Passman on Defrance and Ulrich Pfeil, 'Der Élysée-Vertrag Und Die Deutsch-Französischen Beziehungen 1945-1963-2003'

H-German Passman on Defrance and Ulrich Pfeil, 'Der Élysée-Vertrag und die deutsch-französischen Beziehungen 1945-1963-2003'

Review published on Thursday, June 1, 2006

Corine Defrance, Ulrich Pfeil. Der Élysée-Vertrag und die deutsch-französischen Beziehungen 1945-1963-2003. München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2005. 291 S. EUR 24.80 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-486-57678-8.

Reviewed by Elana Passman (Department of History, Indiana State University)Published on H- German (June, 2006)

Catalyst to Cooperation? The 1963 ElysÃ©e Treaty in France and Germany

Three winters ago, the tricolor waved over Berlin--from the new French Embassy near the Brandenburg Gate (through which Napoleon had marched victorious in 1806) to the Siegessäule (built to commemorate the 1870 victory over the French). The previous day, a joint French-German parliamentary session took place at Versailles, where so many wars had been ended. January 22, 2003 marked the fortieth anniversary of the Elysée Treaty (often dubbed the Treaty of Friendship), signed by Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Fanfare in both Berlin and Paris demonstrated the desire to neutralize--and even appropriate--symbolic sites of the old enmity. Recasting lieux de mémoire has a long legacy in the post-1945 history of Franco-German relations, and the 2003 celebrations proved no exception.

This volume, drawn from a 2003 conference at the Deutsches Historisches Institut-Paris and the Sorbonne, hinges on two basic and interrelated questions. First, did Franco-German reconciliation result from the state and its representatives (read great men), from big ideas or from civil society? Second, was the Elysée Treaty the cause or the result of reconciliation between the twoErbfeinde ? Throughout the work, a rigorous and balanced scrutiny of the treaty from multiple angles belies the apparent simplicity of these queries.

Signed a few months after the Spiegel Affair and barely a week after de Gaulle's (in)famous declaration against British entry into the European Economic Community, the Elysée Treaty was born at a thorny moment in European politics. The Treaty of Friendship, which heralded the regular consultation of German and French officials with the aim of developing joint policy, rankled the other Treaty of Rome signatories. The Americans, moreover, understood this privileged Franco-German partnership as a direct affront. Indeed, at its inception, the treaty was objected to for varying reasons by (among others): Atlanticists in Germany, the French Left, the Benelux nations, Britain, East Germany and the Soviet Union. In the face of such pressures and a weakened Adenauer, the Bundestag appended a conciliatory preamble that affirmed Germany's other alliances and thereby blunted the thrust of the treaty. The French did not ratify this addition to the treaty.

Initial misgivings over the treaty were soon compounded by the poor relationship between de Gaulle and Atlanticists Ludwig Erhard and Gerhard Schröder. To be sure, several contributors argue that the treaty could only come into its own with the end of de Gaulle's rule; in some cases, such as

Through a nuanced analysis of the origins and legacies of the treaty, the book demonstrates the extent to which the treaty was contested in Germany, France and elsewhere. The authors note how it overlapped with and sometimes undermined previous agreements such as the Treaty of Rome. While underscoring the limitations of the treaty's power, they also highlight the ways in which future politicians and social movements invoked its legacy as a mandate for more--and more concrete-- efforts at cooperation.

Articles by Hans-Peter Schwarz, Jacques Bariéty and Ulrich Lappenküper examine the treaty at the nexus of international diplomacy and domestic politics. These contributions take into account political posturing and negotiations within the domestic (executive vs. parliament in each country), bilateral (Adenauer vs. de Gaulle), European, transatlantic, East/West and German/German contexts. The intricate and wide-ranging analysis of overlapping impulses of domestic and international affairs is admirable in all three articles, as the authors chart the two nations navigating among the rocky shoals of the transatlantic alliance, Soviet concerns, broader European goals and their own respective national interests. At times, however, the reader drowns in the excessive blow-by-blow rehashing of the events of 1958-67 from one article to the next.

The volume's second section examines the domains regulated by the treaty, namely foreign policy (Lappenküper), defense (Florence Gauzy) and issues related to education and youth (Ansbert Baumann) to compile a balance sheet of the treaty's effectiveness. Ultimately, the terms of the treaty were not realized, although important steps were taken to these ends.

Focusing on those realms not regulated by the Treaty, the third section of the book grapples with the intersections between government and private efforts for cooperation, whether in the industrial and commercial sector, the arts, or among civic activists. In particular, it highlights the legal and logistical challenges of shaping joint policies between one highly centralized and one federal state. Because German cultural affairs were regulated by the Länder, for example, it did not make sense to include them in an international treaty. In contrast, the economy, explains Andreas Wilkens, fell under the auspices of the European Economic Community and was successful enough not to merit further interference. Werner Bührer, agreeing that Adenauer and de Gaulle did not want to meddle with healthy economic relations, explains how this success in fact stemmed from a longstanding tradition of Franco-German industrial cooperation that reemerged after the war as early as 1947. Here, government interference could hinder independent efforts.

All told, it seems the most successful outgrowths of the treaty involved those realms most loosely addressed in the treaty, such as joint scientific research (Baumann) and those outside its direct purview altogether, from sister cities to TV/radio (Corine Defrance). Yet it was precisely the treaty that nurtured such bilateral ties.

The book's final section assesses the treaty--and the Franco-German relationship more broadly--from

Citation: H-Net Reviews. Passman on Defrance and Ulrich Pfeil, 'Der Élysée-Vertrag und die deutsch-französischen Beziehungen 1945-1963-2003'. H-German. 09-30-2014. https://networks.h-net.org/node/35008/reviews/44681/passman-defrance-and-ulrich-pfeil-der-%C3%A9lys%C3%A9e-vertrag-und-die-deu tsch Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-German today's perspective. In a particularly stimulating contribution, Robert Frank dissects the creation of what Defrance and Pfeil dub the "myth of 1963" to determine whether the treaty has evolved into a lieu de mémoire. Frank unpacks the myths around the treaty, demonstrating when and how the failures associated with the treaty began to fade from collective memory and the new enthusiasm seen in recent commemorations emerged. Both Colette Mazucelli and former Foreign Minister Hans- Dietrich Genscher (FDP) see in the treaty a model for contemporary politics. For Mazucelli, the Franco-German partnership stands as a model of reconciliation for a Europe threatened by the rise of the far right. Genscher's contribution takes on a sense of political urgency as he pleads for multilateralism and global free trade as ways to expand the legacy of the treaty.

Most of the articles in the volume underscore the incongruity between the treaty's initial weaknesses and its long-term legacy of success. Arguments tend to rest on the treaty's indirect effects and the slow accumulation of joint projects. If the authors do not manage to prove the direct links between the treaty and subsequent success stories of cooperation--from ARTE to the Franco-German Brigade-- neither do they set out on such a mission. Several authors make note of earlier postwar efforts at cooperation, whether through private organizations or initiatives like the Schuman Plan and the 1954 Franco-German Cultural Agreement. Yet most equally point to the Elysée Treaty's "accelerating effect" on bilateral ties.

The book assumes a general familiarity with the histories of France, Germany and European unification, as well as at least a passing acquaintance with the Elysée Treaty itself. In this respect, the point that Defrance and Pfeil make in their introduction that most general history surveys of modern Germany or France devote a sentence or less to the treaty should have prompted the editors to introduce the book with a quick overview of the document. In a similar vein, it would have been useful to include the text of the contested preamble in the document appendix devoted to the body of the treaty.

Despite the volume's exceptional coherence and balance, a few untapped veins remain that could further round out our understanding of the treaty's success. It would have been fruitful, for example, to examine environmental policies in light of the treaty's references to forestry, agriculture and energy under the foreign policy clauses. On a slightly different tack, an article on public opinion could have provided an effective counterbalance to the top-down approach pursued in most articles, with the notable exception of the article on the Deutsch-Französisches Jugendwerk by Hans Manfred Bock and Ulrich Pfeil.

These omissions, along with frequent repetitions of quotations and anecdotes, only minimally detract from an otherwise a perceptive and valuable addition to the "Europeanizing"--indeed internationalizing--of German (and French) history by some of the foremost experts on French- German relations. This volume cuts through the treacle cooked up by German and French politicians as well as by the press during the heady fortieth anniversary celebrations of Franco-German friendship. At the same time, it succeeds as a corrective to historians' chronic underestimation of the significance of the Elysée Treaty (as policy, as impetus, as symbol) to the individual histories of both the German and French nation-states.

Note

[1]. The treaty called for the "Gleichwertigkeit der Diplome" in the two countries. Making French and German grades, diplomas and degrees more compatible would simplify the process of studying and working abroad and thereby amplify cross-border contacts.

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Citation: Elana Passman. Review of Defrance, Corine; Ulrich Pfeil,Der Élysée-Vertrag und die deutsch-französischen Beziehungen 1945-1963-2003. H-German, H-Net Reviews. June, 2006. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11886

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