The Academic Cooperation between Charles University in Prague and University of Hamburg during the Period of the So-called Normalization

This master thesis deals with the development of the academic relations between the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany during the so-called normalization, so from the beginning of the 1970s to the fall of the so-called Iron Curtain. The main focus lies on the inter-university partnership between Charles University in Prague and the University of Hamburg, which was concluded in Prague in 1980 and is successfully carried out till today. It was the first cooperation agreement Charles University made with a West German university during the period of the cold war. The thesis analyses, in which way both universities approached the partnership and how the cooperation could be put into practice. The main objective of the text is to find out which dynamics the partnership in the observed period gained and if the cooperation even managed to overcome the original expectations of the main actors considering the given conditions within the domestic and international politics. The examined cooperation is put into a broader context, not only of the development of the Czechoslovak-West German relations but also of the situation within international politics. The partnership was possible to negotiate thanks to bilateral agreements, which arranged the further development of the..