On August 18, 1972, Aktuelle Kamerathe state television news program of the then German Democratic Republic (GDR) broadcast a surprising report.
It reported on the ceremony of transfer of sovereignty of an island in the Caribbean that the then Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, had given to East Germany.
It was what was then called Cayo Blanco del Sur, an islet of 7 km2, 500 meters wide and 15 km long located in the Gulf of Cazones.
That day, the island would change its name to be called Cayo Ernesto Thaelmann either Ernst-Thälmann-Insel in honor of the German communist politician Ernst Thälmann, who had been leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during most of the Weimar Republic and who was shot in 1944 on the orders of Adolf Hitler.
During the ceremony of transfer of sovereignty of the new Ernesto Thaelmann Island, the Aktuelle Kamera He also showed in his newscast the inauguration of a bust of Ernest Thälmann.
Present there were the German ambassador and several of his delegates with dozens of Cuban representatives.
The story
It all started during an official visit by Fidel Castro to Berlin, in June 1972.
He had been invited by Erick Honecker, the then general secretary of the Unified Socialist Party, the main political group in the GDR.
The German politician is said to have given Castro a teddy bear, the symbol of Berlin, as a gift.
Castro, however, was more generous. His gift to East Germany: the Caribbean island.
According to the newspapers of the time, in the Council of State building, the Cuban leader spread a map of Cuba in front of Honecker and pointed to a small island that was part of the archipelago of the Southern White Keys.
Castro explained to Honecker that Cuba’s gift to the GDR was “in the Bay of Pigs, where the imperialists invaded.”
Castro then announced that the island would be renamed in honor of Ernesto Thälmann, “in memory of an exemplary son of the German people.”
The Cuban leader also told his German hosts that the small beach on the uninhabited islet would be called “GDR beach.”
The objective of this small territory 500 meters wide and 15 km long that Cuba gave to the GDR was to turn it into a “communist tourist destination” for East Germans.
The honoree, Enst Thälmann, who today is considered the father of the Marxist-Leninist movement in Germany, had been arrested in 1933 by the Gestapo, and after being imprisoned in solitary confinement for 11 years, he was shot in 1944 by order of Adolf Hitler .
forgotten island
The plan to create a communist tourist destination in the Caribbean was never carried out due to the economic problems that the country was experiencing.
And the island, which from that day in June 1972 was a German territory, remained intact with its highly developed reef formations and a number of endangered species, such as black coral and ornamental reef fish.
In East Germany the news, It didn’t seem to have any major repercussions.
No citizen of the GDR was allowed to spend their holidays in the distant Caribbean paradise.
The East Germans wondered how they could get to the Caribbean if they were hardly allowed to travel to Hungary.
Little by little Ernesto Thälmann Island fell into oblivion.
After reunification in 1990, Germany did not claim the territory.
As it was said, the “gift” from the Cuban government had not been such. Rather than a real concession, it was reported, it had been “a symbolic gesture.”
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Eric Honecker, who became president of the GDR until 1989, went into exile in Chile where he remained until his death in 1994.
And also the man who gave his name to the German Caribbean island was forgotten with the passage of time.
In 1988, the island was hit hard by Hurricane Mitch, destroying the bust of Ernesto Thälmann.
Today the island remains uninhabited and the only reminder that it was once German territory are the remains in the sand of that statue of his “exemplary son.”
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