German-Kazakh relations

Germany and Kazakhstan have had diplomatic relations since February 11, 1992. Both states are members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Kazakhstan is a member of the NATO Partnership for Peace .

Germany has an embassy in Nur-Sultan (Astana until 2019) and a consulate general in Almaty . An honorary consul works in Atyrau . Kazakhstan has an embassy in Berlin with a branch in Bonn and a consulate general in Frankfurt am Main . Honorary consuls reside in Bremen , Dresden , Hamburg , Hanover , Wolfratshausen near Munich and Stuttgart .

There is a German-Kazakh University in Almaty . The German-Kazakh Society (DKG) was founded in 1997 and is based in Bonn.

history

Early contacts between Germans and Kazakhs are often related to the expansion efforts of the Russian Empire in the direction of Turkestan or scientific trips by German or Russian-German researchers to Central Asia. For example, the German-Baltic geologist Gregor von Helmersen traveled as a researcher from 1833 to 1836, including the Kazakh steppe . The later Kazakhstan, after the Russian influence had already become very strong, was finally subjugated in the middle of the 19th century by the Russian-German General Konstantin Petrovich Kaufmann († 1882) and his troops and thus subordinated to the General Government of Turkestan .

Settlements of German religious minorities such as the Russian Mennonite there was in the 19th century in several parts of the Russian rich and since the end of the 19th century on the territory of present-day Kazakhstan. The German presence in Kazakhstan was boosted by the deportation of the Volga Germans to Siberia and Kazakhstan, ordered by Stalin after the attack of the German Reich on the Soviet Union in 1941 , where they were mostly settled scattered. During and after the Second World War, the Germans were subject to a so-called command office with strict reporting requirements , exit restrictions and discrimination . Conditions resembling camps prevailed for a long time. The commandant's office was not lifted until January 1956. However, the German settlements continued to exist. After 1979, the idea to form an autonomous region of the Germans in Kazakhstan - in the area of Akmolinsk / Tselinograd (now Astana) with a high proportion of German origin - foundered on the opposition of the local Russian and Kazakh population, most migrated Kasachstandeutschen since the late 1980s from Kazakhstan to settle back in the homeland of their ancestors. According to the census of 2003 300,000 German living in Kazakhstan, especially in the north of the country and in space only Sultan (2019 Astana) . According to the Federal Foreign Office, there were around 800,000 Kazakh Germans in Germany and 220,000 in Kazakhstan in 2011.

After the Republic of Kazakhstan declared its independence from the Soviet Union on December 16, 1991 , it was recognized by Germany on December 31, 1991. Diplomatic relations have existed since February 11, 1992. Since then, bilateral contacts have developed dynamically. For example, through the Joint Declaration of September 22, 1992 on the Basis of Relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Kazakhstan, the bilateral development cooperation which lasted until 2008 , the Agreement on Partnership and Cooperation between the European Communities and their Member States and the Republic of Kazakhstan of 1999 , the EU Central Asia Strategy from 2007, the Joint Declaration on a Partnership for the Future between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Kazakhstan from 2008 and the Germany Year in Kazakhstan 2010. Also in 2010, Chancellor Angela Merkel took part in the OSCE summit in Kazakhstan's capital Nur -Sultan (until 2019 Astana) and also met the Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev . It became clear what applies to the entire German and European foreign policy towards independent Kazakhstan: there is a fine line between safeguarding and promoting economic interests (the country is rich in raw materials, e.g. crude oil, uranium and gold) on the one hand and the dissemination of constitutional and democratic standards on the other hand. Kazakhstan under the authoritarian ruling President Nazarbayev is still a long way from these. For example, the Kazakh presidential elections in 2012 and 2017 should be canceled because, according to Kazakh parliamentarians, there is no alternative to Nazarbayev anyway and elections are therefore a waste of money. This project (which was not carried out in this way) was sharply criticized from abroad and also from the German federal government. In the 2011 election, there were only opposing candidates who spoke out in favor of a victory for the incumbent.

Web links

Commons : German-Kazakh Relations - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

^ German Embassy Astana (German and Russian) . Retrieved December 11, 2011.

^ Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the Federal Republic of Germany (German, Russian and Kazakh) . Retrieved December 11, 2011.

↑ German-Kazakh University (German, Russian, English and Kazakh) . Retrieved December 11, 2011.

^ German-Kazakh Society - About Us . Deutsch-Kazachische Gesellschaft eV Archived from the original on October 28, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 23, 2011. @1@ 2