Ostpolitik and reconciliation, 1969–89
When the SPD scored impressive gains in the election of 1969 and its candidate, Gustav Heinemann, also captured the presidency, West Germany underwent its first full-scale change of government. After 20 years of CDU-CSU domination, the SPD captured the chancellorship for Brandt in coalition with the FDP, whose leader Walter Scheel became foreign minister. This so-called social-liberal coalition carried through a number of domestic reforms, but its principal impact was on the Federal Republic’s relations with East Germany and the communist-ruled countries of eastern Europe. While confirming West Germany’s commitment to the Western alliance, the new government embarked upon a bold new “eastern policy,” or Ostpolitik.
Willy Brandt.Authenticated News International
Previously, West Germany had refused to recognize even the existence of the East German government. And by the terms of the Hallstein Doctrine (named for one of Adenauer’s key foreign-policy aides, Walter Hallstein), the Bonn authorities had refused to maintain diplomatic relations with all those countries (other than the Soviet Union) that recognized the German Democratic Republic. Now the Brandt-Scheel cabinet reversed these policies by opening direct negotiations with East Germany in 1970 to normalize relations between the two German states.
In 1970 the government entered into treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland that required Bonn to recognize the Oder-Neisse line as Germany’s eastern boundary. After the Soviet Union joined in 1971 with the Americans, British, and French in a Four Power Agreement that regularized Berlin’s status and opened the way for an easing of the West Berliners’ lot, in 1972 the Brandt-Scheel cabinet and East Germany concluded the Basic Treaty, which regularized the relations of the two German states. By its terms each side recognized, and agreed to respect, the other’s authority and independence. Each foreswore any title to represent the other internationally, which meant West Germany’s abandonment of its long-standing claim to be the sole legitimate spokesman of the German people. The two agreed to exchange “permanent missions,” which meant that their relations stopped short of full diplomatic recognition.
The new Ostpolitik met with bitter resistance within West Germany from the Christian Democrats, who denounced it as a surrender on many points that should await settlement by a peace treaty, including the status of the eastern territories that were severed from Germany in 1945. The Christian Democrats especially objected to the appearance that West Germany had given legitimacy to a dictatorial East Germany that refused to allow free elections, maintained the Berlin Wall, and ordered its border guards to shoot fleeing citizens. The Christian Democrats therefore pledged not to ratify the Basic Treaty if they regained power in the election of November 1972. The voters endorsed the Brandt government’s Ostpolitik, however, by making the SPD the largest party in the Bundestag (for the first time) and by strengthening their coalition partner, the FDP. The Basic Treaty was signed at the end of 1972, and in the following year both German states gained admission to the United Nations.
West Germany’s original overtures toward East Germany had met with resistance from Ulbricht, but the path for negotiations was cleared by a withdrawal of Soviet support that led to Ulbricht’s replacement by another communist functionary, Erich Honecker, as East German leader in 1971. In his last years, Ulbricht had experimented with a decentralization of economic decision making, but under Honecker East Germany reverted to Soviet-style centralized planning.
East Germany benefited greatly from the Basic Treaty. Once Bonn had accorded East Germany recognition, the Western democracies followed suit, so that the East German state at last enjoyed the international acceptance that it had long sought. Economically, the Basic Treaty also proved a boon to East Germany. Spurred by West German credits, trade between the two German states increased, yielding valuable West German currency for East Germany. The latter derived further income from annual fees paid to it by West Germany for Western travelers’ use of the highways through East Germany to Berlin and from ransoms paid by West Germany for the release of political prisoners held in East Germany. The larger number of West Germans allowed to visit East Germany also brought in hard currency. Each year the East German government reported impressive leaps in productivity, which, after the regime’s collapse, proved to be largely fictional. In actuality, the material gap between the two parts of Germany widened. In order to concentrate its resources on industrial production for export purposes, the East German government neglected to maintain the country’s infrastructure, which became increasingly apparent as East Germany’s roads, railways, and buildings deteriorated. An acute housing shortage also persisted. Waiting periods of years were still required for the purchase of major consumer items such as automobiles, which continued to be crudely manufactured according to standards of the early postwar period, while those of West Germany ranked high in the world for quality and advanced design.
The benefits of international recognition were offset by the dangers posed to the dictatorial East German government by increased contact with democratic West Germany as a result of the Basic Treaty’s easing of restrictions on visits by West Germans to East Germany. In an effort to deal with the subversive effects of such contacts, the East German government repeatedly sought to reduce the influx of West German visitors by raising the fees it charged for visas. It classified some two million of its citizens as “bearers of secrets” and forbade them personal contact with Westerners. To stifle dissent at home, the government tightened its already repressive ideological controls on artists and intellectuals, imprisoning some and stripping others of their citizenship and banishing them to West Germany. To emphasize the distinctness of the German Democratic Republic, an amended constitution was adopted in 1974 that minimized the use of the word “German” and stressed the socialist nature of the East German state and its irrevocable links with the Soviet Union.
West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (left) and Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo during a photo session in Tokyo, 1978.Sadayuki Mikami/AP
In West Germany, Brandt resigned in May 1974 after one of his trusted aides was unmasked as a spy for East Germany. Brandt’s successor as chancellor was fellow Social Democrat Helmut Schmidt, who continued the SPD-FDP coalition. When Walter Scheel of the FDP was elected federal president in 1974, his party colleague Hans-Dietrich Genscher succeeded him as foreign minister. Because the FDP’s laissez-faire elements resisted increases in the government’s role in the economy, the SPD was able to achieve little of its program for expanding the welfare state. In 1976 both the SPD and the FDP suffered electoral losses, but the coalition retained its majority; four years later, however, the coalition regained some ground.