What is Ostpolitik?

Neue Ostpolitik (German for "new eastern policy"), or Ostpolitik for short, was the normalization of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and Eastern Europe, particularly the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) beginning in 1969. Influenced by Egon Bahr, who proposed "change through rapprochement", the policies were implemented beginning with Willy Brandt, fourth Chancellor of the FRG from 1969 to 1974.

Ostpolitik was an effort to break with the policies of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which was the elected government of West Germany from 1949 until 1969. The Christian Democrats under Konrad Adenauer and his successors tried to combat the Communist regime of East Germany, while Brandt's Social Democrats tried to achieve a certain degree of cooperation with East Germany. The term Ostpolitik has since been applied to Pope Paul VI's efforts to engage Eastern European countries during the same period.

The term Nordpolitik was also coined to describe similar rapprochement policies between North and South Korea beginning in the 1980s. The easing of tensions with the East envisioned by Ostpolitik necessarily began with the Soviet Union, the only Eastern Bloc state with which the Federal Republic had formal diplomatic ties. In 1970, Brandt signed the Treaty of Moscow, renouncing the use of force and recognizing the current European borders.

Ostpolitik is also the name given to Pope Paul VI's policies towards the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states. Trying to improve the condition of Christians in general, and Catholics in particular, behind the Iron Curtain, he engaged in dialogue with Communist authorities at several levels, receiving Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and USSR President Nikolai Podgorny in 1966 and 1967 in the Vatican. The situation of the Church in Poland, Hungary and Romania improved somewhat during his pontificate.