GermanyWho was Konrad Adenauer?
Konrad Adenauer was a Catholic Centre Party politician and Mayor of Cologne until the Nazis removed him in 1933. After the war he co-founded the CDU, which he hoped would unite Catholic and Protestant Germans, presided over the Parliamentary Council that drafted the Basic Law, and in 1949 became the Federal Republic's first chancellor, winning by a single vote. He governed until 1963, serving also as foreign minister from 1951 to 1955. The Nazis had dismissed him in 1933 after he refused to decorate Cologne for a visit by Hitler, and he was held in a Gestapo prison after the failed July 1944 plot.
Political views
Pursued integration with the West through the European Coal and Steel Community and the 1952 Germany Treaty, gaining full sovereignty in 1955.
Source: hdg.deSupported West German rearmament and NATO membership, while declining to recognize East Germany or the Oder-Neisse border.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgSigned the 1952 Luxembourg Agreement on restitution payments to Israel.
Source: hdg.deBacked the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and saw European unity as the path to lasting peace.
Source: european-union.europa.euSigned the 1963 treaty on Franco-German cooperation with Charles de Gaulle.
Source: hdg.deHoped the CDU would unite Catholic and Protestant Germans in one Christian democratic party.
Source: european-union.europa.euVisited Moscow in 1955, establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and securing the return of many German prisoners of war.
Source: hdg.de
Legacy
Supporters see Adenauer as the founder of a stable West German democracy, reconciliation with France and Israel, and one of the founding fathers of European integration. Critics, including contemporaries on the left, argued that his firm Western alignment deepened the division of Germany, and historians have criticized his government's amnesty policies and its employment of former Nazi officials. The Spiegel affair of 1962, which led five FDP ministers to resign, is often cited as the low point of his tenure.
In their words
In past decades and centuries, coal and steel have played a destructive role in conflicts between the peoples of Europe, having been used to manufacture weapons. Let us hope coal and steel will now unite them in thinking and acting together.