In this podcast Professor Matthew Stibbe of Sheffield Hallam University provides an introduction to the German Democratic Republic.

1. What led to the formation of the GDR?
2. What was the GDR’s system of government? To what extent was it dominated by the SED?
3. What economic developments took place between 1949 and 1961?
4. Emigration in the 1950s, Crisis in 1960 and the Berlin Wall.
5. What was the impact to families split by the wall?
6. How did the East German state develop economically after 1961?
7. To what extent did the government try to create a GDR identity?
8. How did relations with West Germany and the world transform in the 1970s?

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