West Berlin

In the wake of the unconditional surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945, the capital of Berlin was divided into four sectors of oc­cupation by the victorious Allied Powers (the United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France).

Happy Berlin children wave from the top of the truck carrying the “Freedom Bell” to its shrine. The donation of a replica of Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell to the City Hall of Sch∂neberg in 1950 symbolized the mutual identification of America and West Berlin with the cause of “freedom” and strengthened emotional ties. (Bettmann/Corbis)

capitalism in the midst of the territory of the Socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR). Most notable during those years were succeeding American efforts to make West Berlin sustainable and maintain its status as a “showcase of the free world.” All U.S. governments in power between 1945 and 1989 provided political and military guarantees and furthered the emergence of lasting cultural and emotional bonds.

According to the London Protocol and the London Agreement of September and November 1944, respectively, Germany was to be divided into zones of occupation with Berlin being treated as a special case. Germany was to be administered jointly and supervised by an Allied Control Coun­cil in the German capital. However, Berlin was occupied completely by Soviet troops by early May 1945.

Initial German administrative struc­tures for “Greater Berlin” had been in­stalled early on when the Soviet Union was still the city’s sole occupation power. Al­though the Western powers at first went along with these administrative arrange­ments, a major conflict arose in spring 1946 when the Soviets enforced the merger of the majority Social Democratic Party (SPD) with the minority Commu­nist Party of Germany (KPD) into a new Socialist Unity Party (SED) dominated by Communists. Only in the Western sectors of Berlin was it was possible to hold a vote among SPD members about whether to consent to the merger. Overwhelming re­jection of the Communist scheme in these sectors accelerated the rapidly deteriorat­ing situation in the nominally still-unified city. Emerging cold war divisions on all levels, in Germany and worldwide, paved the way toward two separate cities on Berlin’s territory.

When in 1947 the Soviets vetoed the election of Ernst Reuter (SPD) as mayor of Berlin, Social Democrats left the Trade Unions Federation after conflicts with the Communists.

On June 18 and 24, 1948, the occupa­tion powers respectively introduced con­flicting currency reforms in the Western sectors of Berlin and in its Eastern sector. When the Western powers refused to ac­cept the Soviet demand to adopt the East­ern currency for the entire city, the Soviet Union began to block all access into West­ern sectors by land or on water. This block­ade lasted from June 1948 to May 1949 before it was suspended due to successful U.S.-Soviet negotiations to end the im­passe (Jessup-Malik Agreement of May 4, 1949). Those eleven months achieved leg­endary status for German American rela­tions and strengthened the U.S. commit­ment to West Berlin. The U.S. Air Force and the British Royal Air Force organized the Berlin Airlift to support the population and military garrisons in West Berlin with altogether 279,114 flights of food and sup­plies for the Western sectors. American military commander Lucius D. Clay be­came enshrined in the collective memory of West Berliners.

During this period, the Berlin city government and administration also split along sectoral borders. After Communist- inspired turmoil, Western representatives left the city hall in the Eastern sector on September 6, 1948, forever and established their own government in the city hall of the Schoneberg district. In December 1948 the SPD won two-thirds of the vote in West Berlin local elections, and Ernst Reuter became the first democratically elected mayor of the Western sectors.

When the Federal Republic of Ger­many (FRG) was established in the West­ern zones of occupation of Germany proper with Allied consent on May 23, 1949, the Basic Law of the new state only cautiously stipulated that West Berlin was to be part of the FRG in terms of advisory roles and adjunct memberships in West German legislative bodies.

During the 1950s both parts of the city underwent further political and eco­nomic integration into the two respective German states and the antagonistic cold war blocs. The donation of a replica of Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell to the Schoneberg City Hall in 1950, following an extensive fundraising drive all across the United States, symbolized the mutual iden­tification of America and West Berlin with the cause of “freedom” and strengthened emotional ties. Nominally all of Berlin re­mained a city under four-power rule. Some elements of this status, like demilitariza­tion, were initially maintained despite gen­eral tensions. Notwithstanding interrup­tions due to events like the 1952 treaties on FRG sovereignty, or the June 1953 upris­ing in East Berlin and the GDR, border crossings between the Eastern and Western sectors remained open in general, and in both directions. Public transportation linked both parts of the city.

The situation changed, however, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev issued on November 10, 1958, an ultimatum to end the Allied “occupation regime in Berlin” and make West Berlin into an “indepen­dent political unit” free of any ties to West Germany. The ensuing “Berlin Crisis” be­tween the major cold war powers with its potential for becoming nuclear was, in a way, not resolved until summer 1961. Be­ginning on August 13, 1961, the GDR built fences and walls around West Berlin that eventually divided the city physically. Irritation among West Berliners over al­leged American passivity in light of these Communist actions was assuaged by skill­ful rhetoric and symbolic acts on the part of charismatic mayor Willy Brandt and the Kennedy administration in Washington alike.

Beginning in August 1961 transporta­tion links between the two halves of the city were permanently cut off.

On a cultural level, West Berlin main­tained its viability as a “Western island” in the midst of the GDR with much closer ties to the FRG than to the Eastern part of the city. In the late 1960s West Berlin students were at the forefront of the West German anti—Vietnam War protest movement. This was a far cry from the boundless enthusi­asm for the United States that the city had manifested during the triumphant June 26, 1963, West Berlin visit of U.S. president John F. Kennedy. Starting around 1966 or 1967, for the first time many of the younger generation in West Berlin felt a growing alienation from the United States and its policies. “America’s Berlin” had changed and no longer encompassed all of its citizens, as was to be observed later in the 1980s dramatically during the visits of U.S. president Ronald Reagan.

Following the FRG’s Ostpolitik and So­viet desires for detente in Europe, the situ­ation considerably relaxed when the four Allied Powers agreed in 1970 to enter into negotiations for an agreement to resolve ex­isting tensions over Berlin’s status. Prepared mostly in “backchannel” negotiations be­tween the Bonn ambassadors of the Soviet Union (Valentin Falin) and the United States (Kenneth Rush) with West German state secretary Egon Bahr, the Quadripar­tite Agreement was signed in the Allied Control Council building in West Berlin on September 9, 1971. Ratification by the four Allied foreign ministers followed on June 3, 1972.

At the same time, geopolitical constel­lations and domestic currents contributed to the seeming permanence of Berlin’s and Germany’s division. West Berlin became just another West German city—actually the country’s largest—with unique features (such as exemption from the military draft for male inhabitants), Germany’s largest universities, and the highest proportion of foreign residents in a German city (about 15 percent of the population in the 1980s). Overall population gradually declined after the 1961 building of the wall by about 400,000 people until the late 1980s (DDR Handbuch 1984, 179). West Berlin’s in­dustry and workforce had to be propped up by massive West German subsidies. Economic incentives and financial benefits were applied generously to make people stay in the city.

Politically, West Berlin became divided into a traditional, pro-American milieu and a liberal to antiestablishment culture that rose to prominence in the “squatter wars” (young people in search of scarce liv­ing space squatted empty houses and apart­ments subjected to real estate speculation by their private owners) in Kreuzberg dur­ing the late 1970s and early 1980s. These cultural clashes brought the downfall of in­creasingly corrupt SPD-led coalition gov­ernments that had dominated West Berlin since the 1950s (mayors Willy Brandt, Klaus Schutz, Dietrich Stobbe, Hans- Jochen Vogel). With the highly popular candidate Richard von Weizsacker, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won a majority in 1981 for the first time in the city’s history and went on to govern the city until March 1989. Weizsacker had re­placed some of the worn-out West Berlin “political class” with imports from West Germany and markedly improved the

quality of city government. His native suc­cessor Eberhard Diepgen, who followed him into office in 1984, returned to old networks. With them he ruled the city for most of the period until 2001, when a fi­nancial crash in the course of a massive banking scandal ended his term. In its af­termath, the SPD returned to power in a coalition with the post-Communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). However, the CDU had to bear with an interim SPD/Alternative List city government be­tween March 1989 and January 1991 under SPD mayor Walter Momper. The latter had the privilege to preside over the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the first steps to reunify the city. These historical events came as unexpectedly for the unprepared West Berliners as for most Germans and Europeans. Nominally this meant the end of “West Berlin,” though the mindset remained for a considerable time after 1990 and dominated life in many practical and emotional terms. The reelevation of Berlin to Germany’s capital in 1991, and the consequent move of gov­ernment institutions to the city by 1999, gradually began to change those patterns so deeply ingrained during the long period of Berlin’s division.

Bernd Schaefer

See also American Occupation Zone; Berlin Wall; Brandt, Willy; German Unification (1990); Halvorsen, Gail S.; Vietnam War and West German Protests

References and Further Reading

Bering, Henrik. Outpost Berlin: The History of the American Military Forces in Berlin, 1945—1990. Chicago: edition q, 1995.

Daum, Andreas. Kennedy in Berlin. Paderborn: Schoningh, 2003.

DDR Handbuch, Band I. Koln: Verlag Wissenschaft undPolitik, 1984.

Forschungsinstitut der DGAP, ed. Dokumente zur Berlin-Frage 1944—1966. Munchen: Oldenbourg, 1967.

------. Dokumente zur Berlin-Frage 1967—1986. Munchen: Oldenbourg, 1987.

Merrit, Richard L., and Anna J. Merrit, eds.

Living with the Wall: West Berlin, 1961—1985. Durham, NC: Duke University, 1985.

Tusa, Ann, and Henning Gutmann. The Last Division: A History of Berlin, 1945—1989. New York: Perseus, 1997.

U.S. Department of State, ed. Documents on Germany 1944—1985. Washington, DC: Office of the Historian, 1985.