Page:CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110024-7.pdf/14

 APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110024-7

'''FIGURE 3. Population density

declined 7.7% between 1946 and the end of 1970 as compared to an 8.4% decline for all of East Germany. Only a few cities, such as Eisenhuettenstadt, Hoyerswerda, and Schwedt, where major new industrial enterprises have been created, have gained significant numbers of residents.

From 1953, the first year for which data are available, until 1969, annual internal migration from one Kreis (county) to another ranged from a high of 4.8% of the total population in 1953 to 1.6% in 1969. During this period, 9,783,000 inter-Kreis migrations were counted. No cumulative data are available on migrations within counties for this period, but almost 395,000 East Germans moved from one community (Gemeinde) to another in 1969. In that year communities of less than 10,000 population showed a net loss of 34,100 inhabitants, of whom 32,900 had resided in communities of less than 2,000 people. The largest absolute increase (1,500) was registered by cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, and the largest proportional increase (0.7%) was registered by cities with between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants. Some of the internal migration, particularly in the earlier years, was decreed by the authorities in their efforts to depopulate the areas near internal frontiers. Although many of the rural and small town migrants fled to West Berlin and West Germany, others moved to the larger towns and cities seeking better paying jobs in industry. Internal migration also is affected by the government's efforts to regulate urban development to avoid crowding and congestion. The government hopes that by expanding old towns and building new ones it will be able to control population growth in areas of old cities now undergoing extensive urban renewal and thus avoid the problems plaguing many large Western urban centers (Figure 6).

The pattern of population growth and decline in the postwar period has been most markedly influenced by migrations to and from other countries. Of the 16.7 million persons living in the area in 1939, only 14.5 million remained in 1946. By that year, however, an additional 4 million Germans were settled in East Germany, having fled or been expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and former German territories incorporated into Poland and the U.S.S.R. The continued influx of refugees and the return of former residents dispersed by the war resulted in a steady

9

APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110024-7