Meanwhile, scope for integrating the little plant at Brombach (Lörrach) in the French occupation zone continued to be affected by bureaucratic hurdles, and in 1951 the Brombach facility was abandoned. By this time a new plant for braking components and subassemblies had quietly been constructed and opened at Gifhorn in . In May 1949 the British, French and American zones - had been merged to form a new U.S. sponsored West German state which came with the promise of enhanced economic integration between the hitherto separately administered sectors. (The Soviet zone was excluded for political reasons, with the result that Germany would remain politically and economically divided till 1990. The Soviet occupation zone nevertheless underwent its own relaunch as a semi-autonomous nation state in October 1949, becoming the Soviet sponsored &lt;a href="East%20Germany"&gt;"German Democratic Republic" / East Germany&lt;/a&gt;") The significance of the Gifhorn location was greatly enhanced by its proximity to Wolfsburg, home to the Volkswagen Gifhorn and Wolfsburg were also both located close to the so-called "Inner German border", which during the early 1950s remained, for most purposes, porous. Half of the workers recruited to work at the Gifhorn factory during those years were &lt;a href="Republikflucht"&gt;economic and/or political refugees&lt;/a&gt; from East Germany.