This research project carried out by Heike Amos focuses, from a historical perspective, on the aims, activities, results, and evaluations of the SED leadership’s policy on Germany with the assistance of its central party apparatus between the building and fall of the Berlin Wall. The goal here is to analyze the processes of political interaction, opinion-forming, and decision-making in this area of policy on the part of the SED’s Politburo and Central Committee Secretariat, and to investigate the institutional, structural, and personnel networks within the groups centrally responsible for “Western Operations” within the SED’s Central Committee. The study takes into account state-official institutions carrying out SED policy on Germany, including in particular the “FRG/West Berlin” Department of the GDR Foreign Ministry and the State Secretariat for West German Affairs (1965-1971). The project deals with a topic that involves the history of parties, policies, and institutions – which is to say a “history from above” – researching and presenting these operations with regard to West Germany from 1961 to 1989 in light of the perspectives, actions, and reactions of the SED leadership.