Hallstein Doctrine [SEP] named after
Hallstein Doctrine
The Hallstein Doctrine, named after Walter Hallstein, was a key principle in the foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1955 to 1970. As usually presented, it prescribed that the Federal Republic would not establish or maintain diplomatic relations with any state that recognized the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). In fact it was more nuanced. There was no public official text of the "doctrine", but its main architect, Wilhelm Grewe, explained it publicly in a radio interview
), Heinrich von Brentano was the foreign minister, a post that had been recently created, after West Germany largely regained its sovereignty in 1955—before this, political responsibility for foreign policy had been retained by the chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. Brentano is also known to have referred to the policy, or a variation of it as the Brentano Doctrine.
Some time later, in 1958, journalists named the policy "the Hallstein–Grewe Doctrine", and this later became shortened to "the Hallstein Doctrine". Grewe himself writes