ABSTRACT
Romania is one of Germany's more distant neighbors. It is separated by a greater physical and cultural distance than many of them, and the two countries have been spared direct territorial disputes with each other. At times, however, their relations have been marked by dramatic forms of cooperation or estrangement with political consequences that have had much more than a bilateral impact. To understand the dynamics of Romanian-German interaction since 1945, it is important to appreciate their previous history. During the 19th and early 20th centuries relations between Germany and Romania were generally good. A pre-war legacy that has had an important impact on Romanian-German relations since 1945 is the large ethnic German population living in Romania. After the end of World War II, Romania's relations with West Germany were limited. Immediately after the war, Romania endured the convulsion of a Communist seizure of power and the restructuring of its political, economic and social system.
