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conclusion In AuGuST 1966, less than a year before he died, Konrad Adenauer told the Swiss historian and journalist Jean Rudolf von Salis that “they should eradicate all foreign offices root and branch!” When Salis replied that they were accused above all of formalism, or strict adherence to prescribed forms, Adenauer said, “This formalism goes deeper; the worst thing is that it suppresses the true meaning of foreign policy. One loses sight of the problems [Man sieht die Probleme nicht mehr . . . ].”1 Four years earlier, foreign policy commentatorAlbrecht von Kessel had noted thatAdenauer remained intensely distrustful of the Auswärtiges Amt and its diplomats, even after he gave up the ministerial portfolio. However, Kessel did not find Walter Hallstein or Heinrich von Brentano adequate leaders either. “What the Office has lacked more than anything else was a chief who truly concerned himself with the house, that is, who held the civil service together, but also was its advocate [für sie eintrat].”2 Obviously, Adenauer’s relationship with the Auswärtiges Amt was no love affair. While foreign minister, he had neither the time nor the inclination to devote himself to the Foreign Office and its problems. He preferred instead to concentrate on high policy with the assistance of a small circle of trusted advisors . However, the Foreign Ministry’s rapidly increasing competencies and workload required more supervision from the highest levels, and the diplomats felt this lack of attention acutely. They thought that the chancellor did not always understand the needs of professional diplomacy and complained, with justification, that he too often left them out of the loop. The Auswärtiges Amt itself had only just emerged from the period of its “childhood illnesses” when conclusion 245 Adenauer turned it over to Heinrich von Brentano in 1955. In the early 1950s, when Adenauer’s immediate goals—sovereignty and equality in the Western Bloc—were limited and obvious, his leadership of the ministry did not present serious problems. Special conditions during the first half of the decade, such as the proximity of the Allied High Commission on the Petersberg, accommodated Adenauer’s methods especially well. West Germany’s foreign policies were indeed tremendously successful through 1955. The Federal Republic went from being a state living under an Occupation Statute and without the right to conduct an independent foreign policy to one that had regained its sovereignty (except in matters concerning German unification) and had become an ally and partner for other Western countries. As some observers noted, it already enjoyed considerable international status several years before it was sovereign. For example, on June 3, 1953, the Dutch paper Het Parool wrote the Federal Republic was becoming increasingly important in world politics, as evidenced by the fact that the Three Western Powers had agreed to keep the Adenauer government informed about discussions on Germany at the upcoming Bermuda Summit. West Germany was not yet sovereign but already was taking its place among the world powers, and its significance would only increase due to European unification and the growing insight in Bonn that foreign policy could not focus solely on German issues.3 West German reactions to the lifting of the Occupation Statute underline, however, the feeling among many at the time that in important respects this type of sovereignty and partnership was no more normal thanAdenauer’s leadership of the Foreign Office. In his memoirs Adenauer called May 5, 1955, “one of the greatest days in German history.” “Ten years after the collapse of National Socialism, the occupation period came to an end for the Federal Republic. We were a free and independent state. Sovereignty returned to us the most important right of any state, the freedom of decision. It gave us the right to decide over our internal and external affairs as we saw fit [nach eigenem Ermessen].” In a public declaration that day he added that “what had been unfolding for some time already on the basis of growing trust has now become a legal fact: we stand as free [people] among the free, bound to the former Occupation Powers in true partnership.” Yet the moment was subdued because both the government and the opposition remembered that there were millions of Germans in the GDR who, as Adenauer’s declaration put it, “were forced to live separated from us in bondage [Unfreiheit] and illegality.” An FDP orator saw May 5 as only the start of a longer process toward German unity, while [3.145.178.240] Project MUSE (2024...

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