Editing West Germany (section)

==History==
{{History of Germany}}
{{further|History of Germany (1945–1990)}}
[[File:Map-Germany-1945.svg|thumb|[[Allied-occupied Germany|Occupation zone borders]] in Germany, early 1946. The territories east of the [[Oder–Neisse line]], under Polish and Soviet administration/annexation, are shown in cream, as is the detached [[Saar Protectorate]]. [[Bremen (state)|Bremen]] was an American [[Enclave and exclave|enclave]] within the British zone. Berlin was a four-power area within the Soviet zone.]]
On 4–11 February 1945 leaders from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the [[Soviet Union]] held the [[Yalta Conference]] where future arrangements regarding post-war Europe and [[Pacific War|Allied strategy against Japan in the Pacific]] were negotiated. They agreed that the boundaries of Germany as at 31 December 1937 would be chosen as demarcating German national territory from German-occupied territory; all German annexations after 1937 were automatically null. Subsequently, and into the 1970s, the West German state was to maintain that these 1937 boundaries continued to be 'valid in international law', although the Allies had already agreed amongst themselves that the territories east of the [[Oder–Neisse line|Oder-Neisse line]] must be transferred to Poland and the Soviet Union in any peace agreement. The conference agreed that post-war Germany, minus these transfers, would be divided into [[Allied-occupied Germany|four occupation zones]]: a French Zone in the far west; a British Zone in the northwest; an American Zone in the south; and a Soviet Zone in the East. Berlin was separately divided into four zones. These divisions were not intended to dismember Germany, only to designate zones of administration.

[[File:Vogelsang (West-Duitsland). Legeroefeningen 32e regiment. Centuriontanks en infa, Bestanddeelnr 050-0522.jpg|thumb|left|Dutch tanks, pictured in West Germany in 1956 as part of the large British and American-led foreign military presence in the country]]

By the subsequent [[Potsdam Agreement]], the four Allied Powers asserted joint sovereignty over "Germany as a whole", defined as the totality of the territory within the occupation zones. Former German areas east of the rivers [[Oder]] and [[Lusatian Neisse|Neisse]] and outside of 'Germany as a whole' were officially separated from German sovereignty in August 1945 and transferred from Soviet military occupation to Polish and Soviet (in the case of the territory of Kaliningrad) civil administration, their Polish and Soviet status to be confirmed at a final Peace Treaty. Following wartime commitments by the Allies to the governments-in-exile of Czechoslovakia and Poland, the Potsdam Protocols also agreed to the 'orderly and humane' transfer to Germany as a whole of the ethnic German populations in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Eight million German expellees and refugees eventually settled in West Germany. Between 1946 and 1949, three of the occupation zones began to merge. First, the British and American zones were combined into the quasi-state of [[Bizone|Bizonia]]. Soon afterwards, the French zone was included into [[Bizone|Trizonia]]. Conversely, the Soviet zone became [[East Germany]]. At the same time, new federal states ({{lang|de|Länder}}) were formed in the Allied zones; replacing the geography of pre-Nazi German states such as the [[Free State of Prussia]] and the [[Republic of Baden]], which had derived ultimately from former independent German kingdoms and principalities.

In the dominant post-war narrative of West Germany, the [[Nazi Germany|Nazi]] regime was characterised as having been a 'criminal' state,{{sfnp|Collings|2015|p=xxiv}} illegal and illegitimate from the outset; while the [[Weimar Republic]] was characterised as having been a 'failed' state,{{sfnp|Collings|2015|p=xv}} whose inherent institutional and constitutional flaws had been exploited by [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] in his illegal seizure of dictatorial powers. Consequently, following the death of Hitler in 1945 and the subsequent capitulation of the German Armed Forces, the national political, judicial, administrative, and constitutional instruments of both Nazi Germany and the Weimar Republic were understood as entirely defunct, such that a new West Germany could be established in a condition of constitutional nullity.<ref>{{Citation |last=Jutta Limbach |title=How a constitution can safeguard democracy:The German Experience |url=https://www.law.hku.hk/ccpl/Docs/JuttaLimbach.pdf |access-date=7 December 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161220115032/https://www.law.hku.hk/ccpl/Docs/JuttaLimbach.pdf |archive-date=20 December 2016 |url-status=dead |publisher=Goethe-Institut}}</ref> Nevertheless, the new West Germany asserted its fundamental continuity with the 'overall' German state that was held to have embodied the unified German people since the [[Frankfurt Parliament]] of 1848, and which from 1871 had been represented within the [[German Reich]]; albeit that this overall state had become effectively dormant long before 8 May 1945.

In 1949 with the continuation and aggravation of the Cold War (for example, the [[Berlin Blockade#Start of the Berlin Airlift|Berlin Airlift]] of 1948–49), the two German states that had originated in the Western Allied and the Soviet Zones respectively became known internationally as West Germany and East Germany. Commonly known in English as [[East Germany]], the former [[Soviet occupation zone in Germany]], eventually became the ''[[East Germany|German Democratic Republic]]'' or ''GDR''. In 1990 West Germany and East Germany jointly signed the [[Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany]] (also known as the "Two-plus-Four Agreement"); by which transitional status of Germany following [[World War II]] was definitively ended and the Four Allied powers relinquished their joint residual sovereign authority for Germany as a whole including the area of West Berlin which had officially remained under Allied occupation for the purposes of international and GDR law (a status that the Western countries applied to Berlin as a whole despite the Soviets declaring the end of occupation of East Berlin unilaterally many decades before). The Two-plus-Four Agreement also saw the two parts of Germany confirm their post-war external boundaries as final and irreversible (including the 1945 transfer of former German lands east of the [[Oder–Neisse line]]), and the Allied Powers confirmed their consent to German Reunification. From 3 October 1990, after the reformation of the GDR's {{lang|de|Länder}}, the East German states and East Berlin [[German reunification|joined the Federal Republic]].

===NATO membership===
<!--[[File:ParisAgreement1954.jpg|thumb|left|The Paris Agreements, signed on 23 October 1954, restored sovereignty to the [[West Germany|Federal Republic of Germany]] (FRG), which became a full member of [[NATO]] and resulted in the creation of the [[Western European Union]] (WEU).]]-->
[[File:Deutschland Bundeslaender 1957.png|thumb|upright|left|West Germany (blue) and West Berlin (yellow) after the accession of the Saarland in 1957 and before the five {{lang|de|Länder}} from the GDR and East Berlin joined in 1990]]
With territories and frontiers that coincided largely with the ones of old [[Middle Ages]] [[East Francia]] and the 19th-century [[Napoleon]]ic [[Confederation of the Rhine]], the Federal Republic of Germany was founded on 23 May 1949 under the terms of the [[Bonn–Paris conventions]], whereby it obtained "the full authority of a sovereign state" on 5 May 1955 (although "full sovereignty" was not obtained until the [[Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany|Two Plus Four Agreement]] in 1990).{{refn |name=Sovereignty |group=lower-alpha |Detlef Junker of the {{lang|de|[[Heidelberg University]]}} states "In the October 23, 1954, Paris Agreements, Adenauer pushed through the following laconic wording: 'The Federal Republic shall accordingly [after termination of the occupation regime] have the full authority of a sovereign state over its internal and external affairs.' If this was intended as a statement of fact, it must be conceded that it was partly fiction and, if interpreted as wishful thinking, it was a promise that went unfulfilled until 1990. The Allies maintained their rights and responsibilities regarding Berlin and Germany as a whole, particularly the responsibility for future reunification and a future peace treaty".<ref>{{Cite book |editor-first=Detlef |editor-last=Junker |translator-first=Sally E. |translator-last=Robertson |url=http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780511192180&ss=exc |title=The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, A Handbook |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923221838/http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780511192180&ss=exc |archive-date=23 September 2015 |volume=1, 1945–1968 |series=Publications of the [[German Historical Institutes]] |isbn=0-511-19218-5 |at=Section "The Presence of the Past", paragraph 9}}</ref>}} The former occupying Western troops remained on the ground, now as part of the [[NATO|North Atlantic Treaty Organization]] (NATO), which West Germany joined on 9 May 1955, promising to rearm itself soon.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kaplan |first=Lawrence S. |year=1961 |title=NATO and Adenauer's Germany: Uneasy Partnership |journal=[[International Organization (journal)|International Organization]] |volume=15 |issue=4 |pages=618–629 |doi=10.1017/S0020818300010663 |s2cid=155025137}}</ref>

West Germany became a focus of the [[Cold War]] with its juxtaposition to [[East Germany]], a member of the subsequently founded [[Warsaw Pact]]. The former capital, [[Berlin]], had been divided into four sectors, with the Western Allies joining their sectors to form [[West Berlin]], while the Soviets held [[East Berlin]]. West Berlin was completely surrounded by East German territory and had suffered a Soviet blockade in 1948–49, which was overcome by the [[Berlin Blockade#Start of the Berlin Airlift|Berlin airlift]].

[[File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F078072-0004, Konrad Adenauer.jpg|upright|thumb|[[Konrad Adenauer]] was a German statesman who served as the first [[Chancellor of Germany|chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany]].]]

The outbreak of the [[Korean War]] in June 1950 led to U.S. calls to rearm West Germany to help defend Western Europe from the perceived Soviet threat. Germany's partners in the [[European Coal and Steel Community]] proposed to establish a [[Treaty establishing the European Defence Community|European Defence Community]] (EDC), with an integrated army, navy and air force, composed of the armed forces of its member states. The West German military would be subject to complete EDC control, but the other EDC member states ([[Belgium]], France, Italy, [[Luxembourg]] and the [[Netherlands]]) would cooperate in the EDC while maintaining independent control of their own armed forces.

Though the EDC treaty was signed (May 1952), it never entered into force. France's [[Gaullism|Gaullists]] rejected it on the grounds that it threatened national sovereignty, and when the [[National Assembly (France)|French National Assembly]] refused to ratify it (August 1954), the treaty died. The French Gaullists and communists had killed the French government's proposal. Then other means had to be found to allow West German rearmament. In response, at the [[London and Paris Conferences]], the [[Treaty of Brussels|Brussels Treaty]] was modified to include West Germany, and to form the [[Western European Union]] (WEU). West Germany was to be permitted to rearm (an idea many Germans rejected), and have full sovereign control of its military, called the {{lang|de|[[Bundeswehr]]}}. The WEU, however, would regulate the size of the armed forces permitted to each of its member states. Also, the German constitution prohibited any military action, except in the case of an external attack against Germany or its allies ({{lang|de|Bündnisfall}}). Also, Germans could reject military service on grounds of conscience, and serve for civil purposes instead.<ref>John A. Reed Jr, ''Germany and NATO'' (National Defense University, 1987) [https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a264257.pdf Online].</ref>

The three Western [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] retained occupation powers in Berlin and certain responsibilities for Germany as a whole. Under the new arrangements, the Allies stationed troops within West Germany for NATO defense, pursuant to stationing and status-of-forces agreements. With the exception of 55,000 French troops, Allied forces were under NATO's joint defense command. (France withdrew from the collective military command structure of NATO in 1966.)

===Reforms during the 1960s===
[[Konrad Adenauer]] was 73 years old when he became chancellor in 1949, and for this reason he was initially reckoned as a caretaker. However, he ruled for 14 years. The grand statesman of German postwar politics had to be dragged—almost literally—out of office in 1963.<ref>William Glenn Gray, "Adenauer, Erhard, and the Uses of Prosperity." ''[[German Politics and Society]]'' 25.2 (2007): 86–103.</ref>

{{Main|Spiegel affair}}
In October 1962 the weekly news magazine {{lang|de|[[Der Spiegel]]}} published an analysis of the West German military defence. The conclusion was that there were several weaknesses in the system. Ten days after publication, the offices of {{lang|de|Der Spiegel}} in Hamburg were raided by the police and quantities of documents were seized. Chancellor Adenauer proclaimed in the {{lang|de|Bundestag}} that the article was tantamount to high treason and that the authors would be prosecuted. The editor/owner of the magazine, [[Rudolf Augstein]] spent some time in jail before the public outcry over the breaking of laws on freedom of the press became too loud to be ignored. The FDP members of Adenauer's cabinet resigned from the government, demanding the resignation of [[Franz Josef Strauss]], Defence Minister, who had decidedly overstepped his competence during the crisis. Adenauer was still wounded by his brief run for president, and this episode damaged his reputation even further. He announced that he would step down in the fall of 1963. His successor was to be Ludwig Erhard.<ref>Alfred C. Mierzejewski, ''Ludwig Erhard: A Biography'' (Univ of North Carolina Press, 2005) p 179. [https://www.questia.com/library/120073119/ludwig-erhard-a-biography Online] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200412065325/https://www.questia.com/library/120073119/ludwig-erhard-a-biography |date=12 April 2020}}</ref>

In the early 1960s, the rate of economic growth slowed down significantly. In 1962 growth rate was 4.7% and the following year, 2.0%. After a brief recovery, the growth rate slowed again into a recession, with no growth in 1967.

A new coalition was formed to deal with this problem. Erhard stepped down in 1966 and was succeeded by [[Kurt Georg Kiesinger]]. He led a [[grand coalition]] between West Germany's two largest parties, the CDU/CSU and the [[Social Democratic Party of Germany|Social Democratic Party]] (SPD). This was important for the introduction of new [[German Emergency Acts|emergency acts]]: the grand coalition gave the ruling parties the two-thirds majority of votes required for their ratification. These controversial acts allowed basic constitutional rights such as [[freedom of movement]] to be limited in case of a state of emergency.

[[File:Rudi.jpg|upright|thumb|[[Rudi Dutschke]], student leader]]
During the time leading up to the passing of the laws, there was fierce opposition to them, above all by the [[Free Democratic Party (Germany)|Free Democratic Party]], the rising [[West German student movement]], a group calling itself {{lang|de|Notstand der Demokratie}} ("Democracy in Crisis") and members of the Campaign against Nuclear Armament. A key event in the development of open democratic debate occurred in 1967, when the [[List of monarchs of Persia|Shah of Iran]], [[Mohammad Reza Pahlavi]], visited West Berlin. Several thousand demonstrators gathered outside the Opera House where he was to attend a special performance. Supporters of the Shah (later known as {{lang|de|Jubelperser}}), armed with staves and bricks attacked the protesters while the police stood by and watched. A demonstration in the centre was being forcibly dispersed when a bystander named [[Killing of Benno Ohnesorg|Benno Ohnesorg]] was shot in the head and killed by a plainclothes policeman. (It has now been established that the policeman, Kurras, was a paid spy of the East German security forces.) Protest demonstrations continued, and calls for more active opposition by some groups of students were made, which was declared by the press, especially the [[Tabloid journalism|tabloid]] {{lang|de|[[Bild]]-Zeitung}} newspaper, as a massive disruption to life in Berlin, in a massive campaign against the protesters. Protests against the [[Vietnam War|US intervention in Vietnam]], mingled with anger over the vigour with which demonstrations were repressed led to mounting militance among the students at the universities in Berlin. One of the most prominent campaigners was a young man from East Germany called [[Rudi Dutschke]] who also criticised the forms of capitalism that were to be seen in West Berlin. Just before Easter 1968, a young man tried to kill Dutschke as he bicycled to the student union, seriously injuring him. All over West Germany, thousands demonstrated against the Springer newspapers which were seen as the prime cause of the violence against students. Trucks carrying newspapers were set on fire and windows in office buildings broken.<ref name="Kraushaar">Wolfgang Kraushaar, ''Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung'', vol. 2 ''Dokumente'', Rogner und Bernhard, 1998 Dokument Nr. 193, p. 356</ref>

In the wakes of these demonstrations, in which the question of America's role in Vietnam began to play a bigger role, came a desire among the students to find out more about the role of the parent-generation in the Nazi era. The proceedings of the [[Nuremberg trials|War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg]] had been widely publicised in Germany but until a new generation of teachers, educated with the findings of historical studies, could begin to reveal the truth about the war and the crimes committed in the name of the German people, one courageous attorney, [[Fritz Bauer]] patiently gathered evidence on the guards of the [[Auschwitz concentration camp|{{lang|de|Auschwitz|nocat=y}} concentration camp]] and [[Frankfurt Auschwitz trials|about twenty were put on trial in Frankfurt]] in 1963. Daily newspaper reports and visits by school classes to the proceedings revealed to the German public the nature of the concentration camp system and it became evident that [[The Holocaust|the {{lang|he-Latn|Shoah|nocat=y}}]] was of vastly greater dimensions than the German population had believed. (The term "Holocaust" for the systematic mass-murder of Jews first came into use in 1979, when a 1978 [[Holocaust (miniseries)|American mini-series with that name]] was shown on West German television.) The processes set in motion by the Auschwitz trial reverberated decades later.

The calling in question of the actions and policies of government led to a new climate of debate. The issues of emancipation, colonialism, environmentalism and grass roots democracy were discussed at all levels of society. In 1979 the environmental party, the Greens, reached the 5% limit required to obtain parliamentary seats in the [[Bremen (state)|Free Hanseatic City of Bremen]] provincial election. Also of great significance was the steady growth of a [[Feminism in Germany|feminist movement]] in which women demonstrated for equal rights. Until 1977, a married woman had to have the permission of her husband if she wanted to take on a job or open a bank account.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cornelius Grebe |url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-531-91924-9 |title=Reconciliation Policy in Germany 1998–2008, Construing the 'Problem' of the Incompatibility of Paid Employment and Care Work |publisher=Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften |year=2010 |isbn=978-3-531-91924-9 |page=92 |doi=10.1007/978-3-531-91924-9 |quote=However, the 1977 reform of marriage and family law by Social Democrats and Liberals formally gave women the right to take up employment without their spouses' permission. This marked the legal end of the 'housewife marriage' and a transition to the ideal of 'marriage in partnership'. |access-date=18 September 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170416053908/http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-531-91924-9 |archive-date=16 April 2017 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Further reforms in 1979 to parental rights law gave equal legal rights to the mother and the father, abolishing the legal authority of the father.<ref>''Comparative Law: Historical Development of the Civil Law Tradition in Europe, Latin America, and East Asia'', by John Henry Merryman, David Scott Clark, John Owen Haley, p. 542</ref> Parallel to this, a gay movement began to grow in the larger cities, especially in West Berlin, where homosexuality had been widely accepted during the twenties in the Weimar Republic.

[[File:RAF-Logo.svg|thumb|upright|Logo of the [[Red Army Faction]]]]

Anger over the treatment of demonstrators following the death of Benno Ohnesorg and the attack on Rudi Dutschke, coupled with growing frustration over the lack of success in achieving their aims led to growing militance among students and their supporters. In May 1968, three young people set fire to two department stores in Frankfurt; they were brought to trial and made very clear to the court that they regarded their action as a legitimate act in what they described as the "struggle against imperialism".<ref name="Kraushaar" /> The student movement began to split into different factions, ranging from the unattached liberals to the [[Maoism|Maoists]] and supporters of direct action in every form—the anarchists. Several groups set as their objective the aim of radicalising the industrial workers and taking an example from activities in Italy of the [[Red Brigades]] ({{lang|de|Brigate Rosse}}), many students went to work in the factories, but with little or no success. The most notorious of the underground groups was the [[Red Army Faction]] which began by making bank raids to finance their activities and eventually went underground having killed a number of policemen, several bystanders and eventually two prominent West Germans, whom they had taken captive in order to force the release of prisoners sympathetic to their ideas. In the 1990s attacks were still being committed under the name "RAF". The last action took place in 1993 and the group announced it was giving up its activities in 1998. Evidence that the groups had been infiltrated by German Intelligence undercover agents has since emerged, partly through the insistence of the son of one of their prominent victims, the State Counsel [[Siegfried Buback]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Denso |first=Christian |date=13 August 2011 |title=RAF: Gefangen in der Geschichte |url=http://www.zeit.de/2011/32/Buback-Tragoedie |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130508122346/http://www.zeit.de/2011/32/Buback-Tragoedie |archive-date=8 May 2013 |access-date=25 May 2013 |work=[[Die Zeit]]}}</ref>

===Willy Brandt===
{{main|Willy Brandt}}
In October 1969 Willy Brandt became chancellor. He maintained West Germany's close alignment with the United States and focused on strengthening [[European integration]] in western Europe, while launching the new policy of ''[[Ostpolitik]]'' aimed at improving relations with Eastern Europe. Brandt was controversial on both the right wing, for his ''Ostpolitik'', and on the left wing, for his support of American policies, including the [[Vietnam War]], and [[Right-wing dictatorship|right-wing authoritarian]] regimes. The [[Brandt Report]] became a recognised measure for describing the general [[Global North and Global South|North-South divide]] in world economics and politics between an affluent North and a poor South. Brandt was also known for his fierce [[Anti-communism|anti-communist]] policies at the domestic level, culminating in the ''[[Berufsverbot|Radikalenerlass]]'' (Anti-Radical Decree) in 1972. In 1970, while visiting a memorial to the [[Warsaw Ghetto Uprising]] crushed by the Germans, Brandt unexpectedly knelt and meditated in silence, a moment remembered as the [[Kniefall von Warschau]].

Brandt resigned as chancellor in 1974, after [[Günter Guillaume]], one of his closest aides, [[Guillaume affair|was exposed]] as an agent of the [[Stasi]], the [[East Germany|East German]] [[secret service]].

===Helmut Schmidt===
Finance Minister [[Helmut Schmidt]] (SPD) formed a coalition and he served as Chancellor from 1974 to 1982. [[Hans-Dietrich Genscher]], a leading FDP official, became Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister. Schmidt, a strong supporter of the European Community (EC) and the Atlantic alliance, emphasized his commitment to "the political unification of Europe in partnership with the USA".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Max Otte |title=A rising middle power?: German foreign policy in transformation, 1989–1999 |last2=Jürgen Greve |year=2000}}</ref> Mounting external problems forced Schmidt to concentrate on foreign policy and limited the domestic reforms that he could carry out. The USSR upgraded its intermediate-range missiles, which Schmidt complained was an unacceptable threat to the balance of nuclear power, because it increased the likelihood of political coercion and required a western response. NATO responded in the form of its twin-track policy. The domestic reverberations were serious inside the SPD, and undermined its coalition with the FDP.<ref>Frank Fischer, "Von Der 'Regierung Der Inneren Reformen' zum 'Krisenmanagement': Das Verhältnis Zwischen Innen- und Aussenpolitik in der Sozial-Liberalen Ära 1969–1982". ["From the 'government of internal reforms' to 'crisis management': the relationship between domestic and foreign policy in the social-liberal era, 1969–82"] ''Archiv für Sozialgeschichte'' (January 2004), Vol. 44, pp. 395–414.</ref> One of his major successes, in collaboration with French President [[Valéry Giscard d'Estaing]], was the launching of the [[European Monetary System]] (EMS) in April 1978.<ref>Jonathan Story, "The launching of the EMS: An analysis of change in foreign economic policy." ''Political Studies'' 36.3 (1988): 397–412.</ref>

===Helmut Kohl===
In October 1982 the SPD–FDP coalition fell apart when the FDP joined forces with the CDU/CSU to elect CDU Chairman [[Helmut Kohl]] as Chancellor in a [[constructive vote of no confidence]]. Following national elections in March 1983, Kohl emerged in firm control of both the government and the CDU. The CDU/CSU fell just short of an absolute majority, due to the entry into the Bundestag of the [[Alliance 90/The Greens|Greens]], who received 5.6% of the vote.

In January 1987 the Kohl–Genscher government was returned to office, but the FDP and the Greens gained at the expense of the larger parties. Kohl's CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, slipped from 48.8% of the vote in 1983 to 44.3%. The SPD fell to 37%; long-time SPD Chairman Brandt subsequently resigned in April 1987 and was succeeded by [[Hans-Jochen Vogel]]. The FDP's share rose from 7% to 9.1%, its best showing since 1980. The Greens' share rose to 8.3% from their 1983 share of 5.6%.

===Reunification===
{{Main|German reunification}}
{{See also|Old states of Germany}}
With the [[Revolutions of 1989|collapse of eastern bloc]] in 1989, symbolised by the opening of the [[Berlin Wall]], there was a rapid move towards [[German reunification]]; and [[Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany|a final settlement of the post-war special status of Germany]]. Following democratic elections, East Germany declared its accession to the Federal Republic subject to the terms of the Unification Treaty between the two states; and then both West Germany and East Germany radically amended their respective constitutions in accordance with that Treaty's provisions. East Germany then dissolved itself, and its five post-war states ({{lang|de|Länder}}) were reconstituted, along with the reunited Berlin which ended its special status and formed an additional {{lang|de|Land}}. They formally joined the Federal Republic on 3 October 1990, raising the number of states from 10 to 16, ending the division of Germany. The expanded Federal Republic retained West Germany's political culture and continued its existing memberships in international organisations, as well as its Western foreign policy alignment and affiliation to Western alliances like NATO and the European Union.

The official German reunification ceremony on 3 October 1990 was held at the [[Reichstag building|{{lang|de|Reichstag|nocat=y}} building]], including [[Chancellor of Germany#Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (1949–present)|Chancellor]] [[Helmut Kohl]], President [[Richard von Weizsäcker]], former Chancellor [[Willy Brandt]] and many others. One day later, the parliament of the united Germany would assemble in an act of symbolism in the Reichstag building.

However, at that time, the role of Berlin had not yet been decided upon. Only after a fierce debate, considered by many as one of the most memorable sessions of parliament, the {{lang|de|[[Bundestag]]}} concluded on 20 June 1991, with quite a slim majority, that both government and parliament should move to [[Berlin]] from [[Bonn]].