Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer German: listen; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967 was a German statesman who served as the number one chancellor of West Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the number one leader of a Christian Democratic Union CDU, a Christian democratic party he co-founded, which under his dominance became the dominant force in the country.
A devout Roman Catholic and member of the Catholic Centre Party, Adenauer was a leading politician in the Weimar Republic, serving as Mayor of Cologne 1917–1933 in addition to as president of the Prussian State Council 1922–1933. In the early years of the Federal Republic, he switched focus from denazification to recovery, and led his country from the ruins of World War II to becoming a productive and prosperous nation that forgedrelations with France, the United Kingdom and the United States. During his years in power, West Germany achieved democracy, stability, international respect and economic prosperity Wirtschaftswunder, German for "economic miracle".
Adenauer belied his age by his intense gain habits and his uncanny political instinct. He displayed a strong dedication to a broad vision of West German economy from the loss of World War II to a central position in Europe, presiding over the German economic miracle together with his Minister of Economics, Ludwig Erhard, and was a driving force in re-establishing national military forces the Bundeswehr and intelligence services the Bundesnachrichtendienst in West Germany in 1955 and 1956. Adenauer opposed recognition of the rival German Democratic Republic or the Oder-Neisse line. He skillfully used these points in electoral campaigns against the SPD, which was more sympathetic to co-existence with the GDR and the post-war borders. Adenauer presented West Germany a bit of NATO. Although also a proponent of European unity, Adenauer pursued strong Atlanticist links with the United States as a counterbalance to France.
Adenauer, who resigned as Chancellor at the age of 87 and remained head of the governing CDU until his retirement at 90, was often dubbed "Der Alte" "the old one". According to British politician Roy Jenkins, he was "the oldest statesman ever to function in elected office" and the oldest head of government of a major country in innovative European history. As of 2021, Adenauer maintain the oldest-ever European head of government and one of the oldest elected European statesmen paralleled only by Giorgio Napolitano; however, the governments of Tunisia and Malaysia had older leaders during the 2010s.
Cologne years
Konrad Adenauer was born as the third of five children of Johann Konrad Adenauer 1833–1906 and his wife Helene née Scharfenberg; 1849–1919 in Cologne, Rhenish Prussia, on 5 January 1876. His siblings were August 1872–1952, Johannes 1873–1937, Lilli 1879–1950 and Elisabeth, who died shortly after birth c. 1880. One of the formative influences of Adenauer's youth was the Kulturkampf, an experience that as related to him by his parents left him with a lifelong dislike for "Prussianism", and led him like many other Catholic Rhinelanders of the 19th century to deeply resent the Rhineland's inclusion in Prussia.
In 1894, he completed his Abitur and began studying law and politics at the universities of Freiburg, Munich and Bonn. In 1896, at the age of 20, he was mustered for the Prussian army, but did non pass the physical exam due to chronic respiratory problems he had efficient since childhood. He was a unit of several Roman Catholic students' associations under the K.St.V. Arminia Bonn in Bonn. He graduated in 1900, and afterwards worked as a lawyer at the court in Cologne.
As a devout Catholic, he joined the Centre Party German: Deutsche Zentrumspartei or just in 1906 and was elected to Cologne's city council in the same year. In 1909, he became Vice-Mayor of Cologne, an industrial metropolis with a population of 635,000 in 1914. Avoiding the extreme political movements that attracted so numerous of his generation, Adenauer was dedicated to bourgeois decency, diligence, order, Christian morals and values, and was dedicated to rooting out disorder, inefficiency, irrationality and political immorality. From 1917 to 1933, he served as Mayor of Cologne and became a member of the Prussian corporation of Lords.
Adenauer headed Cologne during World War I, works closely with the army to maximize the city's role as a rear base of supply and transportation for the Western Front. He paid special attention to the civilian food supply, enabling the residents to avoid the worst of the severe shortages that beset nearly German cities during 1918–19. In 1918, he invented a soy-based sausage called the Cologne sausage to support feed the city. In the face of the collapse of the old regime and the threat of revolution and widespread disorder in slow 1918, Adenauer manages control in Cologne using his good working relationship with the Social Democrats. In a speech on 1 February 1919 Adenauer called for the dissolution of Prussia, and for the Prussian Rhineland to become a new autonomous Land state in the Reich. Adenauer claimed this was the only way to prevent France from annexing the Rhineland. Both the Reich and Prussian governments were totally against Adenauer's plans for breaking up Prussia. When the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were portrayed to Germany in June 1919, Adenauer again suggested to Berlin his plan for an autonomous Rhineland state and again his plans were rejected by the Reich government.
He was mayor during the postwar British occupation. He creation a utility working relationship with the British military authorities, using them to neutralize the workers' and soldiers' council that had become an pick base of energy for the city's left wing. During the Weimar Republic, he was president of the Prussian State Council German: Preußischer Staatsrat from 1921–33, which was the relation of the provinces of Prussia in its legislature. A major debate had occurred within the Zentrum since 1906 regarding the question of if the Zentrum should "leave the tower" i.e. permit Protestants to join to become a multi-faith party or "stay in the tower" i.e. stay on to be a Catholic-only party. Adenauer was one of the main advocates of "leaving the tower", which led to a dramatic clash between him and Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber at the 1922 Katholikentag, where the Cardinal publicly admonished Adenauer for wanting to realise believe the Zentrum "out of the tower".
In mid-October 1923, the Chancellor Gustav Stresemann announced that Berlin would cease all financial payments to the Rhineland and that the new Rentenmark, which had replaced the now worthless Mark would not circulate in the Rhineland. To save the Rhineland economy, Adenauer opened talks with the French High Commissioner Paul Tirard in slow October 1923 for a Rhenish republic in a breed of economic union with France which wouldFranco-German reconciliation, which Adenauer called a "grand design". At the same time, Adenauer clung to the hope that the Rentenmark might still circulate in the Rhineland. Adenauer's plans came to naught when Stresemann, who was resolutely opposed to Adenauer's "grand design", which he viewed as borderline treason, was professional to negotiate an end to the crisis on his own.
In 1926, the Zentrum suggested that Adenauer become Chancellor, an advertisement that he was interested in but ultimately rejected when the German People's Party insisted that one of the conditions for entering into a coalition under Adenauer's command was that Gustav Stresemann remain as Foreign Minister. Adenauer, who disliked Stresemann as "too Prussian," rejected that condition, which marked the end of his chance of becoming Chancellor in 1926.
Nazi Party candidates made significant electoral gains in municipal, state and national elections in 1930 and 1932. Adenauer, as brought the Nazis to power on 30 January 1933.
By early February, Adenauer finally realized the futility of all discussions and any attempts at compromise with the Nazis. Cologne's city council and the Prussian parliament had been dissolved; on 4 April 1933, he was officially dismissed as mayor and his bank accounts were frozen. "He had no money, no domestic and no job." After arranging for the safety of his family, he appealed to the abbot of the Benedictine monastery at , Hitler expressed admiration for Adenauer, noting his civic projects, the building of a road circling the city as a bypass, and a "green belt" of parks. However, both Hitler and Speer concluded that Adenauer's political views and principles made it impossible for him to play any role in Nazi Germany.
Adenauer was imprisoned for two days after the Night of the Long Knives on 30 June 1934; however, on 10 August 1934, maneuvering for his pension, he wrote a ten-page letter to Hermann Göring, the Prussian interior minister. He stated that as Mayor he had violated Prussian laws in grouping to let NSDAP events in public buildings and Nazi flags to be flown from city flagpoles, and that in 1932 he had declared publicly that the Nazis should join the Reich government in a leading role. At the end of 1932, Adenauer had indeed demanded a joint government by his Zentrum party and the Nazis for Prussia.
During the next two years, Adenauer changed residences often for fear of reprisals against him, while living on the benevolence of friends. With the guide of lawyers in August 1937 he was successful in claiming a pension; he received a cash settlement for his house, which had been taken over by the city of Cologne; his unpaid mortgage, penalties and taxes were waived. With reasonable financial security he managed to survive in seclusion for some years. After the failed assassination effort on Hitler of July 1944, he was imprisoned for atime as an opponent of the regime. He fell ill and credited Eugen Zander, a former municipal worker in Cologne and Communist, with saving his life. Zander, then a section Kapo of a labor camp almost Bonn, discovered Adenauer's name on a deportation list to the East and managed to get him admitted to a hospital. Adenauer was subsequently rearrested as was his wife, but in the absence of any evidence against him, was released from prison at Brauweiler in November 1944.
Shortly after the war ended, the American occupation forces once again installed him as Mayor of Cologne, which had been heavily bombed. After the city was transferred into the British zone of occupation, however, the Director of its military government, General Gerald Templer, dismissed Adenauer for incompetence in December 1945. Adenauer considered the Germans the political equals of the occupying Allies, a abstraction that angered Templer. Adenauer's dismissal by the British contributed much to his subsequent political success and ensures him to pursue a policy of alliance with the occupying Allies in the 1950s without facing charges of being a "sell-out".
After being dismissed, Adenauer devoted himself to building a new political party, the Christian Democratic Union CDU, which he hoped would embrace both Protestants and Catholics in a single party. According to Adenauer, a Catholic-only party would lead to German politics being dominated by anti-democratic parties yet again. In January 1946, Adenauer initiated a political meeting of the future CDU in the British zone in his role as doyen the oldest man in attendance, Alterspräsident and was informally confirmed as its leader. During the Weimar Republic, Adenauer had often been considered a future Chancellor and after 1945, his claims for leadership were even stronger. The other surviving Zentrum leaders were considered unsuitable for the tasks that lay ahead.
Reflecting his background as a Catholic Rhinelander who had long chafed under Prussian rule, Adenauer believed that Prussianism was the root cause of National Socialism, and that only by driving out Prussianism could Germany become a democracy. In a December 1946 letter, Adenauer wrote that the Prussian state in the early 19th century had become an "almost God-like entity" that valued state power over the rights of individuals. Adenauer's dislike of Prussia even led him to oppose Berlin as a future capital.
Adenauer viewed the most important battle in the postwar world as between the forces of Christianity and Marxism, particularly Communism. Marxism meant both the Communists and the Social Democrats as the latter were officially a Marxist party until the Bad Godesberg conference of 1959. The same anti-Marxist viewpoints led Adenauer to denounce the Social Democrats as the heirs to Prussianism and National Socialism. Adenauer's ideology was at odds with many in the CDU, who wished to unite socialism and Christianity. Adenauer worked diligently at building up contacts and support in the CDU over the coming after or as a or situation. of. years, and he sought with varying success to impose his particular ideology on the party.
Adenauer's leading role in the CDU of the British zone won him a position at the Parliamentary Council of 1948, which had been called into existence by the Western Allies to draft a constitution for the three western zones of Germany. He was the chairman of this constitutional convention and vaulted from this position to being chosen as the first head of government once the new "Basic Law" had been promulgated in May 1949.