian Peninsula , the Reconquista concluded with the fall of Granada in 1492 , ending over seven centuries of Islamic rule in the south-western peninsula. In the east, a resurgent Byzantine Empire recaptured Crete and Cyprus from the Muslims, and reconquered the Balkans. Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe from the 9th to
9062-442: The Irtysh River , a major tributary of the Ob, as components of a series of partly-joined waterways taking the boundary between Europe and Asia from the Turkish Straits, and the Don River all the way to the Arctic Ocean. In 1721, he produced a more up to date map that was easier to read. However, his proposal to adhere to major rivers as the line of demarcation was never taken up by other geographers who were beginning to move away from
9259-419: The Mediterranean Sea —namely, Ceuta and Melilla —which are parts of Africa and share a border with Morocco. According to the current convention, Georgia and Azerbaijan are transcontinental countries where waterways have been completely replaced by mountains as the divide between continents. The first recorded usage of Eurṓpē as a geographic term is in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo , in reference to
9456-490: The Megalithic Temples of Malta and Stonehenge , were constructed throughout Western and Southern Europe. The modern native populations of Europe largely descend from three distinct lineages: Mesolithic hunter-gatherers , descended from populations associated with the Paleolithic Epigravettian culture; Neolithic Early European Farmers who migrated from Anatolia during the Neolithic Revolution 9,000 years ago; and Yamnaya Steppe herders who expanded into Europe from
9653-427: The Neandertal valley in Germany ) appeared in Europe 150,000 years ago (115,000 years ago it is found already in the territory of present-day Poland ) and disappeared from the fossil record about 40,000 years ago, with their final refuge being the Iberian Peninsula. The Neanderthals were supplanted by modern humans ( Cro-Magnons ), who seem to have appeared in Europe around 43,000 to 40,000 years ago. However, there
9850-443: The Oder–Neisse line (see former eastern territories of Germany ). The treaty defined the territory of a 'united Germany' as being the territory of East Germany, West Germany, and Berlin, prohibiting Germany from making any future territorial claims. Germany also agreed to sign a separate treaty with Poland reaffirming the present common border, binding under international law, effectively relinquishing these territories to Poland. This
10047-410: The Peaceful Revolution , led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the SED party in East Germany (GDR). In a 9 February 1990 conversation with Mikhail Gorbachev held in Moscow, US Secretary of State James Baker argued in favor of holding the Two-Plus-Four talks. According to Moscow as well as Baker's notes, the famous "not one inch eastward" promise about NATO's eastward expansion
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#173283743491910244-432: The Pechenegs and the Cuman-Kipchaks , caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, and temporarily halted the expansion of the Rus' state to the south and east. Like many other parts of Eurasia , these territories were overrun by the Mongols . The invaders, who became known as Tatars , were mostly Turkic-speaking peoples under Mongol suzerainty. They established
10441-409: The Pontic–Caspian steppe of Ukraine and southern Russia in the context of Indo-European migrations 5,000 years ago. The European Bronze Age began c. 3200 BCE in Greece with the Minoan civilisation on Crete , the first advanced civilisation in Europe. The Minoans were followed by the Myceneans , who collapsed suddenly around 1200 BCE, ushering the European Iron Age . Iron Age colonisation by
10638-400: The SED general secretary Walter Ulbricht assumed most executive authority. Socialist leader Otto Grotewohl (1894–1964) became prime minister until his death. The government of East Germany denounced West German failures in accomplishing denazification and renounced ties to the Nazi past, imprisoning many former Nazis and preventing them from holding government positions. The SED set
10835-406: The Serbian Principality (later Kingdom and Empire ), and the Duchy of Croatia (later Kingdom of Croatia ). To the east, Kievan Rus' expanded from its capital in Kiev to become the largest state in Europe by the 10th century. In 988, Vladimir the Great adopted Orthodox Christianity as the religion of state. Further east, Volga Bulgaria became an Islamic state in the 10th century, but
11032-400: The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet-controlled zone. However, the SED quickly transformed into a full-fledged Communist party as the more independent-minded Social Democrats were pushed out. The Potsdam Agreement committed the Soviets to support a democratic form of government in Germany, though the Soviets' understanding of democracy was radically different from that of
11229-495: The Soviet Union . The German populations of these areas either fled or were expelled . Although the German Democratic Republic formally accepted the border in the 1950 Treaty of Zgorzelec with Poland, West Germany initially entirely rejected it, declaring the treaty "null and void" in line with the Hallstein Doctrine , and later reluctantly recognised the border in the 1970 Treaty of Warsaw as provisional only, to be finalised by "a peace settlement for Germany to be accepted by
11426-411: The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and in 1991 the Energy Charter Treaty , establishing a multilateral framework for cross-border cooperation in the energy industry , principally the fossil fuel industry ; Russia postponed ratification of the latter treaty, linking it to the adoption of the Energy Charter Treaty Transit Protocol. In 1994, the Budapest Memorandum was signed where Russia,
11623-407: The United Kingdom , and the United States made security assurances to Belarus , Kazakhstan , and Ukraine , in return for handing over by these three countries of their post-Soviet nuclear arsenal. In 1997, NATO and Russia signed the Russia–NATO Founding Act , which stated that each country had a sovereign right to seek alliances. NATO ended up expanding to sixteen Eastern countries (apart from
11820-480: The United Nations and the Helsinki Final Act . This assessment of the Basic Treaty was confirmed in a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1973; the German Democratic Republic is in the international-law sense a State and as such a subject of international law. This finding is independent of recognition in international law of the German Democratic Republic by the Federal Republic of Germany. Such recognition has not only never been formally pronounced by
12017-399: The annexation of Crimea , but the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) was not suspended. In 2015, Russia entirely terminated its participation in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. On 18 February 2017, Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs , Sergey Lavrov , said he supported the resumption of military cooperation with the NATO alliance. In late March 2017, the Council met in advance of
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#173283743491912214-425: The de facto and de jure government, but also the sole de jure legitimate representative of a dormant "Germany as whole". The two Germanies each relinquished any claim to represent the other internationally; which they acknowledged as necessarily implying a mutual recognition of each other as both capable of representing their own populations de jure in participating in international bodies and agreements, such as
12411-426: The decline of the Roman Empire , Europe entered a long period of change arising from what historians call the " Age of Migrations ". There were numerous invasions and migrations amongst the Ostrogoths , Visigoths , Goths , Vandals , Huns , Franks , Angles , Saxons , Slavs , Avars , Bulgars , Vikings , Pechenegs , Cumans , and Magyars . Renaissance thinkers such as Petrarch would later refer to this as
12608-493: The elections of October 1946 . The SED government nationalised infrastructure and industrial plants. In March 1948 the German Economic Commission ( Deutsche Wirtschaftskomission –DWK) under its chairman Heinrich Rau assumed administrative authority in the Soviet occupation zone, thus becoming the predecessor of an East German government. On 7 October 1949 the SED established the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic – GDR), based on
12805-557: The equestrian statue of Frederick the Great was removed from East Berlin. Instead, the SED focused on the progressive heritage of German history, including Thomas Müntzer 's role in the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 and the role played by the heroes of the class struggle during Prussia's industrialization. Other notable figures and reformers from Prussian history such as Karl Freiherr vom Stein (1757–1831), Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), and Gerhard von Scharnhorst (1755–1813) were upheld by
13002-432: The last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. Earth is currently in an interglacial period of the Quaternary, called the Holocene . Homo erectus georgicus , which lived roughly 1.8 million years ago in Georgia , is the earliest hominin to have been discovered in Europe. Other hominin remains, dating back roughly 1 million years, have been discovered in Atapuerca , Spain . Neanderthal man (named after
13199-517: The polis , was the fundamental political unit of classical Greece. In 508 BCE, Cleisthenes instituted the world's first democratic system of government in Athens . The Greek political ideals were rediscovered in the late 18th century by European philosophers and idealists. Greece also generated many cultural contributions: in philosophy , humanism and rationalism under Aristotle , Socrates and Plato ; in history with Herodotus and Thucydides ; in dramatic and narrative verse, starting with
13396-404: The shock-therapy style of privatization , the artificially high rate of exchange offered for the Ostmark , and the speed with which the entire process was implemented did not leave room for East German enterprises to adapt. There were four periods in East German political history. These included: 1949–1961, which saw the building of socialism; 1961–1970 after the Berlin Wall closed off escape
13593-402: The "Dark Ages". Isolated monastic communities were the only places to safeguard and compile written knowledge accumulated previously; apart from this, very few written records survive. Much literature, philosophy, mathematics, and other thinking from the classical period disappeared from Western Europe, though they were preserved in the east, in the Byzantine Empire. While the Roman empire in
13790-455: The 'state anti-fascism' of the GDR gave way to the 'state anti-communism' of the FRG. From then on, the dominant interpretation of GDR history, based on the concept of totalitarianism, led to the equivalence of communism and Nazism. Historian Anne-Kathleen Tillack-Graf shows, with the help of the newspaper Neues Deutschland , how the national memorials of Buchenwald , Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück were politically instrumentalised in
13987-432: The 'two', the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic , in addition to the Four Powers which had occupied Germany at the end of World War II in Europe : France , the Soviet Union , the United Kingdom , and the United States . The treaty supplanted the 1945 Potsdam Agreement : in it, the Four Powers renounced all rights they had held with regard to Germany, allowing for its reunification as
14184-573: The 12th centuries, with a population of approximately 400,000. The Empire was weakened following the defeat at Manzikert , and was weakened considerably by the sack of Constantinople in 1204 , during the Fourth Crusade . Although it would recover Constantinople in 1261, Byzantium fell in 1453 when Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Empire . In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as
14381-652: The 12th to the 15th centuries, the Grand Duchy of Moscow grew from a small principality under Mongol rule to the largest state in Europe, overthrowing the Mongols in 1480, and eventually becoming the Tsardom of Russia . The state was consolidated under Ivan III the Great and Ivan the Terrible , steadily expanding to the east and south over the next centuries. The Great Famine of 1315–1317
14578-705: The 14th and 16th centuries: it saw the flowering of art , philosophy , music , and the sciences , under the joint patronage of royalty , the nobility, the Roman Catholic Church and an emerging merchant class. Patrons in Italy, including the Medici family of Florentine bankers and the Popes in Rome , funded prolific quattrocento and cinquecento artists such as Raphael , Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci . Treaty on
14775-494: The 18th century. During this period, more than 100 plague epidemics swept across Europe. The Renaissance was a period of cultural change originating in Florence , and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The rise of a new humanism was accompanied by the recovery of forgotten classical Greek and Arabic knowledge from monastic libraries, often translated from Arabic into Latin . The Renaissance spread across Europe between
14972-617: The 1990s, the majority of West German historians described the Normandy landings in June 1944 as an "invasion", exonerated the Wehrmacht of its responsibility for the genocide of the Jews and fabricated the myth of a diplomatic corps that "did not know". On the contrary, Auschwitz was never a taboo in the GDR. The Nazis' crimes were the subject of extensive film, theatre and literary productions. In 1991, 16% of
15169-400: The 50 years of peace that followed are known as Golden Age of Athens , the seminal period of ancient Greece that laid many of the foundations of Western civilisation. Greece was followed by Rome , which left its mark on law , politics , language , engineering , architecture , government , and many more key aspects in western civilisation. By 200 BCE, Rome had conquered Italy and over
15366-591: The British Isles, France, Christianised western Germany, the Alpine regions and northern and central Italy. The concept is one of the lasting legacies of the Carolingian Renaissance : Europa often figures in the letters of Charlemagne's court scholar, Alcuin . The transition of Europe to being a cultural term as well as a geographic one led to the borders of Europe being affected by cultural considerations in
15563-471: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union , Joseph Stalin , issued a proposal to reunify Germany with a policy of neutrality, with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for "the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction, and assembly" and free activity of democratic parties and organizations. The West demurred; reunification
15760-502: The Don altogether, following the Greater Caucasus watershed to the Caspian. The question was still treated as a "controversy" in geographical literature of the 1860s, with Douglas Freshfield advocating the Caucasus crest boundary as the "best possible", citing support from various "modern geographers". In Russia and the Soviet Union , the boundary along the Kuma–Manych Depression was the most commonly used as early as 1906. In 1958,
15957-586: The Early Middle Ages, and soon spread throughout Europe. A struggle for influence between the nobility and the monarchy in England led to the writing of Magna Carta and the establishment of a parliament . The primary source of culture in this period came from the Roman Catholic Church . Through monasteries and cathedral schools , the Church was responsible for education in much of Europe. The Papacy reached
16154-415: The East German state was defined by two dominant forces – Soviet communism on the one hand, and German traditions filtered through the interwar experiences of German communists on the other. Throughout its existence GDR consistently grappled with the influence of the more prosperous West, against which East Germans continually measured their own nation. The notable transformations instituted by
16351-556: The East of Berlin). Over time, however, the abbreviation "DDR" was also increasingly used colloquially by West Germans and West German media. When used by West Germans, Westdeutschland ( West Germany ) was a term almost always in reference to the geographic region of Western Germany and not to the area within the boundaries of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, this use was not always consistent and West Berliners frequently used
16548-503: The East, especially relating to areas under Byzantine, Ottoman, and Russian influence. Such questions were affected by the positive connotations associated with the term Europe by its users. Such cultural considerations were not applied to the Americas, despite their conquest and settlement by European states. Instead, the concept of "Western civilization" emerged as a way of grouping together Europe and these colonies. The question of defining
16745-548: The Elbe [ sic ]. We cannot therefore offer Poland and the others NATO membership." Klaus Wiegrefe says that Chrobog may have confused the Elbe for the Oder , to which NATO was supposed to extend upon German unification, that Bonn had never made it clear that NATO would not expand beyond the Elbe. According to Die Welt , a German foreign minister at the time would never make
16942-523: The European post-classical Middle Ages . The Italian Renaissance spread in the continent a new humanist interest in art and science which led to the modern era . Since the Age of Discovery , led by Spain and Portugal , Europe played a predominant role in global affairs with multiple explorations and conquests around the world. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers colonised at various times
17139-526: The FRG). Emigration to the West was a significant problem as many emigrants were well-educated young people; such emigration weakened the state economically. In response, the GDR government fortified its inner German border and later built the Berlin Wall in 1961. Many people attempting to flee were killed by border guards or booby traps such as landmines . In 1989 numerous social, economic, and political forces in
17336-737: The FRG. While in West Germany, a work of memory on the resurgence of Nazism was carried out, this was not the case in the East. Indeed, as Axel Dossmann, professor of history at the University of Jena , notes, "this phenomenon was completely hidden. For the state-SED (the East German communist party), it was impossible to admit the existence of neo-Nazis, since the foundation of the GDR was to be an anti-fascist state. The Stasi kept an eye on them, but they were considered to be outsiders or thick-skinned bullies. These young people grew up hearing double talk. At school, it
17533-464: The Federal Republic of Germany but on the contrary repeatedly explicitly rejected. If the conduct of the Federal Republic of Germany towards the German Democratic Republic is assessed in the light of its détente policy, in particular, the conclusion of the Treaty as de facto recognition, then it can only be understood as de facto recognition of a special kind. The special feature of this Treaty is that while it
17730-417: The Federal Republic of Germany, while East and West Berlin united as a third city-state (in the same manner as Bremen and Hamburg ). On 1 July, a currency union preceded the political union: the "Ostmark" was abolished, and the Western German "Deutsche Mark" became the common currency. Although the Volkskammer 's declaration of accession to the Federal Republic had initiated the process of reunification,
17927-628: The Final Settlement with Respect to Germany The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany ( German : Vertrag über die abschließende Regelung in Bezug auf Deutschland ), more commonly referred to as the Two Plus Four Agreement ( Zwei-plus-Vier-Vertrag ), is an international agreement that allowed the reunification of Germany in October 1990. It was negotiated in 1990 between
18124-631: The Frankish tribes were united under Clovis I . Charlemagne , a Frankish king of the Carolingian dynasty who had conquered most of Western Europe, was anointed " Holy Roman Emperor " by the Pope in 800. This led in 962 to the founding of the Holy Roman Empire , which eventually became centred in the German principalities of central Europe. East Central Europe saw the creation of the first Slavic states and
18321-411: The GDR and abroad, one of the most notable being peaceful protests starting in the city of Leipzig , led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the establishment of a government committed to liberalization. The following year, a free and fair election was held in the country, and international negotiations between the four former Allied countries and the two German states commenced. The negotiations led to
18518-443: The GDR era. The official name was Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic), usually abbreviated to DDR (GDR). Both terms were used in East Germany, with increasing usage of the abbreviated form, especially since East Germany considered West Germans and West Berliners to be foreigners following the promulgation of its second constitution in 1968. West Germans, the western media and statesmen initially avoided
18715-523: The GDR, leading to an alliance of parties that favored German reunification winning a plurality. To achieve unity and full sovereignty, both German states were willing to accept the terms of the Potsdam Agreement that affected Germany. On 31 August 1990, the FRG and GDR signed the Unification Treaty, which describes the manner and specifics of the GDR's accession to the Federal Republic. It
18912-471: The GDR, particularly during the celebrations of the liberation of the concentration camps. Although officially built in opposition to the 'fascist world' in West Germany, in 1954, 32% of public administration employees were former members of the Nazi Party . However, in 1961, the share of former NSDAP members among the senior Interior Ministry administration staff was less than 10% in the GDR, compared to 67% in
19109-480: The GDR. SPDA Vice President Wolfgang Thierse , for his part, complained in Die Welt about the rise of the extreme right in the everyday life of the inhabitants of the former GDR, in particular the terrorist group NSU, with the German journalist Odile Benyahia-Kouider explaining that "it is no coincidence that the neo-Nazi party NPD has experienced a renaissance via the East". The historian Sonia Combe observes that until
19306-514: The German Democratic Republic was Wilhelm Pieck . However, after 1950, political power in East Germany was held by the First Secretary of the SED, Walter Ulbricht . On 16 June 1953, workers constructing the new Stalinallee boulevard in East Berlin according to the GDR's officially promulgated Sixteen Principles of Urban Design , rioted against a 10% production-quota increase. Initially
19503-441: The German labour movement and the victims of the camps, it was "staged, censored, ordered" and, during the 40 years of the regime, was an instrument of legitimisation, repression and maintenance of power. In May 1989, following widespread public anger over the faking of results of local government elections, many GDR citizens applied for exit visas or left the country contrary to GDR laws. The impetus for this exodus of East Germans
19700-659: The Government of Germany when a government adequate for the purpose is established" (Potsdam Agreement 1.3.1). The overall "German Question" became one of the salient and crucial issues of the long-running Cold War , and until it ended in the late 1980s, little progress had been made in the establishment of a single government of Germany adequate for the purpose of agreeing to a final settlement. This meant that in some respects (largely, but not entirely, technical), Germany did not have full national sovereignty . Several developments in 1989 and 1990, collectively termed Die Wende and
19897-461: The Great 's efforts to make Russia more European, ignored the whole boundary question with his claim that neither Russia, Scandinavia, northern Germany, nor Poland were fully part of Europe. Since then, many modern analytical geographers like Halford Mackinder have declared that they see little validity in the Ural Mountains as a boundary between continents. The mapmakers continued to differ on
20094-634: The Levant and North Africa and making inroads into Asia Minor . In the mid-7th century, following the Muslim conquest of Persia , Islam penetrated into the Caucasus region. Over the next centuries Muslim forces took Cyprus , Malta , Crete , Sicily , and parts of southern Italy . Between 711 and 720, most of the lands of the Visigothic Kingdom of Iberia were brought under Muslim rule—save for small areas in
20291-675: The Mediterranean Sea without the inclusion of any mountain ranges. Cartographer Herman Moll suggested in 1715 Europe was bounded by a series of partly-joined waterways directed towards the Turkish straits, and the Irtysh River draining into the upper part of the Ob River and the Arctic Ocean . In contrast, the present eastern boundary of Europe partially adheres to the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, which
20488-482: The Nazis consolidated all power and criminalized them, and official East German and Soviet histories portrayed this merger as a voluntary pooling of efforts by the socialist parties and symbolic of the new friendship of German socialists after defeating their common enemy; however, there is much evidence that the merger was more troubled than commonly portrayed, and that the Soviet occupation authorities applied great pressure on
20685-459: The SED as examples and role models. The communist regime of the GDR based its legitimacy on the struggle of anti-fascist militants. A form of resistance "cult" was established in the Buchenwald camp memorial site, with the creation of a museum in 1958, and the annual celebration of the Buchenwald oath taken on 19 April 1945 by the prisoners who pledged to fight for peace and freedom. In the 1990s,
20882-577: The SED eliminated the clause in the East German constitution guaranteeing the Communists leadership of the state. The change was approved in the Volkskammer on 1 December 1989 by a vote of 420 to 0. East Germany held its last election in March 1990 . The winner was Alliance for Germany , a coalition headed by the East German branch of West Germany's Christian Democratic Union , which advocated speedy reunification. Negotiations ( 2+4 Talks) were held involving
21079-552: The SPD's eastern branch to merge with the KPD, and the communists, who held a majority, had virtually total control over policy. The SED remained the ruling party for the entire duration of the East German state. It had close ties with the Soviets, which maintained military forces in East Germany until the dissolution of the Soviet regime in 1991 ( Russia continued to maintain forces in the territory of
21276-710: The Soviet Geographical Society formally recommended that the boundary between the Europe and Asia be drawn in textbooks from Baydaratskaya Bay , on the Kara Sea , along the eastern foot of Ural Mountains, then following the Ural River until the Mugodzhar Hills , and then the Emba River ; and Kuma–Manych Depression, thus placing the Caucasus entirely in Asia and the Urals entirely in Europe. The Flora Europaea adopted
21473-442: The Soviet borders, not least because it might reverse the positive trends in the Soviet Union. (See Document 26) The Bush administration took the latter view. And that's what the Soviets heard. In 2018, Hannes Adomeit disputed the conclusions by Blanton and Savranskaya, saying that those documents were already known, and that, it is inadmissible to conclude that assurances concerning the expansion of NATO command structures and
21670-447: The Soviets administered their zone without regard to the policies implemented in the other zones. The Soviets withdrew from the ACC in 1948; subsequently, as the other three zones were increasingly unified and granted self-government, the Soviet administration instituted a separate socialist government in its zone. Seven years after the Allies' 1945 Potsdam Agreement on common German policies,
21867-509: The Soviets impoverished the Soviet Zone of Occupation and severely weakened the East German economy. In the 1945–46 period the Soviets confiscated and transported to the USSR approximately 33% of the industrial plant and by the early 1950s had extracted some US$ 10 billion in reparations in agricultural and industrial products. The poverty of East Germany, induced or deepened by reparations, provoked
22064-657: The Soviets were not deliberately misled." In her 2021 book Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of the Cold War Stalemate , Mary Elise Sarotte balanced out these different interpretations, concluding that Russian claims of betrayal are in fact untrue in law but have psychological truth. On 18 February 2022, German magazine Der Spiegel published an investigation of the British National Archives in which Joshua Shifrinson ( Boston University ) discovered
22261-669: The Soviets with the Berlin Airlift (1948–49) of food, fuel, and supplies to West Berlin. On 21 April 1946 the Communist Party of Germany ( Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands – KPD) and the part of the Social Democratic Party of Germany ( Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands – SPD) in the Soviet zone merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED – Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands ), which then won
22458-500: The Tanais (the modern Don River) as the boundary. The Roman Empire did not attach a strong identity to the concept of continental divisions. However, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire , the culture that developed in its place , linked to Latin and the Catholic church, began to associate itself with the concept of "Europe". The term "Europe" is first used for a cultural sphere in
22655-607: The USSR via the Stalin Note (10 March 1952) proposed German reunification and superpower disengagement from Central Europe, which the three Western Allies (the United States, France, the United Kingdom) rejected. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin , a Communist proponent of reunification, died in early March 1953. Similarly, Lavrenty Beria , the First Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR, pursued German reunification, but he
22852-559: The Ulbricht government had experimented with liberal reforms, the Honecker government reversed them. The new government introduced a new East German Constitution which defined the German Democratic Republic as a "republic of workers and peasants". Initially, East Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, a claim supported by most of the Communist bloc. It claimed that West Germany
23049-615: The United Nations on 18 September 1973. This also increased the number of countries recognizing East Germany to 55, including the US, UK and France, though these three still refused to recognize East Berlin as the capital, and insisted on a specific provision in the UN resolution accepting the two Germanies into the UN to that effect. Following the Ostpolitik, the West German view was that East Germany
23246-619: The West more accessible than ever before, 30,000 East Germans made the crossing via Czechoslovakia in the first two days alone. To try to stem the outward flow of the population, the SED proposed a law loosening travel restrictions. When the Volkskammer rejected it on 5 November, the Cabinet and Politburo of the GDR resigned. This left only one avenue open for Krenz and the SED: completely abolishing travel restrictions between East and West. On 9 November 1989,
23443-404: The West, to which Russia responded in August 2008 with launching the Russo-Georgian War . On 20 August 2009, Russia officially informed the depository of the Energy Charter Treaty (the Government of Portugal ) that it did not intend to become a contracting party to the treaty. On 1 April 2014, NATO unanimously decided to suspend all practical co-operation with the Russian Federation in response to
23640-414: The West. As in other Soviet-bloc countries, non-communist political parties were allowed. Nevertheless, every political party in the GDR was forced to join the National Front of Democratic Germany , a broad coalition of parties and mass political organisations, including: Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere . It
23837-435: The act of reunification itself (with its many specific terms, conditions and qualifications, some of which involved amendments to the West German Basic Law) was achieved constitutionally by the subsequent Unification Treaty of 31 August 1990 – that is, through a binding agreement between the former Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic, now recognising each other as separate sovereign states in international law. The treaty
24034-422: The adoption of Christianity ( c. 1000 CE) . The powerful West Slavic state of Great Moravia spread its territory all the way south to the Balkans, reaching its largest territorial extent under Svatopluk I and causing a series of armed conflicts with East Francia . Further south, the first South Slavic states emerged in the late 7th and 8th century and adopted Christianity : the First Bulgarian Empire ,
24231-641: The barrier of the Eastern Bloc was broken. Tens of thousands of East Germans, alerted by the media, made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or force its border troops to open fire on escapees. The GDR leadership in East Berlin did not dare to completely lock down their own country's borders. The next major turning point in the exodus came on 10 September 1989, when Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn announced that his country would no longer restrict movement from Hungary into Austria. Within two days, 22,000 East Germans crossed into Austria; tens of thousands more did so in
24428-411: The basis of many modern legal systems, funded the construction of the Hagia Sophia and brought the Christian church under state control. From the 7th century onwards, as the Byzantines and neighbouring Sasanid Persians were severely weakened due to the protracted, centuries-lasting and frequent Byzantine–Sasanian wars , the Muslim Arabs began to make inroads into historically Roman territory, taking
24625-418: The beginning, the newly formed GDR tried to establish its own separate identity. Because of the imperial and military legacy of Prussia , the SED repudiated continuity between Prussia and the GDR. The SED destroyed a number of symbolic relics of the former Prussian aristocracy ; Junker manor-houses were torn down, the Berliner Stadtschloß was razed and the Palace of the Republic was built in its place, and
24822-449: The border on the Iron Curtain . In particular, it tested whether Moscow would give the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary the command to intervene. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by the Paneuropean Union through posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union , which was then headed by Karl von Habsburg , distributed thousands of brochures inviting GDR citizens to
25019-435: The boundary between the lower Don and Samara well into the 19th century. The 1745 atlas published by the Russian Academy of Sciences has the boundary follow the Don beyond Kalach as far as Serafimovich before cutting north towards Arkhangelsk , while other 18th- to 19th-century mapmakers such as John Cary followed Strahlenberg's prescription. To the south, the Kuma–Manych Depression was identified c. 1773 by
25216-416: The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The idea of opening the border at a ceremony came from Otto von Habsburg , who proposed it to Miklós Németh , then Hungarian Prime Minister, who promoted the idea. The patrons of the picnic, Habsburg and Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay , who did not attend the event, saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev 's reaction to an opening of
25413-444: The capital. However, the Western Allies disputed this recognition, considering the entire city of Berlin to be occupied territory governed by the Allied Control Council . According to Margarete Feinstein, East Berlin's status as the capital was largely unrecognized by the West and by most Third World countries. In practice, the ACC's authority was rendered moot by the Cold War , East Berlin's status as occupied territory largely became
25610-484: The communist regime were particularly evident in the abolition of capitalism, the overhaul of industrial and agricultural sectors, the militarization of society, and the political orientation of both the educational system and the media. On the other hand, the new regime made relatively few changes in the historically independent domains of the sciences, the engineering professions, the Protestant churches, and in many bourgeois lifestyles. Social policy, says Ritter, became
25807-400: The continent The prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid-19th century. Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water to the north, west and south; Europe's limits to the east and north-east are usually taken to be the Ural Mountains , the Ural River , and the Caspian Sea ; to the south-east, the Caucasus Mountains , the Black Sea , and
26004-514: The continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a total population of about 745 million (about 10% of the world population ) in 2021; the third-largest after Asia and Africa. The European climate is affected by warm Atlantic currents, such as the Gulf Stream , which produce a temperate climate , tempering winters and summers, on much of the continent. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable producing more continental climates . European culture consists of
26201-453: The continent. Chinese, for example, uses the word Ōuzhōu ( 歐洲 / 欧洲 ), which is an abbreviation of the transliterated name Ōuluóbā zhōu ( 歐羅巴洲 ) ( zhōu means "continent"); a similar Chinese-derived term Ōshū ( 欧州 ) is also sometimes used in Japanese such as in the Japanese name of the European Union, Ōshū Rengō ( 欧州連合 ) , despite the katakana Yōroppa ( ヨーロッパ ) being more commonly used. In some Turkic languages,
26398-424: The continents as the lands given by Noah to his three sons; Europe was defined as stretching from the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar , separating it from Northwest Africa , to the Don, separating it from Asia. The convention received by the Middle Ages and surviving into modern usage is that of the Roman era used by Roman-era authors such as Posidonius , Strabo , and Ptolemy , who took
26595-623: The country by the end of 1994. Before the Soviets withdrew, Germany would only deploy territorial defense units not integrated into the alliance structures. German forces in the rest of Germany were assigned to areas where Soviet troops were stationed. After the Soviets withdrew, the Germans could freely deploy troops in those areas, with the exception of nuclear weapons. For the duration of the Soviet presence, Allied troops would remain stationed in Berlin upon Germany's request. Germany undertook efforts to reduce its armed forces to no more than 370,000 personnel, no more than 345,000 of whom were to be in
26792-402: The development of major commercial routes along the coast of the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas . The growing wealth and independence acquired by some coastal cities gave the Maritime Republics a leading role in the European scene. The Middle Ages on the mainland were dominated by the two upper echelons of the social structure: the nobility and the clergy. Feudalism developed in France in
26989-402: The early 1970s, West Germany maintained that East Germany was an illegally constituted state. It argued that the GDR was a Soviet puppet-state, and frequently referred to it as the "Soviet occupation zone". West Germany's allies shared this position until 1973. East Germany was recognized primarily by socialist countries and by the Arab bloc , along with some "scattered sympathizers". According to
27186-443: The eastern parts of Brandenburg and Pomerania . On 1 August 1945, the Potsdam Agreement , promulgated in the Potsdam Conference , among other things agreed on the initial terms under which the Allies of World War II would govern Germany. A provisional German–Polish border known as the Oder–Neisse line awarded, in theory within the context of that "provisional border", most of Germany's former eastern provinces to Poland and
27383-418: The effect that NATO would expand "not one inch eastward" in a unified Germany, as applying instead to Eastern Europe; neither has such a provision been included in the treaty, nor any of the parties has proposed or demanded its inclusion, and neither a recording nor written minutes of Baker's comment exist. In 2014, Gorbachev said that the assurance only pertained to East Germany, and that the resulting agreement
27580-401: The end of 1994. However, with post-Soviet Russia facing severe economic hardship, President Boris Yeltsin ordered Russian troop deployment in Germany to be reduced to levels significantly below those permitted in the Treaty. The last Russian troops left Germany at the end of August 1994, four months before the treaty deadline. In the first decade of the 21st century, the Bundeswehr underwent
27777-402: The epic poems of Homer ; in drama with Sophocles and Euripides ; in medicine with Hippocrates and Galen ; and in science with Pythagoras , Euclid , and Archimedes . In the course of the 5th century BCE, several of the Greek city states would ultimately check the Achaemenid Persian advance in Europe through the Greco-Persian Wars , considered a pivotal moment in world history, as
27974-410: The following two centuries it conquered Greece , Hispania ( Spain and Portugal ), the North African coast, much of the Middle East , Gaul ( France and Belgium ), and Britannia ( England and Wales ). Expanding from their base in central Italy beginning in the third century BCE, the Romans gradually expanded to eventually rule the entire Mediterranean basin and Western Europe by the turn of
28171-407: The following weeks. Many other GDR citizens demonstrated against the ruling party , especially in the city of Leipzig . The Leipzig demonstrations became a weekly occurrence, with a turnout of 10,000 people at the first demonstration on 2 October, peaking at an estimated 300,000 by the end of the month. The protests were surpassed in East Berlin, where half a million demonstrators turned out against
28368-445: The formation of three zones of occupation, i.e., American, British, and Soviet. Later, a French zone was carved out of the US and British zones. The ruling communist party, known as the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), formed on 21 April 1946 from the merger between the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The two former parties were notorious rivals when they were active before
28565-423: The former East Germany until 1994), with the purpose of countering NATO bases in West Germany. As West Germany was reorganized and gained independence from its occupiers (1945–1949), the GDR was established in East Germany in October 1949. The emergence of the two sovereign states solidified the 1945 division of Germany. On 10 March 1952, (in what would become known as the " Stalin Note ") the General Secretary of
28762-420: The full integration of the German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of the resulting deindustrialization in the former East Germany, the causes of the failure of this integration continue to be debated. Some western commentators claim that the depressed eastern economy is a natural aftereffect of a demonstrably inefficient command economy . But many East German critics contend that
28959-400: The height of its power during the High Middle Ages. An East-West Schism in 1054 split the former Roman Empire religiously, with the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire and the Roman Catholic Church in the former Western Roman Empire. In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a crusade against Muslims occupying Jerusalem and the Holy Land . In Europe itself, the Church organised
29156-399: The idea of water boundaries as the only legitimate divides between Europe and Asia. Four years later, in 1725, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg was the first to depart from the classical Don boundary. He drew a new line along the Volga , following the Volga north until the Samara Bend , along Obshchy Syrt (the drainage divide between the Volga and Ural Rivers ), then north and east along
29353-471: The last instrument of ratification, united Germany became fully sovereign on 15 March 1991. The treaty allows Germany to make and belong to alliances, without any foreign influence in its politics. However, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl , who became chancellor of the reunified Germany, made no secret that the enlarged Federal Republic would inherit the West German seats in NATO and the European Communities . All Soviet forces in Germany were to leave
29550-532: The latter waterway to its source in the Ural Mountains . At this point he proposed that mountain ranges could be included as boundaries between continents as alternatives to nearby waterways. Accordingly, he drew the new boundary north along Ural Mountains rather than the nearby and parallel running Ob and Irtysh rivers. This was endorsed by the Russian Empire and introduced the convention that would eventually become commonly accepted. However, this did not come without criticism. Voltaire , writing in 1760 about Peter
29747-431: The majority of Europe. The European Union is a supranational political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation and is based on a system of European treaties . The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. A majority of its members have adopted a common currency, the euro , and participate in the European single market and
29944-431: The manufacture, possession of, and control over nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and in particular, that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty would continue to apply in full to the unified Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany). No foreign armed forces, nuclear weapons, or the carriers for nuclear weapons would be stationed or deployed in six states (the area of Berlin and the former East Germany), making them
30141-464: The millennium. The Roman Republic ended in 27 BCE, when Augustus proclaimed the Roman Empire . The two centuries that followed are known as the pax romana , a period of unprecedented peace, prosperity and political stability in most of Europe. The empire continued to expand under emperors such as Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius , who spent time on the Empire's northern border fighting Germanic , Pictish and Scottish tribes. Christianity
30338-441: The northwest ( Asturias ) and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees . This territory, under the Arabic name Al-Andalus , became part of the expanding Umayyad Caliphate . The unsuccessful second siege of Constantinople (717) weakened the Umayyad dynasty and reduced their prestige. The Umayyads were then defeated by the Frankish leader Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732, which ended their northward advance. In
30535-400: The official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like Ostzone (Eastern Zone), Sowjetische Besatzungszone (Soviet Occupation Zone; often abbreviated to SBZ ) and sogenannte DDR or "so-called GDR". The centre of political power in East Berlin was – in the West – referred to as Pankow (the seat of command of the Soviet forces in Germany was in Karlshorst , a district in
30732-431: The originally Persian name Frangistan ("land of the Franks ") is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa . Clickable map of Europe, showing one of the most commonly used continental boundaries Key: blue : states which straddle the border between Europe and Asia ; green : countries not geographically in Europe, but closely associated with
30929-407: The population in West Germany and 6% in East Germany had antisemitic prejudices. In 1994, 40% of West Germans and 22% of East Germans felt that too much emphasis was placed on the genocide of the Jews. Historian Ulrich Pfeil , nevertheless, recalls the fact that anti-fascist commemoration in the GDR had "a hagiographic and indoctrination character". As in the case of the memory of the protagonists of
31126-424: The ratification of the Energy Charter Treaty was unlikely due to the provisions requiring third-party access to Russia's pipelines. In 2007 Russia suspended its participation in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. In 2008, the relations deteriorated further and became almost openly hostile, following the 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence from Russia's ally Serbia and its partial recognition by
31323-497: The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. An alternative view is that of Robert Beekes , who has argued in favour of a pre-Indo-European origin for the name, explaining that a derivation from eurus would yield a different toponym than Europa. Beekes has located toponyms related to that of Europa in the territory of ancient Greece, and localities such as that of Europos in ancient Macedonia . There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpē to
31520-452: The regime on 4 November. Kurt Masur , conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra , led local negotiations with the government and held town meetings in the concert hall. The demonstrations eventually led Erich Honecker to resign in October; he was replaced by a slightly more moderate communist, Egon Krenz . The massive demonstration in East Berlin on 4 November coincided with Czechoslovakia formally opening its border to West Germany. With
31717-456: The remote regions of north-western Iberia and the middle Pyrenees the power of the Muslims in the south was scarcely felt. It was here that the foundations of the Christian kingdoms of Asturias , Leon , and Galicia were laid and from where the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula would start. However, no coordinated attempt would be made to drive the Moors out. The Christian kingdoms were mainly focused on their own internal power struggles. As
31914-402: The restoration of German sovereignty. In eastern Germany, the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ – Sowjetische Besatzungszone ) comprised the five states ( Länder ) of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern , Brandenburg , Saxony , Saxony-Anhalt , and Thuringia . Disagreements over the policies to be followed in the occupied zones quickly led to a breakdown in cooperation between the four powers, and
32111-400: The risky crossing into Austria but remained instead in Hungary or claimed asylum in West German embassies in Prague or Budapest . The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a chain reaction leading to the end of the GDR and disintegration of the Eastern Bloc. It was the largest mass escape from East Germany since
32308-630: The same name today. The principal river there – Evros (today's Maritsa ) – flows through the fertile valleys of Thrace , which itself was also called Europe, before the term meant the continent. In classical Greek mythology , Europa ( Ancient Greek : Εὐρώπη , Eurṓpē ) was a Phoenician princess. One view is that her name derives from the Ancient Greek elements εὐρύς ( eurús ) 'wide, broad', and ὤψ ( ōps , gen. ὠπός , ōpós ) 'eye, face, countenance', hence their composite Eurṓpē would mean 'wide-gazing' or 'broad of aspect'. Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in
32505-476: The signing of the Final Settlement treaty , which replaced the Potsdam Agreement on the status and borders of a future, reunited Germany. The GDR ceased to exist when its five states ("Länder") joined the Federal Republic of Germany under Article 23 of the Basic Law , and its capital East Berlin united with West Berlin on 3 October 1990. Several of the GDR's leaders, notably its last communist leader Egon Krenz , were later prosecuted for offenses committed during
32702-474: The spirit of the earlier agreements. In December 2017, researchers Tom Blanton and Svetlana Savranskaya argued that declassified documents challenged this narrative. They commented: The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to
32899-422: The state of the Golden Horde with headquarters in Crimea, which later adopted Islam as a religion, and ruled over modern-day southern and central Russia for more than three centuries. After the collapse of Mongol dominions, the first Romanian states (principalities) emerged in the 14th century: Moldavia and Walachia . Previously, these territories were under the successive control of Pechenegs and Cumans. From
33096-490: The stationing of NATO forces on the territory of the former GDR had anything to do with promises concerning the enlargement of the Alliance east of a unified Germany. Additionally, he stated that, a distinction must be drawn between informal or exploratory talks of this nature on the one hand and negotiations, promises, commitments or indeed guarantees on the other. An analysis by Marc Trachtenberg in 2021 concluded that "the Russian allegations are by no means baseless ... But
33293-424: The status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels. They further said that, the view of the State Department was that NATO expansion was not on the agenda, because it was not in the interest of the U.S. to organize 'an anti-Soviet coalition' that extended to
33490-453: The term Westdeutschland to denote the Federal Republic. Before World War II, Ostdeutschland (eastern Germany) was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe ( East Elbia ), as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt . Explaining the internal impact of the GDR government from the perspective of German history in the long term, historian Gerhard A. Ritter (2002) has argued that
33687-424: The two German states and the former Allies , which led to agreement on the conditions for German unification. By a two-thirds vote in the Volkskammer on 23 August 1990, the German Democratic Republic declared its accession to the Federal Republic of Germany. The five original East German states that had been abolished in the 1952 redistricting were restored. On 3 October 1990, the five states officially joined
33884-407: The waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea . Islands are generally grouped with the nearest continental landmass, hence Iceland is considered to be part of Europe, while the nearby island of Greenland is usually assigned to North America , although politically belonging to Denmark. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions based on sociopolitical and cultural differences. Cyprus
34081-400: The way for East Germany's reunification with the West. Unlike the government of West Germany, the SED did not see its state as the successor to the German Reich (1871–1945) and abolished the goal of unification in the constitution ( 1974 ). The SED-ruled GDR was often described as a Soviet satellite state ; historians described it as an authoritarian regime. Geographically the GDR bordered
34278-445: The west and the north, transmitting newly acquired skills in producing copper artifacts. In Western Europe the Neolithic period was characterised not by large agricultural settlements but by field monuments, such as causewayed enclosures , burial mounds and megalithic tombs . The Corded Ware cultural horizon flourished at the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic . During this period giant megalithic monuments, such as
34475-416: The west continued to decline, Roman traditions and the Roman state remained strong in the predominantly Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire , also known as the Byzantine Empire . During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe. Emperor Justinian I presided over Constantinople's first golden age: he established a legal code that forms
34672-399: The western shore of the Aegean Sea . As a name for a part of the known world, it is first used in the 6th century BCE by Anaximander and Hecataeus . Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni River on the territory of Georgia ) in the Caucasus, a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE. Herodotus mentioned that
34869-414: The wider world. Both world wars began and were fought to a great extent in Europe, contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid-20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States took prominence and competed over dominance in Europe and globally. The resulting Cold War divided Europe along the Iron Curtain , with NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in
35066-419: The widespread use of pottery—began around 7000 BCE in Greece and the Balkans , probably influenced by earlier farming practices in Anatolia and the Near East . It spread from the Balkans along the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine ( Linear Pottery culture ), and along the Mediterranean coast ( Cardial culture ). Between 4500 and 3000 BCE, these central European neolithic cultures developed further to
35263-411: The world had been divided by unknown persons into three parts—Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa)—with the Nile and the Phasis forming their boundaries—though he also states that some considered the River Don , rather than the Phasis, as the boundary between Europe and Asia. Europe's eastern frontier was defined in the 1st century by geographer Strabo at the River Don. The Book of Jubilees described
35460-422: Was legalised by Constantine I in 313 CE after three centuries of imperial persecution . Constantine also permanently moved the capital of the empire from Rome to the city of Byzantium (modern-day Istanbul ) which was renamed Constantinople in his honour in 330 CE. Christianity became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 CE, and in 391–392 CE the emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan religions. This
35657-516: Was a de facto government within a single German nation and a de jure state organisation of parts of Germany outside the Federal Republic. The Federal Republic continued to maintain that it could not within its own structures recognize the GDR de jure as a sovereign state under international law; but it fully acknowledged that, within the structures of international law, the GDR was an independent sovereign state. By distinction, West Germany then viewed itself as being within its own boundaries, not only
35854-434: Was a period of stability and consolidation; 1971–1985 was termed the Honecker Era, and saw closer ties with West Germany; and 1985–1990 saw the decline and extinction of East Germany. The ruling political party in East Germany was the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands ( Socialist Unity Party of Germany , SED). It was created in 1946 through the Soviet-directed merger of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and
36051-446: Was an illegally-constituted puppet state of NATO. However, from the 1960s onward, East Germany began recognizing itself as a separate country from West Germany and shared the legacy of the united German state of 1871–1945 . This was formalized in 1974 when the reunification clause was removed from the revised East German constitution. West Germany, in contrast, maintained that it was the only legitimate government of Germany. From 1949 to
36248-433: Was done on 14 November 1990, with the signing of the German–Polish Border Treaty . Furthermore, the Federal Republic was required by the treaty to amend its Basic Law so as to be constitutionally prohibited from accepting any application for incorporation into Germany from territories outside of East Germany, West Germany, and Berlin. Although the treaty was signed by West and East Germany as separate sovereign states, it
36445-428: Was eventually absorbed into Russia several centuries later. The period between the year 1000 and 1250 is known as the High Middle Ages , followed by the Late Middle Ages until c. 1500. During the High Middle Ages the population of Europe experienced significant growth, culminating in the Renaissance of the 12th century . Economic growth, together with the lack of safety on the mainland trading routes, made possible
36642-463: Was expelled from the Council of Europe . The treaty does not mention NATO membership prospects of any other countries, as none of them has been a party to the treaty, while only 4 out of the 15 NATO member states at the time have been parties to it. Some commentators, such as Stephen F. Cohen , as well as Mikhail Gorbachev in 2008, have advanced in later years the interpretation of a comment allegedly made by US Secretary of State, James Baker , to
36839-425: Was forbidden to talk about the Third Reich and, at home, their grandparents told them how, thanks to Hitler , we had the first motorways." On 17 October 1987, thirty or so skinheads violently threw themselves into a crowd of 2,000 people at a rock concert in the Zionskirche without the police intervening. In 1990, the writer Freya Klier received a death threat for writing an essay on antisemitism and xenophobia in
37036-428: Was generally viewed as a communist state and described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state". The economy of the country was centrally planned and state-owned . Although the GDR had to pay substantial war reparations to the Soviets, its economy became the most successful in the Eastern Bloc . Before its establishment, the country's territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following
37233-402: Was made during this conversation. The concession essentially meant that the western half of the unified Germany would be part of NATO but the eastern half would not. The US National Security Council pointed out that it would be unworkable, and the concession was later amended to state that NATO troops would not be stationed in East Germany. On 18 March 1990, a national election was held in
37430-428: Was not then a priority for the leadership of West Germany, and the NATO powers declined the proposal, asserting that Germany should be able to join NATO and that such a negotiation with the Soviet Union would be seen as a capitulation. In 1949 the Soviets turned control of East Germany over to the SED , headed by Wilhelm Pieck (1876–1960), who became President of the GDR and held the office until his death, while
37627-429: Was removed from power that same year before he could act on the matter. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev , rejected reunification as equivalent to returning East Germany for annexation to the West; hence reunification was off the table until the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. East Germany regarded East Berlin as its capital, and the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc diplomatically recognized East Berlin as
37824-419: Was subsequently ratified by the united Federal Republic of Germany. After the Soviet Union dissolved itself in December 1991, the command unit of the Soviet Group of Soviet Forces in Germany devolved to the Russian Federation . The German government subsequently recognized the Russian Federation's claim to be the successor state of the Soviet Union, including the right to maintain troops in Germany until
38021-495: Was the first crisis that would strike Europe in the late Middle Ages. The period between 1348 and 1420 witnessed the heaviest loss. The population of France was reduced by half. Medieval Britain was afflicted by 95 famines, and France suffered the effects of 75 or more in the same period. Europe was devastated in the mid-14th century by the Black Death , one of the most deadly pandemics in human history which killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe alone—a third of
38218-403: Was the removal of the electrified fence along Hungary 's border with Austria on 2 May 1989. Although formally the Hungarian frontier was still closed, many East Germans took the opportunity to enter Hungary via Czechoslovakia , and then make the illegal crossing from Hungary to Austria and to West Germany beyond. By July, 25,000 East Germans had crossed into Hungary; most of them did not attempt
38415-417: Was then possible for all international parties to negotiate a final settlement. The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany was signed in Moscow on 12 September 1990, and paved the way for German reunification on 3 October 1990. Under the terms of the treaty, the Four Powers renounced all rights they formerly held in Germany, including those regarding the city of Berlin . Upon deposit of
38612-418: Was then voted into effect prior to the agreed date for Unification by both the Volkskammer and the Bundestag by the constitutionally required two-thirds majorities, effecting on the one hand the extinction of the GDR, and on the other the agreed amendments to the Basic Law of the Federal Republic. The great economic and socio-political inequalities between the former Germanies required government subsidies for
38809-517: Was upheld by NATO. His main aide in these negotiations, Eduard Shevardnadze , likewise agreed that NATO never made any such commitment regarding other countries in Eastern Europe, and that "the question never came up" in the talks on German reunification. That is presumably because all of the countries in question were still in the Warsaw Pact at the time and hosted large Soviet garrisons. Gorbachev and his successor, Boris Yeltsin , felt that NATO's later acceptance of countries like Poland violated
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