Interzonal trade

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Interzone trade initially referred to the transfer of goods and services between the zones of occupation of the Allies in the area of Germany after the Second World War . After the "double state establishment" in 1949, the concept of interzonal trade was retained due to the mutual claim to sole representation of both states. It was not until 1967, under the new Ostpolitik and the Frankfurt Convention (1949) and the Berlin Agreement (1951/60), said the Federal Republic of Germany from the inner-German trade , or even German-German trade . The term “German-German economic relations”, on the other hand, includes economic relations that were also handled outside of the Berlin Agreement.

In particular, the commercial coordination under the direction of Schalck-Golodkowski used the interzonal trade for their business for foreign exchange procurement.

Illegal trafficking

Until the Wall was built in 1961, there was large-scale illegal trade. However, this does not exclusively mean black market trading, but also individual transactions (so-called compensation transactions, which were concluded in the event of a shortage of goods outside the agreed interzonal trade agreements) as well as triangular transactions, which are particularly common in the case of embargoes in the west, e.g. B. on resolutions of the CoCom (Coordinating Committee for East-West-Trade Policy), through which trade with other countries such as Switzerland , Austria or Denmark could be carried out. Especially since the existence of two currencies, there has been a considerable flow of goods from east to west, which has taken place outside of any controls and agreements.

Legal trade

Legal trade refers to the exchange of goods and services on the basis of interzonal trade agreements between the responsible bodies. The first trade agreement was concluded between Bavaria and Saxony on December 11, 1945 and included a Bavarian consignment of slaughter cattle and salted herring for seed potatoes from Saxony. These goods show that in the early days it was primarily about nutrition - people lived from hand to mouth. Industrial goods groups such as steel, iron, machines, etc. Ä. were not yet the focus of trade. Contract partners at this time were the military governments. In the Dyson, British, Länderrat and Sofra business, too, the contractual partners were the individual military governments of the zone of occupation. With the conclusion of the Minden Agreement, there was talk of an interzonal trade agreement for the first time, as the merger of the Western Allied zones had started. The Minden Agreement contained all the essential points that were also part of all future agreements. This clarified the three most important questions:

  1. Lists of goods: All goods that passed the zone boundaries were recorded in lists of goods and provided with accompanying documents that required approval. This control had the background that no quota goods could be exported (legally) from a zone.
  2. Approval of work and repair contracts : The contract as a commodity could thus also be traded. Machines that later required repair, maintenance or assembly could thus be delivered without being unable to carry out repairs after their failure.
  3. Processing business and wage labor: In order to enable a person living in West Berlin to work in a company in East Berlin, regulated wage agreements between the zones of occupation were required. This initially affected the so-called "small border traffic", but also port workers.

The Frankfurt Agreement represents a further milestone in the interzonal trade agreements. Based on the Minden Agreement, it clarified further problems that were contained in all other agreements:

  2. Clarification of the financial problem of the exchange of goods on the basis of two non- convertible currencies: Due to the currency reform carried out in both zones in 1949, there were two DM - East and West. While the value of goods in the capitalist economic system of the West is regulated by demand and supply, the price of goods in socialist economic systems is determined by the (in the GDR ) Politburo in the five-year plan according to the work performed for it . The solution was an artificial currency, which can be seen as a kind of "voucher system". This artificial currency, of which there was never a coin or a note, was called “accounting unit”. “Both the BdL and the DNB each set up a clearing account through which all financial transactions were processed. Invoices for goods deliveries from east to west were paid in DM-West on the clearing account at the BdL and transferred from this in so-called 'clearing units' (VE) to the account of the DNB. This then paid the corresponding amount to the supplying company in the GDR. In the opposite case, that is, when goods were delivered from west to east, the analogous transaction took place.
  3. Declaration of goods accounts: In order to prevent West German "iron and steel deliveries" from being paid for with East German stockings, allotment goods, so-called "hard goods", had to be exchanged on one account and the "soft goods" on another not quota. An overdraft was set up for both accounts to finance the GDR's import surplus from 1951, the Swing . This reached its peak in 1983 with a limit of 850 million DM.
  4. The role of Berlin in interzonal trade - the “Berlin clause”: Berlin required a special agreement because West Berlin belonged to the economic area of ​​the Federal Republic, but was an island in the GDR. Since every part of the state, i.e. the Federal Republic and the GDR, viewed itself as the sole legitimate successor state of the German Reich and represented a claim to sole representation, neither the Federal Republic was willing to speak of a "GDR" in the treaty, as this would already amount to recognition as a state. It was also unthinkable for the GDR to speak of a “Federal Republic” in the treaty. The Berlin problem and the question of recognition were resolved by stating that the contract between the "representatives of the currency areas of the DM-West and DM-East" was concluded.
  5. No further compensation transactions
  6. The "anti-dumping clause": made it possible for a contractual partner to withdraw from a transaction if the pricing ran counter to its own economic interests.
agreement partner running time sales
Dyson business BBZ - SBZ 01.01.1946–31.08.1946
British business BBZ – SBZ September 1, 1946– March 31, 1947 65 million RM
State Council business ABZ –SBZ October 1, 1946– March 31, 1947 RM 62 million
Sofra business FBZ –SBZ 10.10.1946–31.12.1946 7 million RM
Minden Agreement Bizone –SBZ 01/01/1947–31/03/1948 220 million RM
1. Berlin Agreement Bizone-SBZ 01/01/1948–30/09/1948 314 million RM
Agreement on interzonal trade
"Frankfurt Agreement"		 Federal Republic of Germany - GDR October 8, 1949– June 30, 1950 450 million VE (!)
Berlin Agreement BR Germany – GDR July 3, 1951–1990
  1. ↑ was merged with the British business
  2. ↑ originally planned to run until December 31, 1949, but ended early due to the first Berlin crisis
  3. ↑ originally planned until the end of the term
  4. ↑ the lists of goods and thus the turnover were determined annually

Only through the success of the counter -blockade to the Berlin blockade in 1949, as a result of which the western occupation zones stopped all steel and iron deliveries to the Soviet Zone, the link between Berlin traffic and interzonal trade became clear: Should the Soviet Union impair or even stop traffic to or in Berlin , this results in economic sanctions in the form of the suspension of deliveries from the western zones. If, on the other hand, they did not meet their deliveries, the Soviet Union was able to influence the Berlin traffic. This mutual blockade was lifted by the Jessup-Malik Agreement of 1949.

The resumption of interzonal trade after the first Berlin crisis came about in the form of the Berlin Agreement (not to be confused with the “Berlin Agreement” or the 1st Berlin Agreement). It was based on the Frankfurt Agreement and only added:

  2. New clearing account for services: Now all four accounts for interzone trade were set up and had their own overdraft facility. The clearing account for services was of particular benefit to port workers.

The Berlin Agreement was the first open-ended agreement. For the following time only the lists of goods for barter had to be discussed again. Until the fall of the Wall, the Berlin Agreement was the legal basis for interzonal and later for German-German trade.

Significance for the Federal Republic and the GDR

For the Trizone / Federal Republic the economic importance of this trade was of similar importance until the end of the 1950s as for the Soviet Zone / GDR. While the Soviet Zone / GDR was initially an indispensable supplier of food for the Trizone / Federal Republic, the Trizone / Federal Republic was always a supplier of steel and iron, and later of machines and electrical equipment without military use. The increasingly one-sided dependency did not develop until the 1960s. In the Federal Republic of Germany people spoke of the "golden fish hook" that the GDR wanted to "swallow". The more the GDR was driven into economic dependency, the sooner reunification could be achieved. German-German trade was a way of creating a solid bond between the diverging parts. But also the possibility of the economic shop window did not want to be given up, in order to always be there as a model example of how one could live at the same time. As a German state, the Federal Republic was not allowed to disappear from the view of the GDR citizens. The GDR saw it similarly. Walter Ulbricht saw the interzonal trade as a " Trojan horse " with whose help the GDR could be recognized as a sovereign state. But the GDR also saw German-German trade and the superiority of socialism as a forum for the political and economic systematic debate by peaceful means. Both sides, the Federal Republic and the GDR, saw it as a bracket for a possibility of bringing about reunification in the future, albeit with a different outcome.

literature

  • Peter Bender: The golden fish hook . In: Gustav Schmidt (Ed.): East-West Relations: Confrontation and Détente 1945–1989 . tape 1 . University Press Dr. N. Brockmeyer, Bochum 1993, ISBN 978-3-8196-0159-0 , pp. 83-90 .
  • Peter E. Fäßler: Through the "Iron Curtain". German-German economic relations 1949–1969 . In: Stuart Jenks, Michael North, Rolf Walter (eds.): Economic and social historical studies . tape 14 . Cologne [u. a.] 2008.
  • Fritz Faust: The Potsdam Agreement and its significance under international law . Metzner Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1969.
  • Tae-Heon Kim: Foreign trade of the GDR and trade relations between the FRG and the GDR. Its consequences for the German economic and monetary union and the time afterwards . Regensburg 2000.
  • Peter Krewer: Doing business with the class enemy. The GDR in intra-German trade 1949–1989 . Kliomedia, Trier 2005, ISBN 978-3-89890-122-2 .
  • Michael Kruse: Politics and German-German Economic Relations from 1945 to 1989 . Köster Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-89574-556-0 .
  • Gunther Mai: The "Trojan Horse". Intra-German trade relations between block formation and inter-systemic symbiosis (1945–1989) . In: Gustav Schmidt (Hrsg.): East-West Relations: Confrontation and Détente. 1945-1989 . University Press Dr. N. Brockmeyer, Bochum 1993, ISBN 978-3-8196-0159-0 , pp. 433-448 .
  • Jörg Roesler: Moments of German-German economic and social history 1945 to 1990. An analysis on an equal footing . Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2006, ISBN 978-3-86583-096-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Peter Krewer: Business with the Class Enemy. The GDR in intra-German trade 1949–1989. Trier 2008, pp. 16-17.
  2. ↑ See Kruse (2005), p. 16 ff.
  3. ↑ Kruse (2005), p. 17.
  4. ↑ Fäßler (2008), p. 96.
  5. ↑ Fäßler (2008), p. 96. Quoted from Kaumann, TSI at Inter-Zone Trade Conference, 11/1949 (SAPMO-BA, N 1062, 97, p. 1).
  6. ↑ Fäßler (2008), p. 98.
  7. ↑ Kruse (2005), p. 20.
  8. ↑ Kruse (2005), p. 27.
  9. ↑ Bender (1993).
  10. ↑ May (1993).