Outside of Berlin, what was life like in East Germany during the Cold War? Was crossing the border from east to west as dangerous as trying to cross the Berlin Wall?

Modified from an earlier answer of mine

This is a tricky question to answer because the German adjustment to the creation of the GDR and its ruling SED party was multifaceted and varied considerably over time. What daily life was like was quite different for a GDR citizen in 1953, 1973, or 1983. Therefore it becomes very important when examining the GDR to distinguish between Germans' often begrudging acceptance of the status quo and embracing the SED's ideology of Aufbau Sozialismus(building socialism). The latter position always had some adherents among the wider public throughout the GDR's lifespan, but there was usually a distinct gap between rhetoric and reality that placed a hard ceiling on the SED's popularity and credibility.

One element that forced compliance and adjustment was coercion by the state. The fact that the Soviet military occupation government (SVAG) kept a large contingent of troops in the Eastern zone certainly put a damper on any incipient resistance movement to the emergence of SED rule. Boots on the ground often meant that many Germans in the Easter zone had little choice but to accept post-1945 political realities. Systems of military justice almost invariably favored the occupier and underscored to Germans their subordinate place with the authorities. The SED's use of Soviet-supplied tanks to crush the 1953 uprisings also highlighted to many that at the end of the day, the state could, and would, use the barrel of a gun to survive.

But coercion was only one component that enforced order within the nascent GDR. Co-option of existing political trends and sentiments was another strand in forming some degree of stability. SVAG's decision in June 1945 to allow the reestablishment of four political parties- the Communist Party (KPD), Socialist Party (SPD), the liberal democrats (LDP), Christian Democrats (CDU)- was a move that surprised many contemporaries at the time. Especially in the light of the Cold War and the later erection of single-party dictatorships within Eastern Europe, SVAG's move at first appears rather puzzling. However, there was a certain logic behind this decision. For one thing, Stalin believed that the Soviet European interests postwar would not be furthered by pursuing a strategy of revolutionary insurrection by a vanguard party, but rather through Communist Parties entering into political alliances with the left and co-opting the democratic system. Although SVAG clearly put its thumb on the scales to favor the SED (the forced amalgamation of the KPD and SPD), this strategy did buy a number of converts in the early postwar years. The war's ignominious end and the final agony of its last eighteen months had thoroughly discredited fascism in the eyes of many Germans and the political left held a great deal of attraction as alternatives to a brand of politics that left little but ashes. SED promises of a better future and an equitable standard of living was one that was enormously attractive in a time of real material dearth. Ironically, the SED's vision of a future of modern conveniences acquired through honest work (one of the hallmark slogans of the postwar period was "work harder, earn more") hearkened back to National Socialism's appeals to German workers that the the new order would reward the work of honest labor with modern amenities. Although the SED's promises of a socialist utopia foundered amidst Soviet reparations, bureaucratic incompetence and cronyism, as well as lofty expectations, it was an attractive script that had earlier found some resonance under Hitler.

The enthusiasm felt by some for the Aufbau campaign helped the SED create its own cadres among German youth or those relatively uninvolved with National Socialism. The SED leadership, many of whom were KPD exiles from the 1930s, placed great stock in raising up a cadre of loyalists to prevent an internal coup. The cadre-building process often targeted young who may have grown up under Hitler, but whose youth meant their politics were relatively malleable, and much of the groundwork had already been laid by SVAG. Much of these programs sought to create a "correct" class structure by promoting or uplifting various individuals from the working classes into bourgeois professions. The Neulehrer program of SVAG was an example of this type of class-based affirmative action, with young Germans, often soldiers, gaining an official proletarian class-identity for being teachers of often ideological materials. Although the quality of Neulehrerteachers was often quite poor and the SED outlawed the term in 1952 because of its negative associations, many of the prominent SED members of the 1960s and 70s had cut their teeth within this program. Likewise, when the SED created its own secret police force, the MfS, it drew on young Germans so much that by 1952, over half of the MfS's members were under thirty. Positions that required a high-degree of training like physicians or professors often had to deal with the SED's carrot-and-stick approach to compliance. Professors in the early postwar period often had to follow strict lesson plans and were subject to termination based on their connections to the NSDAP. But while mass firings like Greifswald University in 1947 underscored state power, various perks like access to food and other amenities highlighted the benefits of loyalism. In the case of the Eastern zone's professoriate is an example of how quickly political orientations could turn, but also on what terms Germans could wring from the system. The professoriate, like much of German higher education, had been quite nazified and in the early years resisted SVAG's attempts to remodel German higher education along Stalinist lines.But there was shift in this tense relationship with the creation of the GDR because despite the SED's public campaign to cement Marxist-Leninist thought as the cornerstone of intellectual life, the SED tended to be more hands-off in the professoriate's actual academic life. Soviet intellectual and pedagogical models found relatively little traction in the GDR university beyond lip service, but the mandarins of the GDR academy were largely pliant servitors to the state. The GDR universities stayed largely quiet during events like the 1953 uprising despite the GDR professoriate's above average number of former NSDAP members (around 60% for the mid-1950s) than other professional groups.

Professionals like university professors often had the option of leaving for the FRG, which until the building of the Berlin Wall, remained a viable option for many in the GDR if conditions became too unbearable. Although the West posed the very real danger of a brain drain for an already tense socioeconomic situation, it did act as a safety-valve of sorts for the SED. Republikﬂucht and other forms of protest gave the GDR citizenry a weapon of sorts to use against the SED dictatorship. MfS reports on the wider population revealed widespread discontent with SED rule and a widespread belief in Party corruption. The 1953 Revolt also revealed fractures in the relationship of the SED to the "friends" in the USSR. Amidst the post-Stalin shuffling of power in Moscow, many within the USSR leadership saw the failure of Ulbricht's Aufbau campaign as a sign of SED incompetence and inability to manage its population. Although Moscow for reasons of Cold War politics could never throw the SED under the bus in exchange for a neutral united Germany under FRG leadership, the threat was always there in the minds of the SED leadership. The 1953 revolt shook many within the SED leadership to their core, the timing of the revolt meant that the Khrushchev found it expedient to blame it on Beria instead of Ulbricht, which many in the SED wanted the Soviets to do. Domestic unrest carried with it a further complications with the SED's patron, and this meant that the SED had to come up with a modus vivendi of sorts with its population after the Wall's erection meant that malcontents could not pack up for the West. This gave Eingaben (direct petitions) to SED officialdom a certain degree of heft that might be unexpected in a dictatorship. Participation in state elections, even if elections were the classic "elections without choice" that typify dictatorships, which hovered in the ninetieth percentile, gave many GDR citizens a chance to gain state resources in exchange for a public avowing of loyalty by showing up at the ballot box. Requests for state attention to fix a problem gained a degree more results during election season as the SED placed great priority in gaining high turnout as a means to legitimize itself in the eyes of the world, especially the FRG.

Although Ulbricht remained in power, the Soviets pushed him towards easing up on the consumer economy and the resulting Neues Ökonomisches System (NES) sought to achieve prosperity through a rational management of the planned economy. The state eased production goals and gave more leeway for factory management and the promotion of a technocratic elite. The NES was in line with the wider Eastern bloc's post-Stalin economic system during the Khrushchev era (Vera Dunham's "Big Deal") in which Communist party rule did not promise a Utopian restructuring of society, but rather a more palpable goal of consumer goods and the good life. Leisure time increased during the 1960s as well as a modicum increase in the standard of living for the GDR society as a whole. Therefore, the GDR in the 1960s was a curious entity, a Stalinist style leadership presiding over a more liberalized economy.