Konrad Adenauer

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Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (from 1876 to 1967) was a German statesman who served as the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1949 to 1963.

He was both the founder and first president of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) (until 1966), a Christian Democratic party that under his leadership became one of the country's most influential groups. He went from denazification to reconstruction and led his country from the wrecks of World War II to a prosperous and prosperous world with close links with France, the United Kingdom, and the United States in the early years of the Federal Republic.

West Germany demonstrated democracy, stability, international recognition, and economic growth during his tenure as Chancellor (see "Wirtschaftswunder," German for "economic miracle").Adenauer belied his age by his rigorous work habits and his extraordinary political instincts.

He exhibited a strong commitment to a broader vision of market-based liberal democracy and anti-communism.

Adenauer, a shrewd politician, was deeply committed to a Western-oriented foreign policy and reclaiming West Germany's global prominence.

He worked to restore the West German economy from World War II's ruins to a central position in Europe, presiding over the German Economic Miracle alongside his Minister of Economics, Ludwig Erhard.

Since 1955, he was a driving force in the re-establishing national military forces (the Bundeswehr) in West Germany.

Adenauer fought East Germany and made his country a NATO member and a member of the Western Alliance. "The elder" in Adenauer's name, who was Chancellor until age 87, was dubbed "Der Alte" ("the elder").

Roy Jenkins, a British politician and scholar, claims he was "the first statesman to hold office." He was a leading politician in the Weimar Republic, serving as Mayor of Cologne (1917-1933) and as President of the Prussian State Council (1922-1933).

Early life and education

Konrad Adenauer (1833-1876) and his mother Helene (née Scharfenberg) married in Cologne, Rhenish Prussia, on January 5, 1876. Alexander (1872–1952), Johannes (1873–1937), Lilli (1879–1950), and Elisabeth, who died shortly after birth in 1880, were among his siblings. Culturekampf, an experience shared by his parents' sons' death left him with a lifelong dislike for "Prussianism" and prompted him to resent the Rhinelanders' Prussian entry into Prussia.

He completed his Abitur and began studying law and politics at the universities of Freiburg, Munich, and Bonn in 1894. In 1896, when he was 20 years old, he was mustered for the Prussian army, but he was unable to pass the physical examination due to persistent respiratory difficulties he had suffered with from childhood. He was active in several Roman Catholic students' organisations under the K.St.V. Arminia Bonn is a fictional character from The Great Britain Innis. He graduated in 1900 and spent time as a lawyer in Cologne.

He joined the Centre Party (German: Deutsche Zentrumspartei, or just Zentrum) in 1906 and was elected to Cologne's city council in the same year as a devout Catholic. He was Vice-Mayor of Cologne, 1909, a 630-strong city with a population of 635,000. Adenauer, who was hesitant to attend so many of his generation's fashionable parties, was committed to bourgeois decency, diligence, order, Christian morals, and values, and he was determined to rooting out chaos, inefficiency, irrationality, and political immorality. He served as Mayor of Cologne from 1917 to 1933, and became a member of the Prussian House of Lords.

Adenauer served in Cologne during World War I, partnering closely with the army to ensure that the city's position as a backbone of supply and transportation for the Western Front. He paid particular attention to the civilian food supply, enabling the people to avoid the worst of the severe food shortages that beset most German cities during 1918-1919. He created the Cologne sausage, a soy-based sausage, in 1918 to help with the city's food. In the aftermath of the demise of the old regime, the threat of revolution, and widespread chaos in late 1918, Adenauer retained power in Cologne, thanks to his close working relationship with the Social Democrats. In a address on February 1, 1919, Adenauer called for the dissolution of Prussia and the Prussian Rhineland to be renamed as a new autonomous land (state) in the Reich. Adenauer said that this was the only way to prevent France from annexing the Rhineland. Both the Reich and Prussian governments were essentially against Adenauer's proposal for splitting up Prussia. Adenauer suggested to Berlin his proposal for a self-governing Rhineland state when the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced to Germany in June 1919, but the Reich government denied his plans.

During the British civil war, he was mayor. He developed a strong working relationship with the British military authorities, using them to neutralize the workers' and soldiers' council, which had been used as an alternative base of authority for the city's left wing. He was president of the Prussian State Council from 1921 to 1933, which was the representative of the provinces of Prussia in its legislature, during the Weimar Republic. Since 1906, a big discussion had erupted within the Zentrum over whether the Zentrum should "leave the tower" (i.e. Protestants can join a multifaith group (i.e. (The Catholic-only movement in the United States continues to exist.) Adenauer was one of the leading supporters of "leaving the tower" during the 1922 Katholikentag, where the Cardinal chastised Adenauer for attempting to remove the Zentrum "out of the tower."

In mid-October 1923, Chancellor Gustav Stresemann declared that Berlin will suspend all financial payments to the Rhineland and that the new Rentenmark, which had replaced the now worthless Mark, would not circulate in the Rhineland. Adenauer began talks with French High Commissioner Paul Tirard in late October 1923 for a Rhenish republic in a sort of economic union with France that would lead to Franco-Germany, which Adenauer characterized as a "grand plan." At the same time, Adenauer clung to the belief that the Rentenmark will still circulate in the Rhineland. When Stresemann, who had resolutely opposed to Adenauer's "grand plan," which he characterized as borderline treason, was able to reach an end to the crisis on his own, Adenauer's plans came to a halt.

The Zentrum suggested that Adenauer become Chancellor in 1926, but the German People's Party denied when Adenauer's leadership stated that one of the conditions for joining a coalition under Adenauer's leadership was that Gustav Stresemann's tenure remained unchanged as Foreign Minister. Adenauer, adenauer, who despised Stresemann as "too Prussian," slammed the condition, which ended his chances of becoming Chancellor in 1926.

In 1930 and 1932, Nazi Party candidates made substantial electoral gains in municipal, state, and national elections. Adenauer, the mayor of Cologne and president of the Prussian State Council, also agreed that reforms in the national economy would make his policy work easier: forget the Nazis and concentrate on the Communist threat. Even though he was already the object of repeated personal assaults, Adenauer believed that based on electoral results, the Nazis should join the Prussian and Reich governments. President Hindenburg's aging president and his allies returned the Nazis to office on January 30, 1933.

Adenauer had realized the futility of all talks and any attempts at compromise with the Nazis by early February. The city council and the Prussian parliament had been dissolved; on April 4, 1933, he was officially dismissed as mayor and his bank accounts had been frozen; "He had no money, no family, and no job" was his name. He appealed to the abbot of the Benedictine monastery in Maria Laach for a long time after arranging for the safety of his family. Hitler lauded Adenauer's contribution to the city as a bypass, the construction of a road circling the city as a bypass, and a "green belt" of parks, according to Albert Speer in his book Spandau: The Secret Diaries. However, both Hitler and Speer found that Adenauer's political convictions and values made it impossible for him to play any part in Nazi Germany.

On the night of the Long Knives, Adenauer was jailed for two days; however, he wrote a ten-page letter to Hermann Göring, the Prussian interior minister, on August 10, 1934, battling for his pension. He said as Mayor he had broken Prussian rules in order to encourage NSDAP activities and Nazi flags to fly from city flagpoles, and that he had publicly announced that the Nazis should serve in the Reich government in 1932. Adenauer had indeed requested a joint government by his Zentrum party and the Nazis for Prussia at the end of 1932.

Adenauer changed addresses often out of fear of reprisals against him over the next two years, despite being surrounded by the benevolence of friends. He was successful in obtaining a pension with the support of lawyers in August 1937; he received a cash settlement for his house, which had been confiscated by the city of Cologne; and his outstanding mortgage, penalties, and taxes were waived. With good financial stability, he was able to live in seclusion for several years. For a second time as an enemy of the regime after the failed assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944, he was detained for a second time as an enemy of the regime. He was sick and praised Eugen Zander, a former municipal employee in Cologne and a communist, with saving his life. Zander, then a section of a labor camp near Bonn, discovered Adenauer's name on a deportation list to the East and was able to get him to a hospital. Adenauer was then recalled (as was his wife), but he was released from jail in Brauweiler in November 1944 in the absence of any evidence against him.

The American occupation forces installed him as Mayor of Cologne, which had already been heavily bombed, just short of the war's conclusion. Following the city's incorporation into the British zone of occupation, General Gerald Templer, the city's military chief, dismissed Adenauer for incompetence in December 1945. Adenauer regarded the Germans as the political equals of the occupying Allies, a belief that enraged Templer. Adenauer's defection by the United Kingdom contributed a large part to his subsequent political growth and enabled him to pursue a policy of cooperation with the occupying Allies in the 1950s without being accused of being a "sell-out."

Adenauer, who was fired, committed himself to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a new political party that Adenauer hoped would unite both Protestants and Catholics in a single movement. According to Adenauer, a Catholic-only group would lead to German politics being dominated by anti-democratic parties once more. In January 1946, Adenauer initiated a political meeting of the future CDU in the British zone in his capacity as doyen (the oldest man in attendance, Alterspräsident) and was officially announced as the head. Adenauer was often thought of as a future Chancellor during the Weimar Republic, and his leadership credentials were even greater after 1945. The other remaining Zentrum leaders were deemed unsuitable for the forthcoming tasks.

Adenauer, a Catholic Rhinelander who had long chafed under Prussian rule, believed that Prussianism was the root of National Socialism, and that only by driving out Prussianism could Germany become a democracy. Adenauer wrote in a December 1946 letter that the Prussian state had developed into a "most God-like body" that valuing individual rights. Adenauer's aversion of Prussia led him to his rejection of Berlin as the future capital.

Adenauer viewed the most critical battle in the postwar world as a battle between Christians and Marxism, particularly Communism. Marxists also identified the Communists and the Social Democrats as the latter were officially a Marxist party until 1959's Bad Godesberg conference. Adenauer was adamant to condemn the Social Democrats as the successors to Prussianism and National Socialism, according to the same anti-Marxist viewpoints. Adenauer's ideology was at odds with those in the CDU who attempted to unite socialism and Christianity. Adenauer spent years building up contacts and supporters in the CDU, and he attempted to impose his own ideology on the group with varying success.

Adenauer's leadership in the CDU of the British zone earned him a spot in the Parliamentary Council of 1948, which had been called into existence by the Western Allies to draft a constitution for Germany's three western zones. He was the chairman of this constitutional convention and rose from this position to being named as the first head of government after the new "Basic Law" was announced in May 1949.

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Awards

• Charlemagne Prize (Aachen, May 1954) – as a "powerful promoter of a united Europe"
• Man of the Year by the Time magazine (1953)