page_title: BRD (Germany)
section_title: Opposition to use in West Germany
hierarchical_section_title: BRD (Germany) / History / Opposition to use in West Germany
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Portraits von Staatssekretär Hallstein
context_page_description: BRD; is an unofficial abbreviation for the Federal Republic of Germany, informally known in English as West Germany until 1990, and just Germany since reunification. It was occasionally used in the Federal Republic itself during the early Cold War; it was commonly used between 1968 and 1990 by the ruling party of the German Democratic Republic, resulting in a strong deprecation of its use in West Germany. The East German regime had previously used the term "German Federal Republic", which it abbreviated as "DBR", to refer to West Germany. The most widely used abbreviation for West Germany in the country itself was its ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code "DE", which has remained the country code of reunified Germany.
  While the English equivalent FRG was used as an IOC country code and a FIFA trigramme, the use of BRD was strongly discouraged by the authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany itself from the 1970s, because it was considered to be a derogatory communist term following its widespread use in East Germany since 1968; thus the term was regarded as a possible expression of an extremist, anti-constitutional and anti-democratic sentiment by West German authorities.
context_section_description: To distance themselves from the term BRD, until German reunification, the government of the Federal Republic of Germany and media sometimes used the abbreviations BR Deutschland, BR-Dt., BRDt.,
   BR Dtld. or simply Dtld. After the newly established states of the German Democratic Republic acceded to the Federal Republic, Deutschland ("Germany") has always been used as the official short name.
  West Germany had always claimed to be the Germany, and did not like the comparison to DDR, or two separate German states. This claim was also reflected in the Hallstein Doctrine determining its foreign and interior policy until the early 1970s. Named after Walter Hallstein, State secretary at the Foreign Office, this was a key doctrine in the foreign policy of West Germany after 1955, which prescribed that the Federal Republic of Germany would not establish or maintain diplomatic relations with any state that recognised the GDR. Although this changed after 1973, with the Federal Republic no longer asserting an exclusive mandate over the whole of Germany, West Germany only established de facto diplomatic relations with East Germany. Under the terms of the Basic Treaty in 1972, Bonn and East Berlin exchanged "permanent missions", headed by "permanent representatives", rather than de jure embassies headed by ambassadors. Similarly, relations with the GDR were not conducted through the Foreign Office, but through a separate Federal Ministry for Intra-German Relations, to which the East German mission was accredited.
  In 1965 the Federal Minister of All-German Affairs (later Intra-German Relations) issued the Directives for the appellation of Germany recommending that the use of BRD be avoided. On 31 May 1974 the heads of the federal and state governments recommended that the full name should always be used in official publications. In November 1979 the federal government informed the Bundestag that the West German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF agreed not to use the initialism.
  Under the West German federal system, the states were generally responsible for school education, and by the 1970s, some of them had either already recommended omitting the initialism, or, in the case of Bavaria, forbidden it. Similarly, a decree by the educational authorities in the state of Schleswig-Holstein of 4 October 1976 declared the term to be nicht wünschenswert or "undesirable". The conference of all the states ministers for school education decided on 12 February 1981 to not print the initialism in books, maps, and atlases for schools. with pupils being required to write Bundesrepublik Deutschland in full and use of the term being deemed an error. The different usages were so ingrained that one could deduce a person's or source's political leaning from the name used for West Germany, with far-left movements in the country using BRD.
  However, as the Association for the German Language found, this debate on the initialism had little influence on changing the West German parlance with the usage of the initialism - in any event limited - unaffected by the debate.
caption: Walter Hallstein
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