the federal republic of germany was founded on 7 october 1949.
the federal republic of germany was founded on 7 october 1949.
when was the federal republic of germany founded?
7 october 1949
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from the 1950s, the claim that there was a single continuing german reich whose legal status was wholly untouched by the institutions established by the allied powers, and that in some sense the federal republic and the federal republic alone could represent that reich, was adopted both by the federal government itself and by the federal constitutional court. initially, the 1949 constitution of the german democratic republic adopted a mirror image version of this claim; in being framed in anticipation of a future all-german constitution on its own political terms; but all references to a wider national german nation were removed in constitutional amendments in 1968 and 1974, and from that date the gdr maintained that from 1949 there had existed two entirely separate sovereign german states. the federal republic's cold-war allies supported its claims in part, as they acknowledged the federal republic as the sole legitimate democratically organised state within former german territory (the gdr being held to be a soviet puppet state); but they did not accept the associated arguments for the pre-1945 reich's continuing 'metaphysical' existence "de jure" within the organs of the federal republic. subsequently, under the "ostpolitik", the federal republic in the early 1970s sought to end hostile relations with the countries of the eastern bloc, in the course of which it negotiated in 1972 a basic treaty with the gdr, recognising it as one of two german states within one german nation, and relinquishing any claim to "de jure" sovereign jurisdiction over those parts of germany within the gdr. the treaty was challenged in the federal constitutional court, as apparently contradicting the overriding aspirations of the basic law for a unified german state; but the treaty's legality was upheld by the court, heavily qualified by a reassertion of the claim that the german reich continued to exist as an 'overall state' such that the duty to strive for future german unity could not be abandoned, albeit that without any institutional organs of itself the reich was currently not capable of action. the federal republic was indeed identical with the german reich; but this was a 'partial identity' that stopped at the boundaries of the federal republic and did not extend retrospectively to the period 1945-1949 before the federal republic had come into being. the western allies took this as their cue to repudiate any support for the former claims of the federal republic to an exclusive mandate for germany, all thereon recognising the gdr as a separate sovereign state and supporting the admission of both german states as equivalent members of the united nations. in 1975 both german states participated in the helsinki final act under which the existing post-war boundaries of europe, including the separation of east and west germany and the border between east germany and poland, were confirmed as legitimate in international law.
legal status of germany