Portrait of Walter Hallstein, photo from September 6, 1957.

Overview – Skip to a certain paragraph:

☛ Childhood in Imperial Germany

☛ Fast-Track Academic Career

☛ Law Professor During the Nazi Dictatorship and Early Post-war Years

☛ State Secretary and Confidant of Konrad Adenauer

☛ President of the Commission of the EEC

☛ Differences with de Gaulle

☛ Bundestag Member and Activist for European Integration

‘Welding Europe into a single unit is no idyll. ... Conflicts of interest within Europe cannot be overcome with just a dash of goodwill. They must be taken seriously. If the work of unification is to assume concrete form and to endure, there will have to be a tough and often arduous struggle for compromises on innumerable questions of detail.’

(Walter Hallstein at the end of his term as president of the Commission of the European Economic Community in April 1967).

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Childhood in Imperial Germany

Walter Hallstein was born on 17 November 1901 in Mainz. During this period, Imperial Germany was experiencing a sort of ‘Wilhelminian economic miracle’ (Werner Plumpe).

The optimistic outlook of the age is reflected in the biography of his father, Jakob Hallstein, who came from a modest farming background in Hesse. Through academic training parallel to his job, Jakob worked his way up from technical assistant to senior civil servant in the field of bridge-building. This served as a role model for his son Walter.

The start of Hallstein's teenage years coincided with the outbreak of World War One. At the Neues Gymnasium in Mainz (today called the Rabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium), he was confronted with the war propaganda of the time and, not surprisingly, developed a yearning to march off and become a war hero himself. Part of his time in the boy scouts was spent with pre-military exercises. To his regret and eventual good fortune, he was spared combat in World War One. Although he had not experienced the battlefield, the military defeat of Germany and the other Central Powers was nevertheless traumatic for Hallstein, as he could see the consequences with his own eyes. Under the armistice agreement, Mainz was occupied by French troops in December 1919.

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Fast-Track Academic Career

After gaining his Abitur (high school certificate), Hallstein studied law in Bonn, Munich and Berlin. In 1925, after taking the first state law examination, he completed a dissertation on 'Life Insurance Contracts under the Treaty of Versailles' with a grade of magna cum laude. Hallstein then took a position as a lecturer at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin (today Humboldt University) and started an academic career. He received support and advice at this time from Martin Wolff, who had supervised his doctoral thesis, and Ernst Rabel, an Austrian legal expert who had recently accepted a position in Berlin.

In 1927, Rabel hired Hallstein as an instructor at the prestigious Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für ausländisches und internationales Privatrecht (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Foreign and International Private Law), where he completed his habilitation thesis, 'Studies of Italian Stock Corporation Law', in early 1930. Hallstein had already acquired an outstanding reputation as a scholar, as evidenced by his appointment, on 1 October 1930, as professor of business and commercial law at the University of Rostock. At the time, he was only 28 years old, which made him one of the youngest professors in Germany.

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Law Professor During the Nazi Dictatorship and Early Post-war Years

As a newly appointed professor at the University of Rostock, Hallstein was required to teach for ten hours per week. His range of subjects was quite extensive. It included the private law of Mecklenburg, commercial law, civil law and German legal history. From 1936 until he moved to the University of Frankfurt/Main in 1941, Hallstein also held the office of dean of the law and business faculty. In 1939, he rejected an offer of a position at the University of Königsberg.

Mecklenburg, the region in northern Germany where Rostock is located, was an early stronghold of National Socialism; the NSDAP formed the state government there from mid-1932 onwards. Hallstein took up the appointment in Rostock during the Weimar period, and a possible appointment in Munich, the 'capital of the [National Socialist] movement', came to naught in 1938, presumably for political reasons. In an internal evaluation, he was accused of taking a rather critical view of National Socialism and of not really having internalized the realities since 1933. From time to time, he did make compromises with those in power in his roles as professor and dean. In his addresses and publications, however, there are relatively few declarations of loyalty to the 'new era'.

In a biography published in 2018, Hallstein was accused of having been a member of the Nazi party. As evidence, a purported NSDAP membership card of July 1934 was offered. It is now safe to say, however, that this assertion has been refuted. Not only was there a freeze on party admissions at that time, but the membership number is also too low. The document in question is also not a membership card for the NSDAP but instead the admittance note for the Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund (National Socialist Teachers League), which initially included teachers at institutes of higher learning. Joining the Nazi professional groups was the minimum that was required to continue exercising a profession without problems – especially in the civil service.

Moreover, his work as a professor and dean points to aloofness from the regime on a substantive level. Hallstein, for example, was a friend of Friedrich Brunstäd, who was a professor of Protestant theology in Rostock and likewise a dean. Among Brunstäd's students was the future CDU politician and president of the Bundestag, Eugen Gerstenmaier, who was associated with the Confessing Church, a movement that arose in opposition to increasing Nazi control of the Protestant churches. Gerstenmaier had signed a petition critical of National Socialism and had to answer for that transgression in a disciplinary procedure at the university. Hallstein had himself elected to the three-member committee hearing the case and ultimately obtained an acquittal, as Gerstenmaier later pointed out in his memoirs: ‘I owed the outcome to the young Rostock professor of commercial law, Walter Hallstein. … He was considered an exceptionally astute jurist, an outstanding negotiator and a man who wanted nothing at all to do with the regime’.

In 1941, Hallstein was appointed professor of law at the University of Frankfurt, but in the following year he was called up for military service and stationed in occupied France. After the Allies landed in Normandy, he was captured by the Americans in June 1944 and taken to Camp Como, a prisoner-of-war camp in Mississippi. While a prisoner, he helped set up a camp university and resumed his academic research studies. In the re-education process known as the Sunflower Project, he became one of a select group of people to receive special training from the American authorities as a potential future decision-maker.

Hallstein returned to Germany in November 1945. In Frankfurt am Main, which had experienced widespread destruction, he helped make it possible to reopen the university. In April 1946, he became the first post-war rector of the Goethe University of Frankfurt. During his two years as rector, his focus was to rebuild the university not just physically but intellectually. Not only were more than half of the university buildings destroyed, but academic freedom and democratic structures had been foreign concepts to the younger students up until that point.

In 1948, Hallstein realised a goal he had first entertained three years earlier: he spent a year as a visiting professor at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. During this time he established important contacts with American scholars and politicians, becoming part of the transatlantic networks that were forming among Americans and West Germans in the early days of the Cold War. He also campaigned for international academic cooperation and represented the young Federal Republic of Germany in negotiations with UNESCO, the cultural institution of the United Nations.

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State Secretary and Confidant of Konrad Adenauer

Before long, Hallstein had attracted notice in Bonn, the West German capital. In the summer of 1950, Konrad Adenauer made him a state secretary in the Chancellery. The next year, he moved into the same role in the re-created Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was also being led by Adenauer until Germany regained its sovereignty. Hallstein served ‘as a sort of foreign minister during this time, to all intents and purposes’ (Hans-Peter Schwarz). Just how close the cooperation was between Hallstein and Adenauer is illustrated by the fact that, even after Heinrich von Brentano was appointed foreign minister in 1955, Hallstein had the right to report directly to the chancellor and was still allowed to take part in cabinet meetings. After the Bundestag election of 1961, Adenauer even wanted to make Hallstein foreign minister, but the FDP resisted this move, because it felt he was too inflexible in the field of Ostpolitik.

The reason for the two men’s close cooperation lay in their shared convictions regarding foreign policy. In the 1950s, West German foreign policy was focussed on integration with the West: the clear positioning of the Federal Republic of Germany in the new structures of European and Atlantic cooperation, based on the common ideals of democracy and market economics. Hallstein served as a negotiator for West Germany in the preparations for the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951 as well as the European Defence Community (EDC). Although he regretted the failure of the EDC when it was rejected by the French National Assembly in 1954, Hallstein took a pragmatic approach and quickly helped to establish an ‘alternative solution’, whereby West Germany would join NATO.

In addition to the ECSC, he also played a leading role in the negotiations leading to the formation of the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) and the European Economic Community (EEC). On 25 March 1957, Hallstein and Adenauer signed the Treaty of Rome on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany. Besides European policy, the main concerns of the Adenauer government were the de facto division of Germany and the Cold War. In the view of Hallstein, it was essential to avoid doing anything that could raise the status of the former Soviet occupation zone and encourage diplomatic recognition of it as the German Democratic Republic (GDR). For this reason, the decision to recognise the Soviet Union was one of the few points on which he disagreed with Adenauer.

Since Adenauer’s visit in 1955, both the Federal Republic and the GDR had maintained embassies in Moscow. The Adenauer government was determined that this should not become the norm for other countries, however. Since the Federal Republic declared itself to be the sole legal successor of the German Reich, and now had a democratically legitimate government, it asserted the exclusive right to represent Germany. The so-called Hallstein Doctrine announced in 1955, which had actually been prepared by the diplomat and international law specialist Wilhelm Grewe, threatened penalties for countries that established diplomatic relations with the GDR, including the potential termination of diplomatic relations with West Germany. The Hallstein Doctrine was modified in 1967 and abandoned in 1969. The fact that a wave of countries recognised the GDR from 1970 onwards shows that the Hallstein Doctrine, which had sometimes been criticised while it was still in effect, was quite successful in keeping East Berlin relatively isolated.

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President of the Commission of the EEC

In the course of many years negotiating the Treaty of Rome, Hallstein developed an excellent reputation in Germany and abroad. In the discussions on how to fill the offices of the new institutions of the European Communities, Adenauer succeeded in having Hallstein appointed as president of the Commission of the EEC in January 1958. This was a development that no-one could have taken for granted. The appointment of a German to the top position only thirteen years after the war had ended showed, on one level, an appreciation of the personal integrity of Walter Hallstein. On another level, it was a sign of the stature that the Federal Republic had acquired and a demonstrable success of Adenauer's policy of integration with the West.

The early years of the European Communities were dominated by the question of the feasibility of European integration at a practical level. Then, as today, the policy of European integration was based on two pillars: at the supranational level, the Community institutions with the commissions and the European Parliament (although the latter was still filled with representatives of the national parliaments) and, at the intergovernmental level, the councils consisting of national heads of state and government or their special ministers.

Under Hallstein, the Commission was interested in deepening – or at least strengthening – the supranational elements agreed upon in Rome. However, President Charles de Gaulle, who had also entered office in 1958, proved to be a powerful opponent. The state played a central role in the thinking of de Gaulle, the general and hero of the French Resistance. President de Gaulle was certainly interested in restoring amicable relations in Europe and he strove for reconciliation with Germany, in particular. He felt, however, that closer European cooperation should take place primarily in the framework of a ‘Europe of peoples and nations’. In 1961–62, the French president unsuccessfully floated a proposal to create a closer European political union. That proposal, known as the Fouchet Plan, was viewed with disapproval by Hallstein, because it would have strengthened the member states relative to the Commission. As president of the EEC Commission, Hallstein had floated his own proposal (Hallstein Plan) to accelerate European integration in 1960. It called for a faster reduction in customs duties among the member states, but this project did not meet with acceptance either.

The second major controversy of this period was the question of whether the United Kingdom would join the EEC. Hallstein acted with restraint in this regard and took a sceptical view of accession by the United Kingdom; he was in no doubt that deepening European integration should take priority over expanding the community, which he believed ran the risk of weakening European institutions. As he cautioned in 1969 in his programmatic book Der unvollendete Bundesstaat (literally, 'the incomplete federal state'), it was important not to lose sight of the ultimate goal: ‘That ultimate goal remains the European federal state’.

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Differences with de Gaulle

In the mid-1960s, the conflict between the EEC Commission and President de Gaulle over the right approach to integration culminated in the 'empty chair crisis'. This was but one occasion when it became apparent that although Hallstein wore ‘the mask of the reserved law professor’, he was, with respect to his political objectives, an ‘exceptionally tough and determined man’ (Hans-Peter Schwarz). The immediate cause of the conflict was an argument about the organisation and financing of the European Common Agricultural Policy. Beginning on 1 July 1965, France refused to participate in the Council of Ministers of the EEC and thereby paralysed European politics. In the view of the French president, the actions being taken by the Commission with regard to European policy-making exceeded its authority. Despite this attempt at coercion, Hallstein was not willing to make concessions on this occasion either. The Luxembourg Compromise ultimately negotiated among the governments of the member states in January 1966 was seen by most observers as a victory for de Gaulle, however. It led to a weakening of the principle of majority rule (a de facto right of veto was established) and it required the EEC Commission to present its own initiatives to the Council before they were made known to the public.

When the time drew near to merge the European Communities, Hallstein would gladly have assumed the leadership of the joint Commission, but following the prior ‘fateful confrontation’ (Wilfried Loth), de Gaulle no longer regarded him as a tenable candidate. The West German government wanted to secure another term for Hallstein, but it ultimately backed down under French pressure, because this would have put the merger as a whole in jeopardy. Furthermore, the grand coalition of CDU and SPD that was now in power in Bonn had set itself the goal of improving relations with Paris, which had deteriorated during the chancellorship of Ludwig Erhard. In conversations with Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger and Foreign Minister Willy Brandt in January 1967, de Gaulle insisted that the Commission’s serving president should not be granted a new term of office. He wanted Hallstein ‘to be able to enjoy his Christmas goose at home in peace and quiet’. Hallstein rejected the compromise that was ultimately reached, whereby he would continue to carry out the duties of his office until the end of 1967. Instead, he stepped down when the merger officially took effect on 1 July 1967.

In his farewell speech to the European Parliament, Hallstein invoked the ideal of European unity and stressed the need for greater cooperation in foreign policy with words that still sound timely today:

‘Europe cannot accept the role of helpless spectator while powers of a continental scale are exposed to the temptation to divide up heaven and earth between themselves. In the long run, Europe cannot tolerate having her security on loan from others. ... Every European must feel that it is scandalous that on the confines of Europe dramatic events are taking place which she is powerless to influence while others intervene to arrange things in the area. ... No one on this continent is prepared to endorse the abdication of responsibility by Europe’.

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Bundestag Member and Activist for European Integration

From then on, Hallstein championed his visions for European policy both inside and outside parliament. It was the up-and-coming CDU state party chairman from Rhineland-Palatinate, Helmut Kohl, who persuaded the European heavyweight to run in the federal election of 1969. Hallstein won a direct mandate with 52 percent of the vote in the rural constituency of Altenkirchen-Neuwied. In the Bundestag, he joined the Foreign Affairs Committee and became the CDU spokesman for European affairs.

The fact that Hallstein found his term in parliament ‘disappointing on the whole’ (Hans-Peter Schwarz) was probably due to his biography and the circumstances at the time. Not only had he entered politics from a different career, but he was a man accustomed to exercising executive power. His rise in politics had owed nothing to any parliament. Besides that, the CDU and CSU were pushed into opposition in the fall of 1969, so there were only limited options for shaping policy. After the constructive vote of no confidence in Willy Brandt failed and early Bundestag elections were called in 1972, Hallstein decided not to run again. From 1968 to 1974, he served as chairman of the European Movement International. In 1979, a collection of addresses that he had given as EEC Commission president was published as a sort of legacy under the title ‘European Speeches’. Likewise in 1979, the members of the European Parliament were elected directly for the first time, fulfilling a demand that Hallstein, the convinced European, had been making for decades.

Walter Hallstein died in Stuttgart on 29 March 1982. His grave is located in the city's Waldfriedhof cemetery.

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The original german text was translated into English by Richard Toovey.