{"id":135,"date":"2017-10-18T15:47:40","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T14:47:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/csmch\/?p=135"},"modified":"2017-11-21T15:58:49","modified_gmt":"2017-11-21T15:58:49","slug":"lorena-de-vita-on-the-1952-reparations-agreement-between-germany-and-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/csmch\/2017\/10\/18\/lorena-de-vita-on-the-1952-reparations-agreement-between-germany-and-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"Lorena de Vita on the 1952 reparations agreement between Germany and Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, the Centre welcomed Lorena de Vita<\/a> (Utrecht), whose work on postwar German-Israeli relations formed the basis of her talk entitled\u00a0‘Democracy, morality, pragmatism: The 1952 agreement between Germany and Israel’. You can read Rosalind Parr’s seminar report below and you can also listen to a short interview Emile Chabal did with Lorena about how she first became interested in this research topic.<\/em><\/p>\n[audiomack src=”https:\/\/audiomack.com\/song\/csmch-edinburgh\/lorena-de-vita-talks-to-emile-chabal-about-her-work-on-german-israeli-relat”]\n

Lorena de Vita\u2019s work examines the history of International Relations between Israel and \u2018the two Germanys\u2019 in the years immediately after the end of the Second World War.\u00a0 Although East and West employed radically different approaches, de Vita nevertheless includes them in a common frame – a historiographical innovation which, amongst other things, offers insights into the globally-wrought framework on which German-Israeli relations rested.<\/p>\n

In her paper, de Vita examined the 1952 agreement through which the Federal Republic of Germany (FDR) paid Wiedergutmachung (\u2018reparations\u2019, literally \u2018making good again\u2019) to Israel following the Holocaust. The overlapping rivalries between East and West Germany on the one hand, and between Israel and its Arab neighbours on the other, form the background to this diplomatic episode.\u00a0 As de Vita demonstrated, the agreement contributed to the FDR\u2019s self-representation as a stable, responsible democracy on the world stage. In doing so, the new FDR made a conscious bid to differentiate itself from both \u2018the Germany of the past and the Germany of the East.\u2019<\/p>\n

By 1949, Israel was reeling under austerity, inflation and the arrival of a new wave of refugees created by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Official boycotts prevented economic or political links with Germany but a series of secret missions took place to assess the willingness of either West or East to negotiate on the subject of shilumim (\u2018payments\u2019), as well as to consider the possibility of trade links.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Chancellor Adenauer signalled the FDR\u2019s willingness to \u2018make good again\u2019 by publicly pledging ten million German Marks in reparations. This laid claim, not only to the FDR\u2019s new democratic credentials, but to its status as the real representative of Germany.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Lorena de Vita fielding questions from a packed room of staff, students and visitors<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As de Vita explained, the issue could not be resolved so easily. When the Israeli parliament met to discuss whether to start official talks with the FDR, there were violent protests. After negotiations had begun, they were disrupted by explosive parcels sent by Jewish terrorists opposed to the talks. There were voices of dissent, too, on the German side amid suggestions that the FDR\u2019s relations with Israel could undermine trading opportunities elsewhere. In Jakarta, the German Ambassador objected on the grounds that the FDR had already paid out to individual Jewish claimants. Meanwhile, the FDR had unfulfilled financial obligations to the Allies, making it difficult for the German government to commit to specific figures despite Adenauer\u2019s earlier pledge.<\/p>\n

As de Vita pointed out, pressure came from elsewhere too. While the British and United States governments urged Adenauer not to let the talks fail, the Arab League was deeply opposed to the prospect of payments to Israel, fearing they would boost Israeli military might.\u00a0 One fascinating dimension of the FDR-Israeli agreement is how, in March 1952, Arab states became prominent players in the story of FDR-GDR rivalry when delegations from the two German governments arrived simultaneously in Cairo for negotiations, raising the question of who represented Germany on the world stage.<\/p>\n

Amid these multiple tensions, a clear theme of the paper was the history of human connections between the FDR and Israel. Over the course of the negotiations, a German and an Israeli delegate discovered, on the basis of a common accent, that before the war they had attended the same school and shared a favourite teacher.<\/p>\n

Commenting on the paper, Stephan Malinowski was impressed by the multiple levels of analysis, ranging from domestic agendas to regional rivalries and global connections.\u00a0 This was something that was further discussed in the Q&A session that followed.\u00a0 Malinowski also provided fascinating insight into the \u2018monster word\u2019 Wiedergutmachung, drawing our attention to the subtle connotations of the term. Finally, he raised the question of the reparations model, prompting a thoughtful response from de Vita about the morality of reparations in the international postcolonial context.<\/p>\n

De Vita\u2019s research on the agreement between the FDR and Israeli forms part of a wider project on Israel-German relations.\u00a0 We look forward to the book\u2019s publication!<\/p>\n

Rosalind Parr is PhD student in History. Her research interests are located in transnational and global histories of the twentieth century, particularly through the lenses of South Asian and gender history. Her thesis examines the international activities of Indian nationalist women in the period from the 1920s to the 1950s. She is an affiliated student of the CSMCH<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, the Centre welcomed Lorena de Vita (Utrecht), whose work on postwar German-Israeli relations formed the basis of her talk entitled\u00a0‘Democracy, morality, pragmatism: The 1952 agreement between Germany and Israel’. You can read Rosalind Parr’s seminar report below and you can also listen to a short interview Emile Chabal did with Lorena about how … Continue reading Lorena de Vita on the 1952 reparations agreement between Germany and Israel<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/csmch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/csmch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/csmch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/csmch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/csmch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/csmch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"http:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/csmch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/csmch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/csmch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/csmch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}