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Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen 151
German government. Amongst Adenauer’s motives for the rejection of the Soviet proposals
the non-recognition of the Oder-Neiße as Germany’s final Eastern border ranked very high.
One may speculate about the chances to unify at least the Federal Republic and the GDR at
that time, if Adenauer would have been willing to renounce the Eastern parts of the former
German Reich.
As far as European integration is concerned, the formation of a defence community is the
problem most frequently dealt with in the documents. The West Germans stressed the necessity
to be treated on equal terms and to establish some sort of political framework for the
EDC and the ECSC as well. Although there can be no doubt regarding the Federal government’s
willingness to integrate West Germany into the emerging European community,
French anxiety seemed not to have disappeared until the signing of the ECSC treaty. To control
the Germans counted, after all, amongst the predominant causes of European integration
– a fact that Adenauer had already “forgotten” in spring 1952, when he only mentioned the
aggressive politics of the Soviet Union as an impetus to unify Europe.
The two volumes are a valuable and indispensable source for anyone who is interested in
the beginnings of West German foreign policy. The documents demonstrate in detail what
kind of obstacles had to be cleared and how “Bonn” step by step got used to a new style of
foreign policy and to its new role in European and international politics.
Priv.Doz. Dr. Werner Bührer
Technische Universität München
Marie-Thérèse BITSCH (ed.) – Le couple France-Allemagne et les institutions
européennes. Une postérité pour le plan Schuman? Proceedings of the symposium held at
the Institute of high European studies of Strasbourg (Strasbourg University III – Robert
Schuman), 25 -27 May 2000, Brussels, Bruylant, 2001, 609 p. – ISBN 2-8027-1500-3 –
85,00 €.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the declaration of 9 May 1950, the Institute of
high European studies of the Strasbourg University III – Robert Schuman, organized, from
25 to 27 May 2000, a scientific symposium with the purpose of studying the posterity of this
founding proclamation of the European Community. Following the tradition established by
Raymond Poidevin who has set up and run for long years the Research Centre for the history
of international relations of the Institute, this symposium gathered French and German historians
specialists in the history of Europe and connected the subjects of Franco-German
relations and European construction.
Without recounting the genesis and the immediate results of the Schuman plan, already
known by the works of Raymond Poidevin 1 and Pierre Gerbet 2 or by the symposium organized
on that subject by Klaus Schwabe, 3 the 25 contributions collected by Marie-Thérèse
Bitsch look back, over a period of 50 years, on the evolution of the Franco-German relations
with regard to the Community construction. The contributions are divided into five large
parts that successively take up the “first options” leading from the Schuman plan to the treaties
of Rome (with in particular an assessment of the ideas of Walter Hallstein), the “pros-
1. R. POIDEVIN, Robert Schuman, homme d’Etat, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1986, 520 p. by the
same author, in collaboration with Dierk SPIERENBURG, Histoire de la Haute Autorité de la CE-
CA, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 1993, 919 p.
2. P. GERBET, La genèse du plan Schuman. Des origines à la déclaration du 9 mai 1950, Lausanne,
Centre de recherches européennes, 1962, 40 p.
3. K. SCHWABE (editorship), Die Anfänge des Schuman-Plans 1950-1951, Baden-Baden, Nomos,
1988, 475 p.