London Debt Conference

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The conference on the settlement of foreign debts from February 28 to August 8, 1952 negotiated the foreign debts of the Federal Republic of Germany with its creditors and led to the multilateral London debt agreement . Bilateral repayment agreements were concluded between the Federal Republic and the creditor states of the USA , Great Britain , France and Denmark for the debts that went back to economic aid from the post-war period .

To the prehistory

On June 20, 1948, a currency reform came into force in the three western occupation zones of Germany , and from June 21, the Deutsche Mark was the sole legal tender . The exchange rate of the D-Mark to all major currencies at the time was largely fixed by the Bretton Woods system . The US dollar and the British pound were high; the incentive for exports to these two countries was high (or from the point of view of these countries: the incentive to import was high because these were so cheap - also thanks to the exchange rate). In 1950 there were still shortages in many areas of the economy, especially raw materials. Coal, steel and electrical energy were still rationed. The currency reserves of the central bank (then the Bank of German States , the predecessor of the Bundesbank) were very small.

In the fall of 1950 a foreign exchange crisis broke out in Germany. The world economy was then under the influence of the Korean War that broke out in June 1950 (price inflation, shortage of goods).

The conference

In mid-1952, Germany had long overcome the currency crisis of autumn 1950; The Bank of German States and the Federal Government at the time succeeded in keeping inflation significantly lower than in France and Great Britain (hardly any imported inflation yet ) despite considerable trade surpluses . The inflation in these countries increased the demand for products from Germany. The franc and the pound sterling were already overvalued in 1952.

The German delegation was led by the banker Hermann Abs . The still young Federal Republic received acceptable terms of contract; the economic miracle continued. Abs was able to convince the delegations of other states that excessive reparation demands on Germany were one of the main reasons for the failure of the Weimar Republic after the First World War .

While the modalities were being negotiated at the London Debt Conference, the argument that the Federal Republic of Germany had only limited solvency due to considerable territorial losses - because "important parts of the empire were further separated" (Hermann Josef Abs) - played an important role: the territorial restriction of power the federal government must be taken into account. Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had already referred to this in the debt declaration of March 6, 1951, and the Western powers had expressly confirmed this in their reply.

Reparation issues for losses and damage from World War II were not negotiated in London . According to the understanding at the time, they should have been settled in a later peace treaty . When Germany was reunified in 1990 - for various reasons - an official peace treaty was waived; the two-plus-four treaty bears the attribute “instead of a peace treaty”.

literature

  • Ursula Rombeck-Jaschinski: The London debt agreement: the regulation of German foreign debts after the Second World War . Oldenbourg, Munich 2005, plus Habil.-Schr., Univ. Düsseldorf, 2003 ( publications by the German Historical Institute in London , volume 58).
  • Hermann J. Abs : Decisions 1949–1953: The Origin of the London Debt Agreement . Verlag v. Hase & Koehler, Mainz 1991.
  • Hans-Peter Schwarz (ed.): The restoration of the German credit. The London Debt Accord. Belser, Stuttgart / Zurich 1982 ( Rhöndorf Talks , Volume 4).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Otmar Emminger : D-Mark, Dollar, Currency Crises - Memories of a Former Bundesbank President , DVA 1986, p. 48.
  2. ↑ See Otmar Emminger: D-Mark, Dollar, Currency Crises , DVA 1986, chap. 2 (“From extreme deficit country to permanent surplus country”).
  3. ^ Otmar Emminger: D-Mark, Dollar, Currency Crises , DVA 1986, p. 75 ("From extreme deficit country to permanent surplus country").