The Allied commitment to maintaining the West Berlin enclave actually predated the formation of the Federal Republic in May 1949. The Berlin Airlift actually formally ended a few days prior to the formal establishment of the FRG state. So in more than a few ways, Bonn's commitment to West Berlin was a legacy of the complexities of the emerging Cold War.

As the Cold War began to take form in the first postwar years, the Western Allies held that the status of Berlin could only be hashed out with a proper peace treaty while the Soviets maintained that the Western Allies were violating preexisting agreements by countenancing a division of Germany into two separate states. Both sides were somewhat disingenuous in their claims, but the end result was Berlin's status became something of a political football. The Berlin Blockade was a calculated risk by the Soviets to force the three other Allies out, and this was not as foolhardy as it seemed in hindsight. The State Department was skeptical of maintaining West Berlin and it was largely the initiative of the US military government in Germany that the Airlift took form. The Soviets ultimately were not willing to risk war for West Berlin, and lifted the blockade. But Berlin's status would remain in limbo as a divided and occupied city until a peace conference or other diplomatic breakthrough could finally end its occupation.

The Adenauer government thus had to accept the compromised position on Berlin. West Berlin was a de facto part of the FRG. Basic Law and FRG citizenship applied to the city, but it could only send non-voting delegates to the Bundestag and Bundesrat. Even with the latent threat of the GDR cutting off the supply lines to the city, maintaining the exclave was expensive. This consisted of a whole panoply of subsidies and tax breaks given to both individuals and businesses. This economic commitment to West Berlin started with the division of Germany, but continued apace with the hardening of the Cold War. After the erection of the Wall in 1961, Bonn feared that FRG industry businesses would abandon the city and lead to an economic crisis in West Berlin. The West Berlin aid package of 1962 allowed for substantial tax breaks to both individuals and corporations such as writing off up to 75 percent of construction costs for new buildings, new rent-controlled housing, up to a 30 percent reduction in income tax. Federal employees in the city enjoyed an additional bonus on the top of their regular salary and the state also underwrote low cost loans for West Berlin for economic investments. West Berliners called these tax breaks the Zitterpraemie (jitters premiums) for living in this urban exclave and they were designed to be a proactive measure to prevent people from migrating out of the city.

Yet the fact that Bonn was willing to stomach these costs of Berlin division is a testament to the political imperative of maintaining the city. The official position of the FRG that emerged in 1949 was that it was the official "temporary" government for all of Germany. In theory, Basic Law applied to the GDR as well as to the FRG. Bonn thus was not to be a permanent capital, but a provisional one. Early FRG political discourse often stressed that what Adenauer created was a transient government that would provide the basis for a permanent peace once there was a final peace treaty formally ending the war. Such a political position was an ideological umbrella that appealed not only to the anticommunist right, especially the expellees from Eastern Europe and GDR refugees, but also the left-wing SPD. The position that the government in Bonn was the sole legitimate German one was not just limited to the continued commitment to West Berlin. The Hallstein Doctrine, for example, held that any foreign acceptance of the GDR was a hostile act against Germany and Bonn would act accordingly. Even during the period of Detente and Ostpolitik in the 1970s, Bonn sidestepped the West Berlin issue lest it cede too much diplomatic ground to the GDR.

West Berlin emerged as something akin to an investment by the FRG in which too much had already been sunk into to abandon. The anticommunist propaganda value of the besieged city was something the Adenauer government certainly appreciated, but the costs of West Berlin only grew as the Cold War dragged on. Economic aid and subsidies did not stem the outflow of industry from West Berlin in the 1960s and 70s and the economy of the city shifted to public services and service industries. By the mid-80s, Bonn directly subsidized much of the city's municipal services and the city cost the FRG around 8 billion DM in tax breaks and other incentives. Even as travel to the city normalized through agreements with the GDR, this burden was present in the FRG's budgets. Yet pulling out of the city was not an option as keeping it viable had become too intertwined into West German political culture and the prospect of delivering the city to the SED was something no mainstream FRG political party could stomach.

Sources

Hockenos, Paul. Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic An Alternative History of Postwar Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Large, David Clay. Berlin. New York: Basic Books, 2000.

Vinokurov, Evgeny. A Theory of Enclaves. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007.