50 FRANK BÖSCH AND JENS GIESEKE
Helsinki Accords, the East thus ensured the codifi cation of the political
status quo in Europe while the West was able to anchor its human rights
agenda in international law.
Accordingly, the German-German political contacts made in the 1970s
and 1980s can be seen as part of a growing process of cross-border politi-
cal interaction and interdependence in which both German states vied for
recognition. The so-called “change through trade” (“Wandel durch Han-
del”) was therefore not specifi c to German-German history, but rather
part of multivalent cross-border political entanglements. The long-term
treaties that emerged out of these negotiations, such as the regulation of
the natural gas supply from the USSR, helped to overcome tense political
situations such as the one that occurred around 1980.^18 Many of these po-
litical talks ended—like German-German meetings—in disillusionment.
Yet the network of cross-border relationships kept matters from escalat-
ing, and it created space for accommodation outside of the major confl ict
arenas. Simultaneously, this international integration relativized the im-
portance of German-German talks because a large part of the diplomatic
communication between the two Germanys ran through the respective
bloc partners and neutral countries.
These talks also went hand-in-hand with an increasing social per-
ception that the GDR and the FRG would remain separate states for the
foreseeable future. Although the majority of FRG citizens saw the GDR
in a mostly negative light, the 1970s saw an increase in the percentage
of those in the FRG who were willing to acknowledge the East German
state because of its (supposedly) more resolute anti-fascism and positive
elements of its system, such as equality and education; there was also a
widespread belief that a more open political sphere had been carved out
in the GDR.^19 Yet, at the same time, over half of the people in the FRG
indicated that they were not particularly interested in the GDR.
The focus on negotiations between states as a modus of the East-West
confl ict led to a disregard for nonstate actors that had far-reaching con-
sequences. The reasons Egon Bahr cited for having disregarded the East
German civil rights activists, for example, attest to this point: he claimed
that he simply would not have been able to negotiate anything with Bärbel
Bohley.^20 From this perspective, civil society actors “from below” seemed
to interfere with the politics of negotiation. Politicians in Bonn therefore
kept their distance from the Polish Solidarność movement as well as the
East German civil rights activists until well into the revolution of 1989 and
the accession process. Apart from a few individual politicians from the
“established” parties, the Greens were the only ones who systematically
went against the grain and maintained contacts with the East. Beginning
in 1982, Petra Kelly, for example, visited the GDR several times a year in