Facts in Domhof Hall

The Second World War marked the low point in German-Polish relations. This was followed by a period of territorial reorganization of Poland resulting from cession of territory to the USSR as well as the expulsion of more than 3.5 million Germans and the awarding of the former German territories east of the Oder and the Lausitzer Neisse. However, the question of possible reparations – which, at least in the view of the Federal Republic of Germany, had been settled by a declaration of renunciation on the part of Poland in 1953 – repeatedly arose in the course of the following decades and is still a predominant political issue in Poland today. In the 1960s, after a period dominated by the East-West division of the post-war era, the new “Ostpolitik” propounded by the West German SPD led to a change in circumstances. Willy Brandt’s historic gesture of kneeling in Warsaw in 1970 and the associated signing of a normalization agreement marked the beginning of a gradual improvement in German-Polish relations.

Krysztof Ruchniewicz sees the end of Soviet domination in Central Eastern Europe as the breakthrough in German-Polish relations. In the summer of 1989, the first government not led by a communist was formed in Poland. This triggered a wave of refugees from the GDR, which then brought about its collapse. It was in this atmosphere that Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl traveled to Poland: On November 12, 1989, an ecumenical service was held together with Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, during which the two heads of state made a sign of peace and warmly embraced. A Border Treaty was then concluded on November 14, 1990, and on June 17, 1991 the Treaty of Good Neighborship and Friendly Cooperation was signed. This treaty between Poland and the now reunited Germany not only ended the long-standing dispute over the definitive course of the German-Polish border along the Oder and Neisse rivers, but also laid the foundations for increasingly close cooperation between the two states.