Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)

A state its own founders described as provisional, which lasted forty-one years and then absorbed the other one. The Federal Republic was established in 1949 in the American, British and French zones, and the care taken over its design shows what its founders thought had gone wrong before: the Basic Law opens with the inviolability of human dignity, makes core provisions permanently unamendable, gives the chancellor security through a vote of no confidence that only works if a successor is elected at the same time, sets a threshold to keep splinter parties out of parliament, and allows parties hostile to the constitutional order to be banned. It was called a Basic Law rather than a constitution deliberately, because a constitution implied permanence and the division was not accepted as permanent. Adenauer anchored the state in the west - NATO in 1955, the European Communities from 1957 - against opposition that feared this made reunification impossible. The economic recovery was rapid enough to be called a miracle, helped by currency reform, Marshall aid and millions of expelled Germans as labour. Codetermination gave workers board seats. The generation of 1968 forced open the question of what their parents had done. Brandt knelt at the Warsaw ghetto memorial in 1970 and opened relations with the east. Terrorism by the Red Army Faction tested the state in the 1970s. Bonn was the capital. Unification came in 1990 by the eastern states acceding. The Federal Republic existed under that division from 1949 to 1990 with Bonn as its capital. It held around 62 million people by the late 1980s. Its currency was the Deutsche Mark. It was a founding member of the European Economic Community.

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