German division

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The Berlin Wall was the symbol of the division of Germany.

As a German division or partition of Germany (also division of Germany , the existence of two German is called) States in the area of Germany in the period from 1949 until the reunification referred to 1990 levels. It was a result of the Second World War and the subsequent Cold War between the former allies of the anti-Hitler coalition .

This division also includes the separation of the eastern territories of the German Reich as agreed in the Potsdam Agreement of 1945 . Northern East Prussia became Soviet. The People's Republic of Poland was compensated for its shift to the west unilaterally with German areas east of the Oder-Neisse border , which had made up about a quarter of German territory in 1937. With this westward shift, the VR Poland had to give up its territories east of the Curzon Line , which are now the Soviet republics of Ukraine and Belaruswere incorporated. In doing so, they lost the area that had belonged to Poland-Lithuania until 1795 and which the Second Polish Republic had recaptured from Russia in the 1920s.

With the establishment of the unity of Germany , the Eastern Territories were finally assigned under international law on October 3, 1990.

In a larger context, the division of Germany belongs to the complex of the German question that existed between 1806 and 1990 .

The history of the division 1943–1949

Already during the Second World War the "big three" allies of the anti-Hitler coalition - USSR , USA and Great Britain - met for conferences in Tehran , Yalta and shortly after the common victory over "Hitler Germany" in Potsdam . The common goal of the allies was to prevent the defeated Germany from regaining its strength in order to contain a renewed danger of war . At the same time, however, the Allies also fought among themselves for their future zones of influence on the European continent.

1943: Tehran Conference

Churchill had already considered the division into a northern state and a southern state (including Austria and even Hungary) in 1943.

At the Moscow conference of October 1943 , the foreign ministers stipulated that Germany should be occupied by the victorious powers within its borders from 1937 and that it should be governed until further notice. The US President Franklin D. Roosevelt , the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the Soviet party and state leader Josef Stalin took part in the following Tehran conference . At that time the front line of the war against Germany was still deep in Soviet territory. Stalin vigorously advocated the smashing of Germany in order to be able to gain permanent security from it. It was agreed that the German Empire would be divided into several states or protectorates .

1945: Yalta Conference

The four zones of occupation and Berlin
The four sectors of Berlin

When the Allies met again two years later in February 1945, this time in Yalta in the Crimea , to adopt the Yalta Declaration , the conflicting interests between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had already become clearer. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin fought over the future of the former German satellite states in east- central and south-east Europe . Stalin was already installing regimes loyal to the Soviet Union in the areas occupied by the Red Army . This was not least in contradiction to the British-American “ Atlantic Charter ” of 1941, in which the two Western Allies had agreed not to decide questions of territory and the form of government without hearing the people concerned.

Any danger that Germany would pose in the future was no longer perceived as being so great. It was replaced by the beginning East-West conflict , which was later to be called the Cold War . The Western Allies changed their goals and now wanted a strong and stable Germany as a counterweight to the expansionist efforts of the Soviet Union. Stalin was also no longer interested in the division of Germany , since he had to reckon with the fact that small West German states, which would also have included the Ruhr area , which is interesting for reparation purposes, would turn to the West in view of the Soviet Army in eastern Germany.

Officially, however, all three participants in the conference stuck to the goal of dividing Germany. It was decided to divide Germany into three zones of occupation and the capital Berlin into three sectors in accordance with the proposals of the European Consultative Commission (EAC) contained in the two zone protocols laid down on September 12 and November 14, 1944 respectively . The EAC was a diplomatic committee set up by the three foreign ministers, whose members discussed the course of the borders and the administration of the zones of occupation and recorded the consensus they had reached in the minutes. Each victorious power should rule in its zone of occupation through its own commander in chief on its own responsibility. For questions concerning Germany as a whole , a council of supreme commanders ( Allied Control Council ) should be formed, which should make decisions jointly and unanimously. This also shows that the division of Germany was no longer the primary goal of those involved.

In addition, an agreement was reached in Yalta through which France became the fourth occupying power and was thus entitled to a seat and vote in the Allied Control Council. The discussions held by the EAC on this resulted in the third zone protocol laid down on July 26, 1945. It contained the proposal which areas should be "cut out" for this zone to be created in the west and south-west of Germany from the US and British zones .

1945: Potsdam Conference

The Potsdam Agreement agreed upon at the Potsdam Conference unintentionally led to the division of Germany. Before this, Germany had capitulated militarily on May 8, 1945 . The future order of Southeast Europe and the still unresolved question of reparations were debated until it was foreseeable that the conference would fail. But none of the three participating nations wanted this. The United States wanted to integrate the Soviet Union into the emerging United Nations and not snub it before the world public.

The British, on the other hand, were of the opinion that their role as a world power should depend on the continued existence of the coalition; because firmly tied to the western camp, one quickly becomes a mere junior partner of the USA. The cohesion of the anti-Hitler coalition was essential for each of the three sides.

In order to make the conference a success, the US proposed a compromise on the reparations issue. The dispute over the reparations essentially revolved around the fact that the Americans and the British only wanted to withdraw reparations from Germany according to the " First Charge Principle " when the domestic demand was satisfied. The USSR, far more affected by war damage than the US and Great Britain, was unwilling to accept this. The American compromise proposal now envisaged simply dividing Germany as a reparations area. Each party would then be free to realize their own ideas in their zone of occupation. The proposal was accepted.

In addition, the Western powers agreed to Stalin's plan to place the German eastern territories (east of the Oder-Neisse line ) under Polish and Soviet administration (although the Western powers initially only advocated the Oder border). The victorious powers demanded that the mass expulsions from Czechoslovakia , Poland and Hungary should be carried out “properly and humanely”. Because millions of Germans without state organization had already been forcibly evacuated and expelled under “wild” circumstances with a large number of fatalities , the expulsions should be stopped until the Control Council had dealt with them.

French policy on Germany

After Germany was separated as an economic area, the zones also developed politically separately. France had been under German occupation after the defeat of 1940 and free French armed forces fought alongside the Allies as a result. France therefore had its own zone of occupation and a seat on the council of military governors . However, it hindered cooperation in the Allied Control Council. Council decisions had to be taken unanimously, and France made extensive use of its veto power . This was due to the fact that France was only now getting a voice in the negotiations - at a time when the main decisions had already been made. In order to bring in its own goals (no leniency in the question of reparations , French administration of the Saarland , reintegration of Alsace and Lorraine into the French state association, international rule over the Ruhr area, etc.), France remained in a blockade position.

The body of military governors was unable to act - so the exercise of power in post-war Germany passed to the governor of the respective zone and his military government. Here the foundations for parliamentary democracy on the basis of a capitalist market economy were laid in the three western zones . In the east, on the other hand, a path towards socialism was taken ( land reform , denazification , compulsory unification of the SPD and KPD to form the SED ). The measures were intended to isolate the Soviet occupation zone as economically as effectively as a state border .

Cold War

With the ongoing confrontation between East and West, neither of the two “ camps ” wanted to take a step back: the West feared that the Soviet Union would seize a united Germany; she was afraid of being pushed back to the Oder again. In response to these fears, Germany was divided.

Also the position of power of a united Germany that could work together with the Soviet Union (as happened during the Weimar Republic in the Treaty of Rapallo of 1922 and then during the Nazi era in the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939) and thus a means of pressure against the states of the West in hand led to the decision to actively pursue the division. A supporter of this plan was the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer , who, against strong internal political opposition from the ranks of the SPD, under its chairman Kurt Schumacher , advocated a strong connection to the West , especially within the framework of NATO .

Important steps on the now only formal path to partition were the unannounced currency reform in 1948 , the subsequent blockade of Berlin from June 24, 1948 to May 12, 1949 and ultimately the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany on May 23 and German Democratic Republic (GDR) on October 7, 1949.

The Federal Republic recognized the GDR as a separate state in the basic treaty of 1972 . Until then, the Hallstein Doctrine of 1955, which underlined the Federal Republic's claim to the sole representation of German interests, prohibited recognition of the East German state. When Yugoslavia and Cuba recognized the GDR and sought diplomatic relations there, the Federal Republic broke off diplomatic relations with both countries.

Germany divided in the Cold War 1949–1989

Since no peace treaty was signed after the Second World War and there was no general German government, the development was initially regarded as provisional. The division of Germany did not abolish its constitutional unity. However, the political leadership in the GDR quickly and gradually deviated from this legal conception, not least due to pressure from the Soviet Union.

1949-1961

Federal Republic of Germany

When the Basic Law was drafted , the Federal Republic of Germany, founded in 1949, assumed that Germany , which had been defeated in 1945, had not perished as a subject of constitutional and international law . Their frame and time of reference was the national territory as it was on December 31, 1937, that is, before the " Anschluss " of Austria and the Sudeten area under Adolf Hitler . As a result, the areas east of the Oder-Neisse border that were under Polish or Soviet administration from 1945 were still considered "East Germany", while the restored state of Austria was considered a "foreign state" from the start. This view is particularly clear in Article 116 of the Basic Law , in which a constitutional definition of German is made as follows:

"(1) German within the meaning of this Basic Law is subject to other legal regulation, who has German citizenship or refugee or displaced persons of German ethnic origin or as the spouse or descendant in the territory of the German Reich according to the state from December 31, 1937 has found refuge . "

Poster of the "Kuratorium Indivisible Germany"

For the Kuratorium Indivisible Germany , founded in 1954, Germany was “divided into three parts”: the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), “Central Germany” and “East Germany”.

The stipulation of Art. 116 GG meant that the newly founded Federal Republic (see Frankfurt documents ) had a large number of potential citizens who, however, could not participate in the new state. The Federal Republic of Germany claimed to speak for the entire German people (see below) . Therefore, the goal of "reunification" was also seen as one of the most important tasks of the Federal Republic, as can already be seen from the first two sentences of the preamble of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany :

“Aware of its responsibility to God and people, inspired by the will to preserve its national and state unity and to serve the peace of the world as an equal member in a united Europe, the German people [...] has to support state life To give a new order for a transitional period, this Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany was adopted by virtue of its constituent power. It also acted for those Germans who were denied participation. "

Memorial plaque in a park in Biedenkopf (Hesse), 2011

The constitutional legislators of the Federal Republic of Germany were able to rely on various specifications by the Four Powers , such as the Berlin Declaration of June 5, 1945 and, above all, the Potsdam resolutions , which clearly show that Germany as a whole was intended to continue to exist and that the four victorious powers wanted to reserve decision-making power in relation to the whole of Germany until a peace treaty had been drawn up. This four-power status referred to here was not touched by the victorious powers even until the two-plus-four treaty was signed .

Another important aspect with regard to reunification from the point of view of the Federal Republic of Germany was the objective, also formulated in the preamble of the Basic Law, that “the entire German people” should be called upon to “complete the unity and freedom of Germany through free self-determination” the government of Adenauer , who always justified his endeavors to integrate the Federal Republic into the West as far as possible , since he saw the possibility of freedom and free self-determination only given through increased and institutionalized cooperation with Western Europe. He rejected a reunification of Germany in a communist dictatorship.

The opposition parties SPD and FDP expressed until the late 1950s always concerns about this policy of integration into the West, seeing thus the chances of a reunion considerably reduced. Their idea was rather to separate a united Germany from the international bloc confrontation. However, they could not prevail with this idea because the federal government and also the majority of West Germans feared that a neutralized Germany as a whole could easily become dependent on the Soviet Union. Adenauer therefore also rejected the Soviet proposals for the 1952 Stalin Notes .

Since the Federal Republic was the only free democracy on German soil, it considered its political claim to speak for the Germans in the German Democratic Republic to be justified ( claim to sole representation ).

German Democratic Republic

In the first version of its constitution , the German Democratic Republic also claimed to speak for the entire German people:

"[...] the German people have given themselves this constitution.

Article 1
(1) Germany is an indivisible democratic republic, it is built on the German states.
(2) The republic decides on all matters which are essential for the existence and development of the German people as a whole; [...]
(4) There is only one German nationality. "

The wording of the GDR constitution of 1949 - contrary to the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany - did not say a word about the division of Germany. Initially, it was based on the view that the GDR was identical to Germany , which was also to be constitutively expressed in economic terms: "Germany forms a single customs and trading area, surrounded by a common customs border". Article 1 also read that there is “only one German citizenship ” and that Germany is an “indivisible republic”. This claim of the GDR was also underlined by its constant emphasis that its own form and order of government must be fundamental for a reunified Germany.

There was intense discussion as to whether the Stalin Notes of March 10, 1952 represented a possibility of bringing about reunification. In this, the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin offered his consent to reunification, on the condition that the united Germany should remain neutral. Konrad Adenauer assessed the Stalin notes as an attempt by the Soviet Union to torpedo the negotiations taking place at the same time on the Petersberg in Bonn on a German contribution to a European defense community . The Western powers made free elections a prerequisite for further negotiations in East Germany too, whereupon the initiative fizzled out. Individual politicians and later some historians have spoken of a missed opportunity.

With the rejection of the Stalin Notes by the West, a neutral, united Germany based on the Austrian model became unrealistic. At the beginning of the 1960s there was a reorientation in the self-image of the GDR. The German Reich was henceforth seen as perished in 1945 and instead of the Reich the existence of two German states was emphasized as its successors . In this way an attempt was made, for example, to obtain recognition under international and constitutional law by the Federal Republic, but this refused. With reference to the lack of legal succession, the GDR leadership also ignored demands for restitution against Israel and the Jews , who largely left the GDR in the course of the persecution of " cosmopolitans ".

From now on, the GDR's concept of reunification envisaged an alliance of states in the form of a loose confederation , with socialism as the supporting foundation.

1961-1969

Memorial to the division of Germany in Hof , 1965

Federal Republic of Germany

After the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the opinion increasingly prevailed in West Germany that one should approach the GDR more out of consideration for the Germans living there - specifically the government, because one could hardly get at the people themselves. The aim was to use measures to intensify contacts to keep people aware of a common nation.

One consequence of this change was that people not only accepted the status quo , but also increasingly discussed whether the GDR should be recognized as a separate state. Another consequence was the increased practice of signing bilateral treaties with Eastern Bloc countries in which a mutual renunciation of force was expressed.

This phase of politics was characterized by the attempt to slowly and carefully reduce hostility , prejudice and fears , without foregoing any claims. However, it became increasingly clear that the idea of ​​a real possible German unity evaporated more and more into a distant future.

German Democratic Republic

In the GDR, too, the idea of ​​German unity was more clearly withdrawn after offers for a confederation as a socialist confederation had failed. In fact, the GDR erected the Berlin Wall in 1961 to curb the mass refugee movement. According to the view taken by the GDR, however, it had to defend itself against the constant “ reactionary ” attacks by the Federal Republic of Germany (“ anti-fascist protective wall ”). In addition, the aggressive plans of West Germany have become increasingly clear. In the brochure Why the Wall - How Long a Wall? , which was probably published in the second half of the 1960s and was supposed to justify the building of the wall, it says:

How this raid should be staged, explained the Adenauer intimus Robert Ingrim in the Bonner Rundschau on July 9th : “[...] that the free world must fix itself to use all means of war, war of nerves and gun warfare. This includes not only the traditional armed forces and armaments, but also the undermining, the inciting of internal resistance, the work in the underground, the disintegration of order, sabotage, the disruption of traffic and the economy, disobedience, riot [...] "

In 1967 a law established a separate citizenship for GDR citizens. Just one year later, a new constitution was formulated in accordance with this law, in which the intention was announced to eliminate the division of Germany forced by imperialism through slow rapprochement and even reunification.

In those years, the GDR government became convinced that peaceful coexistence should be sought and that there were now two states on German soil, one socialist and one capitalist. This means clear demarcation, but also the possibility of a meeting.

The idea of ​​reunification in a socialist or at least neutral Germany as a whole, which had been actively propagated in the previous decades, was abandoned at this time. Instead, the SED developed the thesis of the “socialist German nation”. The text of the national anthem of the GDR was no longer sung, the anthem was only intoned . Her text was still printed in school books until the end of the GDR - contrary to many rumors, it was never banned.

Two-state concept 1969–1982

The Brandenburg Gate at the time of the German division

Federal Republic of Germany

When a new coalition under Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt took over the government in 1969 , the new Ostpolitik changed more and more clearly. The social-liberal coalition of the SPD and FDP showed its willingness to recognize the GDR as the second German state from the start. This became clear in the Moscow and Warsaw Treaties in 1970 ( see also the Moscow Treaty ) and in the basic treaty concluded in 1972 , in which the Federal Republic gave up its claim to sole representation and switched to the principle of equal rights with the aim of normalizing relations.

The accession of both German states to the UN in 1973 made it necessary for the Federal Republic of Germany to recognize the sovereign GDR as a subject of international law - although an independent international law recognition was always denied and only constitutional recognition was confirmed - which, however, was already required in the Moscow Treaty of 1970 Affirmed the sovereignty and the status quo of the GDR. The GDR also had to recognize the Federal Republic of Germany. The Federal Republic insisted on a kind of special status for both states ( two-state concept ) because it still did not want to properly recognize the GDR and rejected the existence of GDR citizenship . It was still seen as a central political task to preserve the unity of the nation - as formulated in the Basic Law.

German Democratic Republic

Since the beginning of the 1970s the German Democratic Republic tried to supplement its concept of the two German states with a two-state theory . This was intended to underline the claim to recognition under international law. This view was also shared by the Soviet Union and most of the Eastern Bloc countries .

From this point of view, the basic contract of 1972 was a partial success. The admission of the GDR as the 133rd and the Federal Republic of Germany as the 134th member of the world organization, which took place by acclamation on September 18, 1973 , fulfilled the wish of the German Democratic Republic for final full international recognition as a subject of international law.

The Gera demands presented from the perspective of the GDR the next steps in cementing the division. In the West, these positions found on the part of the peace movement growing and the left wing of the SPD encouragement. With the joint paper of the SPD and SED a turning away from the goal of reunification in freedom became clear.

Kohl - Gorbatschow - Honecker 1982-1989

Although Helmut Kohl only intended to continue the German policy of his predecessors by confessing to the existing treaties and striving for cooperation with the GDR on the foundations previously laid, changes soon became apparent. On the one hand, he clearly pushed the European unification policy, not without emphasizing again and again that a real unification also includes the solution of the German question . On the other hand, he intensified contact with the GDR through contractual agreements, whereby his government made it clear at the same time that it gives freedom first priority in accordance with the Basic Law.

Despite this clear position taken by Helmut Kohl and his ministers towards the GDR, he achieved an intensification of mutual relations through contract negotiations and personal telephone calls with members of the GDR leadership. In the contracts sought, human concerns were mostly in the foreground of the West German government's interests, such as family reunification. In 1984 the GDR leadership could also be persuaded to remove the self-firing systems on the inner-German border . In return, loans were often granted that the economically troubled German Democratic Republic urgently needed.

When Mikhail Gorbachev took office as General Secretary of the CPSU in 1985, the final phase of the Cold War began , which also had a major impact on the process of German reunification. The politics of Gorbachev contributed significantly to the global and domestic détente. In addition, Honecker's long-planned (counter) visit to Bonn took place in September 1987 , during which a radiation protection agreement, a joint environmental protection agreement and a general agreement on cooperation in the scientific and technical field were concluded.

End of the division through reunification in 1989/1990

Tourist notice on the federal highway 115
Information board on the L1005 between Thuringia and Lower Saxony

The end of the division of Germany was heralded with the opening of the Wall on November 9, 1989. However, according to Article 1, Paragraph 1 of the Unification Treaty, German unity only became a legal reality "with the entry into force of the accession of the German Democratic Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany in accordance with Article 23 of the Basic Law on October 3, 1990" (decided by the People's Chamber of the GDR on 23 August 1990), whereby the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany lost its provisional character. With the accession of the GDR , its constitutional law was abolished and replaced by the Basic Law as a constitution , with all the consequences of such adoption of the constitution; It was therefore not necessary for the - now reunited - German people to have to give themselves a new constitution. With the federal election in 1990 and the state elections , the Basic Law was generally accepted, so that further legitimation by the West Germans in accordance with Art. 146 (old version) was no longer required. Since the Basic Law became “now a common all-German constitution ( Art. 3 Unification Treaty)”, Article 146 had served its purpose and was consequently obsolete. It has proven to be the basic legal order and basis of all other laws.

Sentences 1 and 3 of the preamble to the Basic Law make it clear that the Basic Law is permanently valid. Article 146 of the Basic Law does not contradict this either ; this merely points out that it is possible for the German people to replace the Basic Law with a new constitution by virtue of their constituent powers .

German-German sensitivities

In federal German public television - which always referred to itself as " German television " (analogous to this until 1972, the " German television radio " as the state television of the GDR) - Europe maps without national borders were used for weather forecasting until reunification. In this way, a political statement regarding whether or not they belonged to the GDR was avoided.

The first weather map with the outlines of the united Germany showed the Tagesschau on June 13, 1990.

See also

literature

  • Christoph Kleßmann : The double German post-war history as a scientific and didactic problem . Wochenschau-Verlag, Schwalbach / Ts. 2005, ISBN 3-899-74255-9 .
  • Gerd Langguth (Ed.): The intellectuals and the national question . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-593-35725-9 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Dietmar Schultke : Nobody gets through - The history of the inner-German border and the Berlin Wall . 4th edition, structure, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-7466-8157-3 .
  • Heinrich August Winkler : The long way to the west. Volume 2: German history from the “Third Reich” to reunification . CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46002-X .
  • Peter Graf Kielmansegg : After the disaster - A history of divided Germany. Siedler, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-88680-329-5 .
  • Robert Häusser : The Berlin Wall. Photographs and quotes. Edited by Alfried Wieczorek, Claude W. Sui. Edition Braus, Heidelberg 2009, ISBN 978-3-89466-305-6 .
  • Jean-Paul Cahn , Ulrich Pfeil (Ed.): Allemagne 1945–1961. De la "catastrophe" à la construction du Mur . Septentrion, Villeneuve d'Ascq 2008, ISBN 978-2-7574-0056-2 .
  • Jean-Paul Cahn, Ulrich Pfeil (ed.): Allemagne 1961–1974. De la construction du Mur à l'Ostpolitik . Septentrion, Villeneuve d'Ascq 2009, ISBN 978-2-7574-0107-1 .
  • Jean-Paul Cahn, Ulrich Pfeil (eds.): Allemagne 1974–1990. De l'Ostpolitik à l'unification . Septentrion, Villeneuve d'Ascq 2009, ISBN 978-2-7574-0107-1 .
  • Matthias Uhl : The division of Germany. Defeat, east-west division and reconstruction 1945–1949. be.bra, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-89809-411-5 .
  • Gregory Henderson, Richard Ned Lebow, John George Stoessinger: Divided Nations in a Divided World . D. McKay Co., New York 1974, ISBN 978-0-679-30057-1 .
  • Quansheng Zhao, Robert G. Sutter: Politics of Divided Nations. China, Korea, Germany and Vietnam. Unification, Conflict Resolution and Political Development (=  Occasional Papers / Reprints Series in Contemporary Asian Studies, Vol. 9). School of Law, University of Maryland, Baltimore 1991, ISBN 978-0-925153-17-3 ( PDF; 11.8 MB ).
  • Thomas Cieslik: Reunions during and after the East-West bloc confrontation. Causes of the division - foundations of the (missing) unity. Examined using the case studies of Vietnam, Yemen, Germany, China and Korea . Tectum, Marburg 2001, ISBN 978-3-8288-8271-3 (=  Scientific articles from Tectum-Verlag. Sub-series Political Science; Volume 10).
  • Peter Joachim Lapp : Border regime of the GDR. Helios, Aachen 2013, ISBN 978-3-86933-087-7 .
  • More than 30 volumes and two special volumes have been published as documents on Germany policy - DzD (scientifically critical edition of essential documents on the German question).

Web links

Commons : Deutsche Teilung  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim Bentzien, The international legal barriers of national sovereignty in the 21st century , Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 68 f. ; Michael Kirn , The German State in Europe. Tasks and goals of the united Germany , Urachhaus publishing house, Stuttgart 1991, p. 211.
  2. ↑ Detlef Brandes : Purification from the foreign element , in: Stefan Aust , Stephan Burgdorff (Ed.): The flight. On the expulsion of Germans from the East , Bonn 2005, licensed edition for the Federal Agency for Civic Education , ISBN 3-89331-533-0 , p. 130 f.
  3. ^ Journal of the GDR 1949 I, p. 5.
  4. ↑ See Art. 118 of the GDR Constitution of 1949.
  5. ↑ In 1967 there were 1,200 Jews living in the GDR, in 1989 only 350; D. Brückner, H. Focke, Germany after 1945 , p. 56.
  6. ↑ See Kay Hailbronner in: Graf Vitzthum (Hrsg.), Völkerrecht , 4th ed. 2007, 3rd section, Rn 168 .
  7. ↑ 30th meeting of the 10th People's Chamber of the GDR on August 23, 1990: People's Chamber decision on the accession of the GDR to the Federal Republic (5'11 ") , in: Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv (DRA)
  8. ↑ Klaus Stern , The constitutional law of the Federal Republic of Germany , Vol. V: The historical foundations of German constitutional law. The constitutional development from the Old German Reich to the reunified Federal Republic of Germany , CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-07021-3 , p. 1977.
  9. ↑ Franz Schneider, The importance of Art. 178 BV for German reunification and for constitutional revisions of reunified Germany (= legal research and development; Vol. 541), VVF, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-89481-241-9 , p. 36 .
  10. ↑ Quoted from Rupert Scholz , Basic Law between Reform and Preservation: Lecture given to the Legal Society in Berlin on December 2, 1992 , Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1993, ISBN 3-11-014112-4 , p. 5 f.
  11. ↑ Franz Schneider, The importance of Art. 178 BV for German reunification and for constitutional revisions of reunified Germany (= legal research and development; Vol. 541), VVF, 1996, p. 39.
  12. ↑ Tagesschau of 13 June 1990, 20:00 .
  13. ^ List ( memento of October 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), Federal Archives .