84 Facts About Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer was a German statesman who served as the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963.

Konrad Adenauer belied his age by his intense work habits and his uncanny political instinct.

Konrad Adenauer displayed a strong dedication to a broad vision of market-based liberal democracy and anti-communism.

Konrad Adenauer worked to restore the West German economy from the destruction 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 and intelligence services in West Germany in 1955 and 1956.

Konrad Adenauer 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.

Konrad 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".

Konrad Adenauer remained a Member of the Bundestag for Bonn until his death in 1967 at the age of 91.

Konrad Adenauer was born as the third of five children of Johann Konrad Adenauer and his wife Helene in Cologne, Rhenish Prussia, on 5 January 1876.

Konrad Adenauer's siblings were August, Johannes, Lilli and Elisabeth, who died shortly after birth c 1880.

One of the formative influences of Konrad 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.

Konrad Adenauer graduated in 1900, and afterwards worked as a lawyer at the court in Cologne.

Konrad Adenauer headed Cologne during World War I, working closely with the army to maximize the city's role as a rear base of supply and transportation for the Western Front.

Konrad Adenauer claimed this was the only way to prevent France from annexing the Rhineland.

Konrad Adenauer established a good working relationship with the British military authorities, using them to neutralize the workers' and soldiers' council that had become an alternative base of power for the city's left wing.

Konrad Adenauer was one of the leading advocates of "leaving the tower", which led to a dramatic clash between him and Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber at the 1922 Katholikentag, the annual meeting of German Catholics, where the Cardinal publicly admonished Konrad Adenauer for wanting to take the Zentrum "out of the tower".

Konrad Adenauer's plans came to naught when Stresemann, who was resolutely opposed to Konrad Adenauer's "grand design", which he viewed as borderline treason, was able to negotiate an end to the crisis on his own.

In 1926, the Zentrum suggested that Konrad Adenauer become Chancellor, an offer 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 Konrad Adenauer's leadership was that Gustav Stresemann stay on as Foreign Minister.

Konrad Adenauer, who disliked Stresemann as "too Prussian," rejected that condition, which marked the end of his chance of becoming Chancellor in 1926.

Konrad Adenauer thought that based on election returns, the Nazis should become part of the Prussian and Reich governments, even when he was already the target of intense personal attacks.

Konrad 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 Goring, the Prussian interior minister.

Konrad Adenauer stated that as Mayor he had violated Prussian laws in order to allow 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.

Konrad Adenauer fell ill and credited Eugen Zander, a former municipal worker in Cologne and a communist, with saving his life.

Konrad Adenauer was rearrested, but in the absence of any evidence against him, was released from prison at Brauweiler in November 1944.

Konrad Adenauer considered the Germans the political equals of the occupying Allies, a view that angered Templer.

In January 1946, Konrad Adenauer initiated a political meeting of the future CDU in the British zone in his role as doyen and was informally confirmed as its leader.

Konrad Adenauer viewed the most important battle in the postwar world as between the forces of Christianity and Marxism, especially Communism.

Konrad Adenauer's ideology was at odds with many in the CDU, who wished to unite socialism and Christianity.

Konrad Adenauer worked diligently at building up contacts and support in the CDU over the following years, and he sought with varying success to impose his particular ideology on the party.

Konrad 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.

Konrad Adenauer 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.

Konrad Adenauer favored integrating the Federal Republic with other Western states, especially France and the United States in order to fight the Cold War, even if the price of this was the continued division of Germany.

The Free Democrat Theodor Heuss was elected the first President of the Republic, and Konrad Adenauer was elected Chancellor on 15 September 1949 with the support of his own CDU, the Christian Social Union, the liberal Free Democratic Party, and the right-wing German Party.

Konrad Adenauer resisted the claims of Heidelberg, which had better communications and had survived the war in better condition; partly because the Nazis had been popular there before they came to power and partly, as he said, because the world would not take them seriously if they set up their state in a city that was the setting for The Student Prince, at the time a popular American operetta based on the drinking culture of German student fraternities.

Konrad Adenauer argued the continuation of denazification would "foster a growing and extreme nationalism" as the millions who supported the Nazi regime would find themselves excluded from German life forever.

Privately, Konrad Adenauer considered Germany's eastern provinces to be lost forever.

Konrad Adenauer was keen to see Britain join the European Coal and Steel Community as he believed the more free-market British would counterbalance the influence of the more dirigiste French, and to achieve that purpose he visited London in November 1951 to meet with Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Konrad Adenauer deeply disliked the "Pleven plan", but was forced to support it when it became clear that this plan was the only way the French would agree to German rearmament.

Konrad Adenauer kept Globke on as State Secretary as part of his strategy of integration.

In October 1950, Konrad Adenauer received the so-called "Himmerod memorandum" drafted by four former Wehrmacht generals at the Himmerod Abbey that linked freedom for German war criminals as the price of German rearmament, along with public statements from the Allies that the Wehrmacht committed no war crimes in World War II.

On 2 January 1951, Adenauer met with the American High Commissioner, John J McCloy, to argue that executing the Landsberg prisoners would ruin forever any effort at having the Federal Republic play its role in the Cold War.

Konrad Adenauer's intention was to switch government policy to reparations and compensation for the victims of Nazi rule.

Konrad Adenauer pressured his rehabilitated ex-Nazis by threatening that stepping out of line could trigger the reopening of individual de-Nazification prosecutions.

Contemporary critics accused Konrad Adenauer of cementing the division of Germany, sacrificing reunification and the recovery of territories lost in the westward shift of Poland and the Soviet Union with his determination to secure the Federal Republic to the West.

Konrad Adenauer recognized the obligation of the West German government to compensate Israel, as the main representative of the Jewish people, for The Holocaust.

On 27 March 1952, a package addressed to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer exploded in the Munich Police Headquarters, killing one Bavarian police officer, Karl Reichert.

Konrad Adenauer's goal was to put pressure on the German government and prevent the signing of the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany, which he vehemently opposed.

Konrad Adenauer then promised that Germany would never seek to have nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as well as capital ships, strategic bombers, long-range artillery, and guided missiles, although these promises were non-binding.

Additionally, Konrad Adenauer promised that the West German military would be under the operational control of NATO general staff, though ultimate control would rest with the West German government; and that above all he would never violate the strictly defensive NATO charter and invade East Germany to achieve German reunification.

In November 1954, Konrad Adenauer's lobbying efforts on behalf of the "Spandau Seven" finally bore fruit with the release of Konstantin von Neurath.

Konrad Adenauer congratulated Neurath on his release, sparking controversy all over the world.

Konrad Adenauer then traded with Kirkpatrick no early release for Admiral Donitz with an early release for Admiral Erich Raeder on medical grounds.

Konrad Adenauer's achievements include the establishment of a stable democracy in West Germany and a lasting reconciliation with France, culminating in the Elysee Treaty.

Konrad Adenauer firmly integrated the country with the emerging Euro-Atlantic community.

Konrad Adenauer is closely linked to the implementation of an enhanced pension system, which ensured unparalleled prosperity for retired people.

The Konrad Adenauer era witnessed a dramatic rise in the standard of living of average Germans, with real wages doubling between 1950 and 1963.

In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, Konrad Adenauer fully supported the Anglo-French-Israeli attack on Egypt, arguing to his Cabinet that Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was a pro-Soviet force that needed to be cut down to size.

Konrad Adenauer was appalled that the Americans had come out against the attack on Egypt alongside the Soviets, which led Konrad Adenauer to fear that the United States and Soviet Union would "carve up the world" with no thought for European interests.

At the height of the Suez crisis, Konrad Adenauer visited Paris to meet the French Premier Guy Mollet in a show of moral support for France.

The day before Konrad Adenauer arrived in Paris, the Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin sent the so-called "Bulganin letters" to the leaders of Britain, France, and Israel threatening nuclear strikes if they did not end the war against Egypt.

Konrad Adenauer was deeply shocked by the Soviet threat of nuclear strikes against Britain and France, and even more so by the apparent quiescent American response to the Soviet threat of nuclear annihilation against two of NATO's key members.

Konrad Adenauer reached an agreement for his "nuclear ambitions" with a NATO Military Committee in December 1956 that stipulated West German forces were to be "equipped for nuclear warfare".

In September 1958, Konrad Adenauer first met President Charles de Gaulle of France, who was to become a close friend and ally in pursuing Franco-German rapprochement.

Konrad Adenauer saw de Gaulle as a "rock" and the only foreign leader whom he could completely trust.

Konrad Adenauer was opposed to any sort of negotiations with the Soviets, arguing if only the West were to hang tough long enough, Khrushchev would back down.

Konrad Adenauer believed Macmillan to be a spineless "appeaser", who had made a secret deal with Khrushchev at the expense of the Federal Republic.

Konrad Adenauer tarnished his image when he announced he would run for the office of federal president in 1959, only to pull out when he discovered that he did not have political backing to strengthen the office of president and change the balance of power.

In 1961, Konrad Adenauer had his concerns about both the status of Berlin and US leadership confirmed, as the Soviets and East Germans built the Berlin Wall.

Konrad Adenauer doubted Kennedy's commitment to a free Berlin and a unified Germany and considered him undisciplined and naive.

The construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 and the sealing of borders by the East Germans made Konrad Adenauer's government look weak.

Konrad Adenauer chose to remain on the campaign trail, and made a disastrous misjudgement in a speech on 14 August 1961 in Regensburg when he engaged in a personal attack on the SPD Mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt, saying that Brandt's illegitimate birth had disqualified him from holding any sort of office.

Konrad Adenauer was forced to make two concessions: to relinquish the chancellorship before the end of the new term, his fourth, and to replace his foreign minister.

Erhard was in favor of allowing Britain to join to create a trans-Atlantic free trade zone, while Konrad Adenauer was for strengthening ties amongst the original founding six nations of West Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy.

Konrad Adenauer had not initiated the arrests, but initially defended the person responsible, Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss, and called the Spiegel memo "abyss of treason".

Konrad Adenauer managed to remain in office for almost another year, but the scandal increased the pressure already on him to fulfill his promise to resign before the end of the term.

Konrad Adenauer was not on good terms in his last years of power with his economics minister Ludwig Erhard and tried to block him from the chancellorship.

In January 1963, Konrad Adenauer privately supported General Charles de Gaulle's veto of Britain's attempt to join the European Economic Community, and was only prevented from saying so openly by the need to preserve unity in his cabinet as most of his ministers led by Erhard supported Britain's application.

Konrad Adenauer failed in his efforts to block Erhard as his successor, and in October 1963 he turned the office over to Erhard.

Konrad Adenauer remained chairman of the CDU until his resignation in December 1966.

Konrad Adenauer ensured a generally free and democratic society, except the banning of the communist party and the BND spying on SPD on behalf of the CDU, and laid the groundwork for Germany to re-enter the community of nations and to evolve as a dependable member of the Western world.

The British historian Frederick Taylor argued that in many ways the Konrad Adenauer era was a transition period in values and viewpoints from the authoritarianism that characterized Germany in the first half of the 20th century to the more democratic values that characterized the western half of Germany in the second half of the 20th century.

Konrad Adenauer died on 19 April 1967 in his family home at Rhondorf.

Konrad Adenauer is interred at the Waldfriedhof at Rhondorf.

In 2003, Konrad Adenauer was voted the 'greatest German of all time' in a contest called Unsere Besten run on German public-service television broadcaster ZDF in which more than three million votes were cast.

Konrad Adenauer was the main motive for one of the most recent and famous gold commemorative coins: the Belgian 3 pioneers of the European unification commemorative coin, minted in 2002.