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Chronicle 1963

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    • 4 July

      1963

      For the 70th birthday of Walter Ulbricht, the Soviet party and state leader Nikita Khrushchev visits East Berlin once again. "The time is no longer far off," he says, "when the GDR will overtake West Germany in all important economic indicators." more
    • 13 July

      1963

      West German passports are confiscated from West Berliners travelling between zones by GDR border guards, who say the passports are illegal because West Berlin does not belong to West Germany.
    • 15 July

      1963

      In view of the economic crisis in East Germany, the GDR State Council issues a guideline for a "New Economic System for the Planning and Management of the Economy" (NÖSPL). Total production costs, prices, turnover and profits, as well as personal material interest, are in future to be used as "economic levers".
    • 15 July

      1963

      In a speech at the "Evangelische Akademie Tutzing", Egon Bahr, the head of the Press and Information Office of the Land of Berlin, proposes a strategy of "change through rapprochement" with regard to the Eastern Bloc and the GDR in particular, saying that every policy aimed at directly overthrowing the GDR regime is pointless.

      He says that any policy providing relief to the people in the GDR has to be cautious and gradual "so that it does not give rise to a revolutionary change that would of necessity trigger a Soviet intervention to protect Soviet interests." Bahr's speech is later seen as the start of the SPD's ostpolitik. less
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