Has this occasionally been snickered at when misinterpreted?
Weapons. East Germany was a huge supplier of weapons to the rest of Europe.
Technically, West Berlin was a separate sovereign country from West Germany. West Berlin had its own legislative assembly, which basically rubber-stamped carbon copies of West German law, but those would not become law in West Berlin until that formality had been accomplished. West Berlin could have enacted laws different from those of West Germany, if it had wanted to.
West Berlin also issued its own postage stamps, but there was a postal union between the two, and stamps from either side were recognized as valid for postage on either side.
Nitpick: Berlin served as the je jure capital of the Federal Republic while it was under four-power occupation.
It was separate from West Germany, but it wasn’t a “sovereign country”. It was under four-power occupation.
One interesting curiosity was the public rail system, which ran on tracks that predated the division. So the train from one point in West Berlin to another might pass through East Germany. At the border, all West German conductors and motormen would get off the U-bahn, and be replaces by East Germans (who had a dour disposition) for the section of S-bahn. Then when recrossing the border, the conductors would switch again. West Berliners riding the train might be sitting in a seat next to an East Berliner, who was traveling the S-bahn from one point to another, but the Easterner would have to get off before the train recrossed into West Berlin. But West Berliners didn’t particularly like that route, so would try to avoid an itinerary passing through the East.
I met a West Berlin girl when traveling, and stayed in West Berlin in her company for a few days, and remained in touch with her for years. West Berlin was a very vibrant city in the 1960s.
A few years later, I was driving across on the corridor to Poland and illegally stopped for a couple of hours in Potsdam, which happened to be on May Day, and anyone who could have arrested me was in parade dress for the festivities and shows of patriotic force. It was hard to mix in, westerners were conspicuous by their clothing, especially shoes. I couldn’t do anything but walk around, as I had no legal money.
Glad to hear the walking man is still on duty? I thought they tried to update him at some point and people were upset.
For that, the customs officers looked “through [their] paperback books page by page and closely examined the seams of every piece of clothing”?
Slight tangent: This is an interesting and funny movie set at the time of reunification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Bye,_Lenin!
Looking for signs of plastique that might be passed on to the IRA, perhaps?
During the Warsaw Pact era, Czechoslovakia was a major source for Semtex for terrorist orgs and non-western countries like Vietnam and Libya. The wiki article indicates that both the Provisional IRA and Irish National Liberation Army were heavy users.
Czechoslovakia was right beside East Germany and had a similar foreign policy during the Warsaw Pact era.