Giving an engagement gift is complicated. You don’t want to appear stingy, but you also don’t want to be overly generous in case there is an obvious disproportion between what they give you and what you give away. In meetings between leaders of countries it is common to see that they give each other a symbolic gift, and a very curious story is what happened when Fidel Castro visited the German Democratic Republic.
They gave him a teddy bear, he gave a Caribbean island. And maybe with the bear he won.
Good vibes. This story began in the 70s. Fidel Castro visited East Germany, a GDR with which Cuba maintained good relations because there was a common enemy: the United States. This union was a cultural, ideological and economic bond, but also a model for a Cuba that built its educational model based on that of East Germany.
During the aforementioned visit, it is said that Fidel was given a stuffed Berliner bear. It is something that must have moved the Cuban leader, since, according to the newspapers of the time, Fidel spread out a map, pointed to an island and gave it to East Germany. Yes, whole.
“It is in the Bay of Pigs, where the imperialist invasion took place,” said Fidel. It was Cayo Blanco del Sur, an island of about seven square kilometers with paradisiacal beaches that was renamed after Ernst Thälmann, leader of the KPD from 1925 to 1933, when he was arrested by the Gestapo.
The moment when Fidel said “do you see this island? Well, it’s yours”
The Caribbean GDR. The Germans were happy, since it was a piece of the Caribbean for the German Democratic Republic and videos were even recorded emphasizing the friendship between Cuba and East Germany. Furthermore, a bust of Thälmann was placed on one of the beaches and, really, it was the only thing on the island, along with the palm trees and the fauna.
But hey, it was still something owned by the GDR and had to be taken advantage of, since it could be a warm refuge during the harshest winter months, especially for the elites. He spoiler It’s just that that never happened.
Be careful, it is symbolic. Two stories come into play here. The first is the most plausible: the inhabitants of communist Germany could not travel to the island. They simply couldn’t afford it. Frank Schöbel, a singer who was one of the few who was able to visit the island, stated that “we could barely go to Hungary and… we wanted to fly to the Caribbean?”
On the other hand, a rumor circulated that all this had been symbolic and Fidel was not really going to hand over the island. It was simply a gesture of good will. So much so that, after the unification of Germany in 1990, it was said that the gift from the Cuban government had not been such, so everyone seemed to forget about it and it was left to its fate as an almost virgin Caribbean island.
Molossia joins the party. All? No, the small nation of Molossia (which also has a curious history due to it being a micronation that claims sovereignty over 4.6 hectares in Nevada) declared war on the GDR. This is already funny per se, but they claim that since neither German side claimed the Ernst Thälmann Island at reunification, the island remains part of the GDR and therefore the war continues.
The GDR has not existed for 34 years, but Molossia claims sovereignty over the island. In fact, and this is no joke, on the Republic of Molossia website there is a banner which invites us to Buy war bonds to support the war between the micronation and the GDR.
But well, apart from that, today the Caribbean island is still inhabited by local fauna, palm trees and the bust of Thälmann disfigured due to the action of Hurricane Mitch in 1998. It is part of a military exclusion territory, so it is not can visit… unless some Cuban fisherman is bribed to arrive illegally.
Images | Bundesarchiv, Bild
In WorldOfSoftware | The Havana that Fidel left and that, possibly, will never return
