H = Magdeburg
AI = Rostock city
ZD = Cottbus city
The first two plates are in the typical style: A metal base with black decal characters. The third plate is in an unusual style: a borderless flat plastic base with glued on plastic characters.
Germany
German Democratic Republic
Pictures are to scale: 1 cm is approximately 10 pixels.
If you have any corrections, additions or remarks to any of the plates or their descriptions,
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| Normal Series Plates | |
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Normal series plate. Early 1953-1975 style plate made from embossed metal. T = Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz). |
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1976 onwards style normal series plates. H = Magdeburg The first two plates are in the typical style: A metal base with black decal characters. The third plate is in an unusual style: a borderless flat plastic base with glued on plastic characters. |
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1976 onwards style motorcycle plate. A = Rostock. |
| Special Series Plates | |
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Police car and motorcycle plates. VP = Volkspolizei 04 = Potsdam district 01 = Rostock district |
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Army Plate. VA = Volksarmee. |
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Border police plate. GT = Grenztruppen. |
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Sports and Technical Organization plate. U = Leipzig district. Blue plastic seals were used from 1975-1980. |
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Diplomatic plate. 45 = Netherlands. Diplomatic plates had a rectangular annual validation sticker beneath the hyphen. This one is partly removed, but from the design at the left it can be seen that it is from 1990. |
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1982 onwards diplomatic exit plate. When diplomatic cars finally left the country, the normal diplomatic plates had to be surrendered and such pink on white exit plates were issued. |
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Trade plate. KK = Halle city. This plate was used before and after reunification. There used to be an East German seal above the hyphen. This was removed and a West German transitional seal was placed below the hyphen. |
| Transitional Plates during Reunification | |
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Police motorcycle and car plates, used before and after German reunification. Initially, they had the letters VP (vertically aligned on cars, normal size on motorcycles) for Volkspolizei (people's police). Because this is communist diction, "Volks" was dropped from the force's name, and accordingly the letter V was removed from the plates (which were made with stick-on characters). Because the rest of the plates had more time to fade into beige, you can still see the V in bright white. Also West German inspection stickers for 1994 (green) and 1993 (pink) were applied. |
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Border police plates. GS = Grenzschutz. In 1990 the former East German border troops (Grenztruppen) were dissolved and a new border protection unit (Grenzschutz) was established. Thus the license plate code was changed from GT to GS. You can see on this plate that the T sticker was removed and insted a (too high) S was applied. |
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Transitional pair around reunification. During this time, the East German system was used for some time, but plates were made in West German style. Both plates carry a West German transitional seal. SV = Halle. |
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