Gera Demands
Eastern Bloc |
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The Gera Demands (
Formulated in a speech to a party conference at
The Gera Demands followed a period of rapprochement between the two German states. They were received with scepticism by the West German public and none of Honecker's demands were heeded by the government of Helmut Schmidt. According to the historian Ulrich Mählert, the initiative was meant to reassure the Soviet Union of continued East German support in the recent flare-up of the Cold War.
Background
Relations between East and West Germany deteriorated in the late 1970s, having experienced a period of relaxation under the
Content
On 13 October 1980, Honecker spoke in front of a party conference at Gera and formulated his vision for the relationship between the two German states. Citing various "pro-Western" actions as evidence of the "contradictory nature of FRG politics" and his belief in West German attempts to infringe on the GDR's sovereignty, he stated that the intra-German relationship was put under strain.[4] To preserve the formal division of East and West Germany, he formulated four demands directed towards the government of Schmidt.[5]
His first demand was that the West German government recognise the existence of East German citizenship.
Reception
Honecker's demands were met with bewilderment by the West German public. The Hamburger Abendblatt reckoned that they had reversed the recent German rapprochement, while Der Spiegel wrote that Honecker had waged war on the people of East Germany.[6] The Schmidt government did not heed any of the demands, though some state-level authorities stopped funding the Central Registry of State Judicial Administrations.[6] According to the German historian Heinrich August Winkler, this speech, along with a stronger currency exchange requirement for visiting foreigners from capitalist states implemented earlier that day, put a halt to progress in warming the intra-German relationship.[7]
Although the immediate reasons for the Gera Demands were never revealed,[6] the historian Ulrich Mählert writes that Honecker's initiative was caused by turbulences within the Warsaw Pact.[8] In the wake of an informal meeting between representative of both states, Werner Krolikowski and Willi Stoph, two members of the GDR politburo, had informed the leadership of the Soviet Union about the potential for renewed rapprochement with the West.[9] In Mählert's view, Honecker acted to dispel Soviet doubts about his commitment to their shared anti-Western attitude.[8] This possible explanation was reiterated by Sven Felix Kellerhoff in a 2020 article in Die Welt.[6]
References
- ^ Mählert 2010, p. 142.
- ^ Mählert 2010, pp. 142–3.
- ^ a b Mählert 2010, p. 143.
- ^ Wolle 1998, p. 65; Winkler 2007, p. 336.
- ^ a b c Wolle 1998, p. 65.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Kellerhoff, Sven Felix (14 October 2020). "Warum Honecker 1980 die Regierung Schmidt krachend herausforderte". Die Welt.
- ^ a b Winkler 2007, p. 336.
- ^ a b Mählert 2010, p. 145.
- ^ Mählert 2010, pp. 144–5.
Bibliography
- Mählert, Ulrich (2010). Kleine Geschichte der DDR (7th ed.). Munich: ISBN 978-3-406-59464-9.
- ISBN 978-0-19-150061-9.
- ISBN 978-3-86153-157-9.