Abstract
Town twinning is regarded as one of the activities that contributed to Franco-German reconciliation in the second half of the 20th century. Although this concept of co-operation had initially been met with distrust, thousands of German and French municipalities gradually accepted it and gave it a variety of forms.
Based on archive sources, press articles, and interviews, this paper analyses the partnership between Mainz (FRG) and Dijon (France), officially sealed in 1958. The study focuses on the motives that led to the creation of twinning links between Mainz and Dijon, as well as on changes and problems that occurred during the forty years under study.
It argues that it was firstly the metropolitan character of both of the municipalities, and secondly the linkage between their partnership and the partnership of their respective super-ordinated regions, which were decisive for the strengthening or the stagnation of their co-operation. While in the 1950s and 1960s these aspects helped to foster the co-operation between Mainz and Dijon, they had a negative impact in the 1970s.
The effort to change this trend in the 1980s was not particularly successful. It was only in the 1990s that Mainz and Dijon were able to benefit again from regional co-operation and metropolitan possibilities.