Life Behind the Iron Curtain and Leipzig Today

In a museum about life during East German rule of which I forget the name is this chart showing the number of East German citizens that fled to the West each month between 1949 and 1960. The units on are in thousands.

Here are the beautiful buildings of Leipzig today.

In 1954, the DDR raised production target levels without raising incomes. The citizens rioted in the streets and the government responded with military force. A sign of times to come in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and Poland.

July 18th, 1961 -- Four Thousand East Germans fled to West Berlin in one weekend. Weeks later, up went the Berlin Wall.

A sign in West Germany calling to help their brethren in the East.

The city of Karl-Marx-Stadt voted to return to its former name of Chemnitz after Germany reunited.

There is tons of construction happening in Leipzig and Berlin and probably most cities in the former East Germany.