thumb|right|A that was rejected by the Deutsche Post of the GDR. The 1 DM West German stamps depict the Melanchthonhaus, which was located in East Germany. '''''' (German for "Western package", plural: ) is the common term for care packages sent by West Germans to their friends and families in East Germany during the division of Germany from 1961 to 1989.
thumb|right|A that was rejected by the Deutsche Post of the GDR. The 1 DM West German stamps depict the Melanchthonhaus, which was located in East Germany. '''' (German for "Western package", plural: ) is the common term for care packages sent by West Germans to their friends and families in East Germany during the division of Germany from 1961 to 1989.
== History == During the division of Germany from 1945 to 1990, and particularly after the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, East Germans were largely unable to visit West German friends and family members. At the urging of the Office for Pan-German Aid (), many West Germans regularly sent packages to East German relatives on special occasions, such as for birthdays or Christmas. In return, many East Germans would send an Ostpaket'', often containing food, spirits, handicrafts, or confections, such as Stollen for Christmas. With limited opportunities for phone calls and letters, were often the sole form of contact for families, and served as a pleasant improvement for daily life. Beginning in the 1960s, East Germany was able to reliably provide basic necessities, but luxury and exotic products remained scarce.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).