West Berlin was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War; although the actual legal status of West Berlin was ambiguous, and the territorial claim by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was heavily disputed by the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries, West Berlin aligned itself politically with the FRG in 1949. West Berlin was dire…

East Berlin was the de facto capital city of the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as West Berlin. From 13 August 1961 until 9 November 1989, East Berlin was separated from West Berlin by the Berlin Wall. The Western Allied powers did not recognize East Berlin as …