The Frankfurt Documents

The Western Allies propose the foundation of a West German state

At the end of 1947, yet another failure on the part of the Western powers and the Soviet Union to agree on Germany’s future led the USA, France and Great Britain to take a different approach. Instead of trying to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union to unite the whole of Germany, they decided to establish a democratic German state on the territory of the three Western zones of occupation.

The first step taken in this direction was a currency reform launched in June 1948. This was followed on 1 July 1948 by the publication of the “Frankfurt Documents”, which proposed the creation of an assembly commissioned with drafting a democratic constitution for a new unitary state that would safeguard the rights and freedoms of its citizens. After this constitution had been drafted and accepted by the three military governors of the three zones of occupation, it was submitted to the 11 individual German regional states that had recently been created. Their approval was intended to ensure the democratic legitimacy of the new federal structure. The Basic Law was accompanied by the issue of an occupation statute that restricted the sovereignty of the new state. The heads of government of the federal states already established in Western Germany were initially critical of the proposed course of action and requested time to reflect. Many feared that the establishment of a partial German state would hamper or indeed prevent attempts to reunite the German nation.