Konrad Adenauer

The German statesman Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967) was chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1949 to 1963.

Aconservative, Francophile Rhinelander, Konrad Adenauer successfully presided over the creation of a Western-oriented German state after World War II. By providing an efficient political mechanism for German life, he aided the astonishing recovery of West Germany and its acceptance into the Western bloc during the cold war. As a statesman, he was often compared to the 19th-century German leader Otto von Bismarck. But while Bismarck led a largely Protestant, militarist, and aristocrat-dominated government, Adenauer shaped a heavily Catholic, civilian, business-dominated "half-Germany" firmly tied to the West.

Early Life

Konrad Adenauer was born in 1876 in Cologne, and his career was always closely connected with this city in the Rhineland region of Germany. Although his father was a Prussian soldier and minor civil servant, Adenauer shared the common ambivalence of the Rhinelanders to the Prussian-dominated German Empire.

Even as a young man, Adenauer was reserved, somewhat ascetic, and hardworking rather than brilliant in his studies. Severe thrift and the support of friends enabled him to study law at the universities of Freiburg im Breisgau, Munich, and Bonn. Adenauer then worked for an influential Cologne lawyer, who was the head of the local German Center party organization. (The German Center party had been formed by Catholics to protect their interests against the Protestant-dominated government.) Through hard work, ambition, and party contacts, Adenauer became an assistant to the lord mayor of Cologne in 1906. He soon became the equivalent of deputy mayor and finally lord mayor in 1917. During these years Adenauer had married and had three children.

Tenure as Lord Mayor

Adenauer faced many crises in his 16-year tenure as mayor. He successfully dampened the fires of revolution that swept Cologne at the end of World War I. After flirting with movements for a Rhenish state separate from Prussia (and possibly even Germany), Adenauer became noted as a strong representative of Rhineland interests against the central government in Berlin. As a leading member of the Center party, he was chairman of the upper house of the Prussian state legislature from 1920 to 1933.

Adenauer's life was not without dark sides. His first wife died during World War I, and he suffered severe facial injuries in an automobile accident which left him a victim of insomnia. In 1933 Adenauer, an opponent of Nazism, was driven from office by the new regime of Hitler. He was persecuted sporadically, and in 1934 and 1944 he was arrested by the Gestapo. On the latter occasion his second wife was mistreated and later died. Adenauer narrowly escaped being sent to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. But for the most part he spent the years from 1933 to the end of World War II quietly in his villa on the Rhine, cultivating his garden and avoiding politics.

West German State

When American troops seized Cologne, Adenauer was offered his old post of lord mayor. Although he was almost 70, his reputation as a good administrator untainted by Nazism gave him a political edge. Conflicts with the British occupation authorities late in 1945, however, led to Adenauer's dismissal. He then threw himself into reviving German Center party activities. He concurred with other former leaders of the party that it must broaden its base to include all faiths that supported democratic institutions. To achieve this end, he was a cofounder of a new political party—the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). With the backing of the Catholic Church and influential Cologne businessmen, Adenauer rapidly advanced from head of the local CDU (1945) to chairman of the party for the British Zone (1946) and finally for all of West Germany (1949). In 1948 he was elected president of the Parliamentary Council, a body that drew up the political foundations for a new German republic composed of the British, American, and French occupation zones.

Tenure as Chancellor

When the first federal parliamentary elections in 1949 resulted in a victory for the CDU, Adenauer outmaneuvered his many adversaries to become the first chancellor. The decisive single vote which gave him a majority was his own. He was reelected in 1953, 1957, and 1961.

As chancellor, Adenauer was often criticized for behaving more autocratically than the Basic Law (constitution) of 1949 intended. He generally left economic matters in the hands of private enterprise and of Ludwig Erhard, his capable economics minister. Although Adenauer had never before held a diplomatic post, he developed great stature as a statesman. He served as his own foreign minister from 1951 to 1955. A Franco-German rapprochement and a strong tie to the United States formed the basis of Adenauer's European and world policies. Although opponents scornfully dubbed him the "chancellor of the Allies," Adenauer's negotiations with Germany's former enemies resulted in a plan of West European unity and prosperity which rivaled Charlemagne's empire in scope. From the early 1950s on, Adenauer offered to contribute to the European Defense Community and in 1954 to raise a new German army within NATO. Under his guidance West Germany became an active member of the Council of Europe, the West European Union, and the European Economic Community (European Union).

By the early 1960s Adenauer was an octogenarian and had come to be called Der Alte (the Old Man). He was increasingly out of touch with the new generation, liberal opinion, and the thaw in East-West relations. He resigned the chancellorship under heavy political pressure from his own party in 1963. When he died in 1967, his funeral occasioned an almost unprecedented foreign tribute to a German chancellor.

Further Reading

Adenauer's Memoirs (4 vols., 1965-1968; trans., vol. 1, 1966) is an important if not objective source. No fully adequate biography of Adenauer exists. Paul Weymar, Adenauer (1955; trans. 1957), suffers from being an "authorized" version of the Chancellor's life. Both Charles Wighton, Adenauer: A Democratic Dictator (1963), and Rudolf Augstein, Konrad Adenauer (1964; trans. 1964), tend to be hostile. For a good broad evaluation of Adenauer's role after 1945 see Richard Hiscocks, The Adenauer Era (1966). Arnold J. Heidenheimer, Adenauer and the CDU: The Rise of the Leader and the Integration of the Party (1960), treats domestic politics. Edgar Alexander, Adenauer and the New Germany: The Chancellor of the Vanquished (1956; trans. 1957), is a study of the man and his personality and an assessment of present-day political Germany. See also Gordon A. Craig, From Bismarck to Adenauer: Aspects of German Statecraft (1958; rev. ed. 1965), and Wolfram F. Hanrieder, West German Foreign Policy, 1949-1963 (1967).

Additional Sources

Gotto, Klaus., Konrad Adenauer, Stuttgart: Bonn Aktuell, 1988.

Schwarz, Hans-Peter, Konrad Adenauer: a German politician and statesman in a period of war, revolution, and reconstruction, Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995. □

Adenauer, Konrad (b. 5 Jan. 1876, d. 19 Apr. 1967). Chancellor of West Germany 1949–63 Born in Cologne, he joined the Centre Party in 1906, and was Lord Mayor of Cologne 1917–33. Deposed by the Nazis, he was reinstated by the American administration in 1945, though the British soon discharged him for ‘incompetence’. Elected CDU leader in the British Zone in 1946, he was elected chairman of the parliamentary council which drafted the Constitution in 1948. He was narrowly elected Chancellor in 1949, but won the subsequent elections of 1953, 1957, and 1961 with a handsome majority.

At a time when the majority of Germans sought reunification with the GDR as their first priority, Adenauer pursued the goal of Western integration, even if that made unification less likely in the short run. For this reason, Adenauer accepted the Schuman Plan which led to the ECSC, and he supported the creation of the European Defence Community even if this entailed the rejection of the Stalin Note. In a crucial further concession to France, he agreed to the Saarland referendum held in 1955. In that year, full sovereignty was finally achieved, and West Germany was admitted into NATO. The culmination of his policy of reconciliation with France came in the Franco-German friendship treaty of 22 January 1963. This signalled the start of a ‘special’ relationship between the two countries, e.g. through cultural exchanges and regular, twice-yearly consultations between the French President and German Chancellor. A further milestone of Adenauer's policies of normalization came in 1955, when in a visit to Moscow he negotiated the release of the remaining 10,000 German prisoners of war, and the initiation of diplomatic relations with the USSR. Through the Restitution Agreement he initiated the beginning of a long process of reconciliation between Germans and Jews.

These successes abroad were complemented by dramatic achievements in domestic policy. The Equalizations of Burdens Act provided compensation for those who had lost their possessions in the war, especially the German immigrants from the East. Adenauer also reaped the rewards of Germany's rapid economic recovery which set in with the start of the Korean War, and which were greatly helped by the liberal policies of his Finance Minister, Erhardt. Perhaps his most popular measure was the introduction of a generous pension scheme, just ahead of the 1957 elections. Adenauer was increasingly criticized for his autocratic and obstinate style of leadership. This had been crucial in the first years of government, but was increasingly out of place in the early 1960s. He was thus forced to resign by his coalition partners, the Liberal Party. Through his successful policies, Adenauer integrated a heterogeneous population, and integrated many former Nazi adherents into the democratic process. In this way, he created the conditions for the establishment of the first successful democracy on German soil.

Konrad Adenauer , 1876-1967, West German chancellor. A lawyer and a member of the Catholic Center party, he was lord mayor of Cologne and a member of the provincial diet of Rhine prov. from 1917 until 1933, when he was dismissed by the National Socialist (Nazi) regime. He was twice imprisoned (1933, 1944) by the Nazis. Cofounder of the Christian Democratic Union (1945) and its president from 1946 to 1966, he was elected chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) in 1949 and was reelected in 1953, 1957, and 1961. He also served (1951-55) as his own foreign minister, negotiating the West German peace treaty (1952) with the Western Allies and obtaining recognition of West Germany's full sovereignty through the Paris Pacts and through an agreement with the USSR in 1955.

Adenauer's strong will and political acumen helped to give Der Alte [the old man], as he was known, great authority in West German public life. The political architect of the astounding West German recovery, he saw the solution of German problems in terms of European integration, and he helped secure West Germany's membership in the various organizations of what has become the European Union . In 1961 his party lost its absolute majority in the Bundestag, and he formed a coalition cabinet with the Free Democrats. In 1962 a cabinet crisis arose over the government's raid of the offices of the magazine Der Spiegel, which had attacked the Adenauer regime for military unpreparedness. After agreeing to the Free Democrats' demands that he exclude his defense minister, Franz Josef Strauss , who was implicated in the affair, from a new cabinet, Adenauer succeeded in re-forming the coalition. At the same time Adenauer announced (Dec., 1962) his retirement as part of the agreement with the Free Democrats. He resigned in Oct., 1963. His writings include World Indivisible (tr. 1955).

Bibliography: See his memoirs of the years 1945-53 (tr. by B. R. von Oppen, 1966); biographies by T. C. F. Prittie (1972) and C. Williams (2001); E. Alexander, Adenauer and the New Germany (tr. 1957); P. Weymar, Adenauer (tr. 1957); A. J. Heidenheimer, Adenauer and the CDU (1960); N. Frei, Adenauer's Germany and the Nazi Past (2003).

Adenauer, Konrad (1876–1967) German statesman, first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (1949–63). He was Lord Mayor of Cologne (1917–33) and was twice imprisoned by the Nazis. He helped to create the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), West Germany's dominant post-war party, and was its leader (1946–66). Adenauer led West Germany into NATO (1955) and campaigned for the establishment of the European Economic Community.

http://www1.kas.de/stiftung/adenauer/lang-en.html

Adenauer, Konrad (1876–1967) German statesman, first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (1949–63). He co-founded the Christian Democratic Union in 1945. As Chancellor, he is remembered for the political and economic transformation of his country. He secured the friendship of the USA and was an advocate of strengthening political and economic ties with Western countries.