Katherine Young (1906–1993) · CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Konrad Adenauer

January 5, 1876 – April 19, 1967

German Christian Democrat who was the first chancellor of West Germany (1949-1963) and led the CDU from 1946 to 1966. Earlier Lord Mayor of Cologne, he anchored the Federal Republic in the Western alliance and European integration.

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Biography

Konrad Adenauer was born in Cologne in 1876. After studying law and politics at the universities of Freiburg, Munich and Bonn he graduated in 1900 and worked as a lawyer at the court in Cologne. A devout Catholic and a member of the Centre Party, he became Lord Mayor of Cologne in 1917 and held the post until the Nazis removed him in 1933; from 1921 he also presided over the Prussian State Council.

An opponent of Hitler, he spent the Nazi years largely in seclusion and was imprisoned after the failed July 1944 plot. The Americans reinstalled him as mayor in 1945, but the British military government dismissed him later that year. He helped build the new Christian Democratic Union, led it from 1946, and in 1948-49 presided over the Parliamentary Council.

After the first Bundestag election in 1949 he became the first chancellor of West Germany, serving until 1963 and acting as his own foreign minister from 1951 to 1955. He tied the Federal Republic to the West, winning early concessions from the Allies in the Petersberg Agreement, taking the country into NATO, backing European integration through the Treaty of Rome and sealing reconciliation with France in the 1963 Élysée Treaty. A 1955 visit to Moscow brought home the last German prisoners of war. Weakened by the 1962 Spiegel affair, he stepped down in 1963 at the age of 87 but stayed CDU chairman until 1966 and a member of the Bundestag until his death in 1967.