Germany–Hungary relations

Hungary set down an important marker for future bilateral relations in September 1989 when it opened up its border with Austria to refugees from East Germany, thus making a special contribution towards German reunification (1990) and the political transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. On the evening of 10 September 1989, Magyar Televízió broadcast that the Government of Hungary had decided to open that border at midnight. Three weeks prior, the Pan-European Picnic on the Austrian-Hungarian border near Sopron had taken place; about 660 citizens of East Germany had taken the opportunity to cross the Iron Curtain. On 25 August 1989, Hungary's prime minister Miklós Németh and his foreign minister Gyula Horn had secretly visited the German chancellor Helmut Kohl and foreign minister Genscher.

History

Medieval period

Arnulf I of Bavaria maintained an alliance with the Hungarians until his death in 899. During their campaigns following their conquest of the Carpathian Basin the Hungarians stopped neither at the river Morava nor at the western border of Pannonia, but penetrated deeply into the territory of Bavaria as far as the river Enns. During the battle of Pressburg on 4 July 907, a Bavarian army was defeated by the Hungarians. The Battle of Lechfeld (10 August 955) was a decisive victory by Otto I the Great, King of the Germans, over the Hungarian leaders. The defeat effectively ended Magyar raids on the West.

Fearing a war of extermination, Géza of Hungary (972-997) assured Otto II that the Hungarians had ceased their raids and asked him to send missionaries. Otto complied, and in 975 Géza and a few of his kinsmen were baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. Géza used German knights and his position as chief of the Hungarians' largest clan to restore strong central authority over the other clans. Hungary's ties with the West were strengthened in 996 when Géza's son, Stephen I of Hungary married Princess Giselle of Bavaria, sister of Emperor Henry II. On the eve of World War I a Munich archaeologist discovered her grave in the church of the Niedernburg convent — which has since become a place of pilgrimage for the Hungarian faithful.

Transylvania was conquered and colonized with — besides Székely people — German Saxons in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In 1241-42 the Mongols reduced Hungary's towns and villages to ashes and slaughtered half the population. Béla IV of Hungary repopulated the country with a wave of immigrants, transforming royal castles into towns and populating them with Germans, Italians, and Jews. Hungarian kings were keen to settle Germans in the country's uninhabited territories.

Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor was from 1387 to 1437 also a King of Hungary. Although Hungary's economy continued to flourish, Sigismund's expenses outstripped his income. Social turmoil erupted late in Sigismund's reign as a result of the heavier taxes. Hungary's first peasant revolt was quickly checked, but it prompted Transylvania's Hungarian and German nobles to form the Union of Three Nations, which was an effort to defend their privileges against any power except that of the king.

Modern period

In the 18th century, under Charles VI and Maria Theresa, Hungary experienced economic decline. Centuries of Ottoman occupation, rebellion, and war had reduced Hungary's population drastically, and large parts of the country's southern half were almost deserted. A labor shortage developed and the Habsburgs called among others German peasants to Hungary.

In the 19th century Prussia's defeat of Austria-Hungary was a major prelude to the unification of the German Empire in 1871.

During World War I both countries were allied as Central Powers. The 1914 Septemberprogramm authorized by German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg proposed the creation of a Central European Economic Union, comprising a number of European countries, including Germany and Hungary, in which, as the Chancellor secretly stressed, there was to be a semblance of equality among the member states, but in fact it was to be under German leadership to stabilize Germany's economic predominance in Central Europe, with co-author Kurt Riezler admitting that the union would be a veiled form of German domination in Europe (see also: Mitteleuropa). The plan failed amid Germany's defeat in the war.

The countries shared a common border after Germany annexed Austria in 1938. Initially, the two countries were allied during World War II, although Hungary opposed and refused to take part in Germany's invasion of Poland, which started the war. In 1944, however, Hungary also fell under German occupation.

Hungary's 1989 decision to open its borders with Austria to help East German refugees flee to West Germany was a key factor in preparing for the German reunification. Despite this, in the 1990s, Germany opposed Hungary and other Central European nations joining NATO, according to archived German Foreign Ministry files released in 2022. Germany, pursuing a pro-Russian policy, tried to discourage those countries from joining NATO during confidential discussions, and tried to convince other member states against their NATO membership. Hungary eventually joined NATO in 1999.

In 2024, Hungary's Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó summoned the German ambassador Julia Gross to complain about a speech in which she urged Hungarian public figures to speak out against actions she said were eroding the trust of the country's NATO and EU allies.