Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Adenauer
Adenauer in 1952
Chancellor of West Germany[a]
In office
15 September 1949 – 16 October 1963[1]
President
Vice-Chancellor
Succeeded byLudwig Erhard
Minister for Foreign Affairs
In office
15 March 1951 – 6 June 1955
ChancellorHimself
Preceded byOffice established
Succeeded byHeinrich von Brentano
Leader of the Christian Democratic Union
In office
1 March 1946 – 23 March 1966
Bundestag Leader
Preceded byOffice established
Succeeded byLudwig Erhard
President of the Parliamentary Council
In office
1 September 1948 – 23 May 1949
Preceded byOffice established
Succeeded byOffice abolished
Lord Mayor of Cologne
In office
13 October 1917 – 13 March 1933
Preceded byMax Wallraf
Succeeded byGünter Riesen
In office
4 May 1945 – 6 October 1945
Preceded byWilli Suth
Succeeded byWilli Suth
President of the Prussian State Council
In office
7 May 1921 – 26 April 1933
Preceded byOffice established in 1921
Succeeded byRobert Ley
Member of the Bundestag
for Bonn
In office
7 September 1949 – 19 April 1967
Preceded byConstituency established
Succeeded byAlo Hauser
Personal details
Born
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer

(1876-01-05)5 January 1876
Cologne, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Died19 April 1967(1967-04-19) (aged 91)
Rhöndorf, West Germany
Resting placeWaldfriedhof, Rhöndorf, Bad Honnef
Political party
Spouses
  • Emma Weyer
    (m. 1904; died 1916)
  • Auguste Zinsser
    (m. 1919; died 1948)
Children8
Alma mater
Signature

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer[b] (5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman who served as the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a newly founded Christian-democratic party, which became the dominant force in the country under his leadership.

As a devout Roman Catholic, Adenauer was a leading politician of the Catholic Centre Party in the Weimar Republic, serving as Mayor of Cologne (1917–1933) and as president of the Prussian State Council. In the early years of the Federal Republic, he switched focus from denazification to recovery, and led his country to close relations with France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[2] During his years in power, he worked to restore the West German economy from the destruction of World War II to a central position in Europe with a market-based liberal democracy, stability, international respect and economic prosperity.[3]

Adenauer belied his age by his intense work habits and his uncanny political instinct. As a strong anti-communist, Adenauer was deeply committed to an Atlanticist foreign policy and restoring the position of West Germany on the world stage. Adenauer 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 refused the diplomatic recognition of the rival German Democratic Republic as an East-German state and the Oder–Neisse line as a post-war frontier to Poland. Under Adenauer, West Germany joined NATO. As a proponent of European unity, he signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Adenauer is claimed as one of the "Founding fathers of the European Union".


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  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference KAS_111063 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967)". Archived from the original on 26 December 2019. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  3. ^ Richard Hiscocks, The Adenauer era (1975) p. 290