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East Germany was the informal Western name for the Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR (German Democratic Republic — GDR), the communist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany and in the East Berlin portion of the Allied-occupied capital city. The German Democratic Republic had an area of 107,771&_160;km². (41,610&_160;mi.²), bordering Czechoslovakia in the south, West Germany (officially Federal Republic of Germany) in the south and west, the Baltic Sea to the north, and Poland in the east.

At German reunification, on 3 October 1990, the Länder (states) of East Germany were integrated as new federal states to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Moreover, the German Democratic Republic was disestablished after the Communist government, of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), lost the general election on 18 March 1990, and thus its parliamentary majority in the Volkskammer (People’s Chamber); subsequently, on 23 August 1990, the Volkskammer re-established the five pre-war states — Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia (disestablished in 1952) — for the reunification of East Germany to West Germany.

The official name was Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic), usually abbreviated as DDR (GDR). Both terms were used in East Germany with an increasing emphasis on the abbreviated name, especially since East Germany considered West Germans and West Berliners as foreigners following its second constitution in 1968.

The name, Sowjetische Besatzungszone (Soviet Occupation Zone, often abbreviated to SBZ), was used by those who wanted to indicate that East Germany lacked sovereignty, whereas others used Ostzone or der Osten (English Eastern Zone or the East), to avoid the actual name of the state. The latter term, because it was based plainly on geographic location, was sometimes also used by East Germans. Some West German media referred to East Germany initially as the SBZ and later consistently named it the so-called "GDR" (sogenannte "DDR").^{[citation needed]}

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