Chris Gueffroy
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Chris Gueffroy
Chris Gueffroy (21 June 1968 – 6 February 1989) was the last person to be shot and the second-last to die in an escape attempt while trying to escape from East Berlin to West Berlin across the Berlin Wall. Biography Chris Gueffroy was born in Pasewalk, Bezirk Neubrandenburg (present-day Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) on 21 June 1968. He had an older brother, Stefan Gueffroy. He moved to Schwedt in 1970, the same year that his mother, Karin Gueffroy, and his father, Allois Gueffroy, divorced. Three years later, when he was five years old, he moved to Berlin with his mother and his brother. When he was in the third grade, he was sent to the youth sports school SC Dynamo Berlin, based on his gymnastic talent. After he finished school he refused to pursue an officer's career track in the National People's Army and was consequently denied the right to study at university, ending his dream of becoming an actor or a pilot. In September 1985 he began an apprenticeship in the Schönefe ...
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Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer
The (Berlin Wall Memorial) commemorates the division of Berlin by the Berlin Wall and the deaths that occurred there. The monument was created in 1998 by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Federal State of Berlin. It is located on at the corner of and includes a Chapel of Reconciliation, the Berlin Wall Documentation Centre, a section of the former border, a window of remembrance and a visitor center. History The idea of a memorial was suggested by the (German Historical Museum) on behalf of the federal government of Berlin, and architects Kohlhoff & Kohlhoff were commissioned to design it. The cost of the competition and completion was 2.2 million Marks Marks may refer to: Business * Mark's, a Canadian retail chain * Marks & Spencer, a British retail chain * Collective trade marks A collective trademark, collective trade mark, or collective mark is a trademark owned by an organization (such .... The federal government took over the construction cost ...
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National People's Army
The National People's Army (, ; NVA ) were the armed forces of the East Germany, German Democratic Republic (DDR) from 1956 until 1990. The NVA was organized into four branches: the (Ground Forces), the (Navy), the (Air Force) and the (Border Troops). The NVA belonged to the Ministry of National Defence (East Germany), Ministry of National Defence and commanded by the National Defense Council of East Germany, which was headquartered in Strausberg - east of East Berlin. From 1962, conscription was mandatory for all DDR males aged between 18 and 60 requiring an 18-month service, and it was the only Warsaw Pact military to offer non-combat roles to conscientious objectors, known as "construction soldiers" (). The NVA reached 175,300 personnel at its peak in 1987. The NVA was formed on 1 March 1956 to succeed the (Barracked People's Police) and under the influence of the Soviet Army became one of the Warsaw Pact militaries opposing NATO during the Cold War. The majority of NAT ...
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White Crosses
White Crosses (in German: ''Weiße Kreuze'') is a memorial for those who died during the Cold War at the Berlin Wall. It is located at the shore of the river Spree in Berlin next to the Reichstag building, which houses the German parliament. Established by the private group ''Berliner Bürger-Verein'' on the 10th anniversary of the Berlin Wall in 1971 it was first located east of the Reichstag on a fence directly in front of the wall. After the German reunification in 1990 it kept its location until construction of the new government buildings next to the Reichstag was started at the end of that century – Berlin was chosen to be the new capital of Germany.berlin.de: “Weisse Kreuze” memorial / German Bundestag' During construction the memorial was moved to a location south of the Reichstag next to the Tiergarten. On the 50th anniversary of the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany a second set of crosses was erected on the riverbank, which is slightly north-west of the origin ...
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Inner German Border
The inner German border ( or ''deutsch–deutsche Grenze''; initially also , zonal boundary) was the frontier between the East Germany, German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) and the West Germany, Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) from 1949 to 1990. ''De jure'' not including the similar but physically separate Berlin Wall, the border was an irregular L-shaped line, long. It ran south from the Baltic Sea and then east to the border of Protection of Czechoslovak borders during the Cold War, Czechoslovakia. It was formally established by the Potsdam Agreement on 1 August 1945 as the boundary between the Allied-occupied Germany, Western and Soviet occupation zones of Germany. On the Eastern side, it was made one of the world's most heavily fortified frontiers, defined by a continuous line of high metal fences and walls, barbed wire, alarms, anti-vehicle ditches, watchtowers, automatic booby traps and minefields. It was patrolled by 50,000 armed GDR borde ...
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Socialist Unity Party Of Germany
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (, ; SED, ) was the founding and ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from the country's foundation in 1949 until its dissolution after the Peaceful Revolution in 1989. It was a Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist communist party, established in 1946 as a Merger of the Communist Party of Germany and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, merger of the East German branches of the Communist Party of Germany and Social Democratic Party of Germany. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was effectively a one-party state. Other institutional Popular front, popular front parties were permitted to exist in alliance with the SED; these parties included the Christian Democratic Union (East Germany), Christian Democratic Union, the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany, Liberal Democratic Party, the Democratic Farmers' Party of Germany, Democratic Farmers' Party, and the National Democratic Party of Germany (East Germany), Nat ...
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Bundesgerichtshof
The Federal Court of Justice ( , ) is the highest court of civil and criminal jurisdiction in Germany. Its primary responsibility is the final appellate review of decisions by lower courts for errors of law. While, legally, a decision by the Federal Court of Justice is only binding with respect to the individual case in which it enters, '' de facto'' the court's interpretation of the law is followed by lower courts with almost no exception. Decisions handed down by the Federal Court of Justice can only be vacated by the Federal Constitutional Court for violating a provision of the German constitution, the Basic Law. In addition to the court's appellate duties, a few judges of the Federal Court of Justice act as investigating judges in criminal investigations led by the Public Prosecutor General for a small number of exceptional offenses (such as crimes against humanity and the formation of terrorist organisations). As such, they are responsible for issuing search and arrest ...
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German Reunification
German reunification () was the process of re-establishing Germany as a single sovereign state, which began on 9 November 1989 and culminated on 3 October 1990 with the dissolution of the East Germany, German Democratic Republic and the integration of its re-established constituent federated states into the West Germany, Federal Republic of Germany to form Germany, present-day Germany. This date was chosen as the customary German Unity Day, and has thereafter been celebrated each year as a national day, national holiday. On the same date, East Berlin, East and West Berlin, West Berlin were also reunified into a single city, which eventually Decision on the Capital of Germany, became the capital of Germany. The East German government, controlled by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), started to falter on 2 May 1989, when the removal of Hungary's border fence with Austria opened a hole in the Iron Curtain. The border was still closely guarded, but the Pan-European Picn ...
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Moabit
Moabit () is an inner city locality in the boroughs of Berlin, borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. As of 2022, about 84,000 people lived in Moabit. First inhabited in 1685 and incorporated into Berlin in 1861, the former industrial sector, industrial and working-class neighbourhood is fully surrounded by three watercourses, which define its present-day border. Between 1945 and 1990, Moabit was part of the British sector of West Berlin and directly bordered East Berlin. Until the administrative reform in 2001, Moabit was a part of the district of Tiergarten (Berlin), Tiergarten. Colloquially, the name ''Moabit'' also refers to the Moabit Criminal Court, Central Criminal Court (''Strafgericht'') and Detention (imprisonment), detention centre, which deals with all criminal cases in Berlin and is based in Moabit. Name The origin of the name ''Moabit'' is disputed. According to one account, it can be traced back to the Huguenots, in the time of King in Prussia, King Frederick Willia ...
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Winfried Freudenberg
Winfried Freudenberg (29 August 1956 – 8 March 1989) was the last person to die in an attempt to escape from East Germany to West Berlin across the Berlin Wall as he fell from an improvised gas balloon at high altitude over West Berlin. Biography Freudenberg was born in Osterwieck and grew up in the Saxony-Anhalt town of Lüttgenrode, near what was then the border between West Germany and his native East Germany, a part of the communist Eastern Bloc, as a satellite state of the Soviet Union. After completing an apprenticeship as an electrician, he obtained his secondary education diploma in night school, then trained in information technology and received a diploma as an electronics engineer. In the autumn of 1988 he married his wife Sabine, a chemist he had met while both were students at Ilmenau University. With the erection of The Wall, East Germany cut them off from the professional opportunities that existed in the West, and the couple, especially Winfried, had bec ...
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Pankow
Pankow () is the second largest and most populous Boroughs and quarters of Berlin, borough of the German capital Berlin. In Berlin's 2001 administrative reform, it was merged with the former boroughs of Prenzlauer Berg and Weissensee (Berlin), Weißensee; the resulting borough retained the name Pankow. Pankow was sometimes claimed by the Western Allies (United States, United Kingdom, and France) to be the capital of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), while the German Democratic Republic itself considered East Berlin to be its capital. Overview The borough, named after the Panke river, covers the northeast of the city region, including the inner city locality of Prenzlauer Berg. It borders Mitte and Reinickendorf in the west, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in the south, and Lichtenberg, Berlin, Lichtenberg in the east. Pankow is Berlin's largest borough by population and the second largest by area (after Treptow-Köpenick). Between 1945 and 1960, Schönhausen Palace and the ...
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Treptow
Treptow () was a former borough in the southeast of Berlin. It merged with Köpenick to form Treptow-Köpenick in 2001. Geography The district was composed by the localities of Alt-Treptow, Plänterwald, Baumschulenweg, Niederschöneweide, Johannisthal, Adlershof Adlershof (, literally "Eagle's Court") is a locality (') in the Boroughs of Berlin, borough (') Treptow-Köpenick of Berlin, Germany. Adlershof is home to the new City of Science, Technology and Media (WISTA), located on the southwestern edge of ..., Altglienicke and Bohnsdorf. Photo gallery File:TwinTowers BerlinTreptow.jpg, Twin Towers building in Treptow File:Allianzberlin.jpg, '' Treptowers'' compound in Treptow File:Treptow Spree sunbathing.jpg, People sunbathing along the Spree River in Treptow See also * Alt-Treptow External links * * Former boroughs of Berlin Treptow-Köpenick {{Berlin-geo-stub ...
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Johannisthal (Berlin)
Johannisthal () is a German locality (''Ortsteil'') within the Berlin borough (''Bezirk'') of Treptow-Köpenick. Until 2001 it was part of the former borough of Treptow. History The first mention of the locality dates from November 16, 1753. In 1880 it was served by a train station on the '' Berlin-Görlitzer Eisenbahn'' and in 1884 it was awarded by the title of ''Bad'' (bath), becoming ''Bad Johannisthal''. From 1905 to 1906 the town hall was built, and in 1920 the "Greater Berlin Act" merged the town into Berlin. As part of East Berlin bordering Neukölln (West Berlin), its limits were crossed by the Berlin Wall from 1961 to 1989. Geography Overview Located in the south-eastern side of the city, not too far from the river Spree, Johannisthal borders the localities of Baumschulenweg, Niederschöneweide, Adlershof, Altglienicke and Rudow (this one in Neukölln district). Its urban park is the Königsheide. Subdivision Johannisthal is subdivided into 7 zones (''Ortslagen'') ...
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