Germany Reunifies
339 days after the Wall falls, East and West Germany become one country again
Quick facts
- Date
- 3 October 1990
- Unification Treaty signed
- 31 August 1990
- International agreement
- Two Plus Four Treaty
- Days since Wall fell
- 339
What happened
Following the Berlin Wall's collapse, East Germany held its first free elections in March 1990, which produced a strong majority for parties supporting rapid reunification with West Germany. A Unification Treaty between the two German states was signed on 31 August 1990, and separately, the Two Plus Four Treaty, signed by the two Germanys along with the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, secured international agreement, including from the Soviets, for German reunification and full sovereignty. East Germany formally dissolved and its territory joined the Federal Republic on 3 October 1990, and hours after reunification took effect, U.S. President George H.W. Bush telephoned West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to congratulate him, in a call the National Archives preserves a transcript of.
Why it matters
Reunification ended the postwar division of Germany just 339 days after the Wall fell, restoring a single German state for the first time since 1945 and, alongside the Soviet Union's dissolution the following year, marking one of the clearest endpoints of the Cold War itself. The reunified Germany, now the largest economy in the European Union, has since anchored EU policy and institutions from its capital in Berlin.
How we know
The reunification treaties and the diplomatic exchanges around them are preserved as primary documents, including the National Archives' holding of the Bush-Kohl telephone memo from the day reunification took effect.
Sources
- National Archives and Records Administration. Chancellor Helmut Kohl - Reunification of Germany, 1990 (Bush-Kohl telephone memo, 3 October 1990) · Primary source (author-declared)archives.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- In Custodia Legis, Library of Congress. FALQs: 35 Years of German Reunification · Primary sourceblogs.loc.gov · The domain "blogs.loc.gov" is on our Primary source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Part of a timelineHistory of Germany33 events · From the Teutoburg Forest to a divided nation reunited, the long argument over what "Germany" even isView all →