Konrad Adenauer

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Konrad Adenauer (1952) Signature of Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (born January 5, 1876 in Cologne ; † April 19, 1967 in Rhöndorf ; actually Conrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer ) was the first Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963 and also the first Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1951 to 1955 .

The lawyer and member of the Catholic Center Party already completed a political career during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic : He was Lord Mayor of Cologne, belonged to the Prussian manor house and was President of the Prussian State Council . During the Nazi era , he was removed from office and was temporarily imprisoned.

Adenauer was one of the founders of the CDU , of which he was party chairman from 1950 to 1966. As President of the Parliamentary Council and as the first Federal Chancellor and Foreign Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany , he shaped an entire era . Already 73 years old when he took office , he stood up for Bonn as the federal capital, stood for a policy of ties to the West and European unification, and an active role for the Federal Republic in NATO . In terms of economic policy, Adenauer stood for the system of the social market economy . He pursued an anti-communist course at home as well as towards the Soviet Union and its satellite states .

Live and act

Origin and childhood

Konrad Adenauer (1896)
Konrad Adenauer (right) as Vice-Senior of the K.St.V. Arminia Bonn in the winter semester 1896/1897

Konrad Adenauer was the third of five children of the Secretary of Justice at the then Court of Appeal (today Higher Regional Court of Cologne ) and later chancellery Johann Konrad Adenauer (1833-1906) and his wife Helene, née Scharfenberg (1849-1919). His family was influenced by Roman Catholics . His siblings were August (1872–1952), Johannes (1873–1937), Lilli (1879–1950) and Elisabeth (1882, died three and a half months after birth).

Empire, Weimar Republic and the time of National Socialism

Study and start of career

Adenauer passed on March 5, 1894 the Abitur at the Apostelgymnasium in Cologne. After a 14-day banking apprenticeship at the Cologne bank Seligmann in April 1894, he enrolled in the same month at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau , then in Munich and Bonn for law and political science, which he graduated with the state examination in 1897.

In Freiburg he joined the Catholic student union K.St.V. Brisgovia Freiburg joined the Cartel Association of Catholic German Student Associations (KV), then joined the K.St.V. Saxonia in the KV in Munich, the K.St.V. Askania-Burgundia Berlin and in the KStV Arminia in the KV in Bonn, to which he remained closely connected throughout his life. He passed his first state examination in law in 1897 with the grade “good”, his second in 1901 with “sufficient”. He then became assessor at the Cologne District Court in 1902 . From 1903 to 1905 he was the representative of Judicial Councilor Hermann Kausen, a lawyer at the Cologne Higher Regional Court .

1906 Adenauer joined the Catholic Center Party in, was until 1933 a member of the Empire Board and was on March 7, 1906. Assistant Secretary selected the city of Cologne. On July 22, 1909, he was appointed First Deputy Mayor Max Wallraf , who was the uncle of his first wife. It is thanks to the open-mindedness and initiative of Adenauer that the Cologne Werkbund exhibition was opened in Cologne-Deutz in 1914 .

During the First World War , Adenauer was responsible for supplying the city population with food, which became increasingly difficult due to the British naval blockade. He began to hoard food and successfully introduced various substitute products, such as a "Cologne bread" he invented made from rice and corn flour , Jerusalem artichoke instead of potatoes, which were in short supply after a potato rot epidemic in 1916, and last but not least barley . He received a patent on May 2, 1915 for this “Rhenish black bread”. He also invented the so-called Cologne sausage using soy flour, which was patented in Great Britain in 1918 . He was able to mitigate the most threatening consequences of the turnip winter of 1916/17, but because of the unsatisfactory taste of the products he introduced, the Cologne population gave him the disrespectful nickname “Graupenauer”.

Lord Mayor of Cologne

Adenauer's house 1911 to 1933 in Cologne-Lindenthal , Max-Bruch-Str. 6 (monument)
The Adenauer couple at the Max-Bruch-Str. 6 (around 1915)
Kölner Notgeld (1920): Banknote 10 Pfg., Signed by Mayor Adenauer
Mayor Adenauer (center) when the cruiser Köln was launched in Wilhelmshaven (1928)

On September 18, 1917, the Cologne city council elected him unanimously for 12 years as the youngest mayor of the city of Cologne and thus at the same time as the youngest mayor of any major German city. He held the office that was officially assigned to him on October 21, 1917 by decree of the King of Prussia until 1933 and again for a few months in 1945.

On February 12, 1918, Adenauer was appointed to the Prussian mansion for life , which, however , was abolished that same year as a result of the November Revolution . In the twenties Adenauer was a member of the supervisory boards of Deutsche Bank , Deutsche Lufthansa , Rheinisch-Westfälische Elektrizitätswerk , Rhein AG for lignite mining and briquette factories ( Rheinbraun ) and twelve other companies, as well as the Reich Economic Council . In addition, Adenauer was an advocate of the idea of ​​colonialism from 1931 to 1933 as Vice President of the German Colonial Society.

From May 7, 1921 to 1933, he was President of the Prussian State Council with the support of the Center, the SPD and the DDP . In this function he was in a permanent political feud with the Social Democratic Prussian Prime Minister Otto Braun , which Adenauer carried to the State Court of Justice for the German Empire . While Braun saw a strong centralized Prussia as a bulwark of democracy, Adenauer, as a Rhinelander, was strongly opposed to the Prussian state. On February 1, 1919, he summed up the widespread anti-Prussian resentment in a speech , which he was also familiar with: According to this, Prussia was "the evil spirit of Europe, [...] the refuge of culturally hostile, aggressive militarism, " and it was the first to blame World War II , it was " ruled by a bellicose, unscrupulous military caste and Junkers ", and this Prussia "ruled Germany".

In the crisis years after the First World War in 1918/19 and 1929, efforts by the Center Party were aimed at a Rhineland that was to be autonomous from Prussia. Then and later the accusation was made that Adenauer was close to separatist efforts to separate the Rhineland from Germany.

During the Weimar Republic he was discussed several times (1921, 1926, 1928) as a candidate for the office of Reich Chancellor . This was the most promising for the Chancellor of the West and King of the Rhineland in 1926, but he was unable to enforce his political demands. An exchange of the secure and personally satisfying office in Cologne for the insecure Reich Chancellor did not appear to him as a gain.

In 1928 Adenauer speculated his fortune by buying Glanzstoff shares, the price of which soon fell. This he threatened the debt he had with the German bank to grow over the head, but he was of a so-called black funds from the CEO of Glanzstoffwerke AG, Fritz Blüthgen two blocks of shares with a nominal value of a total of 1.14 million Reichsmark to Make available, which he used through the mediation of his friend Louis Hagen to balance his account. In February 1931, the local press in Cologne reported on the mayor's financial difficulties, and the German Nationalists and National Socialists put them on the agenda in the city council. Adenauer had obtained a statement from Deutsche Bank beforehand, which denied the circulating "inaccurate rumors and allegations" by stating that his account was "completely balanced". A conflict of interest was that Adenauer was a member of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank until 1931.

After the war he succeeded in turning the old Prussian fortress ring into a green belt . During his tenure, the University of Cologne was reopened or reopened in 1919 , the trade fair in 1924 , the Musikhochschule in 1925 and the Cologne factory schools in 1926 (after he was unable to bring the Bauhaus art school to Cologne). In August 1932, Adenauer opened the first expressway in Germany known as the Autobahn , today's Autobahn 555, which leads from Cologne to Bonn . Fritz Schumacher , urban planner under Adenauer from 1920 to 1923, said of his commitment in times of inflation: "The more it seemed to collapse, the more energy Adenauer pushed ahead with the work."

Adenauer tried hard to attract foreign investors to Cologne. In 1927 he had already received an approval from Citroën for an automobile factory, but the project came to nothing. After intensive negotiations with the US automaker Ford , he succeeded in convincing the company to build a completely new plant in Cologne instead of expanding the existing smaller plants in Berlin. However, this plant was only able to stop the economic problems that Cologne, like the entire empire, encountered in the late phase of the Weimar Republic for a short time. During the construction of the Mülheim Bridge , which was technically unique at the time , he negotiated skillfully with the KPD ; otherwise this project could not be carried through in the Council.

During his time in Cologne, however, Adenauer was, with all his partial open-mindedness regarding town planning and the founding of universities, “the narrow-minded Catholic central politician for whom there was no unrestricted freedom of science and art as soon as it came to questions of the basic Catholic view” (Peter Koch , 1985). This went so far that he himself changed the text to Brecht's Threepenny Opera , banned Bartók's dance pantomime The Wonderful Mandarin , and had a painting by the expressionist Otto Dix removed from the Wallraf-Richartz Museum . In 1922 he was President of the 62nd German Catholic Convention in Munich .

In 1931 there was the first major confrontation with the National Socialists when they flagged the Rhine bridges with swastika flags in a nightly action. Adenauer had - according to his own account later - the flags removed immediately with reference to the fact that the bridges were public structures. As a result, he came into the sights of the SA , which even publicly raised money for Adenauer's ball . In reality, however, Adenauer had made an agreement with the local NSDAP district leadership to remove their flag from the city's own bridge - because it was politically neutral terrain - and to raise it again in front of the exhibition hall, which also belongs to the city. Hitler was supposed to speak there. Adenauer therefore had to calm his angry party friends.

Even after the so-called Preussenschlag of 1932, when Chancellor Franz von Papen deposed the Prussian state government, Adenauer remained a member of the three-man college .

time of the nationalsocialism

After the seizure of power

On February 18, 1933, Adenauer again banned all flag decorations when Hitler visited. After Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists came to power, the Center Party in Cologne was defeated in the local elections of March 12, 1933. On March 13, 1933, the NSDAP removed Adenauer, who among other things had refused to shake hands with a National Socialist leader during his visit to Cologne as Lord Mayor and a little later as President of the Prussian State Council. Shortly afterwards, on March 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was made an honorary citizen of the city of Cologne by a council resolution.

Without his official apartment in Berlin and threatened by his National Socialist opponents in Cologne, who had demanded “Adenauer, to the Wall!” On campaign posters and accused him of wrongdoing, Adenauer asked a former school friend for help: the abbot of Maria Laach Abbey , Ildefons Herwegen , took Adenauer temporarily stayed in the abbey on April 26, 1933 as "Brother Konrad". From here the former mayor carried out the criminal proceedings that he had applied for against himself and stayed until he moved into a house in the Potsdam suburb of Neubabelsberg in April 1934 . There he was arrested for two days on June 30, 1934 in connection with the Röhm Putsch .

In order to maintain his pension entitlement, Adenauer referred in a ten-page letter dated August 10, 1934 to the Prussian Interior Minister in Berlin, to his previous behavior towards the Nazi movement: He had "always treated the NSDAP correctly" and, for example, "for years contrary to the former By order of the Prussian Interior Minister of the NSDAP, she made the municipal sports fields available and allowed her to hoist her swastika flags on the municipal flagpoles at their events ”. Furthermore, he had opposed an order from the Prussian State Ministry to name National Socialist officials “for the purpose of disciplining”, “because (he) considered them to be unjustified and unjust”. In this letter he also said that he had declared in 1932 "that according to one opinion such a large party as the NSDAP must necessarily be represented in a leading position in the government".

At the end of 1932, Adenauer had spoken out in favor of the formation of a government by the Center and the National Socialists in Prussia. On June 29, 1933, five months after Hitler was appointed Chancellor, he wrote in a letter: “I don't cry tears after the center; it has failed, has not been filled with a new spirit in time in the past few years. ME is our only salvation a monarch, a Hohenzoller [,] or even Hitler, if you like, first Reich President for life, then the next stage comes. This would bring the movement into calmer waters. ”He feared that“ if the revolutionary state does not transition into the period of new calm and new construction in time, then catastrophe will come ”.

In a memo from the Reich and Prussian Ministry of the Interior dated November 8, 1934, written in response to Adenauer's request, Adenauer is "one of those personalities [counted] who have emerged as the bearers of the past political system in a particularly pronounced way". Minister Wilhelm Frick (NSDAP) rejected the petition on the same day.

From 1933 onwards, Adenauer received a reduced pension of around 1000 Reichsmarks per month. In the years after 1934 he often changed his place of residence and hid temporarily, in January 1935 a. a. for a short time also in the Abbey Manufacture . So he lived as a pensioner until 1945.

After July 20, 1944

After the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944 , Adenauer was arrested on August 23 as part of the Grid Action and after a stopover at the Bonn Gestapo he was taken to the labor education camp in the Cologne exhibition center. There were no concrete suspicions against him. His further fate is seen differently in literature. According to an earlier account, the Cologne communist Eugen Zander , who was responsible for the new prisoners as a Kapo and who had discovered Adenauer's name in the prisoner register with the note “ return undesirable ”, recommended that Adenauer make himself sick, whereupon Adenauer with a medically certified “ pernicious one” Anemia ”received a referral to the Cologne-Hohenlind hospital, from where he fled. He was later caught again, but released early on November 26, 1944 from the Brauweiler prison. Henning Köhler contradicts this version, which first appeared in Paul Weymar's Adenauer biography from 1955, with the thesis that the National Socialists hardly had any such consideration for the health of a prisoner whose liquidation they wanted. The Cologne-Deutz camp, which was not under the control of the SS, was more of a "jolly prison".

Federal political career and chancellorship

After the end of the war

Adenauer was appointed Lord Mayor of Cologne by the US occupation forces on May 4, 1945, but was dismissed from this office on October 6, 1945 for alleged failure to fulfill his duties by the British military governor of the province of North Rhine , John Ashworth Barraclough , as he did not resign vigorously enough to take care of the food supply. He had to leave Cologne within eight days and was not allowed to participate in party politics from October 6 to December 4, 1945.

In a letter in February 1946, Adenauer wrote to a Catholic clergyman in Bonn:

“In my opinion, the German people and the bishops and the clergy bear great responsibility for the events in the concentration camps. It is true that afterwards there might not be much more to do. The guilt lies earlier. The German people, including the bishops and clergy for the most part, responded to the National Socialist agitation . Almost without resistance, it was able to catch up with enthusiasm in part. That is his fault. "

Parliamentary Council

On August 31, 1945, Adenauer joined the Christian Democratic Party (CDP). The CDP was one of the four predecessor regional parties of the CDU in the individual occupation zones. At the first zone committee meeting on 22./23. On January 1st, 1946 in Herford , as an elder, he took over the leadership of the CDU in the British zone, which only existed as a union since December 16, 1945. On February 5, 1946, the election of the first chairman of the CDU Rhineland followed in Krefeld- Uerdingen . With this political backing, at the second meeting of the CDU zone committee on March 1, 1946 in Neheim-Hüsten, he finally asserted himself as chairman against the Westphalian state chairman Friedrich Holzapfel . With the Neheim-Hüstener program, Adenauer was instrumental in formulating the first party program for the zone.

His declaration of membership (in the Union) took place on 1 June 1946, the county party of the CDU for the victory circle . In October 1946 he became parliamentary group leader of the CDU in the first state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia , which was appointed by the British occupying power.

He used the following years to expand his house power within the party, so that in 1948 he became President of the Parliamentary Council , which deliberated on the constitution for a German western state. Adenauer, who was not nearly as well known outside the British zone as Kurt Schumacher (SPD) or Ludwig Erhard (non-party), used the actually powerless office as a platform; The SPD had secured the chairmanship of the main committee, which was considered much more important , for her husband, Carlo Schmid . But this worked more in secret, while Adenauer appeared in public as a kind of representative of the Germans (also towards the Allies). According to Carlo Schmid, he became “the first man of the state to be created before it existed.” The same was true in his party, which Adenauer led in the British zone from 1946 and as federal chairman from 1950 when the CDU was also founded at the federal level . He held this post until 1966.

That Adenauer, as a resident of Rhöndorf - within sight of Bonn - is said to have played a key role in the fact that in 1949 Bonn became the federal capital instead of Frankfurt am Main - Frankfurt was not only governed by the SPD and heavily destroyed, but above all the seat of the US military governor - is today largely dismissed as a shortening of the decision-making process. In fact, the initiative to bring the Parliamentary Council to Bonn came from the Düsseldorf ministerial official Hermann Wandersleb . This was an important preliminary decision. It was not until its president, from September 1948, that Adenauer worked with considerable skill to ensure that it also became the capital.

Adenauer renounces West Berlin as a federal state

Konrad Adenauer intervened in 1949 through Johann Jacob Kindt-Kiefer with the French Prime Minister Georges Bidault to prevent West Berlin from becoming a federal state . This did not give the Berlin MPs full voting rights in the Bundestag . Kindt-Kiefer witnessed a conversation between Adenauer and Bidault:

“It was about the way in which France could provide aid to Adenauer and his party. [...] Adenauer suggested that France should advocate that West Berlin should not be annexed to the Federal Republic because otherwise there would be the danger of a social democratic preponderance in West Germany ... "

- Johann Jacob Kindt-Kiefer

The Basic Law and the law on federal elections including the Berlin clause were adopted by the Parliamentary Council in 1949 .

Member of the Bundestag

Adenauer's study in Palais Schaumburg (photo from 1950)

In the first federal election on August 14, 1949 , Konrad Adenauer was directly elected for the constituency of Bonn city and country with 54.9 percent of the vote . He represented this until his death in 1967 and was directly re-elected in the four other federal elections with majorities of up to 68.8 percent. At 91 years and 104 days, he was the oldest member of the Bundestag in Bonn.

On September 1, 1949, Adenauer was elected chairman of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group. Within the CDU, he pushed through the formation of a bourgeois coalition of the CDU / CSU, FDP and DP , because these bourgeois parties had a narrow majority with a total of 208 of the 402 voting seats in the Bundestag. However, in view of the new beginning of the state, parts of the CDU preferred a grand coalition . Adenauer, however, considered the small coalition to be indispensable in order to implement his ideas of a social market economy and a comprehensive link to the West. He was able to fall back on the good cooperation of the parties in the economic council of the British-American bizone . In contrast, the SPD tended towards the planned economy and also strived for a neutral Germany in order to facilitate reunification in this way. The planned economy also had supporters within the CDU ; a few years earlier, a majority of the CDU North Rhine-Westphalia had still implemented the Ahlen program .

At the Rhöndorf Conference of August 21, 1949, however, Adenauer was able to enforce his position and finally ensure that he was the candidate for chancellor of the Union parties . The agreements subsequently made between the CDU / CSU, FDP and DP to form a federal government under his leadership also included the election of FDP Chairman Theodor Heuss as Federal President on September 12, 1949, supported by the coalition parties .

Election to the Federal Chancellor

On September 15, 1949, the Bundestag elected Adenauer as the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany with the smallest possible majority of 202 of the 402 members of the House entitled to vote and 142 votes against. Two FDP MPs were not present. According to later statements, five other MPs from the coalition parties had not voted for him, but he had received the vote of the Bavarian Party MP Johann Wartner and also voted for himself. The chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, Kurt Schumacher , became the first opposition leader .

Federal President Theodor Heuss presented Adenauer with the certificate of appointment on September 16, 1949. Adenauer's first government declaration followed on September 20 and his first visit to the Allied High Commissioners on September 21 - the same day the occupation statute came into force.

Adenauer was re-elected as Chancellor three times after the federal elections in 1953 , 1957 and 1961 . The Bundestag election result of 1957 was unique in West German history: the CDU / CSU won an absolute majority of the votes and seats in the Bundestag and could have governed without a coalition partner. Nevertheless, Adenauer formed a coalition government with the DP (until July 1960).

Policy of integration with the West

Konrad Adenauer with Hermann Josef Abs on the state visit of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1956)

For Adenauer, foreign policy was the determining factor in his political strategy. From 1951 to 1955 he took on the office of Federal Chancellor and Foreign Minister , which - apart from a two-week interlude by Helmut Schmidt after the FDP left the federal government in 1982 - was not repeated. With the entry into force of the Paris Treaties on May 5, 1955 and the abolition of the occupation status, the Federal Republic became a largely sovereign state domestically, but was still subject to the four-power responsibility. Germany only achieved full sovereignty in 1990 through German reunification and the two-plus-four treaty .

Adenauer's strategy was close ties to the Western European countries ( magnet theory ), economic ties with France and Belgium and, in particular, a good political relationship with the USA. Adenauer stood up for the United Europe , because from his point of view only this could guarantee a long-term peace. He drew on his political ideas from the Weimar Republic as well as on the experiences he had made with National Socialism.

Economically, already before 1949 by the left Marshall Plan initiated process by the Coal and Steel Community , the European Economic Community and Euratom on. Adenauer put his trust in the banker Hermann Josef Abs , who had influence on the distribution of the Marshall Plan funds. Occasionally he asked Abs to come to the cabinet table as a guest, and he regularly invited him to his Sunday Rhöndorf coffee table, where he had his advisors meet. He appointed him negotiator for the London Debt Conference . Germany experienced a rise with the economic miracle and integrated itself into the European market. Economic integration led to the European unification processes on which today's European Union is based.

Adenauer and de Gaulle, September 1958 in Bonn

Adenauer also managed to improve the difficult relationship with France, the former enemy of the war. At the London Nine Powers Conference in 1954, at which the Federal Republic of Germany's accession to NATO was being prepared, Adenauer evidently considered the French Prime Minister Pierre Mendès France to be a Soviet agent of influence. Given the deep mistrust with which the Germans and French met at that time, his good personal relationship with the President of the French Republic, Charles de Gaulle , was later of great importance. At first Adenauer was rather skeptical: When de Gaulle became president in 1958, Adenauer saw him as a kind of Hindenburg, a former general who interfered in politics with negative consequences.

What was less well known to the public was that Adenauer was working towards Germany's participation in a European army as early as 1949. In 1950, Interior Minister Gustav Heinemann resigned (successor was Robert Lehr (CDU)), mainly because this policy had also been kept secret from Heinemann. In April 1950, after the establishment of a barracked People's Police in the GDR , Adenauer demanded the establishment of a mobile police force at federal level in the Federal Republic, which also took place in 1951 with the establishment of the Federal Border Guard . The public did not find out until years later that as early as 1957 he approved a project to jointly develop an atomic bomb with France and Italy . When Charles de Gaulle came to power , the project became obsolete, as France then steered towards its own project, the Force de frappe .

Military integration was not achieved, as Adenauer hoped, through an independent European Defense Community (EVG), but through the admission of the Federal Republic into NATO (1955).

Adenauer and the Italian Prime Minister Antonio Segni in August 1959

His policy of resolute ties to the West, which accepted or even desired rearmament of the Federal Republic, but seemed to move Germany's reunification into the distant future, earned him severe criticism. So he was in the context of the Bundestag debate on 24./25. November 1949 on the Petersberg Agreement and the question of whether the Federal Republic, as demanded by Adenauer, should send representatives to the International Ruhr Authority , disparaged by SPD chairman Kurt Schumacher with the interjection "The Federal Chancellor of the Allies!" In the rearmament discussion of the early 1950s, Social Democrats feared that this would squander all chances of German unity soon. The party historian Kurt Klotzbach writes of an “almost manic fixation on the German reunification goal”. The Without Me movement organized demonstrations against rearmament.

On January 23, 1958, Gustav Heinemann (now SPD) and the former Justice Minister Thomas Dehler ( FDP ) settled in front of the Bundestag with Adenauer's policy: Dehler accused the Federal Chancellor of not having “seriously strived for” reunification The practical constraints of the Cold War basically affect politics, "the actual decisions are made by parliament, including the cabinet". Therefore he is ashamed of not having had the courage to resign like Heinemann. In his speech, Adenauer accused him of having dismissed the Stalin notes as "irrelevant", although they had met with "broad approval" even within his own party. The speeches were broadcast directly and had an audience of millions, which aroused considerable concern in the CDU leadership. Group chairman Heinrich Krone already saw a "new stab in the back legend , Adenauer did not want reunification". With a view to the upcoming election campaign, he advised that national issues should be emphasized much more than before. Schwarz, on the other hand, points out that one must always take into account the historical context of Adenauer's positions:

“Certainly there are still individual authors who proceed from the assumption that the alleged reunification policy of this Federal Chancellor was one big lie, and that he was mainly to blame for the suffering of the division. If you approach Adenauer with this certainty, you will always find documents that confirm this suspicion, provided you only take care to ignore the historical context. "

- Hans-Peter Schwarz

Adenauer also worked hard to achieve reconciliation with the Jews . An initial plan developed together with Hermann Josef Abs was rejected again. It would have considered a donation of ten million DM to be sufficient and would have included the construction of a hospital in Israel. The Luxembourg Agreement concluded in 1952 with the newly founded State of Israel was a first gesture of apology. Against the opposition of his finance minister, Adenauer asked for compensation of 3.45 billion DM (in today's purchasing power 8.22 billion euros) - 3000 DM for every Israeli refugee - to Israel, which consisted primarily of deliveries of goods that came from German production. In 1960, in New York , he met Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion . After establishing diplomatic relations with Israel in 1965, he was the first high-ranking German politician to travel to Israel after World War II.

Assassination attempt on Adenauer

CDU election campaign poster (1953)

On March 27, 1952, a package addressed to Federal Chancellor Adenauer exploded in the Munich police headquarters, killing a police officer. Since the investigation led to splinter groups of the Jewish partisan and underground organization Irgun , which was dissolved in 1948 , the federal government decided to keep the evidence secret so as not to provoke anti-Semitic reactions in public; five suspects were deported to Israel. Israel's Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion welcomed this decision and is said to have shown Adenauer's lifelong commitment to it. In order not to put additional strain on the bilateral relations that were gradually emerging, the German authorities closed the investigation. The allegedly unsuccessful reparations policy of the federal government towards Israel was later given as the reason for the attack.

Germany policy and relationship to the Soviet Union

The close policy of ties to the West inevitably led to a conflict with the Soviet Union under the circumstances at the time. The ideological contradictions that emerged as a result of the Second World War led to the division of Europe and the world into two blocs: the Eastern bloc under the then undisputed leadership of the Soviet Union and the western camp under the leadership of the USA .

Although he publicly recognized that there was justified distrust of Germany in all Eastern European countries after the Second World War, Adenauer refused to respond to the political demands of the Eastern Bloc countries. For him, reunification was only possible and should only be strived for if it were accompanied by free, democratic elections. For him, the course of strength, at least according to public statements, led in the long term to reunification under free conditions. For him, cooperation with the communist GDR was only possible in very small steps. At the time , he did not give anything to Germany-wide political concepts that were common at the time and that provided for neutrality and a “third way” between the western and eastern systems in Germany as a whole . After the "war that was broken by the Germans", Germany had to earn the trust of the free world again and was not allowed to engage in rocking politics. Adenauer therefore rejected the Stalin Notes in 1952 , in which Stalin proposed reunification and free elections on the condition of the neutrality of a united Germany.

Conversations in Moscow 1955: in the foreground Bulganin , Malenkow and Khrustschow with Adenauer, in the background Schmid , Kiesinger and Molotow

After the Soviet Union had officially ended the state of war with Germany in January 1955, Adenauer traveled with a large delegation to Moscow in September 1955 and achieved the release of the last 9,626 German prisoners of war from the Second World War, who were still convicted as "war criminals" in Soviet captivity. When Adenauer's death (1967) was asked in a survey about his greatest achievement, the so-called homecoming of the ten thousand was mentioned most frequently. At the same time he agreed on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two states. A few days after his return to Bonn, Adenauer enforced the Hallstein Doctrine , which laid down the Federal Republic's claim to sole representation for Germany and blocked the establishment of diplomatic relations with the other Eastern Bloc states up to Willy Brandt's " Ostpolitik ". Adenauer tried his first approach to Ostpolitik in March 1958: without paying any attention to the public, he sounded out to Ambassador Andrei Andrejewitsch Smirnow whether the Soviet Union could grant the GDR the status of Austria, i.e. free self-determination with internationally guaranteed neutrality. There was no question of the possibility of reunification, Adenauer emphasized that he was not viewing the matter from the standpoint of German nationalism . Obviously he was ready to put the reunification requirement of the Basic Law aside if only the living conditions of the GDR citizens could be improved. The attempt was unsuccessful.

In Adenauer's political thinking, the expansionist character of the policy of the Soviet Union, which he liked to describe in his speeches as “Soviet Russia” or “Moscow”, was a constant: “Even today, Moscow's goal is, without any restrictions, the conquest of the world and domination of communism. ”He later differentiated this view of things when he expressed the opinion at his last CDU federal party congress in March 1966,“ […] that the Soviet Union has joined the ranks of peoples who want peace. ”Reason for this was the successful Soviet mediation in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965/1966. With this statement, Adenauer irritated many of his followers.

Economic and social policy

Adenauer in the Bundestag (1955)

After the fundamental decision in favor of the social market economy had been made, Adenauer left the economic and social policy largely to his specialist ministers, in particular the Federal Minister of Economics Ludwig Erhard . He himself concentrated on foreign policy. "Everything depends on foreign policy, the development of foreign policy, the whole economy depends, what we do in the social field," he said.

However, compared to Erhard, Adenauer was much more open to business associations and unions. He also got involved in social policy: in 1957, for example, Adenauer pushed through - against the advice of Ludwig Erhard - to convert the statutory pension insurance to pay-as-you-go financing . This made it possible to increase the pensions considerably once and from then on to increase them every year in proportion to the development of gross wages. The formerly everyday poverty in old age as a result of rising consumer prices and stagnating pensions disappeared for decades. Adenauer is said to have disregarded warnings from his economics minister with the reference “People always have children”. Proponents of the pay-as-you-go system also invoked the so-called Mackenroth theorem , according to which pensions must always be financed from current national income.

In addition to his commitment to the pay-as-you-go system, Adenauer also campaigned to socially absorb the consequences of the war. This led to laws on the care of war victims and survivors, integration laws for displaced persons and refugees and the so-called equalization of burdens . In addition, Adenauer advocated letting as many people as possible participate in the economic miracle and its successes. This led to the Works Constitution Act (including co-determination ), the Mining and Co-Determination Act , the partial privatization of companies such as Preussag and Volkswagen with so-called people's shares and the Asset Creation Act .

Social policy

Poster for the 1957 Bundestag election

Foreign policy was the most controversial during Adenauer's tenure. In retrospect, however, he is often criticized for his socio-political measures. While he succeeded in defining the main features of the Federal Republic in terms of foreign policy until reunification, Adenauer tried to pursue a conservative policy from the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. The slogan “ No experiments ”, actually only related to foreign policy, became the characterizing term of Adenauer's policy in the public eye.

Adenauer relied on a confrontational course towards the communists, but also the social democrats. According to his rhetoric, the Social Democrats were ideologically closely related to the Communists; he was particularly suspicious of Herbert Wehner . During his tenure in 1950, the so-called Adenauer decree on the constitutional loyalty of public employees and the KPD ban applied for by the Federal Government and pronounced by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956 fell , a few years after the ban on the NSDAP's successor, the Socialist Reich Party (SRP). The Federal Center for Homeland Service , the forerunner of the Federal Center for Political Education , founded in 1952 , pursued a strictly anti-communist course during the Cold War .

While Adenauer tried vehemently to prevent any approach of communist politics, including criminal law, in case of doubt, he pursued the strategy of integrating former officials of the Nazi state , provided they committed themselves to the Federal Republic and democracy. Most symbolically, this happened with Hans Globke . The former editor of the Commentary on the Nuremberg Race Laws and the person primarily responsible for the anti-Semitic National Socialist Name Change Ordinance , headed the Federal Chancellery for Adenauer since October 1953 . Adenauer did not allow himself to be dissuaded by all the criticism from keeping him the position. The Gehlen organization , whose boss and numerous employees had also already worked in similar tasks for the Nazi regime, went largely unchanged into the Federal Intelligence Service . Likewise in 1953 Adenauer appointed Theodor Oberländer as Minister for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims. But it was even more effective that FDP Justice Minister Thomas Dehler, with Adenauer's consent, took over many lawyers from the National Socialist era in the newly established Ministry of Justice and the jurisdiction . Adenauer spoke out in favor of an end to denazification. He, who had repeatedly emphasized that one had to fall back on experienced diplomats when setting up the Foreign Ministry, said in the Bundestag debate on the committee report in October 1952, among other things:

We should put an end to the Nazi smell now, because, you can count on it, when we start, you don't know where it ends. "

In the early years of the Adenauer government, extensive revisions of the war crimes trials of the Allies took place immediately after the Second World War and an impunity law for those under the Nazi regime.

Adenauer and the Catholic Church

Adenauer with Cardinal Joseph Wendel (right) and Bishop Karl Christian Weber at the Katholikentag in Cologne (1956)

Since Adenauer was an avowed and practicing Catholic, many contemporaries suspected that his politics were influenced by the Church. As far as ideological matters were concerned, he tried to represent views that were supported by believing Christians of both denominations. Adenauer succeeded in creating a party with Christian principles in Germany, which was traditionally divided among confessionals, and was eligible for both denominations. At the end of his reign, denominational motives played only a minor role in the elections.

Nevertheless, it was often assumed that he did not want reunification in order to prevent a Protestant majority or one of the Social Democrats. Already in 1946 he had warned the CDU Zone Committee that if the Soviet-occupied zone were to be politically and economically equal, the Social Democrats would get a majority in elections.

Adenauer as an election campaigner

Konrad Adenauer was considered by his supporters to be an unsurpassable campaigner. For him, the next election began the day after the election. In addition to his sense of important topics, he was characterized by quick-wittedness and an unusual ability for his age. Despite his poor health, which he had previously assumed - he had been exempted from military service because of his weak constitution, later he did not want to have life insurance for the same reason and his environment had to adapt to two serious flu illnesses of their boss every year - he was able to attend several events Deny the day, take care of government affairs on the side, discuss with journalists until late at night and start the next day in full freshness. However, this is partly contradicted by reports that since a car accident in 1933 he could no longer sleep without pills and often needed sleep at noon. As Chancellor, he occasionally took the stimulant pervitin . Heart and blood vessels were remarkably healthy, which was also due to the fact that Adenauer did not smoke and with a height of 186 cm, which was unusual for the time, weighed less than 70 kilos.

The then 73-year-old Adenauer had already quoted his doctor Paul Martini at the Rhöndorf Conference in 1949 , who said that Adenauer could remain Chancellor for another year or two without any health problems. In fact, he achieved a term of 14 years, which was only exceeded by Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel .

Late time as Federal Chancellor

Adenauer and Erhard (1956)
Adenauer with John F. Kennedy (1963)

In 1959, Adenauer got involved as a candidate for the office of Federal President , after he had previously tried in vain to praise Ludwig Erhard for this post. The office was up for grabs because, according to the Basic Law, re-election was only possible once and Theodor Heuss ' second term ended on September 12, 1959. Adenauer had already considered the plan to move to the Villa Hammerschmidt in 1957 and intended, as Federal President, to continue to actively influence government policy, i.e. to noticeably strengthen the political weight of the office of the Federal President.

After a few weeks, Adenauer withdrew his candidacy after both Heuss and influential parliamentarians had made their resistance to Adenauer's intention to change the weighting of power in the political system clear. In addition, Adenauer wanted to prevent Erhard's election as Federal Chancellor. Adenauer justified his renouncement of the candidacy on June 5, 1959 by saying that the foreign policy situation had deteriorated in the meantime and that with this development he could not justify leaving his current post as Federal Chancellor. The previous Minister of Agriculture Heinrich Lübke was elected Federal President on July 1, 1959 .

He was not uninvolved in the long-running dispute over his successor. In his opinion, Erhard had neither enough leadership qualities nor house power in the CDU. Adenauer did nothing to build a better candidate. Adenauer's interim favorites, Federal Ministers Franz Etzel , Heinrich Krone and Gerhard Schröder , never got enough support from him to have become really serious challengers to the popular Erhard.

Adenauer's attempt to set up federally controlled television in Germany to compete with the state-controlled ARD failed in February 1961 after the Federal Constitutional Court's first broadcast judgment . In the time of the election campaign for parliamentary elections in 1961 , the construction fell Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961. In its decision until two weeks to visit Berlin later, he earned a lack of understanding, as well as with his strong criticism of the Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt .

After the Union parties had lost their absolute majority in this election, he succeeded in being re-elected Chancellor with the help of the FDP, which had spoken out in favor of his replacement during the election campaign, as well as parts of the CDU / CSU. In return, he promised to step down in good time before the next election in order to make room for a successor - he refused to give a binding date. After the Spiegel affair in 1962, which brought down Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss because of his actions, he decided on the fall of 1963.

Floor slab in front of Reims Cathedral on the occasion of July 8, 1962

Another long-term outcome of Adenauer's policy was reconciliation with France . In July 1962, Adenauer and De Gaulle took part in a symbolic reconciliation mass in Reims Cathedral . A high point in his last term in office was the conclusion of the Élysée Treaty between the French Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany in January 1963 . With this agreement, Adenauer and De Gaulle officially sealed the end of the so-called “ hereditary enmity ” between the two countries. Both governments agreed on close cooperation between the two countries with regular government consultations.

His last years as Chancellor were overshadowed by his persistent struggle to remain in office as long as possible and by the - in vain - attempt to prevent Ludwig Erhard from being elected as successor. During this time he was often referred to as "the old man".

Adenauer's farewell by the Bundeswehr took place on October 12, 1963 at the Wunstorf air base. President of the Bundestag Eugen Gerstenmaier said on October 15, 1963, the last day of his official chancellorship, in tribute to the outgoing Chancellor: "Konrad Adenauer did a great job for the fatherland."

Late years and death

At the federal party conference in Düsseldorf in 1965
Funeral service for Konrad Adenauer, April 25, 1967
Grave in the forest cemetery in Rhöndorf (2007)

Even after his retirement from the Chancellery, Adenauer, who remained CDU chairman until 1966 and a member of the Bundestag until his death, criticized his unloved successor. He intervened in the political process through newspaper articles, speeches and interviews and made positive statements about a possible grand coalition before the 1965 federal election . Shortly before his death, he experienced Erhard's failure as Federal Chancellor - “The one is wech!” Was his comment. After the start of the grand coalition on December 1, 1966 under Kurt Georg Kiesinger , Adenauer took the view that diplomatic relations with states in Eastern Europe were possible, which meant a fundamental departure from the Hallstein doctrine . Even from his deathbed, he supported Kiesinger with advice. Furthermore, he undertook several internationally recognized trips abroad.

In the years following his chancellorship, Adenauer wrote his memoirs , which appeared in several volumes, on his political activities after 1945, some of which were translated into English, French, Italian and Russian.

Adenauer died on April 19, 1967 after a brief flu and three heart attacks at the age of 91 in his house in Rhöndorf. He had already suffered the first heart attack at the end of 1962, the second on March 29, 1967 and the third a few days later. His last words are guaranteed in his family and friends: “Da jitt et nix zo kriesche!” (“There is nothing to cry!” Addressed to his daughter Libet , who burst into tears). Six days before his death, this was reported misleadingly by some media.

Six days after his death, on the morning of April 25, 1967, a state ceremony in honor of Adenauer took place in the plenary hall of the German Bundestag . This was followed by the state funeral, attended by France's President de Gaulle and US President Johnson, 12 heads of government, foreign ministers and ambassadors from a total of 180 countries. Adenauer's farewell took place with a requiem in Cologne Cathedral . Archbishop Joseph Cardinal Frings celebrated the pontifical office . At the coffin, high-ranking officers of the Bundeswehr, all of them knight's cross bearers , took turns holding the guard of honor . The German Navy then transported the coffin with the speedboat Kondor in a ship convoy on the Rhine to Bad Honnef / Rhöndorf. There Adenauer was buried in the forest cemetery (Rhöndorf) .

Family and private

Invitation to the wedding with Emma Weyer (1904)
Family tree Konrad Adenauer (excerpt)
Konrad Adenauer's house in Rhöndorf
Konrad Adenauer with son Georg in the Black Forest (1956)

On January 28, 1904 married Adenauer, in the parish church of St. Stephen , Emma Weyer (1880-1916), the daughter of a respected Cologne gallery and niece of the late President of the Reichstag Max Wallraf . From this marriage the children Konrad (1906–1993), Max (1910–2004) and Maria (Ria, 1912–1998) grew . After his wedding, he lived for rent at Klosterstrasse 71 in Cologne-Lindenthal . After the birth of the children, he bought the house at Max-Bruch-Strasse 6 in Cologne-Lindenthal in 1910 , and the family moved into it in 1911. His first wife died on October 6, 1916.

On September 26, 1919, Adenauer married Auguste Zinsser (called Gussie, 1895–1948), daughter of the dermatologist Ferdinand Zinsser and sister of Ernst Zinsser . He had five other children with her: Ferdinand (* 1920, died soon after his birth), Paul (1923–2007), Charlotte (Lotte, 1925–2018), Elisabeth ( Libet , 1928–2019) and Georg (1931–2020 ). Auguste Adenauer died in 1948. It is controversial in research whether the cause of death was leukemia or the result of a suicide attempt that she made in Gestapo custody in 1944 out of remorse because she threatened the interrogator with her daughters in the Appellhofkeller take, had revealed Adenauer's whereabouts.

Adenauer's grandson Sven-Georg Adenauer (son of Georg) is a district administrator in the Gütersloh district . Another grandson, Patrick Adenauer (son of Konrad), was president of the working group for self-employed entrepreneurs from 2007 to 2011 .

Between May 1934 and April 1935 Konrad Adenauer rented the "Villa Wiener", a furnished corner house in Neubabelsberg , Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse 40 (formerly Augustastrasse) from his Jewish friend Paul Wiener . In May 1935 he moved to Rhöndorf, first to a tenement house at Löwenburgstrasse 76, then from December 1937 to his new house at Zennigsweg 8, which his brother-in-law, the architect Ernst Zinsser , had designed. The financing resulted mainly from a back payment of his pension and compensation for his Cologne house, for which he received 153,886.63 Reichsmarks from the city of Cologne. His house in Cologne-Lindenthal was transferred back to him after 1945. He died in April 1967 in his residence in Rhöndorf.

The Adenauer villa with 600 m² in the Eifler Kammerwald, planned as a gift from the economy to Adenauer, was never completed . The building application of July 11, 1955 for the "new building of a hunting, weekend and guest house near Duppach " on a 2000 square meter property had signed Friedrich Spennrath , then chairman of the board of the AEG and president of the Berlin Chamber of Commerce and Industry . When it became known that Adenauer had taken up quarters in his Grunewald villa while visiting Berlin and that the architect Heribert Multhaupt , who was involved in the construction of the villa , was Adenauer's son-in-law, speculation of corruption arose. Adenauer refused the gift and the work stopped after a few months; three years later he was informed of the ongoing "sensible cleanup".

Around his house in Rhöndorf he tended a large garden with a variety of plants, sculptures and fountains in a Mediterranean style, as well as roses that Adenauer loved but, contrary to popular legend, did not grow. The garden is reminiscent of northern Italy, which Adenauer learned to appreciate and love. In Cadenabbia on Lake Como , where he regularly spent his holidays in the last ten years of his life, he also got to know the game of bocce , which fascinated him so much that he found himself in his garden in Rhöndorf and in the park of the Palais Schaumburg in Bonn had a railway built for it.

Konrad Adenauer was a founding member of the Rotary Club Cologne and the Deutscher Werkbund . In Rhöndorf, where he lived for many years, he was an honorary member of the Catholic Citizens Association and a member of the Rhöndorf local association; Both associations merged in 1974 to form the Rhöndorf community and local association .

Adenauer as an inventor

As an inventor , Adenauer secured three patents, such as the one for a process for the production of a Rhenish black rye bread (Kölner Brot, together with Jean and Josef Oebel). Another invention was the “ stuffing ball illuminated from the inside ”. But since AEG had already applied for a patent, Adenauer's stuffing egg was only used by his wife. In addition, shortly after the First World War, he registered a new nozzle for garden watering cans that could be covered with a movable flap; however, corresponding patents were not published.

He also invented a soy sausage ( Cologne sausage ) in 1916 , as meat was scarce in those times. However, the patent application was not recognized in Germany due to a formal error and instead only registered in England.

After he lost his office during the Nazi era, he also spent the time that was freed up working on further inventions. During this time, the "device for protection against glare from headlights of oncoming vehicles, consisting of a headshield or glasses" was created. However, this was rejected by the patent office on September 22, 1937 on the grounds that this was nothing new. Other curious inventions were the “electric brush for pest control” and the “fixed shower head for watering cans”. Since he was often unsuccessful in filing such inventions for patents, Adenauer did not mention these activities in his memoirs.

Honors and aftermath

Honorary citizenships

Adenauer was among other things an honorary citizen of his last place of residence Bad Honnef as well as of Baden-Baden , Berlin , Bonn , Griante Cadenabbia , the city of Cologne , the University of Cologne and Trier .

Honorary doctorate

Adenauer received a total of 23 honorary doctorates in Germany and abroad. The unusual five honorary doctorates of all faculties of the University of Cologne at the time are justified by the fact that the re-establishment of the university would not have come about without Adenauer's help. The first two were awarded by the transferred faculties of the previous universities of Cologne Commercial College and the Academy for Practical Medicine . The Math.-Nat.-Faculty was not until 1955 from the Phil.-Fac. outsourced.

  • 1919, June 20, Dr. rer. pol., University of Cologne
  • 1919, June 20, Dr. med., University of Cologne
  • 1922, July 17th, Dr. jur., University of Cologne
  • 1923, May 26th, Dr. phil., University of Cologne
  • 1951, May 29, Dr. jur., University of Maryland, USA
  • 1953, April 7th, Dr. jur., Georgetown University, Washington (DC), USA
  • 1953, April 18, Dr. jur., University of Ottawa, Canada
  • 1954, July 19, Dr.-Ing., Technical University, Berlin-Charlottenburg
  • 1954, October 31, Dr. jur., Columbia University, New York, USA
  • 1955, June 16, Dr. jur., Harvard University, Cambridge / Massachusetts, USA
  • 1956, January 5th, Dr. rer. nat., University of Cologne
  • 1956, June 11th, Dr. jur., Yale University New Haven / Connecticut, USA
  • 1956, June 15, Dr. jur., Marquette University Milwaukee / Wisconsin, USA
  • 1956, June 15, Dr., Boswell Institute, Chicago / Illinois, USA
  • 1957, March 30th, Dr. jur., University of Tehran, Iran
  • 1957, June 24th, Dr. med., Albert Ludwig University, Freiburg / Br.
  • 1958, January 10, Dr. rer. pol., University of Leuven, Belgium
  • 1960, March 18, Dr. jur., University of California, Los Angeles, USA
  • 1960, March 21, Dr. jur., University of California, Berkeley, USA
  • 1960, March 31, Dr. jur., Waseda University, Tōkyō, Japan
  • 1960, April 1, Dr. jur., Keiō University , Tōkyō, Japan
  • 1960, July 31, Dr. phil., Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • 1966, May 3, Dr., Weizmann Institute, Rehovoth, Israel

Orders and awards

Shortly before the end of the Kingdom of Prussia, Adenauer was honored with several Prussian medals, including the Cross of Merit for War Aid (Prussia) (1917), the Iron Cross on White Ribbon (1918) and the Order of the Red Eagle (4th class) (1918).

In 1927, as President of the Prussian Council of State and Lord Mayor of Cologne, Adenauer received the Great Decoration of Honor on Ribbon for Services to the Republic of Austria of the First Republic . Initially, Adenauer was given a higher honorary level, the Great Golden Decoration on Ribbon; However, this was reduced in order not to snub the mayor of Düsseldorf , Robert Lehr, who was proposed at the same time, but only for the lower level . In 1956, Adenauer was also awarded the Great Gold Decoration of Honor on Ribbon for Services to the Republic of Austria of the Second Republic .

In January 1954 Adenauer was the first holder of the Grand Cross in a special version of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In May 1958 he was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit .

Adenauer received from the Holy See through Pope Pius XII. the Order of the Golden Spur on January 17, 1956 ; As the holder of this order, he theoretically had the right to ride into a church on horseback. On September 12, 1963, Pope Paul VI awarded him . additionally the Order of Christ , the highest honor of the Holy See. Besides Antonio Segni , Adenauer is so far the only person who has received both papal orders.

In 1965, he was from Cardinal Grand Master Eugène Tisserant the Grand Cross -Ritter of the Equestrian Order of the Holy grave in Jerusalem and appointed on 29 July 1965 in Bonn Minster by Lorenz Cardinal Jaeger , Grand Prior of the German Lieutenancy, and the German governor Friedrich August von der Heydte invested . In 1964 he was accepted by the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques .

Adenauer had been a Knight of the Sovereign Order of Malta since 1951 ; the award (his first outside Germany after 1945) was presented to him on his first state visit to Italy. Adenauer was also a knight of honor in the Teutonic Order .

Among the international state honors during his time as Federal Chancellor, the Order of the Southern Cross in Brazil started in July 1953; According to Tammann, this is remarkable because Brazil was the only South American country to send troops against the German Reich during World War II, and the award was therefore to be understood as a reconciliation. In the same year Adenauer was awarded the Order El Sol del Perú in South America in Peru , in Argentina with the Grand Cross of the Order de Mayo al Mérito and Colombia with the Order de Boyacá . In 1955 Mexico was added with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Aztec Eagle .

Adenauer received the first state honor in Europe at the end of 1953 in Italy through the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic ; followed in 1954 Greece with the Great Cross of the Royal Order of George the First , 1955 Iceland with the Great Cross of the Hawk North , 1956 Portugal with the Order of Christ , Belgium with the Grand Cross Order of Leopold , and the UK as a Grand Cross Knight of the Order of St. Michael and St. George . In 1957 Luxembourg was added with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Oak Crown . In 1960 the Dutch Queen Juliana awarded him the Order of the Dutch Lion as a Grand Cross. In 1962 he was accepted into the French Legion of Honor .

Edel-Rose Konrad Adenauer of the rose grower Rosen Tantau (1953)

In Japan , Adenauer received the Order of the Rising Sun 1st class from Emperor Hirohito in 1960 ; three years later he also received its highest level, the order of the rising sun with paulownia flowers , "because of his long-term commitment to understanding Japanese-German friendship and for peace and welfare in the world."

In May 1954 he received the Charlemagne Prize of the city of Aachen as a "powerful supporter of a united Europe".

The TIME magazine named Adenauer Man of the Year in 1953 .

In 1959, Adenauer received the order against seriousness for his talent as a “master of simplification” ; at the award ceremony, however, he was represented. Adenauer's ability (for which he was awarded the medal) to present even complex issues in a simplified and generally understandable way is emphasized several times by his biographers.

In 1965 he was awarded the Schlesierschild by the Landsmannschaft Schlesien .

For the International Horticultural Exhibition in 1953, Adenauer himself chose a rose variety that was named after him.

Monuments and structures

Plastic Hubertus von Pilgrims in front of the former Federal Chancellery in Bonn on Adenauerallee
Portrait of Oskar Kokoschka (1966) on a postage stamp
Adenauer-Mercedes in the house of history

Public transport routes (streets, squares , avenues , bridges ) in numerous German cities bear Konrad Adenauer's name, as do Cologne / Bonn Airport and the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus (Berlin) as the party headquarters of the CDU (the former Bonn building was demolished in 2003 ).

Located in Cologne Konrad Adenauer barracks of are Military Counterintelligence and the Office of Army Development stationed.

In May 1982 a sculpture of his head created by Hubertus von Pilgrim was placed in front of the Federal Chancellery in Bonn . It was then often seen on television as a symbol of the Bonn Republic , because many cameramen panned the portrait when they showed the Federal Chancellery.

Another monument to Adenauer was set in 1998 with a bust in the Walhalla near Regensburg.

Adenauer Foundations and Adenauer Prizes

The party-affiliated foundation of the CDU in Sankt Augustin goes back to the Society for Christian-Democratic Educational Work founded in 1955 and has been called the Konrad Adenauer Foundation since 1964 . In 1967, the year of his death, the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Rhöndorf Foundation was established.

Around 20 institutions, including foreign ones, award Konrad Adenauer Prizes . The Adenauer de Gaulle Prize honors people and institutions who are committed to German-French cooperation.

Others

In the presence of Adenauer, the Cologne Rowing Society in 1891 christened one of their racing boats with the name of Mayor Dr. Adenauer .

In 1966 Adenauer was portrayed by Oskar Kokoschka . In 1967 the picture Konrad Adenauer by Wolf Vostell was created , a blurring of a photograph of Konrad Adenauer when John F. Kennedy arrived on June 23, 1963 at Cologne / Bonn Airport . The picture is part of the art collection in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.

One of the two government aircraft Airbus A340 of the Luftwaffe readiness for flight bears the name of the first German Chancellor. One of the first new Intercity Express trains ( ICE 4 ) was named after Konrad Adenauer .

The Adenauer-Mercedes is a Mercedes-Benz 300 that served as the Chancellor's official vehicle in the 1950s; it is exhibited in the House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn .

See also

Fonts (selection)

  • The risk bearing in the case of a purchase subject to a condition precedent and a purchase with a start date. Bonn 1932 571746713 (own dissertation in the Law University of Cologne 1932, VIII, 13–67 pages, 8, also in bookshops at Röhrscheid, Bonn and Stilke, Berlin as Cologne jurisprudential treatises , volume 5).

literature

Biographies

Image biographies and photo documentation

  • Franz Burda (Ed.): Konrad Adenauer - Gedenkband , Burda, special print from BUNTEN Illustrierte, illustrated book No. 6, Offenburg 1967, without ISBN,
  • Ulrich Frank-Planitz : Konrad Adenauer , Gustav Lübbe Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach (2nd edition) 1975, ISBN 3-7857-0176-4
  • Will McBride (photos), Hans-Werner Graf von Finckenstein (text): Adenauer - A portrait , Josef Keller Vlg., Starnberg 1965, without ISBN
  • Georg Schröder (Einltg.): Konrad Adenauer - portrait of a statesman. A picture documentation , C. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1966, without ISBN
  • Sven Simon : Adenauer and Kokoschka - Pictures of a Friendship , Econ, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1967, without ISBN

At stages of life

On individual aspects

  • Arnulf Baring : Foreign Policy in Adenauer's Chancellor Democracy , Oldenbourg, Munich 1966 (writings of the research institute of the German Society for Foreign Policy eV Volume 28).
  • Daniel Koerfer : Fight for the Chancellery. Erhard and Adenauer , DVA , Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-421-06372-9
  • Christian Feyerabend / Roland Breitschuh : Adenauer. The garden and its gardener. Published by the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Cologne: Greven Verlag, 2020, ISBN 978-3-7743-0926-5 .

Historical-critical evaluation

Movies

Radio play by Ludwig Harig

In 1969, the radio play State Burial by the author Ludwig Harig caused a scandal and was produced jointly by SR and WDR under the direction of Johann M. Kamps . In the pastiche, only original sound material from the funeral speeches on the occasion of the state funeral for Konrad Adenauer was used and blended against each other. Those responsible were then accused of disrespecting a serious issue two years ago.

Exhibitions

  • 2017: Konrad the Great. The Adenauer period in Cologne 1917–1933 , Cologne City Museum , Cologne. Catalog.

Web links

Commons : Konrad Adenauer  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ C. Williams: Adenauer, The Father of the New Germany. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2000, p. 26, ISBN 0-471-43767-0
  2. ^ Rudolf Jungnickel: Cabal on the Rhine. 1994, p. 7
  3. GB131402A Improvements in the Composition and Manufacture of Sausage Meat and the like
  4. ^ Hans-Peter Schwarz: Adenauer. The rise: 1876–1952 , DVA, Stuttgart 1986, p. 152 f.
  5. Konrad Adenauer was the last surviving member of the Prussian manor house .
  6. ^ Horst Möller : Prussia from 1918 to 1947. Weimar Republic, Prussia and National Socialism. In: Wolfgang Neugebauer (Ed.): Handbook of Prussian History. Vol. 3: From the Empire to the 20th Century and Major Topics in the History of Prussia . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-090669-1 , p. 175 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  7. ^ Henning Koehler: Adenauer. A political biography. Propylaeen, Berlin 1994, pp. 251-264, citations on p. 262.
  8. Incredibly high . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1961 ( online ).
  9. Werner Biermann: Konrad Adenauer: A century of life . Rowohlt Berlin, Berlin 2017, ISBN 3-7371-0006-3 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  10. Archive link ( Memento from August 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  11. Quoted and translated back from Hans-Peter Schwarz: Konrad Adenauer: A German Politician and Statesman in a Period of War, Revolution, and Reconstruction. Volume 1. Berghahn Books, Providence RI 1995, p. 160
  12. ^ Rudolf Jungnickel: Cabal on the Rhine . 1994, p. 275
  13. Dieter E. Kilian, Adenauer's forgotten savior - Major Fritz Schliebusch , 2011, p. 23 f.
  14. Quoted from Peter Koch: Adenauer. Reinbek 1985.
  15. ^ Adenauer's letter to the Prussian. Minister of the Interior of Aug. 10, 1934 (after his dismissal), available at: konrad-adenauer.de . Another letter from Adenauer dated Sept. 18, 1962, confirming the accuracy of the first letter, both printed in: Delmer, Sefton; The Germans and I; Hamburg 1963, p. 751 (1962 facsimile), 752-60 (1934). See also December 12, 1932: Letter from Mayor Adenauer to the chairman of the German Center Party, Prelate Kaas , Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, accessed on December 26, 2017.
  16. a b June 29, 1933: Letter to Dora Pferdmenges, Cologne, from Maria Laach, available at: konrad-adenauer.de and book review: Hans-Peter Schwarz: Adenauer. The rise 1876–1952. In: Der Spiegel, No. 40, 1986
  17. November 8, 1934: Note from Ministerialrat Dr. Scheffler, Reich and Prussian Ministry of the Interior, Berlin, available at: http://www.konrad-adenauer.de/index.php?msg=10046
  18. November 8, 1934: The Reich and Prussian Minister of the Interior, Dr. Wilhelm Frick, to Adenauer, Neubabelsberg, available at: http://www.konrad-adenauer.de/index.php?msg=10047
  19. Herstelle Benedictine Convent 1899–1999. New beginnings and constancy. 1999, p. 174
  20. Hans-Peter Schwarz, Adenauer. The rise: 1876–1952, 3rd edition, Stuttgart 1986, p. 416 f.
  21. Henning Koehler, Adenauer. A political biography , Propylaen, Berlin 1994, p. 316 ff.
  22. Quoted from. Pax Christi (Ed.): 75 years of the Catholic peace movement in Germany. Idstein 1995; P. 59.
  23. ^ Rudolf Jungnickel: Cabal on the Rhine. The chancellor and his monsignor. Wartburg Verlag, Weimar 1994, p. 303.
  24. ^ Rudolf Jungnickel: Cabal on the Rhine. The chancellor and his monsignor. Wartburg Verlag, Weimar 1994, p. 3073.
  25. Quoted from Hans Peter Mensing : Konrad Adenauer. In: Udo Kempf, Hans-Georg Merz: Chancellor and Minister 1949–1998. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, p. 82
  26. ^ Henning Koehler: Adenauer. A political biography. Propylaen, Berlin 1994, pp. 495 and 501; Klaus von Beyme : Cultural Policy and National Identity. Studies on cultural policy between state control and social autonomy. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen / Wiesbaden 1998, p. 208, calls the assumption a " conspiracy theory ".
  27. ^ Henning Koehler: Adenauer. A political biography. Propylaen, Berlin 1994, pp. 498-508.
  28. ^ Press service of the Federal Government: Korrespondenz-Spiegel, Schnell-Information from July 21, 1959, quoted in u. a. on November 5, 1959 in a speech by Erich Mende in the Bundestag . Printed in: Rudolf Jungnicket: Kabale am Rhein; The chancellor and his monsignor. Wartburg Verlag, Weimar 1994, p. 100 f.
  29. § 26 Electoral Law with Berlin Clause of June 15, 1949: Greater Berlin has the right to send eight members to the Bundestag with an advisory function until the State of Berlin joins the Federal Republic of Germany.
  30. ^ Hans-Peter Schwarz: Adenauer. The rise: 1876–1952 , DVA, Stuttgart 1986, p. 630; Henning Köhler: Adenauer. A political biography. Propylaeen, Berlin 1994, p. 541.
  31. August H. Leugers-Scherzberg: Adenauer's secret statements in the Claridge Hotel in London or the latent anti-Semitism of the Federal German founding chancellor. In: theologie.geschichte , Vol. 1 (2006).
  32. Michael F. Feldkamp : The interjection "The Federal Chancellor of the Allies!" And the parliamentary settlement of the conflict between Konrad Adenauer and Kurt Schumacher in autumn 1949. In: From freedom, solidarity and subsidiarity - state and society of modernity in theory and practice. Festschrift for Karsten Ruppert on his 65th birthday, edited by Markus Raasch and Tobias Hirschmüller (= contributions to political science, vol. 175), Duncker & Humblot: Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-428-13806-7 , p. 665 -708. See excerpt from the official minutes of the debate on the government declaration of the Federal Chancellor in the 18th session of the German Bundestag on the Petersberg Agreement on the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung website, accessed on June 28, 2012.
  33. ^ Kurt Klotzbach: The way to the state party. Program, practical politics and organization of the German social democracy 1945–1965 , Berlin 1982, p. 598, quoted from Ulrich Lappenküper : The foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany 1949–1990. Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-70140-1 , P. 71 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  34. Anselm Doering-Manteuffel: The Federal Republic of Germany in the Adenauer era. Foreign policy and internal development 1949–1963. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 75 f.
  35. ^ Zitelmann, Rainer (ed.): Adenauer's opponent. Champion for unity. (Series Extremism and Democracy, edited by Uwe Backes , Eckhard Jesse and Rainer Zitelmann, Vol. 2.) Erlangen, Bonn, Vienna 1991, pp. 116–121 (on the Dehler speech).
  36. ^ Henning Koehler: Adenauer. A political biography. Propylaeen, Berlin 1994, pp. 971-974.
  37. Hans-Peter Schwarz: Notes on Adenauer. Pantheon Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-570-55031-1 , p. 195.
  38. Cf. on the investigations of the German police: Reinhard Scholzen : To protect the politicians. The early years of the backup group. In: Polizei & Wissenschaft 2, 2014, pp. 2–9. Here p. 4.
  39. ^ Henning Sietz: Assassination attempt on Adenauer: On behalf of conscience , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of June 12, 2006.
  40. ^ Henning Koehler: Adenauer. A political biography. Propylaen, Berlin 1994, pp. 251-264, citations on pp. 991-995.
  41. KAS: Cold War
  42. ^ Article in Münchner Merkur from September 7, 1957 ( digitized version ).
  43. ^ KAS: Soviet Russia .
  44. Quoted from Hans Peter Mensing: Konrad Adenauer. In: Udo Kempf, Hans-Georg Merz: Chancellor and Minister 1949–1998. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, p. 86
  45. Gabor Steingart : The German defect . Spiegel Special , 4/2005, p. 126.
  46. In other sources, Adenauer is quoted as saying "People have children anyway", e.g. B. not sustainable in a generation contract. Ludwig Erhard already came to this conclusion . March 2009 / euler “Scobel” at 3sat ; Retrieved September 5, 2013
  47. ^ Frankfurter Rundschau October 27, 2000
  48. There is only one Adenauer . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 1948, pp. 5-8 ( online ).
  49. Klaus Wiegrefe: Adenauer's last years: “The world is going crazy” . Ed .: Der Spiegel. No. 7/2017 . Hamburg February 11, 2017 ( spiegel.de ).
  50. ^ Ulrich Frank-Planitz: Konrad Adenauer. A biography in pictures and words. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-421-06557-8 , p. 160.
  51. Thomas Wolf: The emergence of the BND. Construction, financing, control . Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-96289-022-3 , pp. 394 f .
  52. Deutsche Welle: Konrad Adenauer - the old man from Rhöndorf , accessed on August 8, 2011
  53. October 15, 1963: Address by the President of the Bundestag Eugen Gerstenmaier on the occasion of the honor of Chancellor Adenauer by the German Bundestag , Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, accessed on December 26, 2017.
  54. KAS: Memories .
  55. On April 13, 1967 - six days before his actual death - the Westdeutsche Rundfunk caught a piece of false information and interrupted the live program of the WDR-2 midday magazine. The media had previously speculated for days about the threatening health of Adenauer, which last appeared in the Bundestag on February 24. The moderator of the show ended a telephone interview with the note to the audience that “sad news from Rhöndorf” was expected, and several pieces with funeral music were recorded. The Ministry of Defense then ordered mourning flags in Bonn. In Munich, the members of the Bavarian State Parliament rose to a minute's silence, and the cabinet was called to a special session. In London, Foreign Minister Willy Brandt and a German delegation of parliamentarians were showered with condolences - the British Defense Minister, who was just in Bonn, had reported that Adenauer had died in London. Other media and news agencies spread the hoax around the world. The later accusation by other media that the WDR had spread a false report was not true inasmuch as words such as “Konrad Adenauer is dead” were not used. Due to a misunderstanding, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter had already reported Adenauer's death in 1956 .
  56. ^ Funeral march for a living. In: Der Spiegel April 12, 2008.
  57. Those who die earlier are dead longer. In: sueddeutsche.de November 18, 2008.
  58. bundesarchiv.de ( Memento from November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  59. ^ KAS: The foreign mourners at the funeral ceremonies for Konrad Adenauer
  60. Konrad Adenauer's last child died
  61. so Henning Köhler : Adenauer. A political biography. Propylaea, Berlin 1994, p. 447 f.
  62. ↑ The curriculum vitae of Auguste Amalie Julie Adenauer b. Zinser on the websites of the Adenauer portal of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation (accessed on February 10, 2016).
  63. ^ WDR 2, Heiner Wember , January 5, 2011: deadline January 5, 1876. Konrad Adenauer's birthday. Podcast, accessed October 18, 2012.
  64. DER SPIEGEL: ... The disreputable gift
  65. ^ Christian Feyerabend / Roland Breitschuh: Adenauer. The garden and its gardener. Published by the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Cologne: Greven Verlag, 2020, ISBN 978-3-7743-0926-5 .
  66. ^ Patents from celebrities: Konrad Adenauer
  67. Jean Oebel, Josef Oebel, Konrad Adenauer: Process for the production of a grist bread similar to the Rhenish black bread . (PDF) Patent No .: DE296648, published on February 19, 1917
  68. Jean Oebel, Josef Oebel, Konrad Adenauer: Process for the production of a grist bread similar to the Rhenish black bread . (PDF) Patent No .: AT74310B, published April 10, 1918
  69. ^ Patent GB131402 : Improvements in the Composition and Manufacture of Sausage Meat and the like. Published on August 28, 1919 , inventor: Konrad Adenauer.
  70. ^ Radio Bremen, As time goes by, September 22, 1937, "The stubborn patent office"
  71. Overview of honorary doctorates with exact award dates on the websites of the Adenauer portal of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and the Stiftung Bundeskanzler-Adenauer-Haus (accessed on February 10, 2016).
  72. Orders and Medals , Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, accessed on December 26, 2017.
  73. Ernst Schubersky, in: Gustav Andreas Tammann / Engelbert Hommel (eds.): The medals and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here pp. 175–181.
  74. List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.6 MB)
  75. Hermann Dikowitsch, in: Gustav Andreas Tammann / Engelbert Hommel (ed.): The orders and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here pp. 153–158.
  76. Engelbert Hommel, in: Gustav Andreas Tammann / Engelbert Hommel (ed.): The medals and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here pp. 61-66.
  77. Klaus H. Feder, in: Gustav Andreas Tammann / Engelbert Hommel (Hrsg.): The medals and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here p. 39 f.
  78. ^ Document of the Pope dated December 28, 1955. https://www.konrad-adenauer.de/persoenliches/ehrungen/orden-und-ehrenzeichen
  79. Michael Autengruber / Engelbert Hommel / Gustav Andreas Taumann, in: Ders./Engelbert Hommel (Hrsg.): The medals and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here pp. 91–93 and 97–102.
  80. Ludwig Biewer , in: Gustav Andreas Tammann / Engelbert Hommel (ed.): The medals and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here p. 95 f.
  81. Ludwig Biewer, in: Gustav Andreas Tammann / Engelbert Hommel (ed.): The medals and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here p. 139 f.
  82. Ludwig Biewer, in: Gustav Andreas Tammann / Engelbert Hommel (ed.): The medals and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here p. 53 f.
  83. Adenauer in the regalia of the Teutonic Order. In: Germans and Poles. RBB, accessed October 29, 2011 .
  84. Gustav Andreas Tammann, in: Ders./Engelbert Hommel (Hrsg.): The medals and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here p. 47 f.
  85. ^ Carlos Castán, in: Gustav Andreas Tammann / Engelbert Hommel (eds.): The orders and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here pp. 165–167.
  86. Dragomir Acovic, in: Gustav Andreas Tammann / Engelbert Hommel (ed.): The medals and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here pp. 29–31.
  87. Gustav Andreas Tammann, in: Ders./Engelbert Hommel (Hrsg.): The medals and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here p. 123 f.
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  89. Dragomir Acovic, in: Gustav Andreas Tammann / Engelbert Hommel (ed.): The medals and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here p. 111 f.
  90. Engelbert Hommel, in: Gustav Andreas Tammann / Engelbert Hommel (ed.): The medals and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here pp. 61–65.
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  92. António M. Trigueiros, in: Gustav Andreas Tammann / Engelbert Hommel (ed.): The medals and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here p. 169 f.
  93. Ivo Suetens, in: Gustav Andreas Tammann / Engelbert Hommel (ed.): The orders and decorations of Konrad Adenauer. The orders and decorations awarded to Konrad Adenauer. On behalf of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation. Gottschalk, Bad Honnef 1999, ISBN 3-9806090-1-4 , here p. 41 f.
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  100. TIME magazine, issue of January 4, 1954 with Adenauer on the title page.
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  102. ^ Note in Focus from February 20, 2011.
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  104. Konrad Adenauer und der Sport , Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, accessed on July 5, 2019.
  105. Wolf Vostell. Retrospective 92nd Edition Braus, Heidelberg 1992, ISBN 3-925520-44-9 .
  106. ^ Bahn baptizes new trains: An ICE4 named Einstein
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  108. Wolfgang Malanowski: "I leave with a happy heart" . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 1987 ( online - review of the Adenauer series).
  109. ARD radio play database (State funeral, SR / WDR 1969)
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on March 30, 2006 .