1957   


In 1949 the western allies set up a German government in Bonn, the former residence of the Electors of Cologne on the Rhine. The Federal Republic of Germany was created. It was still under western allied occupation. The Soviets declared a German Democratic Republic in its zone. So now there were two German states. The Eastern G.D.R would abolish its constituent states. Theoretically however the allies still constituted the supreme power in Germany as a whole. So a rather complicated situation arose where international law was concerned. In 1955 both states gained partial sovereignty and were allowed to have their own armies and conduct their own foreign policy. The Federal Republic became a part of the Western Alliance in NATO, while the G.D.R. became a member of the Soviet led Warsaw Pact. With the notable exeption of Berlin, the military occupation was almost completely done away with. The allies still retained some military power over their former zones of occupation and held on to the theoretical all allied supreme responsibility for Germany as a whole. It was argued by the government in Bonn therefore, that this meant that the German Realm in its 1937 borders was still in existence, since only the communion of the four allied occupation powers in cohort with the other allies could change that situation legally. Berlin was to remain fully occupied by the allies. As off 1950 the western sectors of Berlin appointed some members to the Federal diet in Bonn, and were associated with the Federal Republic. The G.D.R. government resided in Soviet occupied East-Berlin. The Soviets adopted the notion that East Berlin was a part of the G.D.R. The western powers and the Federal Republic never accepted that because it felt that the four allies had a joint responsibility for Berlin as a whole. Berlin as a whole was in their eyes a part of Germany as a whole. A concept kept in existence by the enduring supreme responsibility of the allies. Countries that recognised the G.D.R. could not at the same time have diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic, with the exception of the four allied powers. (The Hallstein doctrine) In practice only the Soviet-Union had ties to both German states. In 1957 the French ceded the Saar basin to the Federal Republic of Germany.

The Soviets tried to drive the western allies out of West-Berlin twice, once in 1948 and again under Chrutsjev in 1956. Both times a blockade was broken by an airlift. Because of its status as an all allied occupied city, Berlin was the only place where Germans could freely travel from East to West. The border between the Federal Republic and the G.D.R. was fortified and barricaded. Great numbers of G.D.R. inhabitants left the country through Berlin. In 1961 the G.D.R. government erected a wall separating East and West Berlin and turned the G.D.R. with East-Berlin into a hermetically closed country. The Soviets declared their occupation of Berlin to be over and handed it over to their G.D.R. satellite state. Later an agreement between the allies reaffirmed East-Berlin as the Soviet zone of an all allied occupied Berlin. The parties agreed to disagree about the wall and the status of the two parts of the city towards the two German states.

In the early 1970's a period of relaxation in the Cold War induced the Federal Republic to open ties to Eastern European countries including the G.D.R. The first Social Democrat Federal Chancellor, Willy Brandt, initiated the opening of relations with the G.D.R. on the basis that the Federal Republic would not view the G.D.R as a foreign country but as a part of  Germany as a whole, in reference to the rights the allies still held towards Germany as a whole. The G.D.R. politely disagreed but entered into the treaty just the same. Willy Brandt also went to Warsaw and Moscow and signed treaties in which the Federal Republic recognised the post-war borders, giving up their claim to the territories that were placed under Polish and Soviet administration by the allied government in 1945.

A ferocious political and judicial battle within the Federal Republic was the consequence. The Federal diet ratified the treaties, but the State of Bavaria challenged the treaties in the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. Bavaria's challenge was thrown out, but the court ruled that the Federal Republic might very well recognise Poland and the Soviets Union’s post war borders, but could in this matter only speak for itself as a part of Germany and not for Germany as a whole, a concept theoretically still in existence where International Law was concerned, because of the enduring rights and responsibilities that the allies still held over it. In other words, the Federal Republic was not entirely identifiable with Germany. There were the allies and now too the G.D.R. to be reckoned with. The court made an elaborate compromise. All allied powers had recognised the new borders and so had the G.D.R. The court’s verdict however, enabled conservatives to claim that the lost provinces were still theoretically a part of the German Realm, as it enabled liberals and social democrats to take the view that they were now lost and a part of Poland and the Soviet Union as far as the Federal Republic was concerned.