Overview 1975
16 January: CSU chairman Franz-Josef Strauss becomes the first West German politician to be received in China by Mao Tse-tung.
27 February: Abduction of the West Berlin CDU chairman Peter Lorenz by terrorists from the "Bewegung 2. Juni" ("Movement 2 June"). After the West German government accedes to the demand of the kidnappers and releases supporters of the group from prison, Peter Lorenz is freed on 5 March. Five members of "Bewegung 2. Juni" who are in prison are flown out to the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen.
25 March: Austria and the GDR sign a consular treaty in East Berlin in which Austria becomes the first Western nation to recognise GDR citizenship.
14 April: Launch of fully automatic telephone connections from West Berlin to East Berlin via 240 newly opened telephone lines.
24 April: In Stockholm, the West German embassy is stormed by terrorists from a group calling itself "Kommando Holger Meins". They want the release of 26 prisoners from the "Red Army Faction". When the West German government rejects their demands, two hostages are shot dead before the police can free the remaining hostages and arrest the terrorists.
11 May: DDR border security authorities forbid passers-by and the West Berlin fire brigade to rescue Cetin Mert, a five-year-old Turkish boy. He fell into the Spree from a steep bank in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin; the entire width of the Spree belongs to East Berlin at this location. It is the fourth fatality in this place and unleashes fierce public debate that finally leads to an agreement on rescues in Berlin border waterways on 29 October 1975.
21 May: In Stuttgart-Stammheim, the leading figures in the "Baader-Meinhof Group" go on trial: Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Jan Carl Raspe and Gudrun Ensslin.
11 June: Agreement between West Germany and the Soviet Union on opening tourist offices.
8-12 July: Yitzhak Rabin becomes the first Israeli prime minister to visit West Germany and West Berlin.
17 June: American-Soviet "rendezvous in space": successful docking attempt between the Soviet space capsule Soyuz 19 and the US Apollo 18.
1 August: Summit of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in Helsinki, attended by 35 countries, including West and East Germany. According to the final declaration, known as the Helsinki Final Act, the participating countries are to be guided by the principles of non-violence, the inviolability of borders, non-intervention in domestic affairs and the upholding of human rights and basic freedoms. The fostering of human contacts over borders is also agreed upon. The human rights "Basket 3", which includes a declaration of the right to free choice of one’s place of residence, causes the GDR the main problems. In the ensuing years, more and more people who want to leave and opposition elements refer to the CSCE Final Act. However, it is an international agreement and statement of intent, not a binding treaty under international law. Helmut Schmidt and Erich Honecker meet for the first time on the sidelines of the summit.
19 August: The CDU chairman Helmut Kohl travels to Leipzig with his family on a private visit.
6 October: The Soviet party and state leader Leonid I. Brezhnev and SED General Secretary Erich Honecker sign an agreement in Moscow on "friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance" for the duration of 25 years. The agreement contains no references to Germany as a whole. Brezhnev tells Honecker that in view of the growing inner German economic relations and the increasing amount of travel and visits between the two German states, he considers the border to have been passed "that goes beyond the control of the Politburo". Reproachfully, Brezhnev says that if 40,000 cars carrying Westerners visited a GDR town of 12,000 inhabitants in one year, as had been reported to him, the ideology would also come in with them. And, he asks Honecker, "How is the Secretary of the SED party organisation to know who is coming if there are 40,000 cars?"
7 October: The 26th anniversary of the founding of the GDR is celebrated as a "national" holiday for the first time.
9 October: The foreign ministers of West Germany and Poland sign an agreement in Warsaw under which 125,000 people of German descent are allowed to move to West Germany.
14 October: In an order for the coming training year 1975/1976, the head of the GDR border troops demands: "Targeted education and training of border troop members is to guarantee that firearms are employed decisively and accurately with a high sense of political responsibility according to the regulation on firearm use to prevent border breakthroughs, provocations and diversion tactics of the enemy."
29 October: The medal "Hero of the German Democratic Republic" is introduced for "heroic acts [serving] the general strengthening of the GDR, the enhancement of its international authority and its secure military protection".
28 October – 2 November: Helmut Schmidt is the first West German chancellor to visit China, where he meets Mao Tse-Tung.
10-15 November: Walter Scheel is the first West German president to visit the Soviet Union.
10 December: The Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia; the Soviet leadership does not allow him to travel to Oslo.
16 December: The "Spiegel" correspondent Jörg Mettke is deported from the GDR for "gross libel". He reported on the forced adoption of children whose parents have fled to the West or have made an escape attempt.
31 December: The total number of trips from West German territory and West Berlin to the GDR and East Berlin in 1975 is around 7.7 million (compared with 2.7 million in 1971). In the opposite direction, from the GDR to West Germany, 1.33 million pensioners (1971: 1 million) and 40,000 (1971: none) younger people have travelled across the border for urgent family reasons.
