German-Finnish relations

German-Finnish relations

Germany	Finland

Germany and Finland have had bilateral relations since January 4, 1918. Both states are members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), i. H. of the CSCE successor, the Council of Europe , the Baltic Sea Council , the European Union and the Eurozone .

Germany maintains an embassy in Helsinki . Honorary consuls are active in Joensuu , Jyväskylä , Lappeenranta , Mariehamn , Oulu , Rauma , Tampere , Turku and Vaasa . Finland has an embassy in Berlin and a consulate general in Hamburg . Honorary consuls reside in Bremen , Dresden , Frankfurt am Main , Hanover , Kiel , Lübeck , Munich , Rostock and Stuttgart .

The German-Finnish Society is one of the largest German-foreign friendship societies in Germany today.

history

Early relationships between Germans and Finns can be traced back to the extensive trade network of the Hanseatic League , whose area of ​​influence extended into the Gulf of Finland in the Middle Ages . Furthermore, the Reformation originating from Martin Luther (from 1517) was also introduced in Finland, which was then part of Sweden, beginning in the 1520s, which naturally led to a lively exchange with the Protestant German states. From 1809 Finland belonged to the Russian Empire , which was an opponent of the German Empire in the First World War . Finnish soldiers did not take part in the acts of war unless they had voluntarily joined the Russian army . On the other hand, the Finnish hunter movement made contact with Germany in the hope of a defeat in the war between Russia and Germany , and finally in 1915 sent around 2,000 volunteers for military training in the German army . The hunter battalion formed in this way was partly deployed at the front and thus gained military experience that was otherwise rarely found in Finland.

German soldiers in Helsinki in 1918

In the Finnish Civil War of 1918, the Finnish hunters returning from Germany represented a valuable reinforcement for the “white” bourgeois troops . The intervention of a German intervention group , the Baltic Division on their side, also contributed to a victory for the bourgeoisie over the Finnish “Reds Garden ”.

Heinrich Himmler in Finland

Finland was attacked by the Soviet Union in the Winter War of 1939 . Although this was unable to achieve its original war goal - the occupation of the entire Finnish national territory - due to massive Finnish resistance, the war ended in 1940 with painful relinquishment of territory to the Soviets. After the invasion of the German Reich on the Soviet Union in 1941, Finland has participated in the German side in the so-called " Continuation War " in the Russian campaign with the war aim of the recovery of just lost territory (participation in the attack on Leningrad did not take place; an official alliance never existed). When the German defeat in the war became foreseeable in 1944, Finland signed the Moscow armistice with the Soviet Union . a. obliged to fight the units of the German armed forces stationed in Lapland . This inevitably led to the outbreak of the Lapland War , which lasted until the spring of 1945 and ended with the expulsion of the German troops from Finnish territory. At the end of the Second World War and during the Cold War , Finland was able to maintain its independence from the Soviet Union as well as its democratic constitution and market economy structure, but had to show great consideration for its powerful neighbors in the east and pursue a strict policy of neutrality. A political catchphrase from the Cold War coined in Germany is “ Finlandization ”. It describes the efforts of a (comparatively smaller) country to establish (all too) friendly relations with the Soviet Union.

Finnish state officials are received by the German Ministry of the Interior, 1961

Official diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic were only resumed in 1973 in the run-up to the admission of the two German states to the United Nations . This UN membership was a result of the new German Ostpolitik under Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt . This new Ostpolitik was also helpful in the context of the preparations for the cross-bloc conference on security and cooperation in Europe , which took place in Helsinki from 1973 to 1975 at the invitation of the Finnish government and which subsequently contributed to the collapse of the Eastern bloc (1989). In the wake of these globally significant upheavals, which culminated in the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, Finnish politics began to conduct a more independent foreign policy and to join important European alliances to which Germany also belongs. Today the relations between the two EU members are close and intensive.

See also

• List of German ambassadors in Finland
• Ambassador of the GDR in Finland
• Foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany
• List of German-Finnish city and community partnerships

Web links

Commons : German-Finnish relations  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Information from the German Foreign Office on relations with Finland

Individual evidence

1. ^ German Embassy Helsinki (German and Finnish) . Archived from the original on February 10, 2015. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 12, 2011. 
2. ^ Embassy of Finland - Berlin (German, Swedish and Finnish) . Retrieved November 12, 2011.
3. ↑ Welcome! Tervetuloa! Välkommen! . German-Finnish Society. Accessed November 12, 2011.
4. ^ Relations with Germany . Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Retrieved November 12, 2011.