In the fifty years covered in this book, German and French communities signed over two thousand formal town-twinning agreements. After providing some background on town partnerships and Franco-German relations, Filipová divides the book into chapters focused on distinct phases: the slow beginnings (1950–62), the rapid development of partnerships after the Franco-German Elysée Treaty of 1963 (1963–73), the search for new contents (1974–81), the reintensification of partnerships in the context of warm Franco-German relations (1982–89), and the situation in the wake of German reunification (1990–2000). Statistical data on the intensity of new partnerships and on the regions most involved indicate that the West German states that had the closest cultural and historical connections to France—in particular Rheinland-Pfalz, Baden-Württemberg, Nordrhein-Westfalen, and the Saarland—were the most active in forming city partnerships. Bavaria also became very active, after a late start, as did Thuringia after 1990. In France, most partnerships came from regions in the northern half of the country, mostly the Île-de-France region around Paris, the Rhône-Alpes, the Pays de la Loire, and Burgundy.

Partnerships between French cities (mostly with communist mayors) and cities in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) were always much more limited than partnerships with cities and regions in the Federal Republic, not least because of GDR travel restrictions and poor finances, which also constrained contacts involving former East German cities after 1990. Filipová highlights several case studies involving French and (West) German cities, as well as some triangle relationships involving Franco-German twin cities that became linked with a community in the GDR. These examples include some bigger cities (Dijon-Mainz and Calais-Duisburg-Wismar in the GDR), as well as several smaller communities.

One of the organizing principles of the book is the question of how the city partnerships reflected Franco-German relations at the highest level. The answer is nuanced: the Elysée Treaty of 1963 clearly sparked a surge in partnerships, as did the friendship between French President François Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in the 1980s. Yet, in other periods, the partnerships seemed little affected by what was happening at the highest level of government. For example, the cooling of Franco-German relations after the resignation of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1963 did not slow down the proliferation of partnerships, whereas good relations between Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and President Valéry Giscard-d'Estaing in 1974–81 coincided with a reduced interest in partnerships, partly motivated by French criticism of West German methods of combating left-wing terrorism and the law against “radicals” in the civil service. West German communities, for their part, found it difficult to cooperate with French towns with a communist mayor (e.g., Duisburg-Calais) or a mayor supported by the right-wing National Front. Altogether, Filipová indicates that local and regional factors often played a more important role than top-level contacts. Changes in city government or the retirement of particularly active members involved in such partnerships sometimes meant that partnerships became dormant, except where particularly close economic or cultural interests in both places had led to more formalized institutional cooperation.

The book provides information on the dynamics, actors, and contents of partnerships. The cooperation of larger towns, for example, tended to depend more on negotiations between political representatives, whereas the smaller communities often relied more on private initiatives. Some twin cities cooperated with larger regional initiatives for cultural exchange: Mainz and Dijon, for instance, connected their efforts with the partnership between Rheinland-Pfalz and Burgundy. The contents of partnerships included student exchanges, sports competitions, cultural exchanges, and mutual group visits, often in connection with anniversaries of the partnerships or of the Elysée Treaty. Mainz and Dijon pioneered an integrated Franco-German university program and launched business projects linked to their regional partnership. Filipová shows, however, that not all these initiatives were conducive to better understanding. The language barrier remained a problem; sports competitions could spark resentments instead of friendship; student exchanges could confirm existing prejudices.

French proposals for widening partnerships through the inclusion of places in francophone Africa or Romania sometimes triggered little enthusiasm from German partners, who suspected that these partnerships served to promote francophonie more than anything else; cities in the Federal Republic also watched French outreach to GDR cities with suspicion. Many partnerships therefore resembled the marriages to which they were often compared, involving glamorous festivities and closeness mixed with irritation and crankiness. Often the partnerships depended on the initiative of specific individuals such as town mayors and teachers, and went dormant when key persons left. Whereas the initiators of the contacts in the 1950s and 1960s stressed Franco-German reconciliation, later partnerships declared that reconciliation had succeeded and argued in favor of other purposes, most frequently European integration. But by the 1980s and 1990s, it became increasingly difficult to spark the interest of young people in city partnerships.

The book offers some plausible interpretations based on statistical material. It relies much more heavily on German than on French documents and offers most insight into the (West) German side of the partnerships, perhaps because the source material is richer in Germany than in France. The argument of the book could be clearer, however. The title and the conclusion suggest that the city partnerships were a vehicle of Franco-German reconciliation after 1945. Yet, the substance of the analysis paints a more ambiguous picture. Clearly, the formal reconciliation at the government level symbolized by the Elysée Treaty sparked a massive rise in city partnerships, but Filipová never argues that the partnerships influenced these top-level contacts and rightly points out that the development of new partnerships sometimes contradicted the direction of top-level relations. The lengthy subsections of each chapter entitled “summary” do not help much to support an overarching argument. They often do little summarizing and instead introduce more material and new thoughts. The case studies are well chosen, but the actual substance of the partnerships occasionally deserves more detail, especially with respect to the French communities. Using the number of new partnerships as an indicator of Franco-German relations at the communal level seems problematic in the absence of information on the substance of existing partnerships. Still, the book makes a valuable contribution to an understanding of Franco-German partnerships and explains their changing motives in the larger political and social context.