Talk:Federal Foreign Office

Merger
I suggest that Wilhelmstrasse be merged here; for two reasons:
 * This is probably the primary meaning of the name in English anyway;
 * It may dispose of the silly war over whether to spell it with an esszett (English doesn't), by drowning the issue in something actually useful to the Encyclopedia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:02, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I've removed the merge tags, since the idea got no support. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:45, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong support with readding the {merger} template Sebastian scha. (talk) 10:58, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It will mean a long subsection, only a sentence or two of Wilhelmstrasse is on the Foreign Ministry; but anything is better than this move war with editors who show no sign of understanding that English does not use Wilhelmstraße or why not. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:40, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It will also involve some intricate phrasing. The actual subject of this article is the Foreign Ministry of the Federal Republic, which never has been on the Wilhelmstrasse, and is only rarely so called. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:43, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The German title for the Federal Foreign Office is Auswärtiges Amt ( = Foreign Office) and the former headquarter was located in Wilhelmstraße (<- German spelling :P). By the way I'm not so happy with this page move exactly because of this problem, now it will be much more harder to merge the article. Sebastian scha. (talk) 20:17, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
 * In German, the ministry may be known as Auswärtiges Amt, and this may translate to Foreign Office, however, on English WP (and all WP for that matter I guess), we don't go by translations from the native language into English; we go by what is the most prevalent English usage, or the English name for the article subject. If you look at the FFO English website, they call themselves the Federal Foreign Office, and in French, they call themselves Ministère fédéral des Affaires étrangères. The usage of Federal Foreign Office is prevalent as evidenced at,  and . Moving the page to the current title will not affect any merging efforts. --Россавиа Диалог 21:24, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose Wilhelmstrasse is an article on the Street; a street with its own history; a history which does not apply to the Federal Foreign Office. Much in the same way that Wall Street is an article on the street, not the NYSE; Downing Street is an article on the street, not 10 Downing Street; and the The Kremlin is an article on the complex, not Government of Russia; all of these are terms which in some usage may have another meaning, but first and foremost they are an independent, notable entity on their own. --Россавиа Диалог 21:29, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for answering on my statement at your talkpage. You are right the official given name is federal foreign office (ffo) but in wikipedia common names should be used. You are right wilhelmstraße is a street and is known for its existence. But IMHO it's known because the foreign office was located there with several other ministries (Reich Chancellery) and organisations. (To give google links are IMO no source because it's a selfsource with very often hits on en:wiki and the ffo own edited books. Like other stats 2,420,000 for "foreign office" and 68,500 for "federal foreign office" or some article German Foreign Office comes out in favor of Open Document Format (from a independent German source) also quite unuseful, I think.) wp naming is a very hard and difficult case. Not all articles of places, people or events go by their official name. But back to merging: maybe not the whole article should be merged, but the parts of the history of the foreign office should be merged into here. If there is a source for the 'in grandiose style' ;-). The article of the street should link to the other articles were the history is explained. And the article of the street should be limeted to the 'monument'. Sebastian scha. (talk) 22:13, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The Federal Foreign Office is one specific institution of the German government, Wilhelmstrasse is a street known for housing many different government offices and embassies. Why should they be merged?  They are not the same.Udibi (talk) 23:21, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There is no direct relationship between an important and historical street with the German Foreign Office. Wilhelmstrasse was the German equivalent of Whitehall before the Second World War, however many important government buildings were destroyed during the conflict; the street maintains institutions such as the British Embassy, and Hotel Adlon. This article refers to a particular street and the structures situated along it, and are only indirectly and historically related to the Foreign Office. The strong history of the street as the former centre of the German government including buildings such as the Reich Chancellery, Kaiserhof Hotel, and other important property. It is unfair to relate and compare Wilhemstrasse with its broad and rich history and present significance, with the foreign office of Germany. Through doing this you are creating a narrow perspective and singularly associating the entire street with a single government institution. The separate subjects are only distantly related, it  would be disproportionate to merge these two articles.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.67.185.80 (talk) 20:05, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Del merger, I think nobody want it but me ;-) Sebastian scha. (talk) 10:36, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Length of history section
The history section is turning into an essay rather than an encyclopedic text. It goes on at length, on page after page, about 19th century recruitment practices. While this is in itself interesting, it is far too detailed for this article and needs to be summarized more briefly. If someone feels this topic is worthy of extensive coverage, a separate main article on the history of the Foreign Office (Germany) or even on the recruitment of diplomats in Germany would be a better solution. Similarly, the article goes on at length about how William II took pleasure in homoerotic spectacles and humiliated members of his court, offering many and detailed examples. This is even more peripheral to the Foreign Office and needs to be summarized more briefly. Extensive coverage of William's behaviour belongs in his article or an article about the Imperial-Royal court. Tadeusz Nowak (talk) 07:01, 23 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Agree it's too long, but don't believe it should be split into a new article. What it needs most of all, is some better organization, and the addition of some subsection headers to provide logical, thematic separation.  A lot of the stuff concerning Wilhelm and not really relevant to the Foreign Office should be taken out, and considered for merger into the article Wilhelm II. Mathglot (talk) 20:45, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Rename to Foreign Office (Germany)
I believe this article should be entitled, "Foreign Office (Germany)" or "Federal Foreign Office (Germany)" or even, "German Foreign Office" but not plain "Federal Foreign Office". (You could even make a case for keeping the title in German, in which case the title would be Auswärtiges Amt, currently a redirect.)

The current title "Federal Foreign Office" doesn't even specify what country we are talking about.

This is somewhat analogous to the situation with the Wikipedia article Germany, which clearly uses the common name, even though the official name of the country in English is Federal Republic of Germany. You'll even hear the official term in English in some formal settings, but nobody would argue that it's the common name.

As a title, we should use the common name such as German Foreign Office (see ngrams or the parenthetically disambiguated version Foreign Office (Germany). In other countries, there seems to be a preference for the version using parenthetical disambiguation in some other, similar ministries:  see for example:Ministry of Home Affairs, List of health departments and ministries, Ministry of Defence, and the full article titles underlying the links in the tables at Justice ministry and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Article titles for several German ministries are titled with parenthetical disambiguation, for example: Federal Ministry of the Interior (Germany), Federal Ministry of Health (Germany), or Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (Germany).

In addition, there should perhaps be a "Terminology" or "Naming" section, where various different versions of the name over time could be discussed, such as for example, "Imperial Foreign Office" where this term only makes unambiguous sense in the context of a book about Germany (or Japan, or Russia), or in German, "Kaiserliche Auswärtige Amt". Mathglot (talk) 20:32, 30 March 2017 (UTC) Updated by Mathglot (talk) 20:09, 31 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Another approach might be to split the article into two, considering that this article is really about two separate topics namely, the Auswärtiges Amt or Foreign Office from 1871 through the end of WW II, and the "Federal Foreign Office" as the successor organization that formed as part of the Federal Republic of Germany, to the present. (Or three topics, taking into account the  section below, but that's not relevant to this discussion.)


 * Having two articles like this, one for a historical organization and another for its modern counterpart is not at all unusual. Consider for example, U.S. Department of War and its successor the U.S. Department of Defense; or the Office of Strategic Services and its successor the Central Intelligence Agency.


 * If we decide to go with an approach like this, then we should keep "Federal Foreign Office", but it should only cover the period from its formation under Adenauer. Everything else should be split off into another article covering the predecessor organization, under one of the titles suggested above or some other. Mathglot (talk)


 * I think it should be called the German Federal Foreign Office, as that is what it is always called in real life, even by them. CT55555 (talk) 17:00, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Unfocused
This article is supposed to be about the foreign ministry of Germany. However, there is extensive content (1,607 words) about #Wilhelm II, very little of which is directly related to the Foreign Office, which leaves the article seeming fuzzy, or about two different topics. I plan to remove anything in the Wilhelm II section that doesn't pertain, which means cutting out the majority of that section.

A couple of paragraphs seems more than enough to cover the history of the Foreign Office under Wilhelm II, at least given the current length of the article and the weight given to other sections. Some of the current content consists of overly-long quotations which should either be summarized and removed, quoted more briefly, or perhaps partly moved to quotes in footnotes. Possibly some of the content could be moved into the article on Wilhelm II, if relevant and not already covered. Anything else should be cut. Mathglot (talk) 06:24, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
 * @Mathglot I would agree with this. The article has massively too much history and significantly not enough about current activities. CT55555 (talk) 17:04, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Federal Foreign Office. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130824090001/http://www.bundeshaushalt-info.de/startseite/ to http://www.bundeshaushalt-info.de/startseite/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150619071435/http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/europe/68749-150423-armenian-church-prepares-to-canonize-up-to-1-5-million-genocide-victims to http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/europe/68749-150423-armenian-church-prepares-to-canonize-up-to-1-5-million-genocide-victims

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 04:47, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Federal Foreign Office. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120311013032/http://israelcfr.com/documents/5-1/5-1-8-MosheZimmermann.pdf to http://israelcfr.com/documents/5-1/5-1-8-MosheZimmermann.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 22:03, 3 December 2017 (UTC)