confused - Page 1

How can i tell a East German GSD from a West German GSD

Pedigree

Are you asking about your dog and is your dog listed here in the database?  If so post a link to it and then the members can see who is in your dogs back ground and they may be able to tell you

If you are asking in general then you may be able to get this information from the pedigree and that comes with knowledge of who the dogs are and the country they are registered in  

East Germany has not existed in 25 years .. so the distinction is for dog sellers and pedigree guru types only. If you can't tell by looking or by DNA then there is no difference. If you can charge more $$$ for an East German, West German, or Czech then that is what the distinction is about. There is more difference in appearance between different West German GSD types than between West German and East, DDR, or Czech type GSD.

Tugboat, it´s not easy - after all, a German Shepherd dog is a German Shepherd dog, no matter if he was bred in West or East Germany, or later on in Eastern Europe. All of them are descendants of the foundation dogs of the breed, although they developed slightly different troughout the decades.

The easiest way to acknowledge East or West are the so called "Zuchtbuchnummern".
West Germany ( since 1990 whole Germany ) uses "SZ"
East Germany used "DDR" ( till 1990 )

No more "DDR" numbers after the fall of the "wall" in 1990 ( I think they stopped their register in April 1990 ). That said you need to track down a pedigree back to the late 80s to be sure.

Today there is only a handful of "real" DDR dogs/breeders left in my country. Most of the former DDR breeders were eager to use West German studs as soon as possible ( similar to Eastern Europe ). Good ? Bad? I don´t know. I think mixing the gene pool was good for the breed as a whole.

In case you are uncertain about specific dogs, you need to use Google, and the website DDR Legends may be helpful in finding East German dogs and kennel names, too.

Thanks for all the input everyone

From the pedigree... From the sire dam, follow each dog in each bracket back till you reach a DDR registered dog. Once you have found a DDR regs dog in each, move to the next pair. If all lines go through registered DDR dogs the dog is east line.

Heres one of my dogs and also here is an easy cheat that could be used once in a while but they are getting much harder to find. Click on the 4th or 5th generation. All dogs go through the DDR registered dogs in his 5th and almost all in his fourth. No need to go back further he is East line.

http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=751613-satan-de-lavia

 

Edit: I disagree with the other posters that there are only small differences between the lines. There are plenty of threads here to search and read regarding the differences viewed by many. 

Yeah Gigante, but are those differences visual ones ???

No, financial ones.

No not as an iron clad rule 100% hundmutter, but many times the east line stands out visually different as well yes. In bubbaboo's description I dont see how people who are familiar with each line could not be reasonably accurate in visually identifying the dogs breed true to type.