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Minister of Intra-German Relations
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Federal Minister of Intra-German Relations (German: Bundesminister für innerdeutsche Beziehungen) was a federal cabinet minister of West Germany. The office was created under the title of Federal Minister of All-German Affairs (Bundesminister für gesamtdeutsche Fragen) in 1949, and was renamed in 1969. It was abolished in 1991, after German Reunification.
Since West Germany kept up the legal pretense that East Germany did not exist, it could not handle East German relations through the Foreign Office, since this would have meant to acknowledge that East Germany was a separate country. Hence, a separate ministry for East German relations had to be created. Since this ministry had very limited competence and virtually no political power, it soon became a post used by chancellors to block rivals without publicly offending them. One of the main tasks of the ministry was the publication of propaganda material geared to keep the idea of German unity alive and to discredit the East German government. When German Reunification became a possibility after the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, the ministry was completely disempowered by Chancellor Helmut Kohl; all intra-German affairs were now handled by the Ministry of the Interior under Wolfgang Schäuble. Formally, the ministry continued to exist until 1991.
- Jakob Kaiser, 1949-1957
- Ernst Lemmer, 1957-1962
- Rainer Barzel, 1962-1963, first term
- Erich Mende, 1963-1966
- Johann Baptist Gradl, 1966
- Herbert Wehner, 1966-1969
- Egon Franke, 1969-1982
- Rainer Barzel, 1982-1983, second term
- Heinrich Windelen, 1983-1987
- Dorothee Wilms, 1987-1991