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A blast from the (German) past

Spend a day at my parents’ place this weekend and cleaned up a bit. Found this old application for Western German citizens to enter East Germany. Interesting to see all the stuff that was asked for. Also wondering why it’s also in English and French, but not Russian…

Application for entering the GDRApplication for entering the GDR

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 13:59 and is filed under lang-en, misc, non-technical, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 Responses to “A blast from the (German) past”

  1. Claudio says:
    15. Feb 2010 at 14:25

    Wasn’t the Budesrepublik Deutschland occupied by UK, USA, and France? That would explain it perfectly.

  2. Karl Lattimer says:
    15. Feb 2010 at 15:52

    International language, and diplomatic language is the reason, the occupier is practically irrelevant here.

  3. aklapper says:
    15. Feb 2010 at 15:59

    Claudio: Not to me, as it’s a document for Western German citizens by the GDR administration.

  4. Carsten says:
    15. Feb 2010 at 16:02

    It’s not in russian, cause russian citizen didn’t need it. Within the borders of the eastern bloc you just needed a passport. This form is for the rest of the world and is asking this things for the secret police in GDR. With this facts they would then search for and observe public enemies.

  5. aklapper says:
    15. Feb 2010 at 16:37

    @Carsten: UK and French citizens did not need this specific application either, because it is for Western German citizens only (“für Bürger der BRD”).

  6. Johannes says:
    15. Feb 2010 at 17:54

    Nice catch ;)

    Anyway, if you know the Visa-Forms used by the U.S. Departement of Homeland Security there isn’t much difference. I guess apart from the employee status it’s mostly the same.

    I didn’t happen to enter the GDR but at least got some stamp in my passport for using transit trains and motorways…