Charles Ellson wrote on 15 January 2014 00:12:27 ...
On Tue, 14 Jan 2014 22:07:25 +0000, Arthur Figgis
wrote:

On 14/01/2014 02:09, Charles Ellson wrote:
On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 20:12:45 +0000, Arthur Figgis

In case the names are confusing you, "West Germany" was an English
language colloquial term for the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (or, in
English, Federal Republic of Germany) pre-October 1990. This is the
country which still exists.

No it isn't. One was the country formed in 1949 which used that name
and the other was the country formed in 1990 which incorporated the
former and took over the name; mere use of the same "label" does not
count.

It does when you have full continuity including the same constitution,
the same treaties etc. Buy-in from four major military powers probably
doesn't do any harm, either.

It doesn't, you still have to have your relations with the EU
re-arranged to take account of the different population, land mass and
other consequent matters.

The constitution isn't the same; it was also adjusted to cope with
unification. It might be comonly labelled "1949" but that is not the
date that the current applicable document was formed as indicated by
"as last amended by the Act of 21 July 2010" in this official
translation :-
http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/en..._gg.html#p0012

Please find a more appropriate forum to have this discussion which is
now about three stages removed from the original thread "Which UK
railway station names do you feel are anomalous?" I didn't come to
uk.transport.london to discuss German reunification. I understand
thread drift but this is ridiculous.

I suppose you'll want to extend the discussion to the reasons why
Germany was divided, involving the Nazis and Hitler.

Ooops. Oh dear, you'll now have to invoke Godwin's Law and close the
thread.
--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)