Giving engagement gifts is complicated. You don’t want to appear stingy, but you also don’t want to be overly generous in case there’s a glaring disproportion between what they give you and what you give. It is common to see meetings between country leaders giving each other a symbolic gift, and what happened during Fidel Castro’s visit to the German Democratic Republic is a very interesting story.

They gave him a teddy bear, and he gave him a Caribbean island. And maybe with the bear he won.

good vibes. This story started in the 70s. Fidel Castro visited East Germany, with whom Cuba maintained good relations because of a common enemy, the United States. This union was both a cultural, ideological and economic bond, and a model for Cuba, which established its educational model through East Germany.

It is said that during the visit in question, Fidel was given a stuffed Berlin bear as a gift. This must have impressed the Cuban leader, because according to newspapers of the time, Fidel opened a map, pointed to an island, and handed it to East Germany. Yes, all of it.

“It is in the Bay of Pigs where the imperialist occupation took place,” Fidel said. This was Cayo Blanco del Sur, an island of about seven square kilometers with idyllic beaches and named after Ernst Thälmann, leader of the KPD from 1925 to 1933, who was arrested by the Gestapo.

The moment when Fidel said, “Do you see this island? Well, this is yours.”

Caribbean East Germany. Germans were happy for the German Democratic Republic to be part of the Caribbean and even recorded videos highlighting the friendship between Cuba and East Germany. Moreover, a bust of Thälmann was placed on one of the beaches, and in fact this was the only thing on the island, along with palm trees and fauna.

But hey, it was still an East German thing, and it had to be exploited during the harshest winter months, especially since it could be a warm haven for the elite. HE spoiler It just never happened.

Be careful, it is symbolic. Two stories come into play here. The first is the most plausible: Residents of Communist Germany could not travel to the island. They couldn’t afford it. Singer Frank Schöbel, one of the few singers able to visit the island, said: “We could barely make it to Hungary and…we wanted to fly to the Caribbean?”

On the other hand, there was a rumor that all this was symbolic and that Fidel would not actually surrender the island. It was just a goodwill gesture. So much so that, after the unification of Germany in 1990, when it was said that the Cuban government’s gift was not that much, everyone forgot about it and was left to its fate as an almost untouched Caribbean island.

Molossia joins the party. All? No, the tiny nation of Molossia (which also has an interesting history as a micro-nation claiming sovereignty over 4.6 hectares in Nevada) declared war on East Germany. This is already funny in itself, but they argue that since no German side claimed Ernst Thälmann Island at the time of reunification, the island remained part of East Germany and therefore the war continued.

East Germany has been absent for 34 years, but Molossia claims sovereignty over the island. Actually, and this is no joke, on the website of the Republic of Molossia there is a banner invites us to buy war bonds to support the war between the micronation and East Germany.

But apart from that, the Caribbean island is still alive today with local fauna, palm trees, and a bust of Thälmann that was disfigured by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Since this is part of the military exclusion zone, Visit…unless a Cuban fisherman is bribed to come illegally.

Pictures | Bundesarchiv, Bild

in Xataka | The Havana that Fidel left and will probably never return to