Konrad Adenauer

I

Introduction

Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967), first Chancellor of West Germany (1949-1963) and a central figure in the creation of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) political party.

II

Early Career

The son of a civil servant, Adenauer grew up in Rhöndorf, a village between Bonn and Cologne in the Rhineland, and studied law. As a member of the conservative Catholic Centre party, he was elected mayor of Cologne in 1917. During the Weimar Republic he also played a role in national German politics, and on two different occasions in the 1920s he was seen as a potential candidate for the office of chancellor. Because of his strong anti-Nazi views he was dismissed as mayor of Cologne in 1933, shortly after Hitler's rise to power. During the Third Reich he remained in Germany, but although he avoided political engagement, he was briefly arrested twice, first in 1934 and again after the failed assassination attempt against Hitler on July 20, 1944 (see July Plot).

III

Post-War Career

In May 1945 Adenauer was re-appointed mayor of Cologne, only to be dismissed by the British occupation authorities five months later. He became a co-founder of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a new political party that sought to unite the formerly divided Catholic and Protestant segments of Germany's non-socialist political spectrum. Adenauer soon rose to a dominant position in the party, being appointed its chairman in 1946, a post he continued to hold for the next two decades. In 1948 he was elected chairman of the Parliamentary Council, which drafted the Basic Law, the de facto constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany that was established in May 1949 out of the American, British, and French occupation zones.

In the first federal elections of the new West German state in August 1949, Adenauer led the CDU to a narrow victory and then managed to put together a non-socialist coalition with himself as chancellor, winning confirmation in the new parliament, the Bundestag, by only one vote. He was re-elected with a much wider majority in 1953, and in the next federal parliamentary election in 1957 he led the Christian Democrats to an absolute majority. By the elections of 1961 the party's support had begun to slip, but Adenauer still managed to form a new non-socialist coalition. He resigned as chancellor in autumn of 1963 and was succeeded by his economic minister Ludwig Erhard. Even after his resignation Adenauer remained active as a key CDU power-broker. He died in Rhöndorf in April 1967.

IV

Adenauer’s West Germany

A

Foreign Policy

Adenauer's main focus as Chancellor was foreign affairs, and from 1951 to 1955 he also occupied the post of foreign minister. Acutely aware of his country's troubled history and convinced of the severity of the threat posed by the Soviet Union, he regarded close links with the West as the only reliable guarantor of the Federal Republic's stability and security. He opposed any plans for reunification with the Communist-controlled German Democratic Republic that might have compromised these western commitments. In Adenauer's view, German national unity would ultimately come about through the collapse of Communism, as the system would prove unable to withstand the challenge posed by a strong West. Accordingly, Adenauer implemented a series of policies that linked the Federal Republic firmly to the Western bloc of the Cold War. Through complicated treaty arrangements he provided West Germany with extensive sovereignty and full membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the western defence alliance, by 1955. In 1957 he made his country one of the six founding members of the European Economic Community (EEC; see European Union) by signing the Treaty of Rome. He invested particularly heavily in reconciliation with France and the United States, and in 1952 he also committed the West German state to pay reparations to the state of Israel.