East German by Choice

Meet the GDR's Western Emigres

Brandenburg Gate viewed from West to East, August 1961. Img: CIA

East Germany is mostly remembered for the deadly Wall the regime built in Berlin in 1961 to stop its citizens from leaving the country. People risked being shot or captured to leave the GDR. The West pitied East Germans for having to live in what many saw as a kind of open-air prison from which everyone seemed to want to escape if they were given half a chance. 

There is of course some truth to that. Before the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, 2.8 million people left East Germany and there was no sign that that stream would ever have abated without force. As late as January 1989, the year the Berlin Wall would fall, leader Erich Honecker predicted that it would still stand in “50 or a hundred years if the reasons for its existence won’t be removed.”

But it is also true that the GDR held a certain attraction for some outsiders. An estimated 500,000 people moved the other way, to East Germany from West Germany, in addition to a smattering of foreigners from third countries. 

Who moved to the GDR and what drove them? Of course, every individual had their own story but outlining half a million lives is maybe a bit much even for my dedicated ZEITGEIST readers. So let’s overgeneralise and look at four types: Idealists, Artists, Escapists and Returners.