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The Latest Breaking News from East Germany

In 1950, amid the Cold War, a tiny beetle from the US was destroying potato crops across East Germany. Then began one of history's strangest propaganda campaigns

In 1950, a striped potato beetle became the centre of one of the Cold War's most unusual propaganda campaigns after East Germany accused the United States of dropping the insects from aircraft to destroy socialist food supplies. While farmers battled real crop damage, governments turned the infestation into a political…

The Economic Times

How a tiny potato beetle became a Cold War weapon: The bizarre story behind East Germany's 'American insect' campaign

In the summer of 1950, farmers across East Germany began finding their potato crops stripped bare. The culprit was the Colorado potato beetle, a small, striped insect native to North America that had been spreading steadily across Europe for decades. What happened next had nothing to do with agriculture and…

The Times of India

After Cape Verde’s heroics against Spain, more great World Cup underdog stories

From Sparwasser being the toast of East Germany to Cameroon’s rumbling of Argentina, the finals are littered with upsets

The Guardian - UK

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‘I shared a single bed with my mother for three years’: Sung Tieu on her monument to immigrant workers in Venice

At the German pavilion, the artist has re-created the housing estate where she grew up to tell the forgotten history of migrants, including her parents, hired under a socialist agreement between East Germany and Vietnam – then abandoned

The Guardian - UK

Chernobyl at 40: Secret Stasi files reveal extent of Soviet misinformation campaign over nuclear disaster

On April 26, 1986, Soviet engineers at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were conducting a safety test. Doomed by a fatal design flaw and pushed to the limit by human negligence, reactor 4 exploded amid an attempted shutdown during a routine procedure, setting off a chain of events that ultimately…

The Conversation

This Week in History: From the liberation of Nelson Mandela to East Germany’s final gasp

Explore how major events between 9 and 15 February were captured on The Independent’s front pages

The Independent UK

“I didn’t know him or trust him. But I gave him all of that money in the hope he would bring me a Strat. I had no idea if I’d see him again”: Rammstein’s Richard ZK on the coffee shop rendezvous in East Germany that got him his first Fender

The Rammstein riffer wanted a Strat to imitate his hero, Jimi Hendrix – but getting hold of one took some serious work

Guitar World

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‘No topic is too difficult’: children’s series on life in communist East Germany wins an Emmy

In Fritzi’s Footsteps tells story of a girl growing up in Leipzig who witnesses the fall of the Berlin Wall

The Guardian - UK

I played communist Germany's only arcade cabinet and you can too, comrade

VEB Polytechnik Karl-Marx-Stadt is my dev to watch for 2026.

PC Gamer

Cold war power play: how the Stasi got into computer games

A new exhibition in Berlin shows how the notoriously paranoid East German state greeted the dawn of video gaming with surprising enthusiasm

The Guardian - UK

Why the legacy of East Germany’s prefab housing blocks is more relevant than ever

Once considered progressive, then later derided, a new exhibition is exploring the developments’ place as part of a collective experience

The Guardian - UK

This Oddball Electric Scooter Is More Than Just a Throwback

Before electric scooters were cool—or even a thing—the streets of East Germany were buzzing with the unmistakable whirr of the Simson Schwalbe. First introduced in 1964, the smoky two-stroke scooter became a beloved icon, with over a million units sold before production wrapped in the mid-’80s. Fast forward to today,…

RideApart

“I didn’t know him or trust him. But I gave him all of that money in the hope he would bring me a Strat. I had no idea if I’d see him again”: Rammstein’s Richard ZK on the coffee shop rendezvous in East Germany that got him his first Fender

The Rammstein riffer wanted a Strat to imitate his hero, Jimi Hendrix – but getting hold of one took some serious work

Guitar World

Frieder Reimold, journalist who wrote AP’s iconic ‘East Germany opens borders’ bulletin, dies at 80

Frieder Reimold, the former Berlin bureau chief of The Associated Press German-language service who wrote the iconic 1989 bulletin that East Germany had opened its borders, has died aged 80, his family said

The Independent UK

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The Independent UK

The Berlin Wall: a divide that once shaped German women's lives apart still echoes today

As Germany celebrates the fall of the Berlin Wall 35 years ago on Nov. 1989, women look back at how different their lives were under communism in East and capitalism in West Germany

The Independent UK

AP Photos: 35 years after the Berlin Wall opened, fragments of East Germany's border remain

Most of communist East Germany’s heavily fortified border was torn down quickly after it was opened in 1989, but there are still places where visitors can see the remains of the Berlin Wall and other sections of the frontier

The Conversation

Thirty-five years since the wall fell, Berlin is divided – over what to do with crumbling communist buildings

The 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, an event that powerfully symbolised the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and signalled the end of the cold war, is an opportune moment to take stock of what remains of East Germany (GDR) in the capital of Germany.

The Guardian - UK

As a former East German athlete doped by the state, I see how our past pain is fuelling the far right

In east Germany, our history is shrouded in lies and silence. Until we break their hold, support for extremism will flourish, says academic and author Ines Geipel

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International Business Times

How East Germany's 'Traffic Light Man' Became A Beloved Icon

As Germany readies to mark 35 years since the Berlin Wall fell, one symbol of the former communist East has become an icon of reunification, seen by millions every time they cross a street.

Fortune

Ikea pledges €6 million to former prisoners of communist East Germany who were forced to build flat-pack furniture during the Cold War

“We deeply regret that this happened,” said Walter Kadnar, CEO of Ikea Germany.

Radio France Internationale

Ikea pledges millions over use of forced labour in East Germany

Ikea has pledged to contribute €6 million to a hardship fund for victims of the former East German dictatorship, acknowledging that some of its suppliers had used political prisoners as forced labourers.

Al Jazeera

Former Stasi official sentenced to 10 years for 1974 Berlin border murder

Czeslaw Kukuczka was shot in the back as he tried to flee from East Germany via the Berlin Wall on March 29, 1974.

The Independent UK

Former officer with East Germany’s secret police sentenced to prison for a border killing in 1974

An 80-year-old former officer with communist East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for the murder of a Polish man at a border crossing in divided Berlin 50 years ago

Al Jazeera

Not just AfD: What’s the BSW, Germany’s rising populist left party?

The party founded in January espouses anti-NATO, anti-immigrant populist rhetoric while promoting left-wing economics.

The Conversation

Why German reunification is still a good idea

When asked about my opinion on German reunification, I usually respond that I think it is a good idea, and that we should do it. This is, of course, a joke, as Germany is now united with no official internal borders. However, 35 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall,…

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