Ulbricht Doctrine

Last updated
Walter Ulbricht Bundesarchiv Bild 183-J1231-1002-002 Walter Ulbricht, Neujahrsansprache.jpg
Walter Ulbricht

The Ulbricht Doctrine, named after East German leader Walter Ulbricht, was the assertion that normal diplomatic relations between East Germany and West Germany could occur only if both states fully recognised each other's sovereignty. That contrasted with the Hallstein Doctrine, a West German policy which insisted that West Germany was the only legitimate German state.

East Germany gained acceptance of its view from fellow Communist states, such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria, which all agreed not to normalise relations with West Germany until it recognised East German sovereignty.

West Germany eventually abandoned its Hallstein Doctrine, instead adopting the policies of Ostpolitik. In December 1972, a Basic Treaty between East and West Germany was signed that reaffirmed two German states as separate entities. The treaty also allowed the exchange of diplomatic missions and the entry of both German states to the United Nations as full members.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Finlandization</span> Concept in political science

Finlandization is the process by which one powerful country makes a smaller neighboring country refrain from opposing the former's foreign policy rules, while allowing it to keep its nominal independence and its own political system. The term means "to become like Finland", referring to the influence of the Soviet Union on Finland's policies during the Cold War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">West Germany</span> Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1990

West Germany is the common English name to describe the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until the reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. During the Cold War, the western portion of Germany and the associated territory of West Berlin were parts of the Western Bloc. West Germany was formed as a political entity during the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II, established from 12 states formed in the three Allied zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. The capital was the city of Bonn, hence the Cold War-era country is sometimes known as the Bonn Republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hallstein Doctrine</span> 1955–1970 one-Germany policy during the Cold War

The Hallstein Doctrine, named after Walter Hallstein, was a key principle in the foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1955 to 1970. As usually presented, it prescribed that the Federal Republic would not establish or maintain diplomatic relations with any state that recognized the German Democratic Republic. In fact it was more nuanced. There was no public official text of the "doctrine", but its main architect, Wilhelm Grewe, explained it publicly in a radio interview. Konrad Adenauer, who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1949 to 1963, explained the outlines of the policy in a statement to the German parliament on 22 September 1955. It meant that the Federal German government would regard it as an unfriendly act if third countries were to recognize the "German Democratic Republic" or to maintain diplomatic relations with it – with the exception of the Soviet Union. The West German response to such could mean breaking off diplomatic relations, though this was not stated as an automatic response under the policy and in fact remained the ultima ratio.

<i>Ostpolitik</i> Normalization of relations between West Germany and Eastern Europe

Neue Ostpolitik, or Ostpolitik for short, was the normalization of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Eastern Europe, particularly the German Democratic Republic beginning in 1969. Influenced by Egon Bahr, who proposed "change through rapprochement" in a 1963 speech at the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing, the policies were implemented beginning with Willy Brandt, fourth Chancellor of the FRG from 1969 to 1974, and winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts to place this policy at the acme of the FRG.

The term One China may refer, in alphabetical order, to one of the following:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Hallstein</span> German diplomat and statesman (1901–1982)

Walter Hallstein was a German academic, diplomat and statesman who was the first president of the Commission of the European Economic Community and one of the founding fathers of the European Union.

German <i>Reich</i> Name for the German state (1871–1945)

German Reich was the constitutional name for the German nation state that existed from 18 January 1871 to 5 June 1945. The Reich became understood as deriving its authority and sovereignty entirely from a continuing unitary German Volk, with that authority and sovereignty being exercised at any one time over a unitary German "state territory" with variable boundaries and extent. Although commonly translated as "German Empire", the word Reich here better translates as "realm" or territorial "reach", in that the term does not in itself have monarchical connotations.

BRD is an unofficial abbreviation for the Federal Republic of Germany, informally known in English as West Germany until 1990, and just Germany since reunification. It was occasionally used in the Federal Republic itself during the early Cold War; it was commonly used between 1968 and 1990 by the ruling party of the German Democratic Republic, resulting in a strong deprecation of its use in West Germany. The East German regime had previously used the term "German Federal Republic", which it abbreviated as "DBR", to refer to West Germany. The most widely used abbreviation for West Germany in the country itself was its ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code "DE", which has remained the country code of reunified Germany.

The Basic Treaty is the shorthand name for the Treaty concerning the basis of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. The Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic (GDR) recognized each other as sovereign states for the first time, an abandonment of West Germany's Hallstein Doctrine in favor of Ostpolitik.

Council of Foreign Ministers was an organisation agreed upon at the Potsdam Conference in 1945 and announced in the Potsdam Agreement and dissolved upon the entry into force of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in 1991.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Four Power Agreement on Berlin</span> 1971 multilateral agreement

The Four Power Agreement on Berlin, also known as the Berlin Agreement or the Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin, was agreed on 3 September 1971 by the four wartime Allied powers, represented by their ambassadors. The four foreign ministers, Sir Alec Douglas-Home of the United Kingdom, Andrei Gromyko of the Soviet Union, Maurice Schumann of France, and William P. Rogers of the United States signed the agreement and put it into force at a ceremony in Berlin on 3 June 1972. The agreement was not a treaty and required no formal ratification.

An exclusive mandate is a government's assertion of its legitimate authority over a certain territory, part of which another government controls with stable, de facto sovereignty. It is also known as a claim to sole representation or an exclusive authority claim. The concept was particularly important during the Cold War period when a number of states were divided on ideological grounds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of East Germany</span>

The German Democratic Republic (GDR), German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), often known in English as East Germany, existed from 1949 to 1990. It covered the area of the present-day German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Berlin, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, and Thüringen. This area was occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II excluding the former eastern lands annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union, with the remaining German territory to the west occupied by the British, American, and French armies. Following the economic and political unification of the three western occupation zones under a single administration and the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany in May 1949, the German Democratic Republic was founded on 7 October 1949 as a sovereign nation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">State continuity of the Baltic states</span> Legal continuity of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania

The three Baltic countries, or the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – are held to have continued as legal entities under international law while under the Soviet occupation from 1940 to 1991, as well as during the German occupation in 1941–1944/1945. The prevailing opinion accepts the Baltic thesis of illegal occupation and the actions of the USSR are regarded as contrary to international law in general and to the bilateral treaties between the USSR and the three Baltic countries in particular.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">East Germany–Yugoslavia relations</span> Bilateral relations

East Germany–Yugoslavia relations are historical foreign and bilateral relations between the German Democratic Republic and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, both of which are now former states. Yugoslavia recognized East Germany on 15 October 1957. Decision to recognize East Germany pushed West Germany to apply the Hallstein Doctrine for the first time in history, limiting relations almost exclusively to the economics field for eleven years until the initiation of Ostpolitik. At the time, Yugoslav citizens were one of the largest groups of Gastarbeiter. A significantly smaller Yugoslav community lived in East Berlin, mostly as diplomatic and economic cooperation representatives. Yugoslavia recognized East Germany as part of its efforts to improve relations with the Soviet Union after the 1948 Tito–Stalin split. At the time, the 1955 Belgrade declaration was signed and Yugoslavia verbally supported the 1956 Soviet intervention in Hungary. This support was diametrically opposite to future Belgrade's strong opposition to the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia which led to a second rapprochement between Yugoslavia and the Western Bloc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gera Demands</span> 1980 East German policy

The Gera Demands were a set of demands made by the East German leader Erich Honecker on 13 October 1980. Directed at the West German government, they called for far-reaching foreign policy concessions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inner German relations</span> Bilateral relations

Inner German relations, also known as the FRG-GDR relations, East Germany-West Germanyrelations or German-German relations, were the political, diplomatic, economic, cultural and personal contacts between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, at the period of the West-East division in German history from the founding of East Germany on 7 October 1949 to Germany's reunification on 3 October 1990.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foreign relations of East Germany</span>

The Foreign policy of East Germany was characterized by the close ties of East Germany to the Eastern Bloc. During its existence, the most important partner was the Soviet Union (USSR), which acted as a protecting power and most important trade and economic partner, which is why the GDR was often called a satellite state. The GDR remained closely linked to the other socialist states through organizations such as the Warsaw Pact and Camecon. While the GDR was relatively isolated outside the communist world in the first two decades of its existence due to the Hallstein Doctrine of West Germany, a change took place in the 1970s with the rapprochement with West Germany under Chancellor Willy Brandt's new Ostpolitik. As a result, the GDR was able to gain international status and establish diplomatic relations with almost 130 countries. While the Marxist-Leninist state ideology played a major role in the foreign policy of the East German government, it was however also influenced by their own economic and political interests. From the 1970s onwards, the GDR increasingly emancipated itself from the Soviet Union and pursued an independent policy towards West Germany, as loans from the West had become vital for the GDR's survival. In the 1980s, Erich Honecker refused to implement liberalizing reforms, which alienated the GDR from the USSR under Mikhail Gorbachev. After the revolutions of 1989, the Eastern Bloc collapsed and Germany was reunified, ending the period of an independent East German foreign policy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Central African Republic–Germany relations</span> Bilateral relations

Central African Republic-Germany relations are the bilateral relations between the Central African Republic (CAR) and Germany. The relations between both countries are described by the Federal Foreign Office as "problem-free, but of low intensity". Since the closure of the German Embassy in Bangui, the German Embassy in Cameroon has been responsible for relations with the Central African Republic. The Central African Republic is one of the few countries that does not have its own embassy in Germany. The Central African Embassy in Paris is responsible for relations with Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Germany–Jordan relations</span> Bilateral relations

Germany–Jordan relations are described by the Federal Foreign Office as having been "close and friendly for a long time". Germany is one of Jordan's most important partner countries, with intensive political and economic relations.