Inner German relations, also known as the FRG-GDR relations, East Germany-West Germany relations or German-German relations, were the political, diplomatic, economic, cultural and personal contacts between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, at the period of the West-East division in German history from the founding of East Germany on 7 October 1949 to Germany's reunification on 3 October 1990.
August 1961: Water cannon protects the construction of the Berlin Wall.
Chairman of the Council of Ministers Willi Stoph (left) and Chancellor Willy Brandt in Erfurt in 1970, the first meeting of the heads of government of the two German states
Monday demonstration in Leipzig on October 16, 1989
A truck is sealed at the inner German border.
Neue Ostpolitik, or Ostpolitik for short, was the normalization of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and
Eastern Europe, particularly the German Democratic Republic beginning in 1969. Influenced by Egon Bahr, who proposed "change through rapprochement" in a 1963 speech at the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing, the policies were implemented beginning with Willy Brandt, fourth Chancellor of the FRG from 1969 to 1974, and winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts to place this policy at the acme of the FRG.
Willy Brandt (left) and Willi Stoph in Erfurt 1970, the first encounter of a Federal Chancellor with his East German counterpart, an early step in the de-escalation of the Cold War
Brandt's successor Helmut Schmidt with East German party leader Erich Honecker, Döllnsee 1981
