German Question Traditionally, the question of whether Germany was going to be defined culturally (e.g. by religion and/or language), in which case Germans living in pockets of Russia and Romania would be included, or according to geographical characteristics, in which case a large number of Germans living outside boundaries defined by mountains, rivers, etc. would be excluded. The question was settled in favour of the latter approach by the German unification of 1866/71, through the exclusion of Austria, which had had a common cultural and political history with the other German states up until then. After World War II, the term received a new meaning as there were now two German states which tried to justify their own, separate existence. East Germany (the
German Democratic Republic, GDR) emphasized the Communist ideology of its regime, and insisted that it was the first post-capitalist German state and the only part of Germany which had drawn the correct lessons from the
Third Reich. Until the same conditions obtained in West Germany (the FRG), the GDR was an independent, sovereign state. In contrast, West Germany claimed that it alone was the legal continuation of the German state, and insisted that its constitution and citizenship were valid for all Germans, including those living in the GDR.
West Germany developed the
Hallstein Doctrine (1955), formulated by Walter Hallstein (b. 1901, d. 1982), according to which it refused to take up diplomatic relations with any country (except the Soviet Union) that recognized the East German state. The doctrine effectively prevented the diplomatic recognition of the GDR in the non-Communist world until the admission of both German states to the
UN in 1973. By then, relations between the two Germanies had improved, following the change of government in West Germany in 1969, as the new Chancellor
Brandt made it his primary aim to work in cooperation with, rather than in hostility to, the GDR.
As a precondition to that aim, Brandt's new
Ostpolitik (Eastern Policy) began with the Moscow Treaty of 12 August 1970, in which West Germany
de facto recognized the postwar annexations of German territory by the USSR and Poland. On 7 December 1970 the Warsaw Treaty was signed, in which West Germany again guaranteed the inviolability of Poland's western border. These treaties paved the way for an agreement on 3 September 1971 between the Allied powers, still sovereign over
Berlin, in which the Soviet Union (and implicitly the GDR) recognized the Allied presence in West Berlin and guaranteed free access to the city through East Germany. Finally, in the
Basic Treaty (Grundlagenvertrag) of 21 December 1972, both countries accepted each other's existence while West Germany continued to look forward to the self-determination of the German people in its entirety. The treaty formed the basis of German internal relations until 1989, as despite initial hostility the
CDU came to support the arrangement when it came to power in 1982. Following reunification in 1990, the German question was finally settled, as Germany formally recognized its eastern border with Poland.
