Walter Hallstein (c. 1955)

As state secretary in the Federal Chancellery (1950/51) and state secretary in the Foreign Office (beginning in 1951), law professor Walter Hallstein played a considerable role in the success of negotiations on the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community. On January 1, 1958, the Treaty of Rome took effect, and Hallstein was chosen as the first president of the Commission of the European Economic Community (EEC) shortly thereafter. Hallstein regarded economic integration as a step along the way to the political union that he envisioned as the goal of German policies on Europe. This way of thinking conflicted with Charles de Gaulle's conception of a "Europe of Fatherlands." After conflicts emerged about agricultural financing, and after the French resisted certain EEC policies – including the community's request for certain payments and the introduction of majority decisions in the Council of Ministers – the French government demanded that Hallstein be removed from his post. This followed in mid-1967. Photo by Fritz Eschen.

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© Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz / Fritz Eschen