Rightists Assail Bonn President on Poland Lands

West Germany’s far-right Republicans party strongly criticized President Richard von Weizsaecker on Tuesday for telling the Polish government that Bonn has no outstanding territorial claims on Poland.

The Republicans protest seemed certain to stir up fresh animosity between West Germany and Poland in advance of Friday’s 50th anniversary of the German invasion of its eastern neighbor.

The Republicans said Von Weizsaecker did not speak for “the whole German people” when he told Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski that Bonn had no wish to change Poland’s western border.

“We protest in the name of more than 2 million Republican voters against this falsification of history and breach of law,” the statement said.

The Republicans and some right-wing Christian Democrats, among them Finance Minister Theodore Waigel, leader of the Bavarian branch of the Christian Democrats, maintain that in the absence of a peace treaty, German borders are still those of 1937.

After World War II, Poland was given substantial portions of Germany, including parts of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia, and the German-Polish frontier was drawn along the Oder and Neisse rivers.

Under the Warsaw Treaty signed in 1970, the Bonn government agreed to respect the Oder-Neisse line. Yet, because of the division of Germany and the Cold War, a peace treaty with the Allies has never been signed.

Von Weizsaecker had intended to visit Warsaw on Friday to pay homage to the Polish people and make a national apology for the war. But according to diplomatic protocol, Chancellor Helmut Kohl had to visit the country first. A Kohl trip had been planned tentatively for this summer, but officials could not agree on financial aid for Poland, and it was postponed.

Von Weizsaecker said in his message that Poland had suffered from “unparalleled German war crimes.” In addition, he said the war “shook Europe to its roots and led to immeasurable human misfortune.”

The Republicans leader, Franz Schoenhuber, who was a sergeant in the wartime Waffen SS, called Von Weizsaecker’s remarks “petty humbug” and insisted on the right of Germans to reunification within the 1937 borders.

Schoenhuber was sharply attacked by Education Minister Juergen Moellemann, who declared, “The rightist-radical attack in immature Hitler Youth style on the state’s honored representative should convince those still in doubt that the leadership of the Republicans is infiltrated by neo-Nazis.”