On 8 February 2003, at the Munich Security Conference, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer turned directly to the US defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. He said in English: Excuse me, I’m not convinced. The Defense Ministry’s history of the conference notes that the audience fell silent. Eight years later, Fischer used the line as the title of his memoir, „I am not convinced”. Der Irak-Krieg und die rot-grünen Jahre.
diplomacy
The Final Settlement
The treaty that settled the international side of German unification has finality in its name. It is the Vertrag über die abschließende Regelung in bezug auf Deutschland, the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. The two German states and France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States signed it in Moscow on 12 September 1990. It is regarded as taking the place of a peace treaty. Article 1 says that the external borders of united Germany werden am Tage des Inkrafttretens dieses Vertrags endgültig sein, will be final on the day the treaty enters into force. It also says that united Germany has no territorial claims against other states und wird solche auch nicht in Zukunft erheben, and will not raise any in the future either. On 14 November 1990, Germany and Poland signed a border treaty in Warsaw that confirmed the Oder-Neisse line as inviolable.
Holy and Inviolable
The Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War in the Empire in 1648. The Osnabrück treaty opens with the wish for a christlicher allgemeiner und immerwährender Friede, a Christian, universal and perpetual peace. Its Article V takes up the religious peace of 1555. That peace shall be als gültig anerkannt und als heilig und unverletzlich eingehalten, recognized as valid and kept as holy and inviolable. The same paragraph declares void any objection or protest, from clergy or laity, inside or outside the Empire, at any time. The Peace of Westphalia became a fundamental law of the Empire. The Pope protested against it anyway and did not recognize it.
The Dictated Peace
The German delegation was not allowed to take part in the negotiations on the Treaty of Versailles. It could only submit written objections after the terms were presented. On 12 May 1919, the head of the government, Philipp Scheidemann, asked the National Assembly: Welche Hand müsste nicht verdorren, die sich und uns in solche Fesseln legte? What hand would not wither that put itself and us in such chains? On 28 June 1919, two German ministers signed under protest, after an ultimatum. Most Germans saw the treaty as an illegitimate and humiliating Diktat. Das Versailler Diktat became a political slogan. Revising the treaty was a declared goal of German foreign policy throughout the Weimar Republic. In 1932, Theodor Heuss wrote that the starting point of the National Socialist movement was not Munich, but Versailles.
Five Years in Münster and Osnabrück
The Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War. In December 1641 the warring parties agreed in Hamburg to hold peace talks in Münster and Osnabrück. The envoys met there from 1643. Disputes over rank and titles delayed the opening of the congress for a long time. Then the sides took more than a year to exchange their demands. The real peace negotiations began in June 1645. Both treaties were signed in Münster on 24 October 1648. The ratifications were exchanged on 18 February 1649. A separate congress in Nuremberg then worked out how to carry out the peace, until July 1650. The treaty became a fundamental law of the Holy Roman Empire. Sources differ on how many delegations took part. German Wikipedia gives about 110 delegations from 16 European states. The Münster city museum speaks of envoys from more than 150 states and territories.
Declared Done Too Early
The European Union and the South American Mercosur states negotiated a free trade agreement from 1999. After an EU summit in October 2025, Chancellor Friedrich Merz told journalists: Es gibt aus den Mitgliedstaaten jetzt keine Vorbehalte mehr. Es ist erledigt. Es ist durch. There are no more reservations from the member states. It is done. It is through. The President of the European Council, António Costa, contradicted him: Wir haben darüber nicht diskutiert. Wir haben keine Entscheidungen getroffen. We did not discuss it. We made no decisions. A German news report ran the headline Vorschneller Merz, hasty Merz. A majority of EU member states approved the agreement on 9 January 2026.
The Honest Broker
On 19 February 1878, Otto von Bismarck spoke in the Reichstag about the crisis in the Balkans. He described the part he wanted Germany to play in settling it. He did not want Germany to den Schiedsrichter spielen, to play the arbiter, and say So soll es sein, this is how it shall be, with the power of the German Reich behind it. He saw the role as more modest, and he took an example from ordinary life. It would be mehr die eines ehrlichen Maklers, der das Geschäft wirklich zu Stande bringen will, more that of an honest broker who really wants to bring the business about. Four months later, the great powers met in Berlin under his chairmanship.
The phrase is often quoted in a smoother form: Ich will nichts mehr als der ehrliche Makler zwischen uneinigen Klienten sein, der das Geschäft zustande bringt. I want nothing more than to be the honest broker between clients who disagree, who brings the business about. This form is usually placed at the Congress of Berlin, and it has no clear source. The speech as printed in 1878 uses the wording above.
A Peace With a Secret Reservation
In 1795 Immanuel Kant published Zum ewigen Frieden, Toward Perpetual Peace, in Königsberg. The first article reads: Es soll kein Friedensschluß für einen solchen gelten, der mit dem geheimen Vorbehalt des Stoffs zu einem künftigen Kriege gemacht worden. No treaty of peace shall count as one if it was made with the secret reservation of material for a future war. Kant explained that such a treaty would be ein bloßer Waffenstillstand, Aufschub der Feindseligkeiten, nicht Friede. It would be a mere ceasefire, a postponement of hostilities, not peace. Peace means the end of all hostilities. For that reason, Kant wrote, adding the word perpetual to it is already a suspicious repetition.
The Dog in Sochi
In January 2007, Chancellor Angela Merkel met President Vladimir Putin in Sochi. Putin’s black Labrador, Koni, came into the room and moved around close to her. In her memoir Freiheit, published in 2024, Merkel wrote that Putin had known since 2006 that she was afraid of dogs. In Sochi she tried to ignore the dog while they posed for the photographers. She told herself: Bleib ruhig, konzentrier dich auf die Fotografen, es wird vorübergehen. Stay calm, concentrate on the photographers, it will pass. She wrote that Putin’s face seemed to show that he enjoyed the situation. She did not raise the matter with him. In November 2024, at a press conference in Astana, Putin said that he had not known she was afraid of dogs. He apologized to her in public.
Talks in a Factual Atmosphere
A common word in German official statements on the mood of talks is sachlich, factual. On 7 April 1989, Chancellor Helmut Kohl received Günter Mittag, a secretary of the East German party’s Central Committee. The government bulletin reported: Das Gespräch fand in einer sachlichen Atmosphäre statt. The talk took place in a factual atmosphere. It added that problems were raised openly. On 8 January 2026, Deutsche Bahn and the train drivers’ union GDL opened a new round of wage negotiations. The company’s headline read: Erster Termin konstruktiv und sachlich. First meeting constructive and factual.