West Germany

V

Social Democrats in Power

When Adenauer retired in 1963 at the age of 87, he was succeeded as chancellor by Erhard (1963-1966) and Kurt Georg Kiesinger (1966-1969), fellow Christian Democrats who headed coalition governments. In 1969 a Social Democratic victory brought Willy Brandt, former mayor of West Berlin, to the chancellorship. With the approval of big business, he initiated the Ostpolitik (German for “eastern policy”) to improve political and trade relations with the Soviet bloc. In 1970 he signed nonaggression treaties with the USSR and Poland that confirmed existing boundaries. Reversing Adenauer's policy on East Germany, he reached an accord with East Germany in 1972 that facilitated West German access to West Berlin. In 1973 the two countries granted each other full diplomatic recognition and were admitted to the United Nations. The following year, Brandt resigned when it was discovered that a member of his personal staff was an East German spy. He was succeeded by Helmut Schmidt.

Schmidt faced domestic problems that had been simmering since the late 1960s. The economy suffered under rising unemployment and rapid inflation, exacerbated by the presence of 4 million guest workers and their families. The country was also troubled by student unrest and by a wave of bombings, kidnappings, and murders by such terrorists as the Baader-Meinhof group. In foreign affairs Schmidt applied Brandt's Ostpolitik to relations with East Germany. Schmidt's Social Democratic-Free Democratic coalition government won the elections in 1976 and 1980, but in 1982 the Free Democratic party ended the Schmidt coalition government by withdrawing and forming a new coalition headed by Helmut Kohl of the Christian Democrats.

VI

Economic Ascendancy

In the 1980s West Germany emerged as a leading economic power, along with Japan and the United States. West German leadership in the international arena became more prominent in the late 1980s. West Germany supported both the federation of Western Europe in the European Community (now called the European Union) and the birth of new democracies in Eastern Europe. Kohl's political coalition was confirmed in elections in 1983 and 1987. The two German republics achieved better relations with new financial and travel accords in 1984, and East German President Erich Honecker paid his first official visit to West Germany in 1987.

VII

Reunification

With the reform of Soviet society and economy introduced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s, the Soviet-backed regimes of Eastern Europe began to lose control over their people. East Germany's Communist government fell in 1989, an event that profoundly altered relations between the two German republics. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and other emigration barriers, more than 200,000 East Germans streamed into West Germany. The West German government not only aided the new immigrants but also allocated a massive infusion of capital to shore up the ailing East German economy. West Germany and East Germany merged their financial systems in July 1990, and in October the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) dissolved and became part of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Christian Democratic coalition, led by Kohl, scored a decisive victory in elections for the new German government in December 1990, and Kohl became the chancellor of the unified Germany. The newly elected Bundestag (the legislative body of the German parliament), representing both East and West, named Berlin the capital of Germany on June 20, 1991. The transfer of administration from Bonn, the capital of the former West Germany, was expected to take several years.

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Although the economy thrived in what was formerly West Germany, unemployment and failing businesses plagued what was formerly East Germany. To fund investment and welfare programs in the East, the government raised taxes, generating opposition among citizens of the West who resented having to support the East Germans. The influx of more than 200,000 ethnic Germans from East European countries seeking asylum in Germany also strained the economy. By 1992 the unemployment rate returned to almost normal in the western states, but remained above 15 percent in the eastern states.

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