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Avoiding the extreme political movements that attracted so many of his generation, Adenauer was committed to bourgeois decency, diligence, order, Christian morals and values, and was dedicated to rooting out disorder, inefficiency, irrationality and political immorality. In 1909, he became Vice-Mayor of Cologne, an industrial metropolis with a population of 635,000 in 1914.
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A 1931 modernist painting with mayor Adenauer (in grey) together with artists and a boxer.Īs a devout Catholic, he joined the Centre Party ( German: Deutsche Zentrumspartei or just Zentrum) in 1906 and was elected to Cologne's city council in the same year. Heinrich Hoerle: Zeitgenossen (contemporaries). He graduated in 1900, and afterwards worked as a lawyer at the court in Cologne. He was a member of several Roman Catholic students' associations under the K.St.V. In 1896, at the age of 20, he was mustered for the Prussian army, but did not pass the physical exam due to chronic respiratory problems he had experienced since childhood.
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In 1894, he completed his Abitur and began studying law and politics at the universities of Freiburg, Munich and Bonn. One of the formative influences of 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. His siblings were August (1872–1952), Johannes (1873–1937), Lilli (1879–1950) and Elisabeth, who died shortly after birth c. Konrad Adenauer was born as the third of five children of Johann Konrad Adenauer (1833–1906) and his wife Helene (née Scharfenberg 1849–1919) in Cologne, Rhenish Prussia, on 5 January 1876. As of 2021, Adenauer remains the oldest-ever European head of government however, the governments of Tunisia and Malaysia had older leaders during the 2010s. According to British historian Roy Jenkins, he was "the oldest statesman ever to function in elected office" and the oldest head of government of a major country in modern European history. Although also a proponent of European unity, Adenauer pursued strong Atlanticist links with the United States as a counterbalance to France.Īdenauer, 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" ("the old one"). Adenauer made West Germany a member of NATO. He 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. Adenauer opposed recognition of the rival German Democratic Republic or the Oder-Neisse line. He 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 (the Bundeswehr) and intelligence services (the Bundesnachrichtendienst) in West Germany in 19. A shrewd and strategic politician, Adenauer was deeply committed to a Western-oriented foreign policy and restoring the position of West Germany on the world stage. He displayed a strong dedication to a broad vision of market-based liberal democracy and anti-communism. Īdenauer belied his age by his intense work habits and his uncanny political instinct. During his years in power, West Germany achieved democracy, stability, international respect and economic prosperity ( Wirtschaftswunder, German for "economic miracle"). In the early years of the Federal Republic, he switched focus from denazification to recovery, and led his country from the ruins of World War II to becoming a productive and prosperous nation that forged close relations with France, the United Kingdom and the United States. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a Christian democratic party he co-founded, which under his leadership became the dominant force in the country.Ī devout Roman Catholic and member of the Catholic Centre Party, Adenauer was a leading politician in the Weimar Republic, serving as Mayor of Cologne (1917–1933) and as president of the Prussian State Council (1922–1933). Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer ( German: ( listen) 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman who served as the first chancellor of West Germany from 1949 to 1963.