I’ve done some basic study of the Wall and the travel restrictions that were generally in place (easy for Westerners to go east and then return, but difficult to impossible for Easterners to go west.
If you were a resident of West Berlin, West Germany, or a non-communist country like France or the UK, and happened to be in East Berlin/Germany the day the wall went up, how easy was it to return home? Did you end up having to settle in East Germany?
If you had previously “escaped” from East Germany and had been granted the proper Western documents (e.g. West German passport), could you go to East Germany as a tourist and return as a westerner, or would you be barred from going back west if they found out who you were?
Interesting questions. My understanding is that the government of West Germany considered all Germans between the Rhein and the Oder rivers to be its citizens, so presumably if and when they managed to make it across the border, getting a Western passport was just a formality. Whether that was an effective talisman against being arrested on a visit to the East, I don’t know.
Needless to say the East German authorities could be brutal. There was at least one case involving an East Berliner woman whose new baby was severely ill, and had been admitted to a hospital in West Berlin. At first, she was allowed to make periodic day trips westward to visit the baby, but soon that was no longer allowed. The parents were caught attempting to cross over and spent some time in jail for it.
Eventually they were reunited with their son–who first had to learn he didn’t need to address them with the formal version of “you”!
I think West Germany never restricted its citizenship rules, maintaining the German citizenship of all pre-World War II citizens. So not only East Germans, but also Germans from the territories surrendered to Poland and the USSR, would be entitled to West German citizenship.
What I wonder, though is how East Germany defined its citizenship. Could a West German visiting East Germany be considered to be an East German and prevented from leaving? I kind of doubt it, but we’d need the actual definition of East German citizenship to know for sure.
ETA: and how about West Berliners, who were legally distinct from West Germans? (Well, they were equally FRG citizens, but with different legal rights and obligations.) Now that I think about it, I’d assume that if you could show a passport from a Western country like West Germany (something you couldn’t actually get in East Germany), you’d be in the clear.
You should search this site for the threads we have had on the Berlin Wall coming down. I think you’ll find much of what you want to know is in those threads. They’re full of stories from people that dealt with living with the Berlin wall.
I just tried a search and got back a database error. Now I have to wait to search again and might not be here to do it.