EAST GERMANY ( DDR )

East Germany was the informal Western name for the Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR (German Democratic Republic — GDR), the communist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany and in the East Berlin portion of the Allied-occupied capital city. The German Democratic Republic had an area of 107,771 km2. (41,610 mi.2), bordering Czechoslovakia in the south, West Germany (officially: Federal Republic of Germany) in the south and west, the Baltic Sea to the north, and Poland in the east.