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Wolfgang Schnur
Wolfgang Schnur (8 June 1944 – 16 January 2016) was an East German civil rights lawyer and a longtime informer of the dreaded East German secret service Stasi. He was closely involved with the Association of Evangelical Churches (''"Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen"'' / BEK) and worked on many of the cases in which the BEK's leading figures were involved. He also became well networked, on more than one level, with the country's political establishment. East Germany was a one-party dictatorship. During the 1970s and 1980s, the churches increasingly provided an outlet for alternative political views which, under a more decentralised system, would have been expressed through an effective multi-party parliamentary structure. Schnur was a founding member of the oppositional "Demokratischer Aufbruch" (''loosely "Democratic Awakening"'' / DA) in October 1989. He was one of the "new party" leadership team's most attractive and dynamic members: over the next few months there was tal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Democratic Beginning
Democratic Beginning (german: Demokratischer Aufbruch) was an East German political movement and political party that was active during the Revolutions of 1989 and in the period leading up to the German reunification. While it was a relatively minor party, it took part in the first democratically elected government in East Germany in 1990, and is especially known because future Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel started her political career within the party. It was founded on 29 October 1989, based on existing politically active church groups. Founding members included Wolfgang Schnur, Friedrich Schorlemmer, Rainer Eppelmann, Günter Nooke and Thomas Welz. The organisation became a political party on December 16/17, 1989 in Leipzig. The party convention adopted a more conservative program than some of the founding members, like Schorlemmer, were willing to bear, so they left the party. Others, like Nooke, who left some time later, resented the growing cooperation with the Ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1990 East German General Election
General elections were held in East Germany on 18 March 1990. They were the only free and fair parliamentary elections in the history of the country, and the first free and fair election held in that part of Germany since November 1932. The Alliance for Germany, led by the East German branch of the Christian Democratic Union, won 192 seats and emerged as the largest bloc in the 400-seat Volkskammer, having run on a platform of speedy reunification with West Germany. The East German branch of the Social Democratic Party, which had been dissolved in 1946 and refounded only six months before the elections, finished second with 88 seats. The former Socialist Unity Party of Germany, renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism, running in a free election for the first time, finished third with 66 seats. The Alliance was just short of the 201 seats needed to govern alone. Lothar de Maizière of the CDU invited the SPD to join his Alliance partners – the German Social Union (DSU) and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Territories Of Poland Annexed By The Soviet Union
Seventeen days after the Nazi Germany, German invasion of Poland in 1939, which marked the beginning of the Second World War, the Soviet invasion of Poland, Soviet Union entered the eastern regions of Second Polish Republic, Poland (known as the ''Kresy'') and annexed territories totalling with a population of 13,299,000. Inhabitants besides ethnic Poles included Belarusians, Belarusian and Ukrainians, Ukrainian major population groups, and also Czechs, Lithuanians, History of the Jews in 20th-century Poland, Jews, and other minority groups. These annexed territories were subsequently incorporated into the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, Lithuanian, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Byelorussian, and Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Ukrainian Republics of the Soviet Union, Soviet Socialist Republics and remained within the Soviet Union in 1945 as a consequence of European-wide territorial rearrangements configured during the Tehran Conference of 1943 (see Western ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Recovered Territories
The Recovered Territories or Regained Lands ( pl, Ziemie Odzyskane), also known as Western Borderlands ( pl, Kresy Zachodnie), and previously as Western and Northern Territories ( pl, Ziemie Zachodnie i Północne), Postulated Territories ( pl, Ziemie Postulowane) and Returning Territories ( pl, Ziemie Powracające), are the former eastern territories of Germany and the Free City of Danzig that became part of Poland after World War II, at which time their former German inhabitants were forcibly deported. The rationale for the term "Recovered" was that these territories formed part of the Polish state, and were lost by Poland in different periods over the centuries. It also referred to the Piast Concept that these territories were part of the traditional Polish homeland under the Piast dynasty, after the establishment of the state in the Middle Ages. Over the centuries, however, they had become predominantly German-speaking through the processes of German eastward settlement (), po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oder–Neisse Line
The Oder–Neisse line (german: Oder-Neiße-Grenze, pl, granica na Odrze i Nysie Łużyckiej) is the basis of most of the international border between Germany and Poland from 1990. It runs mainly along the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers and meets the Baltic Sea in the north, just west of the ports of Szczecin and Świnoujście (German: ''Stettin'' and ''Swinemünde''). All prewar German territories east of the line and within the 1937 German boundaries—comprising nearly one quarter (23.8 percent) of the Weimar Republic—were ceded under the changes decided at the postwar Potsdam Conference (Potsdam Agreement), with the greatest part becoming part of Poland. The remainder, consisting of northern East Prussia with the German city of Königsberg (renamed Kaliningrad), was allocated to the Soviet Union, as the Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian SFSR (today Russia). However this did not become completely official until the peace treaty for Germany was signed. The ethnic Germa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference (codenamed Argonaut), also known as the Crimea Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union to discuss the postwar reorganization of Germany and Europe. The three states were represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Secretary Joseph Stalin, respectively. The conference was held near Yalta in Crimea, Soviet Union, within the Livadia, Yusupov, and Vorontsov palaces. The aim of the conference was to shape a postwar peace that represented not only a collective security order but also a plan to give self-determination to the liberated peoples of Europe. Intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe, within a few years, with the Cold War dividing the continent, the conference became a subject of intense controversy. Yalta was the second of three major wartime confe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rügen
Rügen (; la, Rugia, ) is Germany's largest island. It is located off the Pomeranian coast in the Baltic Sea and belongs to the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The "gateway" to Rügen island is the Hanseatic city of Stralsund, where it is linked to the mainland by road and railway via the Rügen Bridge and Causeway, two routes crossing the two-kilometre-wide Strelasund, a sound of the Baltic Sea. Rügen has a maximum length of (from north to south), a maximum width of in the south and an area of . The coast is characterized by numerous sandy beaches, lagoons () and open bays (), as well as projecting peninsulas and headlands. In June 2011, UNESCO awarded the status of a World Heritage Site to the Jasmund National Park, famous for its vast stands of beeches and chalk cliffs like King's Chair, the main landmark of Rügen island. The island of Rügen is part of the district of Vorpommern-Rügen, with its county seat in Stralsund. The towns on Rügen are: Bergen, S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established in January 1918. The Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations (especially the various groups collectively known as the White Army) of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. Starting in February 1946, the Red Army, along with the Soviet Navy, embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces; taking the official name of "Soviet Army", until its dissolution in 1991. The Red Army provided the largest land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II, and its invasion of Manchuria assisted the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan. During operations on the Eastern Front, it accounted for 75–80% of casual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lübeck
Lübeck (; Low German also ), officially the Hanseatic City of Lübeck (german: Hansestadt Lübeck), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 217,000 inhabitants, Lübeck is the second-largest city on the German Baltic coast and in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, after its capital of Kiel, and is the 35th-largest city in Germany. The city lies in Holstein, northeast of Hamburg, on the mouth of the River Trave, which flows into the Bay of Lübeck in the borough of Travemünde, and on the Trave's tributary Wakenitz. The city is part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region, and is the southwesternmost city on the Baltic, as well as the closest point of access to the Baltic from Hamburg. The port of Lübeck is the second-largest German Baltic port after the port of Rostock. The city lies in the Northern Low Saxon dialect area of Low German. Lübeck is famous for having been the cradle and the ''de facto'' capital of the Hanseatic League. Its city centre is Germany's most extens ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flight And Expulsion Of Germans From Poland During And After World War II
The flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland was the largest of a series of flights and expulsions of Germans in Europe during and after World War II. The German population fled or was expelled from all regions which are currently within the territorial boundaries of Poland, including the former eastern territories of Germany annexed by Poland after the war and parts of pre-war Poland. West German government figures of those evacuated, migrated, or expelled by 1950 totaled 8,030,000 (6,981,000 from the former eastern territories of Germany; 290,800 from Danzig, 688,000 from pre-war Poland and 170,000 Baltic Germans resettled in Poland during the war). Research by the West German government put the figure of Germans emigrating from Poland from 1951 to 1982 at 894,000; they are also considered expellees under German Federal Expellee Law. The German population east of Oder-Neisse was estimated at over 11 million in early 1945. The first mass flight of Germans followed the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
