Germany is marking the 36th anniversary of reunification. On 3 October 1990 the former GDR acceded to the Federal Republic, ending a division that had lasted 41 years and making Berlin once again the capital of a united Germany.
In Brandenburg, Steeven Bretz, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union in the state parliament, paid tribute to former Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the Glienicke Bridge in Potsdam, where the border once ran. "We owe him a great deal, above all the fact that unity succeeded," Bretz said, according to his Instagram account. "The fact that we are able to celebrate unity is, I believe, a gift of history."
