Tracing the restoration of Berlin as the capital of Germany … again!
By Robert A. Selig
“Hauptstadt Deutschlands ist Berlin—the capital of Germany is Berlin. The issue of the seat of parliament and government will be decided after the implementation of the unification of Germany.” reads Article 2, Paragraph 1, of the Einigungsvertrag (Unification Treaty), of 31 August 1990 between the Federal Republic of Germany (BRD)and the German Democratic Republic (DDR). Shortly thereafter the Vertrag über die abschließende Regelung in Bezug auf Deutschland (Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany) of 3 October 1990, better known as the “Two Plus Four Agreement”, implemented and completed the creation of an enlarged Bundesrepublik Deutschland when the Deutsche Demokratische Republik dissolved itself and assimilated into the BRD. Die Frage des Sitzes von Parliament und Regierung was settled nine months later in the Hauptstadtbeschluss (Capital Resolution), of 20 June 1991. It was passed by the first German Bundestag elected jointly by citizens who before 3 October 1990 had lived on either side of the German-German border. That border, symbolized around the world by the Berlin Wall, constituted part of an almost impenetrable boundary that stretched from the Baltic to the Adriatic, famously named the “Iron Curtain” by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in a speech given on 5 March 1946, in Fulton, Missouri. What few people would have thought possible became reality on 31 August 1990—45 years after the Unconditional Surrender of the German Wehrmacht to the armed forces of the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France in April 1945—a (re-)united Germany with Berlin as its capital had emerged in the heart of Europe. Another decade would pass before federal ministries and offices completed their move to Berlin.
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