page_title: Hallstein Doctrine
section_title: Authorship and name
hierarchical_section_title: Hallstein Doctrine / Origin of the "doctrine" / Authorship and name
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. Im September 1955 besucht Bundeskanzler Dr. Konrad Adenauer Moskau. Die Gespräche mit Bulganin, Malenkow und Chrustschow (von links) führen zur Aufnahme diplomatischer Beziehungen zwischen der Sowjetunion und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.
context_page_description: The Hallstein Doctrine, named after Walter Hallstein, was a key principle in the foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1955 to 1970. As usually presented, it prescribed that the Federal Republic would not establish or maintain diplomatic relations with any state that recognized the German Democratic Republic. In fact it was more nuanced. There was no public official text of the "doctrine", but its main architect, Wilhelm Grewe, explained it publicly in a radio interview. Konrad Adenauer, who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1949 to 1963, explained the outlines of the policy in a statement to the German parliament on 22 September 1955. It meant that the Federal German government would regard it as an unfriendly act if third countries were to recognize the "German Democratic Republic" or to maintain diplomatic relations with it – with the exception of the Soviet Union. The West German response to such could mean breaking off diplomatic relations, though this was not stated as an automatic response under the policy and in fact remained the ultima ratio.
context_section_description: The Hallstein Doctrine was named after Walter Hallstein, then "state secretary" (the top civil servant) at the German Foreign Office, though largely devised and implemented by the head of the political department of the German Foreign Office, Wilhelm Grewe.
  At the time the Hallstein Doctrine was born (or at least named), Heinrich von Brentano was the foreign minister, a post that had been recently created, after West Germany largely regained its sovereignty in 1955—before this, political responsibility for foreign policy had been retained by the chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. Brentano is also known to have referred to the policy, or a variation of it as the Brentano Doctrine.
  Some time later, in 1958, journalists named the policy the Hallstein–Grewe Doctrine, and this later became shortened to the Hallstein Doctrine. Grewe himself writes that he devised the broad outlines of the policy, but mainly as one of a number of options, the decisions being made by the foreign minister, Brentano, and the chancellor, Adenauer; in any case, the name Hallstein doctrine may be something of a misnomer.
caption: Konrad Adenauer in Moscow, 1955
exif: {}