 The only remaining hope was massive additional loans from the German Federal Republic (""West Germany"").For the German Democratic Republic, the Schürer report was an important catalyst along what is sometimes presented as an unstoppable road toward reunification, which took place the next year, formally in October 1990.For Gerhard Schürer, on both sides of the Inner German border, it permanently raised the public profile of a man who, when appointed as head of the back in 1965, might reasonably have hoped to end his career in circumstances of comfortable obscurity.