West Germany’s Political Conceptions of the Western European Integration and to the East, 1949-1974

The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany from here) has been a pivotal part of the Western European integration. From the outset, European unity process was motivated by the importance to forge economic and other ties between great powers of Western Europe, especially between West Germany and France. At the same time, since the end of 1940s, the German domestic political context experienced major shift from Nazi regime to parliamentary government. Strengthening Western liberal values was an elementary part of this state formation process. In addition to the attempts to reformulate relations with the Western Europe, the domestic political parties in West Germany had to define their approaches to the German Democratic Republic, which represented different kind of state ideology but the same people as in West Germany. Further, by the 1970s, West Germany wanted to be viewed as the bridge-builder between Western Europe and the whole Eastern bloc. Through applying methods of conceptual analysis to the West German parliamentary debates (complemented with selective use of archival sources), this paper analyses controversies related to Western European integration and to the German policy towards the East. The paper concentrates especially on two time periods. Firstly, we discuss the years 1949-1950, when West Germany was aligning itself towards Western European cooperation under the leadership of Konrad Adenauer. Secondly, we study parliamentary aspects of the Ostpolik, the new foreign policy that begun in 1969. The purpose is to illustrate how conceptualizations of democracy constituted a main source of controversy during the Adenauer era, whereas during the 1970s, federalists’ ideas towards European integration were conflicting with more nationalist-orientated ones. Analysis of this historical process provides a background also for more contemporary questions in German politics; if nationalist or European approach towards Russia is more practicable and which values the EU promotes in its foreign relations?