Foreign Office (Germany)

Federal Foreign Office
	Federal Foreign Office; Auswärtiges Amt
Agency overview
Formed	1870
Jurisdiction	Government of Germany
Headquarters	Werderscher Markt 1; 10117 Berlin
Annual budget	€1.313 billion (2005)
Minister responsible	Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs
Agency executives	Gernot Erler, Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office; ; Günter Gloser, Minister of State for Europe
	Website
	http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/diplo/en/Startseite.html

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Foreign Office on the Spree river

The Federal Foreign Office (German: Auswärtiges Amt, AA) is the foreign ministry of Germany, and is responsible for both its foreign politics and its relationship with the European Union. Since 2005, the ministry has been led by Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Foreign Office buildings in Berlin (center and left)

The seat of the ministry is at the Werderscher Markt square in the historic centre of Berlin-Mitte.

[edit] History

The Auswärtiges Amt was established in 1870 to form the foreign policy of the North German Confederation, and from 1871 of the German Empire. The Foreign Office was originally led by a secretary of state (therefore not called a ministry), while the Reich Chancellor remained in charge of foreign affairs. In the first years of the German nation-state under Otto von Bismarck, the Foreign Office on Wilhelmstrasse No. 76 had two departments, a political and an economic, legal and consular. After Bismarck's dismissal in 1890 another department for colonial policy was established, spun off as the separate Reichskolonialamt in 1907. In the forefront of World War I the Auswärtiges Amt had to deal with the own foreign policy of Emperor Wilhelm II.

In 1919, the Foreign Office was reorganized and a modern structure was established. It was now under the authority of a foreign minister, though still called Amt for traditional reasons. The most notable head of the Foreign Office during the Weimar Republic was Gustav Stresemann, foreign minister from 1923 to 1929, who strived for a reconciliation with the French Third Republic, which earned him - together with Aristide Briand - the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize. In 1932 Konstantin von Neurath was appointed foreign minister, he also held the office after Hitler became chancellor, finding himself exposed to increasing competition from Nazi politicians like Alfred Rosenberg and Joachim von Ribbentrop, who followed him in 1938. After World War II the policies of the Auswärtiges Amt were a subject of the Nuremberg Ministries Trial.

While Georg Dertinger had been appointed the first minister of foreign affairs of East Germany already in 1949, the Auswärtiges Amt of West Germany, due to the Allied occupation statute was not reestablished until March 15, 1951. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer took the office of the first Federal Foreign Minister in Bonn. In 2000 the Foreign Office was relocated back to Berlin, where it moved into the former Reichsbank building. The former ministry in Bonn remained a second seat.