Free Republic

East Germany, formally known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), wanted to be a paradise for the common folk. It called itself a “workers’ and peasants’ state.” Its anthem, “Risen from Ruins,” brought to mind a phoenix rising gloriously from the ashes of World War II. From cradle to grave, the East German government cared for its citizens, providing childcare, housing, and job assignments. Even now, shops peddling goods from the GDR years dot the former East. They appeal to those afflicted with Ostalgie, nostalgia for life under the bygone socialist regime. But despite the modern, sanitized images of East...

Germany will spend at least €6 billion this year on caring for the 1.5 million migrants expected to arrive in the country by the end of 2015. In 2014 just 400,000 migrants came to Germany. This year 1.5 million more will arrive in a country of 80,000,000. German schoolchildren are now required as part of their schoolwork to cook, clean and make beds for Muslim migrants.

More than 150 kilometres of concrete, wire and guard towers ringed West Berlin from 1961 to 1989. But it’s not easy to carve up a city - and construction of the Wall threw up many freak instances. [....] "The owners had to pass through the death strip to reach their plots -- and for that there was an iron door in the Wall with a doorbell,...."

More than two decades after its political reunification, Germany continues to be divided along religious lines. Christianity still holds a fair amount of sway in the West. Not so much in the East, where two thirds of the population – young and old – are declared atheists. By Matthias Kamann and Gernot FaciusDIE WELT/WorldcrunchBERLIN -- Bad news for all those who’d hoped Christianity might make a comeback now that the Cold War-era German Democratic Republic (DDR) is becoming an ever more distant memory. Atheism, according to a new study, is very much alive and well in the eastern part of...

A wave of nostalgia for the former GDR is sweeping parts of Berlin. Eighteen years after reunification, knowledge of the communist regime is fading, and its most unpleasant aspects are beginning to be glossed over. 18 years after German reunification, the Wall that once divided the country in two has all but vanished. In Eastern Berlin, memories of the former communist state remain vivid – as evidenced in one local pub. The bar's sign, which reads "come to us or we will come to you," is a slogan once used by the East German secret police. The interior is decorated...

CHILDREN in formerly communist eastern Germany are to be given lessons next year about the dreaded Stasi secret police amid fears that their horrors have been forgotten. Feelgood films like Goodbye Lenin!, TV shows, books and a soon-to-open theme park dedicated to the lost socialist state of the German Democratic Republic have had an impact on children who were not born when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Some fear a rose-tinted view of what was a hideous tyranny has warped the entire German perspective of the state that was Moscow's most fervent eastern bloc ally in the Cold War....

Jaruzelski recalls Honecker's 'disgusting' kisses Tue May 3,11:01 AM ET BERLIN (Reuters) - Being kissed by East German Communist leader Erich Honecker was "disgusting," former Polish communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski was quoted as saying Tuesday. In an interview with Germany's Die Welt newspaper, Jaruzelski said that meetings with Honecker always began with hugs and fraternal socialist kisses on the cheeks. "I exchanged many embraces with Honecker. He had this disgusting way of kissing," Jaruzelski, who was prime minister of Poland from 1981 to 1985 and president from 1985 to 1990, was quoted as saying. Honecker, who ruled East Germany...