Why is konrad adenauer important

His wife died in and he suffered serious injuries in a car accident in In the same year, he was elected Mayor of Cologne. In , Adenauer married Auguste Zinsser — They would have four children together. An interesting light on his character is cast by the fact that he spent a lot of his spare time exploring new applications of technology and even registered patents.

Late in , British troops marched into the city, beginning a seven-year period of occupation. As a Centre Party politician, he occupied leading positions in the Rhenish provincial assembly and its executive committee; from onward, he was also a member of the Prussian State Council. He was re-elected president of the council in every subsequent year until Re-elected Lord Mayor in , he drew the hatred of the National Socialists, for whom he embodied the bastion of republicanism in Prussia.

After the local elections on 12 March, Adenauer was removed from the office of Lord Mayor and on 17 July he was dismissed from the municipal service. For a long time, he was threatened, banned and kept under surveillance. He took refuge in the Benedictine monastery of Maria Laach for a year in — In , he and his family moved to Neubabelsberg near Berlin, but he was placed under arrest for two days in June After being banned from the Cologne metropolitan region, he lived in Unkel for a year.

Adenauer avoided contact with German opposition groups. On 26 August , he was arrested and incarcerated in Cologne for three months. His wife was also kept under arrest for a while, which damaged her health and contributed to her subsequent death in Appointed Lord Mayor of Cologne by the American military authorities on 4 May , Adenauer did everything possible to rebuild the devastated city. His relationship with the Americans was good, but at the end of June, they handed over to the British occupation administration and tension developed.

On 6 October , he was dismissed by the British military governor. He was also forbidden to engage in political activity, so he resigned from the executive committee of the newly founded Christian Democratic Party a regional precursor of the CDU , to which he had been apponted on 2 September. Once the prohibition on his political activity was lifted, Adenauer resumed his political career in spectacular fashion, accumulating every leadership position in the CDU of North Rhine-Westphalia and the British zone.

With his election as president of the Parliamentary Council on 1 September , Adenauer assumed a key position in interstate supra-regional politics. When Konrad Adenauer was elected federal chancellor, sovereign authority over the new democracy remained with the three high commissioners of the Western Allied powers: the United States, Great Britain and France. The Federal Republic, which was largely dependent on foreign decision-making, virtually had the status of a protectorate, although for a long time it remained uncertain whether the Western powers would treat the newly created state as a bargaining chip if negotiations were held on the future of Germany as a whole.

Even in the Federal Republic, which was overwhelmed by masses of refugees and had yet to establish a credible identity after division and occupation rule, people were uncertain whether the reconstruction effort really would succeed. Against this background, it is astonishing how by 5 May , when almost unlimited sovereignty was restored, the externally controlled and impoverished German core state in the west had developed the most powerful economy in Europe and had become a democracy supported by broad majority of the population, as well as a powerful player in Western Europe.

In the general opinion, the credit for this was due primarily to Adenauer. Konrad Adenauer began his post-war career as a party leader and, to a great extent, he continued to see himself as a party leader after taking office as chancellor. The CDU, in the form that it acquired during the s, was both his work and his tool. It was mainly thanks to his skill as a leader that the CDU, which arose in in conjunction with the CSU, became the strongest political force in the Federal Republic, that it largely identified with West Germany as the core German state as well as with the corresponding political course set by Adenauer, and that it stabilised the Federal Republic by following a moderately conservative ideology that was business-friendly while balancing the interests of different parts of society.

Before German currency reform in , influential groups within the CDU were pushing for society and the economy to be developed along socialist lines to a greater or lesser extent.

Adenauer, in contrast, supported the principle of the market economy, in combination with social welfare and a system of checks and balances. He would often spend his holidays in Cadenabbia, Italy, where he would play boccia, the Italian version of bowles. These symbols of the politician's civil life offered a strong contrast to former German rulers, who preferred to be identified with tanks and spiked helmets. When I got to read this material, I immediately knew it provided unique insight into Konrad Adenauer's work and life in the late years of his chancellorship and the years that followed.

At the time, Paul Adenauer was living in his parents' house again and his diary covers the period from to , up until his father's death in These records are particularly interesting because they not only provide insight into the current events of the time; they also reveal how Adenauer felt personally, how he discussed personal things with his son.

It also provides the perspective of the son on his father. It offers new nuances for Adenauer researchers, as his son was with his father almost every day, so he knew him in a unique way that doesn't compare to what others knew of him. He apparently had little time for his children when they were young. This later relationship offers an interesting contrast.

Paul Adenauer, born in , was the second son from Konrad Adenauer's second marriage. During the first 10 years of his life, he didn't get to see his father much, as he was so deeply involved in regional and communal politics as the mayor of Cologne at the time. When he was dismissed from his office as mayor of Cologne in , it opened a new perspective on his father for the son, who visited him relatively frequently in Maria Laach [ Eds.

A Benedictine monastery where Konrad Adenauer stayed for several months during the war, fearing reprisals if he were to return Cologne]. Paul became aware of the spirituality of this convent, and it is during this period that he developed his desire to become a priest. His father was very skeptical about his son's wish.

Yet in the end he could not stop his son's calling to become a priest. You have mentioned that Konrad Adenauer was forced out of office in , as he had positioned himself against the Nazis. Could you tell us more about this period? After 16 years in office as the mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer was expelled by the Nazis when they took power in He lived deprived of public functions until He fought to claim a pension during this period.

He had a family to provide for and these existential problems made him suffer from depression. He is even said to have considered suicide. It was really a difficult period for him. Although he was not a member of the resistance, he always expressed his views against the Nazis. He also aimed to overcome nationalism in through an international approach. That was one of his motivations to push the European Union forward.

He particularly aimed to establish alliances with the West, with liberal parliamentary democracies, and to bring the Germans on the western track. On an international level, he searched to establish these connections because - beyond overcoming nationalism and promoting European integration - he also assumed that economically interdependent western democracies would no longer wage war against each other. Konrad Adenauer had a rough-edged personality, and he was well aware of the importance of his office.

I believe that when he became chancellor at the age of 73, he was the right man at the right time at the right place. He was ready to take responsibility for the reconstruction of Germany and its modernization. But he was also someone who wasn't always easy to deal with. British Broadcasting Corporation Home. Konrad Adenauer was born in Cologne on 5 January , the son of a lawyer. He studied at the universities of Freiburg, Munich and Bonn before himself becoming a lawyer.

He became a member of Cologne City Council, and in lord mayor of the city. He was elected to the Provincial Diet and, in , became president of the Prussian State Council, making him one of the most influential politicians in Germany. Adenauer was replaced as mayor of Cologne after the Nazis came to power, and was briefly imprisoned in He was arrested by the Gestapo in September and accused of involvement in the failed July bomb plot against Hitler.

The United States, which liberated Cologne, appointed Adenauer mayor again, but he was dismissed soon afterwards by the British military government. In , he was made president of the parliamentary council which drew up a constitution for the three western zones of Germany.