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This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Basic Law. And two German states that are now one. The West German Federal Republic was founded on 23 May 1949, followed by the German Democratic Republic in East Germany on 7 October. Over the next four decades, both German states developed into model pupils in the political system of their former wartime enemies.

The borderline between East and West, between the political and economic systems of the Cold War, was drawn on German soil. Crises in German-German relations had an impact on the relationship between the superpowers USA and USSR. The construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 was a high point in the Cold War, which was gradually defused by a policy of rapprochement between the FRG and the GDR that began soon afterwards.

The reconciliation policy of the social-liberal coalition and the ageing of the GDR leadership marked the beginning of a process that lasted two decades, culminating in the opening of the German-German border in November 1989 and the reunification of the two German states in October 1990.

Eine Stunde History illuminates the path of the Germans from the founding of the two states in 1949 to German unity. Presenters Steffi Orbach and Markus Dichmann, co-host Matthias von Hellfeld and singer-songwriter and GDR dissident Stephan Krawczyk will be joined by Prof Sabine Böhne-Di Leo, Prof Dierk Hoffmann, Prof Hedwig Richter and Prof Andreas Rödder to explain the historical process from the division to the unification of Germany.

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DLF Nova Eine Stunde History

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