Although no one could have predicted the extraordinary events that rocked East Germany in ... to open its borders to allow more than 12,000 East Germans to leave for the West.

West Germany was a capitalist democracy with a prosperous economy, while East Germany was a communist country with a very poor economy. The border between East and West Germany shut in 1952 ...

The division between Germany’s East and West did not disappear with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. An invisible “wall” still runs across the country when key demographic indicators are mapped.