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Chronicle 1983

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    • 1 September

      1983

      Badge of the GDR peace movement ("Swords into ploughshares")
      Badge of the GDR peace movement ("Swords into ploughshares") (Source: Private archive Hans-Hermann Hertle)
      Members of the GDR peace movement are arrested by the People’s Police after they try to form a human chain between the Soviet and the American embassies in East Berlin.

    • 15 September

      1983

      After the close of the Madrid CSCE summit, the GDR Council of Ministers for the first time issues a regulation granting the purely formal right to apply for a "change of residence to another country". However, this right is restricted to people moving to join close relatives and spouses. Even in such cases, there is no legal guarantee that they will obtain permission, as the regulation is framed as a discretionary provision.

      It also contains no fewer than ten reasons for rejection; it does not require citizens to be given a written notification, and the only authority with which they can officially lodge a complaint is the one responsible for processing applications in the first place. Secret training material issued by the Interior Ministry states: "The GDR assumes that there are in principle no objective social reasons under socialism why citizens of the GDR have to leave their socialist state. For socialism is the society of real humanism." Decree on the Regulation of Issues of Family Reunions and Marriage between Citizens of the German Democratic Republic and Foreigners of 15 September 1983 (in German) less

    • 25 September

      1983

      In East Berlin, Richard von Weizsäcker becomes the first Ruling Mayor of Berlin to meet SED General Secretary Erich Honecker.
      RIAS report on humanitarian concessions granted by the GDR in return for the loan of billions of DM, 27 September 1983 (in German) (Source: Archiv Deutschlandradio, Broadcast: Die Spätausgabe, Redakteur im Studio/Reporter: Peter Kohagen, Robert Röntgen)
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