"Republikflucht" ("desertion from the republic") and "Republikflüchtling(e)" ("deserters from the republic") were the terms used by authorities in the German Democratic Republic (GDR - East Germany) to describe the process of and the person(s) leaving the GDR for a life in West Germany or any other Western (non-Warsaw Pact) country (Eastern Bloc emigration and defection).
The term applies both to the mass desertion of millions who could leave the GDR rather easily before the Berlin Wall was erected on 13 August 1961, as well as those few thousands who made a dangerous attempt to cross over the Iron Curtain (e.g. the Berlin Wall, the Inner German border, or the western border of another country of the Eastern Bloc), or who managed to obtain temporary exit visas and subsequently did not return, from 1961 to 1989.
Some estimates put the number of those who left the Soviet sector of Berlin, the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR between 1945 and 1961 between 3 and 3.5 million. Close to one million of those who left were refugees and expellees from World War II and the post-war era initially stranded in the Soviet zone or East Berlin.
The numbers leaving the GDR following the construction of the Wall dropped sharply to several hundred a year as an attempt to flee the GDR via its fortified borders involved considerable personal risk of injury or death (see: List of deaths at the Berlin Wall). Several hundred Republikflüchtlinge were shot; about 75,000 were caught and imprisoned.
A propaganda booklet published by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in 1955 for the use of party agitators outlined the seriousness of 'flight from the republic':
| “ | Both from the moral standpoint as well as in terms of the interests of the whole German nation, leaving the GDR is an act of political and moral backwardness and depravity.
Those who let themselves be recruited objectively serve West German Reaction and militarism, whether they know it or not. Is it not despicable when for the sake of a few alluring job offers or other false promises about a "guaranteed future" one leaves a country in which the seed for a new and more beautiful life is sprouting, and is already showing the first fruits, for the place that favors a new war and destruction? Is it not an act of political depravity when citizens, whether young people, workers, or members of the intelligentsia, leave and betray what our people have created through common labor in our republic to offer themselves to the American or British secret services or work for the West German factory owners, Junkers, or militarists? Does not leaving the land of progress for the morass of an historically outdated social order demonstrate political backwardness and blindness? ... orkers throughout Germany will demand punishment for those who today leave the German Democratic Republic, the strong bastion of the fight for peace, to serve the deadly enemy of the German people, the imperialists and militarists. |
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The former East German party leader Erich Honecker was charged in 1993 for ordering soldiers to kill people trying to escape. The trial was postponed due to his bad health, and he died in 1994.
Refugees from the Soviet sector of Berlin, the Soviet zone or East Germany could apply to be accepted as Vertriebene (expellees) of the sub-group of Soviet Zone Refugees (Sowjetzonenflüchtlinge) under the Federal Expellee Law (BVFG § 3), and thus receive support from the West German government. They must have fled before 1 July 1990 in order to rescue themselves from an emergency created by the political conditions imposed by the regime there, especially a danger for one's health, life, personal freedom or freedom of conscience (BVFG § 3). The law did not apply for former supporters of the eastern political system of considerable influence, perpetrators against legality and humanity during the Nazi rule or afterwards within East Berlin or East Germany, and finally not for those who had fought against the democracy in West Germany or West Berlin (BVFG § 3 (2)).
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