Talk:German reunification

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"After the end of World War II, Germany was divided into four occupation zones with areas east of the Oder-Neisse line placed under Polish administration." is this passage historically correct or is this an example of newspeak of German expellees/revisionists ? Kpjas

It's a strongly biased diction at least, emphasizing on Poland and ignoring other territorial losses (The Alsace, Saarland, parts that are part of the Sovjet Union).
Alsace was French pre-WWII.
Alsace was German pre-WWI. (But French pre-Franco Prussian war... and independent pre-17th century)
It is correct as the areas east of Oder-Neisse were annexed by Poland (and the Soviet Union), thus according to international law their status was disputed. They were de facto part of Poland and the Soviet Union, but not de jure (i.e. "under administration"). Although our Polish friends on Wikipedia are loth to hear it, the Ex-German areas of Poland are part of Poland de jure because of the German-Polish border treaty of Nov. 14th 1990.
The Alsace was not considered part of Germany in 1945 as the borders of Germany that were internationally recognised were those of 1937, which did not include the Alsace.
The Saarland was not annexed by France. This was prohibited by the Atlantic Charta of the Allies. It was established as a protectorate. After a plebiscite in 1954 the Saarland was again incorporated into Germany (the so-called "Little Reunification"). 141.13.8.14 14:41, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
A debate took place if this unification of the GDR and FRG should be named Unification or Re-unification. Even though it was a unification in the sense that these two states only came into existence as military occupied countries in 1945 and as such had never been united, it was decided to call it Re-unification, because it includes two sections of the country of Germany, which in 1945 was split in three.

Where has this been debated? The two countries both came from the German Reich, they were one country before 1945. Can you provide any evidence for your statement? -- JeLuF

Also German was split into more than three pieces. See above. Rmhermen 08:13 Aug 23, 2002 (PDT)
Well the Germany of 1945 was split into 3 pieces, two of which became the 4 occupation zones. today only this parts are considered to be Germany. But there is this third part (eastern of Oder-Neiße) that until then was part of Germany.

The FRG (West Germany) saw its self as the direct inheritor of the previously United German Nation, but its constitution stated that it did not govern all the nation. When East Germany (GDR) and West Germany wished to unite the question was should the Germans have a new constitution to achieve confederation of the two parts or should the GDR re-unite with the FRG using the clauses in the FRG's constitution to do so. It was decided to speed up the process to use the latter. Hence it was legaly a reunification and not a confederation leading to a new union. Part of the process was to modify FRG constitution to say that all of the German nation was now united. So the legal constitutional question of "is all of Germany united?" is YES because the German constitution say that it is. Here are two references to debate should be named Unification or Re-unification:

Kohl's use of the word "confederation," rather than "reunification," was strategic. No politician at that moment publicly wanted to talk about reunification. Political support for the Kohl strategy was high, but after a few weeks, the groundswell that dared utter "reunification" was high enough such that the careful strategy of confederation was no longer needed.
The final determination of which tool to use in completing the accession of the territory of the former GDR into the FRG was decided by the Unification Treaty of August 31, 1990, which detailed the required "amendments to the Basic Law Resulting from accession."61 The language of the Unification Treaty made clear that the option laid out in Article 23 would see Germany through the unification process.62 A constitution would not be drafted in accordance with Article 146, but amendments would be made to the existing Basic Law in accordance with the amendment provisions of Article 79. These amendments, constituting the thirty-sixth amendment to the Basic Law,63 dealt with issues such as the former GDR's debt,64 the "transition period for discrepancies between old East German Law and the Basic Law,"65 the updating of Article 146 and the repeal of Article 23 which had allowed "other parts of Germany to accede to the Federal Republic."66 Article 146 now included language signifying that the Basic Law was valid for the "entire German nation following the achievement of the unity and freedom of Germany"67 and still permits the adoption of a constitution by the German people at some future time. The text of Article 23 changed to indicate that there were no other parts of Germany, which existed outside of the unified territory, that had not acceded.

Philip Baird Shearer 13:45, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Having said the above about reunification I am going to change the phrase "reunification of East Germany and West Germany" to "reunification of Germany from its constituent parts of of East Germany and West Germany" because East Germany and West Germany were not reunified Germany was just as it had been unified before but using different collections of lands of Germany.

[edit] four powers

In Treaty on the Final Settlement "the four powers terminated their rights and responsibilities relating to Berlin and to Germany as a whole. United Germany is to have full sovereignty over its internal and external affairs." was needed because of the document signed by the Control Council back in 1945 (see The_end_of_World_War_II_in_Europe) Philip Baird Shearer 13:45, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Stop the POV

"By the mid-1980s, the prospect of German reunification was widely regarded within both Germanies as a distant hope, unattainable as long as communists ruled Eastern Europe." or capitalists Western one, don't you think?

No for three reasons:
  1. The West Germany electorate ruled the Western one and they could have elected a government which would have united with the eastern block, They never did. Would the rest of the west have put tanks onto the streets to stop it (a reverse of 1954)?
  2. West Germany is not a capatalist state -- with laws enforcing things like the Aufsichtsrat (supervisory board) and the structure of the financial markets which large bond marked and relativly small stock market. Look at the fuss in Geamany when ever there is the threat of a hostile takeover.
  3. Proof is in the pudding. Reunification happened as soon as the communists "stopped ruling Eastern Europe", your so called "capitalists" still rule, so it is not a POV it is a statment of fact. Philip Baird Shearer 10:38, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)


The "Effects of Reunification" section talks only about the effects it had on Germany. What about the effects it had on the occupying nations, especially the Soviet Union?


  The reunification of Germany was a blow the the Soviet Union's power, in three ways.

1. The collapse of the East German government caused doubt that the USSR could take care of the nations it occupies. Other bloc nations worried that their economies andgovernments would collapse under Soviet rule.

2. The reunificationof Germany under capitalist rule gave hope of breaking free from Soviet oppression to other bloc nations.

3. The reunification of Germany cause doubt of Soviet control, because the USSR had opposed the reunification, but it happened anyway. This doubt caused some satellite states to wish to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact.

[edit] Once again: Reunification/Confederation

Digging deep into my memory, the proposed alternative does not cover all aspects of the problem. To my mind, there should be a totally new article called "German Union" or at least "German Unification", and a reference at this entry with an explanation of the following.

There is a famous quote of Germany's Foreign Minister at the time of the Union, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in which he corrects a TV commentator who talks about "Germany's reunification". Genscher insists on the term "German Union", because Re-Unification was a revisionist term in the post-war years referring to all the pre-war parts. For obvious reasons - relationship to France and Poland - and less obvious reasons - a German-Polish treaty from the 1970s acknowledging the western border of Poland, Genscher wanted to avoid and to prevent the term "reunification". Officially, therefore, the term was never used by German politicians to describe the event of 1990.

The German article is under "reunification" (Deutsche Wiedervereinigung), though it notes this historical issue. In practice, "die Wende" (the change) is often used as a synonym. Rd232 12:24, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Expropriation-related issues

I did a Google search on

Expropriation Germany reunification.

Two hits included

My hazy recollection is that a significant number of expropriations by the DDR were disallowed after reunification, under legal theories i was not clear about. (DDR was not set up in violation of agreements with the Western Allies? BRD had simply incurred no obligation respect DDR's enactments & thus free to substitute what BRD practice would have produced?) This was true even tho IIRC all expropriations during the period from spring 1945 until creation of the DDR were deemed legitimate exercises of Soviet occupation authority. I had not been aware of the distinction made, in the hits i found, between expropriation of property by DDR

  • that previously the Nazi party government had (formally or defacto) expropriated and turned over to their supportes, and
  • productive capital (farmland and factories?) that had not previously been expropriated.

IMO this is worth discussion under impacts of reunification. Perhaps it is adequately covered in de:Deutsche Wiedervereinigung?
--Jerzy (t) 03:37, 2005 Apr 24 (UTC)

It's not even mentioned there, but should be. The legality of the original 1945-49 expropriations ("Land reform") is a mystery, as is the non-return of property expropriated in eastern Europe. (The scale of the Soviet Zone expropriation is not in doubt: anyone with more than 100 hectares of land had to give it all up, as did anyone who was a "nazi and war criminal" (a criterion not always consistently applied); the total was 14,000 businesses and 3.3m hectares land.) On 30 March 2005 the case of a group of people claiming inadequate compensation for this was dismissed by the European Court of Human Rights (partly because the Convention was not established until 1950), upholding a German Constitutional Court decision. (Christian Gottschalk, Stuttgarter Zeitung, 31 March 2005, "Straßburger Richter ziehen einen Schlussstrich; Regelungen zu sowjetischen Enteignungen werden bestätigt".)
In addition, there is the issue of the "black" expropriation (political colour of the CDU, the governing party in 1992 when the relevant law was passed). Perhaps 70,000 GDR citizens had property expropriated by a 1992 govt decision to reverse a March 1990 law meaning some recipients of property expropriated 1945-49 (or their descendants) lost that property without compensation. (Bizarrely, those employed in agriculture or forestry were allowed to keep the property.) This decision was declared illegal by the European Court of Human Rights in January 2004 (but the German govt appealed and I don't know the current status of the case), because of the lack of compensation. Defeat could cost the German government one to ten billion euros. [1]
You say
The legality of the original 1945-49 expropriations ("Land reform") is a mystery
but i assumed that was the least troublesome legal issue. INALB by virtue of the German unconditional surrender, IMO the SU incurred the obligation to put an economy back in motion, and the power to do so, i.e. de facto sovereignty over the occupied territory; that power includes the authority to make irreversible changes of ownership, since the ability only to make temporary changes makes you ineffective in light of how individuals and organizations need to trust in non-reversal of the conditions the substitute sovereign promises them, before they can be induced to carry out economic activities that are necessary for the fulfillment of the occupier's responsibilities. I don't think i am significantly oversimplifying when i say that this is just a more subtle version of this principle:
  • if the occupier can't convince farmers that the currency the occupier issues will be honored when sovereighty is restored,
  • the urban populace is likely to starve en masse, and
  • any farmer who's used to getting even one thing they need from the a different village (let alone a city) will soon be close to disaster.
I assume research would show that this is basic international law, that goes back probably at least as far as the Renaissance.
--Jerzy (t) 20:05, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)

[edit] Exchange Rate - more info needed

I'm not an expert here, but this is a bit ambiguous and potentially POV:

"combined with (politically motivated) conversion rates from East German Mark to the Deutschmark that did not reflect this economical reality"

The Deutschmark article says that the rate was 1 to 1 "for the first few thousand." I've heard though that the rate was 1 western mark for ever two eastern marks. So that should be elaborated in more detail.

From what I know, it seems that good arguments could be made for a one to one conversion, even if this were arguably subsidized - given that this would help the new citizens of the Federal Rebublic enter the market economy from a more even position. Of course the counter argument would be that it could lead to deflation of the mark. Blackcats 00:28, 26 September 2005 (UTC)


[edit] The Saarland reunification

I'm surprised to find no mention of the reunification with the saar in this article. In a way it was a blueprint for the larger reunification.

The early U.S. ockupation policy was to weakn germany industrialy in order to preclude future wars, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box31/t297a01.html

This followed on the policy of the first world war where industrial and mineral rich areas were removed, "Elsass lothringen", Sudetenland, Saar.

This time the country was to be divided in two, the mines in Silesia in the east were to be removed, as well as the Saar protectorate (again), and The Ruhr area. http://zis.uibk.ac.at:81/zisneu/dokumente/karten/2.php

Anyway, in 1957 the Saar was reunited with the fatherland, something that should at least be referenced to in this article.

Stor stark7 22:44, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Die Wende"

What would be the best way to translate "Die Wende", please see discussion at Wikipedia talk:German-speaking Wikipedians' notice board? (Patrick 05:47, 4 June 2006 (UTC))

‘The fall of Communism.’ Not ‘German Re-unification.’ 87.187.76.106 08:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, "die Wende" literally means "the turn", and the word is often used idiomatically to mean "the change." The term in this context means the whole series of changes to Germany in 1989-90, the fall of Communism and the reunification of the two states being the most important. --Jfruh (talk) 14:28, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Change of position

"However, the GDR changed its position at a later point, stating that Germany had ceased to exist in 1945 and that both the FRG and the GDR were newly-created states."

When was that later point? Dynzmoar 20:35, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wrong Term "reunification"

The official German term ist "The German Union" or "The German Unity" - not reunification! Please change this! Andreas Pape, Deutschland —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 145.254.84.210 (talk) 10:53, 25 December 2006 (UTC).

There is no "official term". Legally it was a "Beitritt" (joining) of the new Länder (states) and Berlin to the scope of the basic law following article 23 (the same way the Saarland joined in 1956/57). "Unity" or "Union" is typically used for the current state, thinking of it to be a final state after the first unification 1871 and the "small reunification" 1957. "Reunification" is the widely common and broadly used term for the process - which is described in this article. --84.144.191.36 10:57, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Berlin in the diagram

I see someone has included West Berlin in the diagram. However, Berlin was not technically part of Bundesrepublik Deutschland at the time—it was only on a de facto basis. Ergo, I do not believe it should be represented as such. I'm not sure how we would characterize it.

Actually, you'll note that the diagram treats Berlin (all of it) as separate from the both Germanies -- the explanatory text above reads "BRD - Berlin - DDR". This fits in with the Western legal theory, in which the DDR's annexation of East Berlin was never recognized. In that legal view, the Two Plus Four Treaty unified three entities -- the BRD, the DDR, and occupied Berlin -- which, as near as I can tell, is what the diagram represents. --Jfruh (talk) 19:00, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, in the diagram, Berlin looks roughly like where it would be in relation to the rest of West Germany. —Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 19:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I suppose that's true. Where would you put it? If you look real close, you can see that it's actually all of Berlin being depicted, not just the West. If you'd like to redraw it to make that clearer, go ahead. --Jfruh (talk) 19:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do. Also, all of Berlin is represented with a portion of BDR's flag. This would be a good opportunity to update to SVG, anyhow. —Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 20:02, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it could be represented with a foursquare of the occupying powers' flags? You'd need to make it bigger to do so, but I suppose there's nothing wrong with that (it's a diagram, after all, not a map meant to give people directions). --Jfruh (talk) 20:54, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


Not too sure about the use of purple amongst the blue to denote saarland. Wouldn't a more contrasting colour be better? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.11.125.11 (talk) 20:35, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] This article should be written again.

This article is supposed to be about the "Wende" in 1989. But actually, IT IS NOT. It is completely mistaken. It is a short text about German history, but only the last few sentences relate to the "Wende". Yes, of course, you can write about the tiny states and Bismarck and Prussia, but I suppose this should be limited to the "Backrounds" part. But also the following part "The end of the division" starts with the industrial revolution and ends with the Kaiserreich in 1871. This is 100 years away from the Wende! The Wende is 1989! I'm from eastern Germany, so trust me: When a German says "Wende" he in any case refers to 1989 and NEVER refers to 1871. If you speak about unity, there are two different words used in German: In the case of 1871 you speak about "Einigung" (which refers to the fact that Bismarck did it intentionally), and in the case of 1989 you speak about "Einheit" (which refers to the feeling of the German people in east and west wanting to be ONE people). Literally translated, the first one means "unification" and the second one "unity", if my English is not absolutely wrong.

However, I suppose this article has to be written again. 89.53.205.216 16:14, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is that it?

The German reunification was a pretty major event in the 20th century and I'm surprised to find such a short article about it. The article doesn't say hardly anything about what effect reunification had upon the people of each of the previously segmented countries for instance. Needs a LOT more content in my opinion. ---B- (talk) 09:12, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

The German reunification is the "juristic technical" event that enlarged the Federal Republic of Germany. It took place in a larger context of course. I think that the entire progress is described in this article, in die Wende (which is poor but the artcle to describe the entire phase of german history actually) and in History of the German Democratic Republic#Decline and Fall of the GDR, 1975–89. Geo-Loge (talk) 18:41, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] request to editor to add link

I request that two presentations with many images on the subject of German Unification, covering the periods 1945 to 1990, and 1990 to 1994 be linked to Wikipedia's German Reunification article; they are entitled Berlin and the Two Germanies, and German Unification Five Years After. Created during the early 90's, these presentations are meant as an introduction to the subject of die Wende for high school and college students. They are not meant for scholars or historians of the period. Both are accompanied by exercise questions. Both ran for over a decade on servers at my institution and found success and praise from teachers in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. They have recently moved to a new internet address, and as part of the move, been re-formatted to accommodate more modern browsers and larger screens. The access page for both runs at http://www.sonic.net/WWW_pages/art/uniaccess. Voglsohn1, art@sonic.net

--Voglsohn1 (talk) 05:03, 20 May 2008 (UTC)