2023-07-15 15:59:18
Rarely has a German politician made such a lasting impact with a single speech as Egon Bahr, then press chief of the Berlin Senate, on July 15, 1963, in front of the Political Club of the Evangelical Academy in Tutzing. Two years after the Berlin Wall was built, Willy Brandt, the Governing Mayor’s closest associate, propagated an alternative to the previous official “all or nothing” policy on the German question under the motto “Change through rapprochement”.
Instead of demanding a reunification of Germany on the basis of free elections without any prospect of success, the “zone” should be “transformed” with the consent of the Soviets. Bahr, who joined the SPD in 1956, was not yet talking about de facto recognition of the GDR as a state, but that was what was meant: in order to change something about the unwanted fact of the GDR, one first had to face up to its reality.
#Winkler #German #Ostpolitik #Tutzing #breaking #taboo