When leaders go on an official visit somewhere, it seldom happens that such earth-shattering events take place, but this was certainly the case when Helmut Kohl, the German Federal Chancellor at the time, went to Poland in 1989. Fifty years earlier Germany had invaded its neighbour and triggered off the Second World War. A well-prepared joint declaration had at last been drawn up in which both governments confirmed their will towards improving peaceful cooperation between the two countries. Suddenly however the itinerary was knocked out of kilter for on the evening of 9th November the Berlin Wall was opened, heralding in the non-violent revolution in the former communist GDR – the other half of the divided Germany. The day after, Chancellor Kohl broke off his visit to get back to Berlin to find out exactly what was happening. The German foreign minister remained in Warsaw and on the morning of 10th met, as planned, with the civil rights activist, Bronislaw Geremek, who later became foreign minister. His kind words went down in the history books, “The coming down of the wall – this means German unity. It is will also be a great day for Poland because we will then become neighbours with NATO, the Western military alliance, and the European Union.” German unity was officially declared in 1990, Poland joined NATO in 2000 and then the EU in 2004. The road to international and, above all, bilateral understanding was of course not an easy one, fraught with problems stemming from both sides. In the years leading up to 1945 the German occupation and policy of extermination in Poland had caused the deaths of millions of people. After the end of the war the victorious allies passed a resolution that forced as many as 8 million people to flee from what used to be German territory east of the Oder-Neisse Line – to be “resettled”, as they called it, in the West. In 1950 the communist GDR officially recognised the border to its sister state within the Soviet sphere, whereas the democratic Federal Republic of Germany, in line with an agreement made with the three western powers (USA, Great Britain and France), reserved the right to wait until the question of the legality of the “former eastern territories of Germany” had been settled by a final peace treaty signed by all the victors of the war. In Germany the Associations for Displaced Germans came into being and in 1950 they solemnly declared their intention to secure their right to their homeland – this time without the use of force.

The relations between West Germany and Poland however were put on ice - victims of the “Cold War” between the two power blocks under American and Soviet leadership. It was especially at an intergovernmental level that the federal government in Bonn insisted on its “right to sole representation”. If any country, like Poland, maintained diplomatic relations with the GDR, they could not maintain any with the Federal Republic of Germany.

The policy of détente prevailing in the world after the Cuba Crisis in 1961 also gave a boost to the relationship between Germany and Poland. In 1963 the first trade agreement was signed and a federal German trade mission was set up in Warsaw. In 1965 the Evangelical Church of Germany drew up an “Eastern Memorandum” that championed the cause of a Poland within secure borders – more or less clear recognition of the Oder-Neisse Line. At the same time there was correspondence between the Catholic bishops of the two countries, which underlined the will towards reconciliation on the part of both countries – the phrase they used was, “We forgive and ask for forgiveness.” The Catholic church was in fact the greatest power factor in communist Polish society and its role would be decisive in the developments yet to come.

In 1970 the Treaty concerning the basis of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland was concluded. It reaffirmed the inviolability now and in the future of the frontier existing between them. Willy Brandt, the Federal Chancellor at that time and later Nobel Peace Prize laureate, knelt down after laying a wreath at the memorial to the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto (1943). This was seen as an obvious symbolic gesture for the recognition of German guilt for what happened under the Nazis and during the war. Brandt himself was actually a resistance fighter during the Nazi period.

The memorable Joint Declaration of 12th November ’89 was a tie-on from the 1970 treaty. Then came the German-Polish Border Agreement of 14th November of the following year, six weeks after German reunification. This finally confirmed the normalisation of relations under international law and put an end to the “post-war ‘freeze’ period” between the two countries. Or almost the end – the compensation for Polish victims of the war and forced labourers who were held in Nazi-Germany was not brought to a conclusion until the year 2000 – much too late for many of them.

This change for the better is in most cases always a result of spiritual change, even if it sometimes takes decades to come about. Since 1958 the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst/DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) has sent more than 30,000 Poles to Germany and almost 20,000 Germans to Poland. Since 1972 a joint German-Polish “Commission for Schoolbooks” has been working on clearing up the historical and geographical myths for good and placing more emphasis on the things they have in common. It has been a good 15 years sine the Goethe Institut first opened its doors in Warsaw and Krakow and they are still going strong. Over a quarter of a century ago the German Poland Institute was set up in Darmstadt – the child of the translator, Karl Dedecius – to promote Polish literature in the German language.

By the same token young people living in the western areas of Poland today are starting to delve into the German past of the region they live in. “There can be no future without knowing about your past,” says Dagmara Margiela who is doing a PhD on “Polish myths about the ‘regained territories’ up to the Oder-Neisse Line” at the Willy Brandt Centre for German and European Studies in Wroclaw, previously known as Breslau in German. The centre, founded in 2002, is a joint project for post-graduates in politics, history, German literature, law and economics, set up by the local university in collaboration with DAAD. “Our grandparents,” says Margiela, “who came here to Poland’s Wild West after 1945 to start all over anew were not bothered at all about the region’s history.” This ‘pioneer’ generation – like the Associations for Displaced Germans – is now fading into history. “We younger ones, however, the grandchildren,” the doctoral candidate emphasises, “are now providing our region that has been through so much with the necessary firm ground on which to stand within the greater context of the European Union.”

Getting to know each other and finding out more about each other – the obvious recipe for a secure future. This is also the recipe the German-Polish Youth Office swears by for over the past 12 years they have brought one and a half million schoolchildren and students from both countries together.