German Unification and the Federal Constitutional Court: A Retrospective View After Twenty Years

Abstract

From the time of its founding in 1871 until after World War I, the German Empire (Reich) extended from Alsace-Lorraine, west of the Rhine, all the way to the Russian border in the northeast. After each of the two world wars, however, Germany lost significant portions of this extensive territory. At the end of World War II, for example, the Postdam agreement recognized the transfer of large sections of eastern Germany into the “administration” of Poland and the Soviet Union—in part, to compensate Poland for territory that had been annexed by the Soviet Union. Moreover, Germany was completely occupied by the victorious allies, whose governments agreed to administer German territory in four separate zones.

For earlier writings of the author discussing themes considered in this chapter, see, for example, The Imperfect Union: Constitutional Structures of German Unification (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); “The Constitutional and Legal Framework of German Unification,” in Der Vereinigungsschock. Vergleichende Betrachtungen zehn Jahre danach, ed. Wolfgang Schluchter and Peter E. Quint (Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2001), 19–38; “60 Years of the Basic Law and its Interpretation: An American Perspective,” Jahrbuch des Öffentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart 57 (2009), Iff. See also note 48, infra.