Benefit payments to former political prisoners of ex-communist East Germany (GDR) will be raised to send an "important message" 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the government said on Wednesday.
Three in four East Germans say life has improved since reuniting with the Federal Republic, but say their former state had greater gender equality and a better education system.
Berlin is suing one of Switzerland's largest banks in its bid to recuperate hundreds of million euros that went missing during the reunification of East and West Germany, the bank said Thursday.
Wolfgang Leonhard was tasked with cementing Stalinist socialism in the Soviet sector of Germany. Instead, disillusionment turned him into one of the system's harshest critics.
Wednesday marked the 53rd anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall. Yet fewer than a third of Germans under 30 can name the exact date when Germany and the capital were divided in two, a survey showed.
Berlin will mark 25 years since the fall of the Wall by placing around 8,000 illuminated balloons along the route of the barrier which divided the city between East and West for 30 years.
Two men went to court in Berlin on Wednesday to dispute being fined €2,700 each for wearing the blue shirts of the youth group of former communist East Germany.
The official view of everyday life in socialist East Germany was beaming children and happy farmers rather than grey concrete and queues - as is shown in a new exhibition of official colour photos from the GDR.
Land prices in eastern Germany are rising at dizzying rates and farmers feel they are being squeezed out by foreign investors in a phenomenon known as "land grabbing".
Supermarket Aldi and carmaker Volkswagen allegedly used East German forced labour during the Cold War. A report broadcast on Tuesday evening also said the communist regime forced prisoners to donate blood to sell to the West.
An East German teenager who was listening illicitly to a West German radio station and sent a postcard across the Iron Curtain to try to win a record will receive the prize on Tuesday, 44 years later.
Emigration from the former Communist states of East Germany has finally ended, 23 years after reunification. The slowly improving economy is behind the fall in people moving to the west, a report released on Wednesday found.
Germany has long accepted that 137 people died trying to cross the Berlin Wall, but new research emerged on Friday that a young father drowned in the river Spree, unnoticed for 40 years.
Thousands of Germans are still driving an East German "travelling cardboard box". More than two decades after the Berlin Wall fell, 32,500 Trabants, are on the country's roads. <b>Alex Evans</b> examines their enduring appeal.
Germany has come a long way in the 23 years since reunification, yet deep-seated differences between the east and west still remain. On German Unity Day we ask how united is the country really?
An American ad agency boss claims to have stolen Berlin’s famous Checkpoint Charlie sign after the fall of the Wall. Twenty three years on he wants €1 million for it.
In the first in a new series of Friday interviews, The Local chatted with the man responsible for turning Berlin's iconic pedestrian crossing - the Ampelmann -into an international cult figure.
Berlin is debating whether to protect the giant, Soviet-era, office blocks at Alexanderplatz. Some argue they are an important part of the city's history, despite being old and ugly. Should they be listed or demolished? <b>Have your say.</b>
Two months after revealing details of her life growing up in the former East Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she often thought about leaving for the West – but couldn't bear to leave her parents behind.
Angela Merkel praised on Monday the bravery of protesters who took part in demonstrations against the Communist East German government sixty years ago – which was put down by tanks, prompting an uprising.
Germany's Christian Democrats (CDU) called on Tuesday for symbols associated with the totalitarian socialist regime of former East Germany to be banned, in the same way that it is illegal to display Nazi memorabilia.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has revealed more details of her activities under the communist regime in East Germany, insisting that she had never kept certain things secret, but that no one had ever asked.
