General background In May 1945, following its defeat in
World War II, Germany was occupied by the
United States,
Britain,
France and the
Soviet Union. All four occupation powers reorganised the territories by recreating the
Länder (states), the constituting parts of federal Germany. The state of
Prussia, whose provinces extended to all four zones and covered two thirds of Germany, was
abolished in 1947. Special conditions were assigned to
Berlin, which the four powers divided into four sectors. A united German state government existed in the city until it broke apart in 1948. After 1949, both
West Berlin and
East Berlin (officially only called Berlin) were in effect incorporated into the
Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, respectively, despite not legally being part of these countries.
Länder in East Germany In the
Soviet occupation zone, five
Länder were established which roughly corresponded to the preexisting states and provinces. (The territories east of the
Oder–Neisse line had been transferred from the Soviet occupation zone to the Polish authorities as agreed upon at the
Potsdam Conference.) The five states were: •
Brandenburg was created out of the major part of the Prussian province of that name •
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern was created out of the state of
Mecklenburg (reunited out of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz only in 1934) and the
Western parts of the Prussian
province of Pomerania •
Saxony (
Sachsen) was augmented by the westernmost parts of the Prussian
province of Lower Silesia. Also, the town of
Reichenau was ceded to
Poland. •
Saxony-Anhalt (
Sachsen-Anhalt) was created out of most of the Prussian
Province of Saxony and the
Free State of Anhalt •
Thuringia (
Thüringen) was augmented by neighbouring parts from the Prussian provinces of
Saxony and
Hesse-Nassau. In 1949, the
Soviet occupation zone was transformed into the German Democratic Republic. The five
Länder (and
East Berlin, though the latter only with consultative votes) participated in the legislative branch through the
Länderkammer (Chamber of States), which was elected by the
Landtage (state parliaments). However, the
Länder were not constituting entities forming a
federal republic (as in West Germany) but rather decentralised administrative entities of a quasi-
unitary state. As a nod to the
legal fiction that East Berlin was still occupied territory, it was counted neither as part of Brandenburg, nor as a state in its own right. East Germany claimed Berlin as its capital, a status recognised by virtually all Eastern Bloc countries, and exercise de facto control over East Berlin. However, the
Western Allies (the
US,
UK, and
France) never formally acknowledged the authority of the East German government to govern East Berlin; the official Allied protocol recognised only the authority of the
Soviet Union in East Berlin in accordance with the occupation status of Berlin as a whole. == Division into
Bezirke ==