Berlin Through the Eyes of a Longtime Member of the German Parliament (Bundestag)

Abstract

The Bundestag can be compared with the House of Representatives in the United States, although it has more power. In 1965, the year I entered the German Parliament, Berlin was the crucial point of German domestic politics, of the relations between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the Soviet Union, and of the Western Alliance. The German population, especially the politicians, and above all the members of the Federal Parliament, were used to facing one Berlin crisis after another. The question was only how one would overcome those crises and how much the West would give in.