12 IUPAP, Cooperative Antagonism, and the GDR

The controversy surrounding the German Democratic Republic (GDR)’s accession to the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) is a typical example of cooperative antagonism. The countries of both blocs and their state representatives acknowledged that they had divergent political interests, but nonetheless tried to find a compromise to avoid a severe blockage of international cooperation or an escalation of political tensions. They did not have malevolent intentions, but neither were they altruistically inclined, serving competing national interests.¹ The negotiating process between East and West over the future of German representation in IUPAP was therefore driven by dynamic interactions between “cooperation” and “antagonism.”

The case of East Germany is highly instructive in comprehending the tactics employed by distinct blocs for multiple reasons. The Hallstein Doctrine adopted in 1955 and the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 had a notable impact on international science policy; yet the international scientific community’s inclination was mostly towards active collaboration rather than the isolation of the GDR.

The negotiations surrounding the GDR’s role in the international scientific community in general, and IUPAP more specifically, sparked the discussion of crucial issues like political and non-political discrimination, the free movement of scientists, and the official recognition of the scientific community of a state that had not yet received official international recognition. On the level of international organizations, the interconnectedness of national policies, foreign relations, and scientific internationalism² are apparent and demonstrate how challenging the GDR’s path to international recognition was. While international relations and the policy of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) members heavily influenced the formal processes leading to the GDR’s recognition in UNESCO, the acceptance of the GDR into IUPAP (and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), too) reveal the functioning of cooperative antagonism at a pragmatic level.

In the first section of this paper, we discuss the chronology and function of East and West German physical associations formed after World War II. The Hallstein Doctrine, the erection of the Berlin Wall, and the fragmented institutional background of German physicists—whose main organization, the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (German Physical Society) had been abolished by the Allies after World War II—all contributed to the escalation of tensions between the two communities, whose cooperation had been going reasonably well in the late 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s. The second section of the paper provides an overview of the GDR’s initial efforts to achieve international recognition in UNESCO and ICSU. The third section focuses on the strategy of East German science leadership in science diplomacy after their application to join UNESCO was rejected. The proactive agenda and growing self-confidence of the GDR in the international arena also influenced the policy of ICSU, which as a result adopted the Resolution of Political Non-Discrimination in 1958. The fourth section describes the process of the GDR’s admission to IUPAP and highlights the symmetry of cooperative antagonism in the strategy of promoting the admission of the GDR as a new member coming from the Eastern bloc and Taiwan as a new member coming from the Western bloc. The last section before the conclusion briefly summarizes the final phase of the GDR’s admission as a member of ICSU. The negotiations replicated previous IUPAP discussions: the procedure itself was relatively smooth, except for the protests of the West German representative of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. We conclude by tracing the previous steps towards the establishment of the ICSU Standing Committee on the Free Circulation of Scientists in 1963, where the Soviet bloc countries were able to exert considerable influence.

By the end of World War II, there was great uncertainty about how German physicists would reconvene after the war and be represented internationally.³ Nobody foresaw that the community would be institutionally divided (see Table 12.1). The international crisis culminating in the Berlin blockade and airlift led, on May 23, 1949, to the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), followed, five months later, by that of the GDR.⁴ Even that, however, did not cause significant tensions or divisions within the German physics community. For instance, when the Allies abolished the German Physical Society because of its Nazi connections, German physicists swiftly re-organized and first re-established the Physikalische Gesellschaft zu Berlin and then, on October13, 1950, the Union of German Physical Societies (in German Verband Deutscher Physikalischer Gesellschaften, e.V.).⁵ Karl Wolf, who served as the first President of the society, subsequently submitted a formal request to the IUPAP Secretary General, the French physicist Pierre Fleury, applying for membership in the Union. In April 1952, IUPAP welcomed the German physicists’ return to international science and no objections were raised.⁶ The issue of separate representations of East and West German physics was not a topic of discussion since at the beginning of the 1950s, the existence of two German states appeared to be a transitional solution on the way to the post-war establishment of a new German state. The society Verband Deutscher Physikalischer Gesellschaften was established in 1950 as a collaborative effort between communities and individual researchers, regardless of their geographical location, and collaboration between the Eastern and Western German physicists proceeded relatively seamlessly. For example, the Physikalische Gesellschaft zu Berlin had 430 members in 1955, eighty of them from East Berlin.⁷ Things started rapidly to change from 1952 when the official membership of the Union of German Physical Societies as a member of IUPAP was officially accepted on September 29, 1952, and the East Berlin group founded the Physikalische Gesellschaft in der DDR (Physical Society in the GDR) on September 26 of that year, officially registered with the Ministry of the Interior on October 31, 1952.⁸ It was evident that both communities were able to work together, but they were also beginning to rethink their activities in the new context of a divided state and to claim more space for their own agendas. As a result, it became apparent that both communities wanted to fortify their standing within the global scientific community.

In international relations, the FRG did not recognize the existence of an independent GDR after 1949.⁹ Following the signing of the Paris Agreement in May 1955, the FRG was granted full membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the occupation by Allied forces officially ended. During the attempt to establish official diplomatic relations with the USSR in the autumn of 1955, it became clear that this principle would have to be violated, since diplomatic relations between the USSR and the GDR were established shortly after the foundation of the independent GDR on October 19, 1949. State Secretary Walter Hallstein subsequently formulated the fundamental principle of West Germany’s new state doctrine, which stipulated that the state would refrain from establishing diplomatic relations with countries that recognized the GDR.¹⁰ The doctrine that was implemented from 1955 to 1969, and officially terminated in 1972, rendered East Germany’s representation on the global stage impossible due to West Germany’s practical application of the policy. For almost twenty years, such a West German foreign policy of “calculated ambiguity,” as the German historian Hermann Wentker aptly characterized it,¹¹ also shaped international scientific relations.

In accordance with the Hallstein Doctrine, in the second half of the 1950s NATO member states generally refused to recognize passports issued by state authorities in the GDR, thereby denying GDR citizens entry to their respective countries and refusing to issue visas. Although citizens of the GDR complied with this directive and submitted applications for travel documents to the Allied Travel Office, the documents were usually not issued and were refused. As a consequence, in the 1950s and 1960s, the East German scientific community was ostracized to a degree that was more than evident in international science.¹²

Already in 1960, the growing isolation of GDR scientists had caused a sensation. When the Royal Society invited Professor Werner Hartke, who served as the President of the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (DAW) from 1958 to 1968, and its Secretary, Günther Rienäcker, to attend the 300th anniversary of its foundation in London in 1960, the British envoys at the Allied Travel Office turned down their request for temporary travel documents.¹³ The decision to decline an official invitation by Britain’s foremost academy to the scientific representatives of East Germany was quite evidently politically motivated, as the invitation was made for the commemoration of a significant anniversary of one of Europe’s most important scientific institutions.

These circumstances remained unchanged for quite some time, as evidenced by Rienäcker’s 1964 correspondence claiming that “since the middle of 1961 a complete boycott has been imposed on travel by G.D.R. scientists to scientific meetings in N.A.T.O. countries.”¹⁴ The aforementioned circumstances resulted in East German scientific endeavors being mostly reliant on international collaboration with Soviet bloc countries for two decades.¹⁵

Furthermore, negotiations and collaboration between the East and West German physical communities, which had been hampered by conflicting foreign politics at the zenith of Stalinism in the Soviet Union, were made even worse by the implementation of the Hallstein Doctrine by the FRG and by the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961.¹⁶ Inevitably, they greatly affected the GDR’s participation in inter- and non-governmental scientific organizations.

The crisis in German affairs had ramifications for international science. Facing travel restrictions and lack of official state recognition, East Germans started applying for membership in various international scientific organizations, but, at least up until 1960, this produced a stalemate as no organization was prepared to offer membership in the ongoing political crisis marked by the implementation of the Hallstein doctrine.

This is particularly evident with the DAW’s request for the GDR to join UNESCO. The prospect of an application appeared as a sound prospect after 1953 since, with Stalin’s death, there was a more conducive atmosphere within the Soviet bloc towards international activities. The interest of the presidium of the DAW in reinstating participation in UNESCO was great, and in November 1954 the leadership of the academy made a request for the GDR to join UNESCO. In this request, the academy stated that, after the entry of the USSR and the re-entry of Hungary and Czechoslovakia into UNESCO in 1954, the presidium recommended that the East German government should review the possibility of the GDR’s entry into this institution in the name of the development of science and technology.¹⁷ Subsequently, a new commission was established to prepare the case. This commission included representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Employment and Workplace Education, the state secretariat for Higher Education, the Deutsche Akademie der Künste, the Staatsbibliothek, and the Amt für Literatur und Verlagswesen. On September 15, 1955, an official request was submitted.¹⁸

The initial formal nomination received official endorsement from the UNESCO National Committees of India, Egypt, and Yugoslavia, which suggests that the East Germans succeeded in mobilizing to their cause not only the Soviet bloc, but also countries that only six years later joined the non-aligned movement. This did not grant them success though. The Director General of UNESCO, Lother Evans, confirmed on December 29, 1955, that the request was declined.¹⁹ A novel strategy was thus formulated, while also seeking out additional, more influential sponsors. Consequently, the Hungarian and Polish national delegations were formally solicited for assistance. Subsequently, both National Committees pledged to endorse the DAW appeal at the UNESCO General Assembly of Delhi in November of 1956.²⁰ Partial concessions were now made, and GDR representatives were allowed to participate as observers or hosts in the negotiations of several UNESCO Committees. The Hallstein Doctrine only came to a definitive end with the resolution of the East Berlin issue, and thus the effective completion of the division of the two German states, which was achieved in 1972 on the basis of the Quadripartite Agreement of September 3, 1971 and the Basic Treaty signed between the FRG and the GDR on December 21, 1972. Nothing stood in the way of the GDR’s accession to international institutions; together with the FRG, it joined the United Nations (UN) on September 18, 1973, and the GDR then joined UNESCO on November 24, 1972, of which the FRG had been a member since 1951.²¹

Following this initial setback and the rejection of the GDR’s bid to join UNESCO, East Germany developed a new approach and opted to concentrate on engaging with other actors and organizations. Upon hearing the informal announcement that UNESCO was inclined to reject the GDR’s membership, Hans Wittbrodt, the DAW Scientific Secretary wrote, in November 1955, to the leadership of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, hereinafter SED) seeking approval to a new plan for admittance into ICSU. In the letter, Wittbrodt stated that it was only natural for the DAW to be selected, as a legally recognized, preeminent representative and leading institution of East German science, and therefore should be included among other members of ICSU of comparable caliber.²² Presumably in appealing to the SED Central Committee, Wittbrodt thought that he could succeed exactly because ICSU, in contrast with UNESCO, was an international scientific agency representing the academies rather than the governments.

During the September General Assembly of 1958, ICSU adopted a resolution on political non-discrimination which ultimately paved the way for the GDR’s acceptance in various spheres of international science. ICSU experienced enormous growth in its activities at the end of the 1950s, which ultimately resulted in a scenario in the 1960s where the organization was forced to choose between competing political and scientific goals. When comparing the General Assemblies of ICSU in 1955 (Oslo) and 1958 (Washington), Eastern European scientists were highly appreciative of the new trend towards the internationalization of science that followed the Geneva Summit in July 1955. While the states of the Soviet bloc and the so-called “Third World” welcomed this state of affairs, US oceanographer Roger Revelle observed in 1962 that there was a significant divide and wrote: “The council is now in a critical stage, largely because of the increasing recognition by governments of the importance of science. In the future, I.C.S.U. may be largely controlled by the national unions.”²³

The non-discrimination resolution effectively marked a political triumph by the Soviet Union and its allies in the Soviet bloc and the successful rethink of bloc strategies following the refusal to accept the GDR into UNESCO. The Aktionsplan submitted by the East German Committee for acceptance into UNESCO in 1958 already provided evidence of the significant shift in the Soviet bloc’s approach to international science, in that it posited that the socialist states, bolstered by the support of third world nations, ought to become increasingly assertive in shaping international meetings in response to evolving political circumstances.

The Aktionsplan examined the results of the Tenth General Conference of UNESCO, held in Paris at the end of December 1958, which followed the ICSU conference and the beginning of Khrushchev’s talks with Eisenhower. The diplomatic struggle over the recognition of the GDR involved a clash between the Soviet bloc’s insistence on recognizing the GDR and the Western bloc’s insistence on recognizing Taiwan. The GDR thus developed the perception that its position within UNESCO was discriminatory. Further, the GDR decided to toughen its demands, announced its refusal to participate as a guest in UNESCO assemblies and other events, and instead adopted a distinct approach centered on building strong bilateral relations with the UNESCO National Committees of individual countries within the Soviet bloc and associated third world countries. This shift was facilitated by the growing influence of the USSR and the Soviet bloc, which motivated the GDR to seek full membership in these international organizations and, in turn, promote general principles that would push ICSU to enforce non-discriminatory practices.²⁴ To overturn the ongoing discrimination at UNESCO and elsewhere, the Soviet bloc hence started campaigning at ICSU for introducing the need of free association for scientists regardless of their own beliefs (political or otherwise) as well as the need for international scientific organizations to give recognition to these associations regardless of whether they came from a group sited in an internationally recognized country or not.

The shift away from the initial rigid political stance of isolating the GDR was also impacted by a transition in the uppermost leadership positions of ICSU. The US scientist Lloyd V. Berkner, who served as the head of ICSU from 1955 to 1958, held a strong stance against the increasing influence of the Soviet Union. In contrast, his successor, the British biochemist Rudolph Peters, demonstrated a more favorable disposition towards collaboration, in comparison to the preceding leadership.²⁵ The objective of his mission was to address the escalating disputes between US and Soviet scientific institutions and organizations. Even more significantly between 1958 and 1964, Vladimir Alexandrovich Engelhardt, a prominent member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, served as the ICSU Vice Chairman, hence directly informing its discussions.²⁶

Correspondence from Soviet bloc officials confirms that the preparation of a general principle was seen as the best way to support the GDR application to ICSU. Engelhardt exchanged ideas with the DAW Secretary General regarding the acceptance process and transmitted to him duplicates of the official ICSU correspondence pertaining to this issue.²⁷ In the first half of 1958, a comprehensive re-assessment of the situation took place under Engelhardt’s leadership. A letter from Wittbrod to Engelhardt on November 25, 1959 confirms that an ICSU Antidiscrimination Declaration served as the starting point for further negotiating a GDR admission. Wittbrod also noted that South Korea, which, was not affiliated with any scientific union, would also seek admission to ICSU in April 1959 based on this declaration, as highlighted by Engelhardt.²⁸

The statement eventually approved at the 1958 ICSU General Assembly recognized that: “to ensure the uniform observance of its basic policy of political non-discrimination, ICSU affirms the right of the scientists of any country or territory to adhere to or to associate with international scientific activity without regard to race, religion or political philosophy,” and that “such adherence or association has no implications with respect to recognition of the government of the country or territory concerned.”²⁹ Its impact was plain to see almost immediately, but not within ICSU; rather within IUPAP.

The implementation of the Hallstein doctrine by the FRG in 1955 and the subsequent physical division of East and West Berlin in 1961 exerted increasing pressure on the physics communities of both states. IUPAP played a positive role and sought a way out of the impasse notwithstanding the refusal of UNESCO to accept an East German representation. Already in 1955, hence before the GDR application to UNESCO, Alfred Büchner, the Secretary of the Physikalische Gesellschaft in der DDR, proposed a meeting in Paris with Fleury to discuss the terms and conditions for establishing an East German Committee in IUPAP.³⁰ As for other scientific organizations, East German officials believed that the proposal had momentum, also due to the recent acceptance of Soviet scientific societies and scientists within scientific unions affiliated with ICSU.³¹

Several strategies were considered, including the establishment of a joint committee. Between 1955 and 1956, two GDR representatives, Gustav Hertz and Friedrich Möglich, engaged in discussions regarding the possibility of a joint representation of the two German communities, and, on September 7, 1956, they sent a telegram to Fleury requesting that the acceptance process of the GDR be interrupted due to ongoing discussions surrounding the possibility of a joint German committee.³² But since their stance was in opposition to the GDR government bodies advocating a formal recognition of East Germany, the proposal was mothballed, and nothing changed.³³

The real breakthrough occurred following the approval of the ICSU political non-discrimination principle, which set a clear precedent in that it compelled to accept applications coming from committees of countries that had not been internationally recognized. A further push towards the approval came from the IUPAP deliberations on the related issue of the “two Chinas”; i.e., when the scientific academies of both the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China had both requested acceptance to IUPAP notwithstanding their ongoing struggle for international recognition. And if the Soviet bloc was insistent in acknowledging the GDR, the Western bloc was equally forceful that Taiwan should be acknowledged wherever possible in the international political and scientific domains. In July 1959, the IUPAP Executive Committee therefore agreed to accept Taiwan as a member, albeit with the abstention of two committee members.³⁴

Since the Taiwanese and East German cases were comparable but symmetrical from the perspective of bloc geopolitics (both unrecognized, one in the Eastern bloc and the other in the West), this gave Büchner an opportunity to push for further abandoning plans for a joint application with the West Germans and press ahead for adhesion of an independent GDR Committee. Indeed, since the Soviet physicist Abraham Joffe was one of the two IUPAP Executive Committee members who abstained in the decision about the Taiwanese admission, he seemingly passed on the relevant information to the East German physical society that persuaded its officers about the merit of moving ahead for full membership.

In September 1959, Büchner sent to Fleury the formal petition of the Physikalische Gesellschaft in der DDR.³⁵ At this point, the IUPAP Secretary expeditiously reached out to Ferdinand Trendelenburg, the President of the West German Physical Society 1957–59 and IUPAP Vice-President in that period, who replied immediately objecting again to admitting an East German Committee.³⁶ In particular, Trendelenburg emphasized the existence of a singular joint committee, the Deutsches Nationales Committee, which had been in operation since 1952 and was open to nominations for members from East Germany. Hence, he argued, the German physics community should be represented by one committee only.³⁷

At this point Fleury experienced significant pressure, especially since Joffe reiterated in a letter in February 1960 that the acceptance of Taiwan set a precedent and there was no justification for delaying the GDR request for admission.³⁸ Fleury himself was puzzled by the situation³⁹ and conveyed in discussion with the IUPAP President, the Italian physicist Edoardo Amaldi, that if East and West German physicists failed to devise a satisfactory resolution, there would be no opposition to the admission of the GDR.⁴⁰ Trendelenburg’s letter of March 1960 urged instead Fleury to halt the proceedings for a separate East Germany Committee and put the matter as an item for discussion at the forthcoming IUPAP’s General Assembly of Ottawa.⁴¹ Trendelenburg was surprised that by then the IUPAP Executive Committee had already agreed to accept the GDR without waiting for his approval, as Fleury confirmed to Büchner on February 23, 1960.⁴² Trendelenburg immediately complained and urged Amaldi to stop the procedure, but Amaldi explained to him that:

the situation, as you know, is rather difficult also because our decision, taken in Moscow, about the two Chinas, constitutes a precedent for the case of East and West Germany. It would be extremely difficult to postpone the admission of East Germany, while we have decided of accepting immediately the membership of Formosa. I hope that in the case of East and West Germany, it will be possible to reach an agreement so that the two groups will collaborate together and maybe at some time later fuse in a single representation.⁴³

In comparison with the other scientific unions, IUPAP was one of the very few where the question of a joint settlement of the representation of both German states had not been resolved in the late 1950s (see Table 12.2). This made the position of IUPAP within ICSU particularly peculiar.

Eventually, Fleury explained to Trendelenburg and Wilhelm Walcher that the acceptance of Taiwan had established a novel framework for the decision-making process within IUPAP. Hence, it had been imperative for the Executive Committee to examine the GDR case in light of the Taiwanese Committee’s comparable circumstances, wherein analogous issues arise with regard to accepting it regardless of its state’s international recognition. In his communication with Amaldi, who was regularly kept informed about the situation, Fleury ironically remarked that the current state of affairs challenged IUPAP no less than the so-called “United” Nations in terms of diplomatic complexities.⁴⁵

The IUPAP General Assembly held in Ottawa ratified both the deliberations on the representation of Chinese and Taiwanese physicists, as well as those regarding the GDR. The ICSU political non-discrimination principle, therefore, kickstarted the process leading to the IUPAP assembly’s consensus that claims on China, Taiwan, and the GDR’s political orientation or the orientation of their citizens would not matter when considering their admission. One argument in favor of the immediate acceptance of China over Taiwan was its size and numerical superiority. However, maintaining a non-political approach when dealing with disputes involving national and political entities became the key. All that mattered was that all those entities’ academic or physics societies had asked to be recognized as IUPAP members and had presented a commendable case for their own acceptance.

The voting procedures went fairly smoothly at Ottawa: the acceptance of committees from Pakistan and Romania was unanimously approved; the East German proposal obtained forty-seven votes (the West Germans and Spaniards abstained); the PRC request received fifty-three votes (three abstained). Interestingly, the Taiwanese application received only thirty-eight votes, ten votes against, (mostly from Eastern bloc delegations like the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Poland), and eight abstentions (including West Germany, Spain, and Japan). The five state delegations now accepted were Pakistan, Romania, East Germany, the Republic of China, and the People’s Republic of China; but the latter eventually withdrew its application upon learning that Taiwan had submitted one too.⁴⁶

The decision taken at the IUPAP General Assembly subsequent to the 1958 political non-discrimination principle lent further support to the GDR Academy of Sciences’ request to join ICSU, which was approved at the 9th ICSU General Assembly in London in 1961.

Prior to the conference, the President of the West German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Gerhard Hess, vigorosly complained about the GDR application, which posed a challenge to DFG’s standing as the sole representative of the German scientific community within ICSU. In his letter addressed to the ICSU President, Rudolf Peters, Hess posited that the inclusion of the GDR academy marked a politicization of scientific representation within ICSU. Less convincingly, Hess also contended that such inclusion was incongruous with ICSU’s policy of political non-discrimination, from which, in fact, the deliberation originated.⁴⁷ Hess’s letter to Peters summarized the advancements made in previous years, indicating that scientific collaboration between East and West Germany was most effective when political considerations were minimized and open discourse was permitted without interference from party directives_.⁴⁸ Consequently, he made a request to the Executive Committee to decline the East Berlin Academy’s application for membership as a “national member.”⁴⁹ He urged the academy and the DFG to collaborate and devise a proposal for the joint representation of both entities. Therefore, he asked that the German ‘national member’ not be represented at ICSU by separate East and West German institutions but rather collectively, under the all-encompassing name of Germany. Gerhard Hess held a similar stance during the Executive Committee meeting of ICSU in Lisbon in November.⁵⁰

To counter this opposition, a secret gathering was held among delegates from various institutions and delegations representing the Soviet bloc. During the meeting, they deliberated on their voting strategy and agenda for ICSU, which entailed Poland putting forward the official proposal in support of the GDR application.⁵¹

The proceedings reiterated the contentious nature of the deliberations pertaining to the formal inclusion of the GDR within ICSU.⁵² While the assembly accepted Hungary, Sri Lanka, and Ghana without the need for further discussion, the motion to accept the GDR was typified by a spirited debate, with the West German representative vibrantly opposing the proposal and advocating for ICSU to reject the motion.

The acceptance of Taiwan into ICSU produced similar tensions, too. The ICSU discussions on Taiwan and the GDR are a vivid example of the organizational structure and the respective roles of different actors in science diplomacy. The Soviet bloc demonstrated a strong commitment to opposing the inclusion of Taiwan in international associations under the auspices of ICSU. Similarly, the Western bloc actively opposed the recognition and admission of the GDR as a member.⁵³

The biggest surprise of the 9th General Assembly was when Great Britain, specifically the Royal Society, announced that it was willing to sponsor the GDR’s candidacy alongside the Polish Academy of Sciences, a representative of Poland. The proposal was opposed by West Germany and the USA, as well as by IUPAC’s representatives. Poland’s application was formally reviewed by a Special Commission consisting of India, Sweden, and the United Arab Republic. The Commission raised no formal objections. In the confidential vote that followed, fifty ICSU members voted in favor of accepting the GDR, fifteen members voted against, and three members abstained.⁵⁴

The 1961 ICSU meeting in London was significant not only for the recognition of the GDR but also for the negotiation of the future structure and form of the organization. It was at this meeting that the ICSU Special Commission was elected to plan the transformation of ICSU. In addition to the direction and planning of major scientific projects, the agenda also included the establishment of contacts between Western academies and the new socialist academies, in which ICSU wanted to play a much greater role.⁵⁵

Unquestionably, the Soviet bloc may be viewed as winning this item on the agenda of the ICSU meeting. The level of interest and response in Central and Eastern Europe was significant. Poland in particular demonstrated significant interest in joining the newly established Coordinating Committee. Its composition reflected existing power balances in that three additional members would be included in addition to the delegates from the four superpowers (Georges Laclavère of France, Harold W. Thomson of Great Britain, Evgeny Konstantinovich Fedorov of the USSR, and Brank of the USA).⁵⁶ The outcome of the commission’s negotiations could have an impact on how major international scientific initiatives are structured in the future, and thus on how criteria for future scientific cooperation are set.

As a consequence of the establishment of this new committee, it was also agreed in London that the venue of the next ICSU board meeting (September 19–21, 1962), and Executive Committee (September 24–28, 1962) would take place in a country located behind the Iron Curtain. Prague was selected as the venue since the members of IUPAP anticipated that the choice of Prague would enhance the impact of academies within ICSU.

The resolution adopted by ICSU was a milestone in addressing the political ramifications of the Cold War that hindered the movement of East German scientists, although the London meeting had taken place right in the middle of the boycott and hence with East Germans virtually absent. According to the text, it can be inferred that during the initial discussions held in Moscow in May 1960, the DAW was accepted by six members of the ICSU Bureau, with no opposing votes and only one abstention. The abstention was made by Lloyd V. Berkner, the US scientist who was also a former ICSU President.

International science and its institutions served as a vehicle for the Soviet leadership’s growing political confidence in the late 1950s and 1960s. Due to the Cuban missile crisis and Czechoslovakia’s occupation by five armies of the Warsaw Pact in August 1968, this growth in political confidence brought the world to the brink of a third world war in the realm of international relations. In the realm of international science, however, the scientists of the Soviet bloc owed this growing Soviet self-confidence to the fact that representatives of socialist states made their way into the international scientific community.

The inclusion of the GDR into global scientific frameworks represented a significant triumph for the Soviet sphere. The GDR’s standing within the global scientific community was tenuous, and its scientific community underwent a challenging phase of complete international seclusion. This period persisted until 1959–1960 when the USSR initiated international collaboration and advanced its objectives on the international stage. The cessation of isolation was formalized in 1972, coinciding with the GDR induction as a recognized member of UNESCO.

International scientific institutions were not successfully instrumentalized to the same extent as global international organizations like the UN and UNESCO, which served as a battlefield for certain national and political goals. In contrast, national scientific associations frequently advocated for scientific internationalism, even when it conflicted with the political or international objectives of their respective nations. The scientific community’s persistent search for and discovery of novel alternative approaches served as the foundation for the grassroots implementation of science diplomacy during the Cold War. Simultaneously, the case of the GDR highlights an effective approach to science diplomacy from within the Soviet bloc in that there was a successful search for the “stumbling block” that prevented the GDR admission to international science and an understanding of how once that was down, metaphorically speaking, all the others (i.e., exclusion from other societies) would crumble.

Acceptance of the GDR as a member of IUPAP was a dynamic process that was prompted by the 1958 ratification of the ICSU Resolution of Political Non-Discrimination and led to the 1963 establishment of the ICSU Standing Committee on the Free Circulation of Scientists (SCFCS). The ICSU Executive Committee Meeting in Prague on September 19–21, 1961 recalled the prioritization of visa policies in socialist nations and third world countries, especially in response to the travel boycott of GDR scientists.⁵⁷ After that, the SED tasked its officials and scientists with producing a thorough report on the mobility patterns of the East European community. As a result, the first contribution officially presented by the GDR after the entry of the GDR to ICSU was this report. This paved the way, in 1963, to the formation of the SCFCS. The committee’s membership in 1963 consisted of the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, the United States of America, and Norway.⁵⁸ The underlying rationale was straightforward and drew on the discriminatory experience of East German scientists with the Allied Travel Office located in Berlin. Even after the establishment of this committee, however, East Germans continued to travel as private citizens rather than as representatives of recognized GDR institutions.

The executive organs of ICSU experienced a boost in the Soviet bloc’s prestige during its session in Prague. This was evidenced by the subsequent election of the Czech microbiologist Dionýz Blaškovič to the position of Secretary General in the following year. Blaškovič served as the first representative of the Soviet bloc in this capacity from 1963 to 1966.⁵⁹ Attributable to his efforts, Czechoslovakia became a member of the SCFCS. There is no doubt that Engelhardt, as the Soviet Vice-Chair of ICSU, helped to elect him. Blaškovič’s election to the ICSU leadership, on the other hand, was further evidence of the changing nature of international cooperation in science. The event marked the initiation of the ascendance of Soviet sway in ICSU, which persisted until 1972. This culminated during the period from 1968 to 1972 when the presidency of ICSU was occupied by Viktor A. Ambartsumian (1908–96), a Soviet professor of astrophysics of Armenian origin.⁶⁰

The scenario involving IUPAP, in conjunction with the IUBS, the IUHPS, URSI, and the IUPS, was unique. The biological sciences in the Soviet Union were significantly influenced by Stalinism and the indoctrination of science, particularly in the fields of biological and physiological sciences, which were impacted by Lysenkoism and radical Pavlovism. In contrast, physics and radio sciences were considered strategic by both sides of the Iron Curtain. The aforementioned hindrances resulted in a setback in their smooth integration into international societies. The political tensions arising from the implementation of the Hallstein doctrine and the subsequent erection of the Berlin Wall were compounded by ideological differences and a deferred discussion on the role of dual representation of the GDR and the FRG in these scientific unions and ICSU.

At the beginning of the 1950s, however, the German scientific community assumed that the re-establishment of a unified German state was only a matter of a few years. Until 1955, there were no signs that the international situation was moving towards a definitive division of the two German states. Their policy of calculated ambiguity fundamentally influenced the practical implementation of foreign policy of both states, and cooperative antagonism thus became one of the successful strategies for negotiating the gradual steps leading to the final settlement of the position of the two German republics on the international scene.

After the de-Stalinization of the Soviet sphere, global cooperation had begun to flourish, but political divergences were becoming an obstacle. The conflicting international objectives and aspirations of the opposing blocs heightened the pace of cooperation and antagonisms, which alternated rapidly and stimulated discourse within the global scholarly community. The divergent interests of the two blocs were offset by their respective requirements for global acknowledgment of the GDR and Taiwan. Both states were admitted not due to altruistic motives or collaborative efforts, but rather as a result of a mutually beneficial approach of win-win strategy if not necessity.

What remained was the dispute over official state names. The inclusion of the names of both communities, along with their respective states, emerged as a prominent topic on the political agenda of the official minutes of IUPAP. The nomenclature employed by the FRG and the GDR officially reflected the political division, which ran counter to the scientific community’s desire to remain impartial. The Executive Committee of IUPAP has implemented a policy that aims to steer clear of any political connotations related to terminological matters. In their written works, they have consistently referred to West Germany as “Allemagne de l’Ouest” and East Germany as ‘Allemagne orientale.’

The text for this chapter was completed during a fellowship at the Berlin Center for Cold War Studies at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin and the author would especially like to thank Prof. Hermann Werntke for revising parts of the text on GDR foreign policy.