Backlash Against Bonn: The Building Freeze in the Bonn Federal District and the "Berlin Initiatives" of 1956

abstract:Examining initiatives in the Bundestag and the media to move the FRG's capital from Bonn to West Berlin in regard to their implications on the West German nation-building process, this article conceives of the year 1956 as a singular counterexample to Bonn's gradual consolidation as federal capital. A unique convergence of an atmosphere of impending change in the Eastern Bloc and a manifest domestic crisis of Bonn as capital created a momentum that threatened to bring down Bonn as capital and central symbol of the Bonn Republic. The resulting "Berlin initiatives" evidence a diverse West German imaginary about the potential of reunification.