There are two Germanys
An old model or guideline was retired in favor of a new one.
TaughtEast Germany and West Germany are separate countries, divided by the Iron Curtain, with Berlin split by a wall.
NowGermany reunified on 3 October 1990. There is one Germany, and its capital is Berlin. The wall came down in November 1989.
What actually happened
For 41 years the division was the defining fact of European geography, and it was taught as a permanent condition of the world rather than as an outcome anyone expected to change. Almost nobody, including intelligence agencies, predicted it would end when it did.
The wall opened on 9 November 1989 following a chaotic press conference in which an East German official misread his notes and said the new travel rules took effect immediately. Formal reunification followed less than a year later. Bonn had been West Germany's capital; the reunified country moved its seat of government back to Berlin over the following decade. If you graduated before 1990, the Europe you memorized had an entire ideological border running through it that has since been erased, along with the Warsaw Pact, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.
Newsletter
Get new weekly revisions
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: German reunificationbritannica.com
- US State Department: German unificationhistory.state.gov
Who was taught this
Still standard through 1990, so anyone who finished school between 1950 and 1990 learned the earlier version.