Rhöndorf Conference
The Rhöndorf Conference was a meeting of politicians from the CDU and the CSU after the 1949 federal election , which took place in the house of the future Chancellor Konrad Adenauer on August 21, 1949 .
After the 1949 federal election, Konrad Adenauer invited leading figures of the CDU / CSU to his house in the Rhöndorf district of Honnef on August 21 , 1949 to discuss the situation after the federal election on August 14, 1949. It was an informal meeting chaired by Adenauer as the head of the house; he had also issued the invitations. The committee even agreed at the beginning that no official resolutions could be made here. Among others, Ludwig Erhard and Franz Josef Strauss were there . Well-known supporters of a grand coalition and others were not invited . a. Karl Arnold .
Despite the participation influenced by Adenauer, initially the mood for a grand coalition predominated. In the opinion of its proponents, the tasks facing the newly founded Federal Republic were so difficult that they could only be mastered with a joint effort by the major parties. Adenauer, on the other hand, highlighted the contrast between the successful election campaign slogan of the 'free market economy' and the social democratic ideas of a state-controlled economy - he preferred not to mention that the CDU's Ahlen program contained a rejection of capitalism; the exponents of this program were not invited either. Adenauer found the strongest support from Ludwig Erhard, who refused to serve as Minister of Economics in a grand coalition.
When, after a lengthy discussion, the mood turned away from the grand coalition, Adenauer got down to business. He calculated for the participants that the bourgeois parties ( Union parties , FDP , DP ) together had a narrow majority. In his opinion, the election result obliged the CDU / CSU to implement a free market economy policy on this basis .
When it came to the personal details, one of the participants suggested Adenauer as chancellor. According to his own report, he was surprised by this, but other sources say he threw his name out himself. He had also talked to his doctor about it beforehand, who had said "one or two years old" he could do that. As Federal President, he proposed Theodor Heuss from the FDP. The objection that Heuss was not close to the Christian church, he settled with the reference to his pious wife.
At the end of the meeting, Adenauer had prevailed on all points. Even if the formal confirmation by the responsible party bodies was still pending, the decision in favor of the small coalition had actually been made.