Pensioners in the GDR are allowed by a resolution of the GDR Council of Ministers to travel to visit relatives in West Germany or West Berlin once a year for up to four weeks.
10 September
1964
The Portuguese Armando Rodrigues de Sá arrives in Cologne. He is celebrated there as the millionth "foreign worker" and is given a moped as a welcoming present.
13 September
1964
In the early morning, the 21-year-old Michael Meyer tries to cross the Wall towards West Berlin on Stallschreiberstrasse in the Mitte district of Berlin. After some warning shots, GDR border guards fire directly at him. Michael Meyer is hit by several shots and is left lying right next to the Wall. American soldiers and West Berlin police officers give covering fire and pull him into West Berlin using ropes and a ladder leant against the Wall.
21 September
1964
GDR prime minister Otto Grotewohl, who was partly responsible for the forced merger of the SPD and Communist Party in 1946, dies in East Berlin after a stroke. On 24 September, the GDR Volkskammer confirms Willi Stoph, who has already been representing Grotewohl for two years, as his successor.
24 September
1964
In East Berlin, the 2nd Border Pass Agreement is signed. It allows West Berliners to visit their East Berlin relatives from 30.10. - 12.11.1964, over Christmas/New Year 1964/65 and at Easter and Pentecost 1965. In the first of these visiting periods in October/November, around 600,000 passes are issued, and in the second at Christmas/New Year, 821,000.
