FRG and the Economic Miracle

Week 19, March 3

Themes in this lecture:

1. Adenauer’s Germany and constitution2. Integration into the W world3. Reparations for the Holocaust4. population influx5. SPD6. Economic miracle7. Coming to terms with the past

Konrad Adenauer, 1876-1967

“No experiments!”

Integration into the Western World• Oct 1949, joined Organization for European Economic Cooperation• March 1951 revisiting of Occupation statute• April 1951 European Coal and Steel Community -- Robert

Schumann, the French foreign minister• May 51 Member of Council of Europe • 1957 Germany founding member of European Economic

Community• September 1952 Luxemburg agreement (Reparations agreement

between Israel and West Germany) Ratification one of the conditions for the end of the occupation

status, gave Germany sovereignty Paris Agreements of 1955: rights to independent foreign policy, rearmament, joining NATO, Saar back (1957)

European Economic

Community, 1958

Reparations to Israel, 1956(train from Esslingen factory train)

Population in flux

• Expellees: Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, Bavaria; 10 mio altogether in Western Germany from 12 mio. altogether

• POWs: 3 mio in the Soviet Union, ca 1 mio died; returning until 1955. Adenauer’s visit to Moscow about “the last ten thousand”

• Refugees from East Germany, ca 3 mio in the 50s• West German emigrants to East Germany (0,5 mio,

including Lothar Bisky, the later chairperson of the PDS)

Return of the German POWs

Emigration from Germany

Migration to the US (380.000) Canada (235.000)Australia (80.000)UK (50.000)

Uprooted expellees, many unemployed before the economic recovery started;Others eager for experiences abroad after the Nazi years

Anticommunism

Kurt Schumacher, 1895-1952

Herbert Wehner, 1906-1990

Godesberg program of 1959: definitive turn away from Marxism and towards a People’s Party -- VolksparteiIn 1960, Wehner delivered a groundbreaking eighty-minute speech in the Bundestag where he aligned the SPD with Western integration and expressed his readiness to join the Union in a common foreign policy and in constructive collaboration "in the democratic whole," a new policy for the SPD

The Economic miracle

The architect, Ludwig Erhard

And the results: new prosperity and lifestyle.

Economic growth of 8% a year; start through the Marshall Plan; German economy had American backing; social economy, but little direct impact of the state.Erhard: planned economy until 48/49, vouchers etc free market is much more efficient. Low wage demand and few strikes; many people willing to work (expellees and refugees)Democracy associated with economic success and not crises. democracy through welfare. People had memories of many lean years

The Song of the Economic Miracle (Aren’t We Wonderful? 1958)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGBVB3KBPn8

Critics: Heinrich Böll, Siegfried Lenz, Group 47

Billiards at Half-Past Nine, 1959

Coming to terms with the past

Hans Globkedirector of the Federal Chancellery,

1953-1963 And the author of the commentary

to the Nuremberg laws (1935)