Walter Hallstein

Who was Walter Hallstein?

Walter Hallstein was a German academic, diplomat, and politician, the first president of the Commission of the European Economic Community and one of the founding fathers of the European Union.

Hallstein began his academic career before World War II, becoming Germany's youngest law professor at the age of 29. During the War he served as an army officer in France. In 1944 he was captured in Normandy by American troops and spent the rest of the War in a prisoner-of-war camp in the United States. After the War he returned to Germany and continued his academic career until, in 1950, he was recruited to a diplomatic career, becoming the leading civil servant at the German Foreign Office, where he gave his name to the Hallstein Doctrine, West Germany's policy of isolating East Germany diplomatically.

A keen advocate of a federal Europe, he played a key role in European integration and in West Germany's post-War rehabilitation, clashing with the Economics Minister, Ludwig Erhard, on the path of European integration. He was one of the architects of the European Coal and Steel Community and became the first President of the Commission of the European Economic Community, which was later to become the European Union. He was in office from 1958 to 1967 and has remained the only German to serve as president of the European Commission or its predecessors.