Walter Hallstein

Nationality

Germany

Date of Birth

1901

Date of Death

1982

Political
Preference

Walter Hallstein was born in Mainz and studied law in Bonn and obtained his doctorate at the Friedrich Wilhem University in Berlin in 1925. Hallstein was a German academic, diplomat, and statesman. He was the first president of the Commission of the European Economic Community.

In 1930, at the age of 29, Hallstein was appointed professor of private law and company law at the University of Rostock, making him Germany’s youngest professor of law. In April 1946 he was elected rector of Frankfurt University, a position he retained until 1948.
In 1948, Walter Hallstein was invited to participate in the Congress of the European Movement in the Hague. Other German participants were Konrad Adenauer, Karl Arnold, Max Bauer, Wilhelm Kaisen and Martin Niemöller.

Hallstein was beloved by the Allies on the other side of the ocean, and received an invitation to become a visiting professor at Georgetown University in Washington. As first president of the German UNESCO Commission, he facilitated German’s integration into the international community.

In June 1950, Konrad Adenauer called Hallstein to Bonn, and appointed him head of the German delegation at the Schuman Plan negotiations in Paris, which was the basis for the European Coal and Steel Community, established by the Treaty of Paris in 1951. In August 1950, Hallstein was made head of the Office of Foreign Affairs (Dienststelle für auswärtige Angelegenheiten) at the Federal Chancellery.

Hallstein and his staff at the Foreign Office favoured a federal Europe – in contrast to Ludwig Erhard at the Ministry of Economics, who advocated intergovernmental economic cooperation, based on free trade.