Wednesday, October 03, 2018

Where Was Germany Divided?


Today is the Day of German Unity. The day on which Germans celebrate the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990. The question that Waz would like you to answer on this day is, 28 years after reunification Do You Remember Where Germany Was Divided?

All you need to do to test your knowledge is draw the historical internal border between East and West Germany on a map of the country. Once you've drawn the old border on Waz's German map you will be shown where the border actually was and the lines that every other Waz reader has drawn. You will also be rated based on how well you did compared to all the previous lines drawn on the map.

Of course there is very little new in map making and Waz's interactive has more than a passing resemblance to the Berliner Morgenpost's Einheitsreise interactive feature, which they ran back in 2015. The Berliner Morgenpost map still works so you can draw the internal border between East on West Germany on their map as well (and get a better score - now you know exactly where the border was).

The Morgenpost map recorded around 13,000 responses to their map quest in just a few days back in 2015. The Webkid blog took a little time to analyze the results. The blog post includes a nice video which draws some of the results on a map one by one. The video starts with some of the wildest guesses and slowly begins to show the more accurate drawn borders as the video progresses. The blog also includes a heat-map showing all of the guesses made and the original border between East and West Germany.

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