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| | Top 20 Encyclopedia (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01) |
 | | East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR), German Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), was a communist state that existed from 1949 to 1990 in the former Soviet occupation zone of Germany. |
 | | In the first and last free elections of the GDR on March 18, 1990, the leading communist party SED lost the majority, which was guaranteed in the previous elections, in the Volkskammer (the parliament of the GDR). |
 | | On a more traditional level, the East German government celebrated the fact that Johann Sebastian Bach was born in East German territory, and spent a great deal of money converting his house in Eisenach into a museum of his life, which, among other things, included more than 300 instruments from Bach's life. |
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