Republikflucht

"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':

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