Perception of the Other: “Kremlinologists” and “Westerners”
Perception of the Other: “Kremlinologists” and “Westerners”

East and West German Analysts and Their Mutual Perceptions, 1977–1985

Author(s): Sabine Loewe-Hannatzsch
Subject(s): Diplomatic history, International relations/trade, Post-War period (1950 - 1989)
Published by: Central European University Press
Keywords: East and West Germany;foreign policy;European Security;
Summary/Abstract: The perceptions held by East and West German foreign policy experts of political research institutions regarding their respective counterparts under went significant changes beginning in the early 1970s and lasting until1990, especially from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. The focus shifted from dissociation from contacts from the other side to well-structured trans-bloc contacts. After becoming chancellor of West Germany in October1969, Willy Brandt pursued a new policy (Neue Ostpolitik) towards the states in Central and Eastern Europe. The Neue Ostpolitik forged new and much more intense contacts between East Berlin and Bonn, resulting in a more precise and more humane picture of the other side. Eventually,the Helsinki Final Act of August 1975 brought about international recognition of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a legitimate second German state.The institutional, yet clandestine contacts between East and West German institutes for political analysis helped to stabilize East-West détente when the deterioration in superpower-relations threatened to throw Europe back to the Cold War years of the 1950s. Beyond these years of crisis, the continuing exchange on security issues across the German-German frontline of the blocs sufficiently watered down harmful images and stereotypes to establish a much more refined, accurate, and humanized picture of the other. This eventually invited a new thinking on security and military policies, resulting in a concept for a common European security system—which took on its own dynamic in the second half of the1980s.

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