Who knew that there is a place that is forever East Germany? The fine Strange Maps posts a satellite image of Playa RDA, or DDR Beach, a 15 kilometre long by 500 metres wide sand spit on the southern coast of Cuba. On the 5th of June, 1972, Fidel Castro gave the sliver of land to the DDR during a state visit, renaming the island Isla Ernst Thälmann and the beach, Playa RDA. You can view it via Google Maps here.
Thälmann was the German Communist leader up to 1933, and was commemorated by a couple of other things, such as a German battalion in the International Brigades during the Spanish civil war. Later, a statue of him was erected on the island after a ceremony at which some hundred guests took part.
According to German Wikipedia, there was a serious point to all this. World trade in sugar was subject to a quota system at the time, and the transfer of the island was theoretically in exchange for an East German sugar refinery’s share of the European export market. No wonder the Cubans were pleased.
The island is in a Cuban military training area near the Bay of Pigs. Which makes me wonder, if during the late 1970s, when East German warships regularly sailed to African and South American ports, they ever visited it? And what is the communist equivalent of “15 men on a dead man’s chest, yo ho ho! and a bottle of rum!”?
