Asylum in Postwar Germany: Refugee Admission Policies and Their Practical Implementation in the Federal Republic and the GDR Between the Late 1940s and the Mid-1970s

Abstract

This article is a history of the refugee and asylum policies in the two postwar German states from the end of the 1940s to the mid-1970s and describes the developments leading to the 1993 constitutional amendment. In West Germany, the right to political asylum was permanently the subject of conflicts and new interpretations based on contradictions between a liberal constitutional law of political asylum and a restrictive institutional practice of migration policy. The resulting developments in asylum policy were part of the democratization of the political culture in the West German society, in which the constitution was recognized as standing above other regulations and political considerations. In contrast, in the GDR asylum remained an arbitrary act under total control of the Communist Party officials and can be seen as a continuation of German nationalistic migration policy under the notion of a homogenous population. The refugee issue was always tied to fundamental questions about the political and moral foundations of the West German society and became the major subject of public debate in the 1980s. These debates culminated in the 1993 constitutional reform popularly known as the ‘asylum compromise’, a combination of democratic values and the traditional notion of national belonging in reunified Germany.