ABSTRACT
The crucial question in the months after the Wall went up was about Kennedy’s pursuit of a modus vivendi for Berlin through bilateral negotiations with the Soviet Union – and up to spring 1961, Brandt’s position on Berlin negotiations had been sceptical at best. He kept reiterating that the Berlin question could not be solved by a mere Berlin agreement since it was to be solved not in isolation, but only in the context of the German question, i.e. reunification. As reunification would probably not materialize, this effectively meant that no Berlin agreement would materialize either, but that suited Brandt, whose main concern had been the defence of the pre-Wall status quo in West Berlin. He therefore strongly opposed an interim agreement for a limited period since this would create a deadline that in due time could turn into an ultimatum. Instead he welcomed the idea of a modus vivendi that would bring merely technical improvements without changing the legal status or the Allied rights. Consequently Brandt dreaded the concessions on offer in 1959 and considered in 1960 and kept repeating that no agreement was better than a bad one, while admitting internally that no change in the status quo was probably the best to be hoped for. As Bahr put it succinctly in May 1960:
We have never spoken of acceptable interim agreements here, but of additional arrangements at best. . . . To this extent we have taken maximum positions compared to what others already consider, without getting into the impossible position of not wanting to talk at all, which would certainly be the best, but which is just not tenable as things are, since one would be completely isolated with it, and Berlin is not that strong.2
