ABSTRACT
In 1957, political parties in Germany faced hard choices. The year 1957 was a federal election year – the third federal election since the country had regained partial sovereignty in 1949. Reconstruction and economic recovery advanced at a fast pace as Germany was entering a period of considerable economic growth. The integration of ethnic Germans expelled from Central and Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War was gradually becoming a less sensitive topic. The contentious issue of the Saarland’s statute had been resolved after France and Germany had agreed to the territory’s return to Germany. Party politics were maturing as the fragmented party system of 1949 was giving way to a stable two and a half party system. Fundamental opposition to the new political system was weakened with the Communist Party’s descent towards electoral marginality and its ban by the Federal Constitutional Court. Arguably, the most salient topic in political debate remained the issue of German unity. However, a new issue was making its appearance in German political debate. On 5 July, two months before the federal election, the parties represented in the Bundestag had to vote on the ratification of the Treaties establishing the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community. The Christian Democrats had negotiated the Rome Treaties and logically approved ratification. The choices were less obvious for opposition parties. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) had inscribed the creation of the United States of Europe based on economic integration as a goal in their 1925 Heidelberg Programme (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands 1925: 110). However, in 1952, the party voted against the ratification of the Treaty of Paris establishing the European Coal and Steel Community, arguing that its provisions were detrimental to German industry (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands 1951). The same scenario was repeated one year later with the party’s No to the European Defence Community. In 1957, the SPD broke the sequence of oppositions to European integration and supported the ratification of the Rome Treaties. In a speech explaining the SPD’s position, the secretary of the social democratic group, Karl Mommer, stated that the party’s position was derived from the compatibility of the Treaties with the general political principles of social democracy (Mommer 1957). While expressing concern on the potentially negative impact of integration on the prospect of German reunification, Mommer defended the view that overcoming nationalism in Europe was worth the risk. The liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) followed an inverse trajectory. The party had been a junior coalition partner of the Christian Democrats until 1956. After having supported the Treaty of Paris and the Defence Community, the liberal group in the Bundestag opted to oppose the Rome Treaties. Robert Margulies, the party’s parliamentary spokesman on European affairs, argued that economic integration on a small scale would further reduce the prospect of German unity, increase protectionism and offer insufficient parliamentary control mechanisms (Margulies 1957; Freie Demokratische Partei 1957).
