The establishment of two separate German states in 1949 had far‐reaching effects on German national identity. Initially, both governments claimed to represent the German nation as a whole, and each professed an identity that went beyond its state borders. When the two German states started to recognize each other in the early 1970s, the GDR (East Germany) embarked on a separate path and posited that a separate Socialist nation had developed in the territorial confines of the GDR. Now the GDR needed to explain how its construction of identity could be unique when it had the same German cultural roots as the FRG (West Germany). In the FRG on the other hand, the narration of national identity had to square the recognition of the eastern border of the GDR in international treaties and with demands to former German territories beyond it. The paper addresses these challenges over territory and identity in the two German states, using a conceptual framework inspired by works from critical geopolitics and recent studies on nations as local metaphors. I identify and discuss three key elements that are central to territorial strategies in the construction of national identities: territorial differentiation, territorial bonding, and territorial script. Next, I apply these elements to an empirical analysis of identity construction in the FRG and GDR. Sources include geography textbooks and atlases, which have a decisive influence on shaping conceptions of the nation. Dominant constructions of national identity in the two states did not respond to each other's initiatives and failed to produce effective strategies by the end of the 1970s.

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