Richard von Weizsäcker

Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker, 1984

Richard Karl Freiherr von Weizsäcker (born April 15, 1920 in Stuttgart , † January 31, 2015 in Berlin ) was a German politician ( CDU ). From 1981 to 1984 he was Governing Mayor of Berlin and from 1984 to 1994 the sixth Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany . In 1985, with his address on the 40th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe and the National Socialist tyranny, he introduced a paradigm shift in German politics towards the pastby honoring May 8, 1945 as the day of liberation . In 1990, during his second term in office, he became the first head of state of reunified Germany .

family

Memorial plaque at the New Palace in Stuttgart

Richard von Weizsäcker came from the Palatinate - Wuerttemberg family Weizsäcker , which sees its origins in the 13th century and first produced a nobleman in 1861. He was born as the fifth child of Ernst von Weizsäcker and Marianne von Weizsäcker (daughter of the royal adjutant general Friedrich von Graevenitz ) in a wing of the New Palace in Stuttgart . His grandfather, the Württemberg Prime Minister Karl Hugo von Weizsäcker , was ennobled by King Wilhelm II of Württemberg and then raised to the status of hereditary baron in 1916 . Weizsäcker had three brothers and a sister: Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (philosopher and physicist, 1912–2007), Ernst Viktor Weizsäcker (died as an infant in 1915), Adelheid von Weizsäcker (1916–2004) and Heinrich Viktor von Weizsäcker (officer, 1917 -1939). Due to the father's diplomatic activities, the family lived in Basel from 1920 to 1924 , in Copenhagen from 1924 to 1927 , in Oslo from 1931 to 1933 , in Bern from 1933 to 1936 , where Weizsäcker attended the Kirchenfeld high school, and then in Berlin , where the father was initially head of the political department of the Foreign Office under Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath and in 1938 was promoted to State Secretary under Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop .

Gravestone of Richard von Weizsäcker and his son Fritz von Weizsäcker

Weizsäcker had been married to Marianne von Kretschmann since October 8, 1953 . Marianne's mother - Asta von Kretschmann, née Mohr - was an adopted daughter of Fritz von Waldthausen . Marianne von Weizsäcker is also a great niece of the social democratic women's rights activist Lily Braun , née von Kretschmann. The marriage had four children:

• Robert Klaus von Weizsäcker (* 1954)
• Andreas von Weizsäcker (1956-2008)
• Marianne Beatrice von Weizsäcker (* 1958)
• Fritz Eckhart von Weizsäcker (1960–2019)

Richard von Weizsäcker died on January 31, 2015 at the age of 94 in Berlin-Dahlem . On February 11, 2015, a state ceremony took place in the Berlin Cathedral . Weizsäcker was then buried in the Dahlem forest cemetery.

Hans-Oskar von Kretschmann (* 1903; † 1962)

Asta von Kretschmann, née Mohr, adopt. von Waldthausen (* 1908; † 1971)

Ernst Heinrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker (* 1882, † 1951)

Marianne von Graevenitz (* 1889; † 1983)

Marianne von Kretschmann (* 1932)

Richard Karl Freiherr von Weizsäcker (* 1920; † 2015)

Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker (* 1912; † 2007)

Ernst Viktor Weizsäcker (* / † 1915)

Adelheid Marianne Viktoria Freiin von Weizsäcker (* 1916; † 2004)

Heinrich Viktor Freiherr von Weizsäcker (* 1917, † 1939)

Robert Klaus Freiherr von Weizsäcker (* 1954)

Andreas Freiherr von Weizsäcker (* 1956; † 2008)

Marianne Beatrice Freiin von Weizsäcker (* 1958)

Fritz Eckhart Freiherr von Weizsäcker (* 1960; † 2019)

School and education

From 1925 he lived with his family in Copenhagen , where he started school at the German School St. Petri in Copenhagen . During his time in Bern - his father was the German ambassador there from 1933 to 1936 - Weizsäcker directed the Hitler Youth at the Kirchenfeld grammar school, the local public school. He himself kept this chapter silent in his memoir, Vier Zeiten .

In 1937 Weizsäcker passed his Abitur at the Bismarck-Gymnasium (today Goethe-Gymnasium ) in Berlin-Wilmersdorf when he was just 17 years old. He was the Fähnleinführer of the Hitler Youth in Jungbann 37 in Berlin Wilmersdorf- Zehlendorf and met the criteria for National Socialist talent promotion. After graduating from high school, Weizsäcker traveled to Oxford ( Great Britain ) and Grenoble ( France ) to attend lectures on philosophy and history .

Military service in World War II

In 1938 Weizsäcker was drafted into the Reich Labor Service . In the autumn of the same year he joined the machine gun company of the Potsdam Infantry Regiment 9 of the Wehrmacht , which belonged to the 23rd Infantry Division . His older brother Heinrich already served as a lieutenant in the same regiment . On September 1, 1939, the Weizsäcker brothers' unit crossed the Polish border on the Polish Corridor , around 40 kilometers north of Bromberg, as part of the attack on Poland . Heinrich von Weizsäcker was killed on the evening of September 2nd during the battle in the Tucheler Heide on the Klonowo railway embankment in a Polish counter-attack, a few hundred meters away from Richard, who then buried him. After the attack on Poland, Weizsäcker and his regiment were transferred to the Luxembourg border. During the western campaign , he took part in officer candidate courses.

Richard von Weizsäcker took part in Operation Barbarossa from July 1941 , was wounded for the first time in the same month and spent four weeks in a hospital . He was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class .

When he returned to the unit, it was 350 km southwest of Moscow . There he took part in the Battle of Moscow , where his unit came within 35 km of the city center. The regiment was almost completely wiped out in the winter of 1941/42 and had to be withdrawn from the front in February 1942.

In March 1942 he was transferred as an orderly officer to the Army High Command (OKH) in Mauerwald in East Prussia , which in June 1942 was transferred to the Führer headquarters in Werwolf near Vinnitsa in the Ukraine . After his promotion to first lieutenant , he returned to his old unit at the end of October 1942 - which had been renamed Grenadier Regiment 9 and was now in Denmark. He became adjutant to regimental commander Kuno Dewitz . Former officers of the unit referred to this as "half life insurance", as one no longer had to fight at the front.

At the end of January 1943, the regiment was relocated to the Eastern Front and - like the later Chancellor Helmut Schmidt - took part in the Leningrad blockade from February 1943 .

At the beginning of 1944 he received the Iron Cross 1st Class, and was later promoted to Captain of the Reserve .

In mid-May 1944 he visited his father, who was ambassador to the Holy See in Rome.

Weizsäcker made close friends with the later resistance fighters of July 20, 1944, Axel von dem Bussche and Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg , who served in the same regiment , through whom he learned of the plans of Count Claus von Stauffenberg . In January 1945 he destroyed a recall order in Wartenburg and thus protected Hermann Priebe from the Gestapo . In the summer of 1944 he took part in the withdrawal of his unit from the Leningrad area to the coast of Latvia . There the remnants of the 9th Grenadier Regiment were taken over by the 67th Grenadier Regiment. Weizsäcker remained an adjutant and saw the unit move by ship to East Prussia . In March 1945 Weizsäcker was slightly wounded in heavy defensive fighting in East Prussia. The 67th Grenadier Regiment was temporarily encircled near Wartenburg. He reached in April 1945 on the ice of the Vistula Lagoon , the Vistula Spit , where the unit of Danzig was evacuated. His commanding officer proposed him for the Army Honorary Leaf Clasp because he had saved many soldiers ; however, due to the end of the war, it was no longer awarded. Via Copenhagen he came to the replacement troop unit of the former 9th Grenadier Regiment in Potsdam. From there he went to Lindau and thus deserted . He experienced the end of the war without being captured.

Study and job

Richard von Weizsäcker together with his father Ernst von Weizsäcker in Nuremberg , approx. 1948–1949

In 1945 Weizsäcker took a study of the law , a minor in history, in Göttingen on which he in 1950 with the first legal state exam ended. After the second state examination (1953) in July 1955, the promotion of Dr. jur. with the work The factual association . During the entire time he was closely connected to the labor lawyer Wolfgang Siebert , who was head of the youth rights committee of the Academy for German Law in the 1940s (revision course, assistant, doctoral supervisor). From 1947 to the beginning of 1949, Weizsäcker worked alongside his studies as an assistant to the lawyer Hellmut Becker in the defense of his father in the so-called Wilhelmstrasse trial . Becker had been a member of the NSDAP since March 1937 . On April 14, 1949, Ernst von Weizsäcker was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for crimes against humanity , which on December 12, 1949, reduced it to five years. As State Secretary in the Foreign Office, the accused signed a letter from Franz Rademacher to the SS dated March 20, 1942, about the deportation of 6,000 French and stateless Jews to Auschwitz, and marked it with “Jews identified by the police”. Furthermore, when asked by the SS, “whether the Foreign Office had any doubts”, he did not express any doubts in this or “similar cases”. The defendant's claim to being close to the resistance was taken into account to mitigate the sentence. Richard von Weizsäcker later always described the judgment as "historically and morally unjust". On the other hand, Norbert Frei rates the research results of a commission of historians appointed by Federal Foreign Minister Fischer as the "end of the Weizsäcker legend".

From 1950 to 1953 Weizsäcker worked as a research assistant at Mannesmann AG in Gelsenkirchen , where he lived in the Bismarck district. In 1953 he moved to the legal department of Mannesmann AG in Düsseldorf . In July 1955 he received power of attorney and in 1957 became head of the economic policy department. At the end of June 1958, Weizsäcker left Mannesmann and was personally liable partner of the Waldthausen bank until 1962 , to which family relationships existed through his wife.

Weizsäcker was then a member of the management board and personally liable partner of the chemical and pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim in Ingelheim am Rhein from 1962 to 1966 . According to a report for the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs , Boehringer Ingelheim had been producing dioxin-containing herbicides and insecticides between 1952 and 1984, which put employees under considerable strain. From 1967 onwards, 720 tons of trichlorophenolate lye , an intermediate product for the defoliant Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War , were supplied to Dow Chemical . Von Weizsäcker said that he only found out about Agent Orange “with great sadness” years after his work at Boehringer - a statement, of course, that has also been questioned.

Richard von Weizsäcker, whose son Andreas attended the reform pedagogical Odenwald School in Heppenheim , had been active in the Odenwald School Association since the 1960s, and was also on the board of directors until August 2, 1984. In 1999 it became known to the public that the headmaster Gerold Becker (1972–1985) was a main perpetrator of pedocriminal crimes against a total of 132 victims. Andreas von Weizsäcker belonged to the residential group (so-called "family") of Gerold Beckers, his father Richard von Weizsäcker later stated that he had not heard about the events.

Political career before the presidency

Political party

Richard von Weizsäcker at a press conference of the CDU executive committee, 1973

From 1954 Weizsäcker was a member of the CDU. From 1966 until his election as Federal President in 1984, he was a member of the federal executive committee . In 1968, Weizsäcker was proposed by Helmut Kohl for the first time as a CDU candidate for the office of Federal President, but was clearly defeated in the vote in the CDU selection committee with 20 to 65 votes against the then Defense Minister Gerhard Schröder . In 1971, Weizsäcker was appointed chairman of the CDU policy committee by Rainer Barzel . At the 22nd federal party congress of the CDU in Hamburg in November 1973, Weizsäcker presented the first results of two years of work in the policy committee and thus sparked lively discussions. It was not until 1978 that the new CDU basic program was adopted, which was created under his leadership - and that of Heiner Geißler  .

In 1965 Weizsäcker was proposed as a candidate for the German Bundestag, but turned down the candidacy in order to avoid a conflict of interest due to his honorary office as President of the German Evangelical Church Congress . In 1969 Weizsäcker ran for the German Bundestag in the constituency of Worms . He was elected to the Bundestag via second place on the Rhineland-Palatinate CDU state list and was a member of the Bundestag until 1981 .

On May 17, 1973, Weizsäcker lost to Karl Carstens in a vote for the chairmanship of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group . Weizsäcker then became deputy group chairman.

Weizsäcker was a candidate for the CDU and CSU in the election of the German Federal President in 1974 . Weizsäcker accepted this candidacy in the knowledge that, due to the majority in the Federal Assembly, he was only put up as a so-called ' counting candidate '. The previous Foreign Minister Walter Scheel (FDP), who had stood as a candidate for the social-liberal coalition, was elected. Weizsäcker then belonged to the shadow cabinet set up by Helmut Kohl for the 1976 federal election . From 1981 to 1983 he was also the CDU state chairman in Berlin.

With the acceptance of his election as Federal President, he traditionally suspended his membership in the CDU and did not take it up again after the end of his term of office.

Governing Mayor of Berlin

Berlin's Mayor Richard von Weizsäcker, US President Ronald Reagan and Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in front of Checkpoint Charlie on June 11, 1982

In 1979 Weizsäcker was the top candidate of the CDU in the elections for the 8th House of Representatives in Berlin . It is true that the CDU was the strongest force with 44.4% of the vote; The governing mayor, however, remained the previous incumbent Dietrich Stobbe . The coalition of the SPD and FDP was continued. From 1979 to 1981 Weizsäcker was Vice President of the German Bundestag . In 1981 there were early elections for the Berlin House of Representatives. In these new elections, the CDU was again the strongest force with 48.0% of the vote and received its best result to date at the Berlin state level. Weizsäcker was then elected mayor of Berlin as the successor to Hans-Jochen Vogel , who had only been in office for six months. From June 11, 1981 to February 9, 1984, he was a Senate , which initially acted as a minority government ; in March 1983 he formed a coalition with the FDP.

Weizsäcker attached particular importance to maintaining international contacts. During his inaugural visits to the Presidents of the Western Allies, observers believe that he gained a great reputation. As the first governing mayor, he also visited the GDR in September 1983, where he was received by the Chairman of the State Council, Erich Honecker . Weizsäcker and Honecker remained strangers to each other, and apart from a declaration of intent by the GDR to lower the minimum exchange rate for young people, the meeting did not produce any practical results.

The domestic political challenges in Weizsäcker's reign included, in particular, the squatting in districts such as Kreuzberg and Schöneberg , whereby he initially left the evictions in the responsibility of Interior Senator Heinrich Lummer . However, after the death of a squatter on September 22, 1981, he initiated the initiative for a peaceful settlement of the conflict with Martin Kruse , the Evangelical Bishop in Berlin. With the mediation of other circles in the city, the establishment of an alternative redevelopment agency  - STATTBAU - succeeded in 1983, which legalized and renovated occupied houses as part of the peaceful solution . Weizsäcker also supported the concept of cautious urban renewal , which replaced area renovation and was also applied to East Berlin's old town areas after the political change .

Weizsäcker's successor as governing mayor in 1984 was Eberhard Diepgen (CDU).

Federal President

In November 1983 Weizsäcker was nominated for the second time as a CDU / CSU candidate for the office of Federal President and was elected the sixth Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany in the election on May 23, 1984 against Luise Rinser proposed by the Greens . On July 1, he was sworn in as the successor to Karl Carstens in this office. In the election of the German Federal President on May 23, 1989, Weizsäcker was confirmed in office. It was the only election of a Federal President so far in which there was only one applicant.

Weizsäcker had an integrating effect and achieved high recognition at home and abroad with his speech on May 8, 1985 , in which he described May 8, 1945 as the “day of liberation from the inhuman system of National Socialist tyranny”. During his tenure as Federal President, German reunification fell, so Weizsäcker became the first Federal President of the united Germany. He advocated a cautious convergence of East and West and warned in his speech on reunification on October 3, 1990: "To unite means to learn to share."

During that time , Richard von Weizsäcker criticized the German parties severely in 1992 . He criticized the fact that the parties' influence had expanded across society. They have long since become a sixth constitutional body , but, unlike the others, they are not subject to any control. He also stated that the primary goal of the parties was to win the next election and not to solve long-term problems in this country. They include temporary moods among the people in their party program in order to get as many votes as possible in the next federal election . This assessment did not go unchallenged. Gunter Hofmann presented in his anthology The Controversy. Weizsäcker's criticism of the party in the discussion against different positions. In 2017, an editorial in the Frankfurter Rundschau said that Weizsäcker cultivated a “special, early form of arrogant populism”. In 2002, in an interview with a contemporary witness for the dissertation of Jens Peter Paul, Helmut Kohl said that Richard von Weizsäcker was "one of the greatest adapters in the history of the republic".

As a result of the decision to relocate the seat of parliament and government in 1991, Weizsäcker moved the first official seat of the Federal President from Villa Hammerschmidt in Bonn to Bellevue Palace in Berlin in January 1994 . This made the Federal President the first constitutional body to move to Berlin. Since then, Villa Hammerschmidt has been the second official residence of the Federal President. The office of the Federal President moved to Berlin in 1998.

State visits

• 

  British Queen Elizabeth II in Brühl in 1992

• 

  State visit to Jordan 1985: King Hussein Bin Tatal , Marianne von Weizsäcker , Queen Nūr , Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker

• 

  May 6, 1985: Ronald Reagan on a state visit to Germany

• 

  1987: Visit of Federal President von Weizsäcker to the Soviet Union

• 

  Federal President von Weizsäcker 1985 in Bonn with US Vice President Bush

year	month	States
1984	November	France
	December	Austria , Vatican City
1985	February	Jordan , Egypt
	March	Finland
	May June	Netherlands
	October	Israel , France ( European Parliament )
	November	Denmark
1986	February	Belgium , United Arab Emirates , Burma , Bangladesh , Malaysia
	March	Austria
	May	Turkey
	June	Switzerland ( ILO )
	July	Turkey , United Kingdom
	September	Norway
	October	Netherlands , Hungary
1987	March	Brazil , Argentina , Bolivia , Guatemala
	May	Switzerland
	June	United States , Greece
	July	Soviet Union
	September	Netherlands
	October	Turkey
1988	March	Mali , Nigeria , Zimbabwe , Somalia
	May	Italy
	June	Sweden , United Kingdom
	September	Luxembourg
	November	France , Bulgaria
1989	February	Japan
	April	Spain , Denmark
	May June	United States
	October	Morocco
1990	January	Switzerland
	March	Netherlands , Portugal , Czechoslovakia
	May	Poland , France
	July	Italy ( World Cup final )
	September	Canada , Belgium , United States ( World Summit for Children )
	October	Malta
	November	Japan , UK
1991	January	Norway
	February	South Korea
	February March	India , France
	June	Switzerland , Italy , Vatican City , France
	October	Czechoslovakia
	November	Netherlands , France
	December	Israel
1992	April May	United States
	June	Spain ( world exhibition )
	June July	Tanzania , Yemen
	July	Spain ( 1992 Summer Olympics ), Iceland , Ireland
	September	France
	October	Greece
	November	Mexico
1993	February	Czech Republic
	April	Turkey
	April May	Tunisia
	May	United States
	June	Hungary
	July	Finland , Estonia , Austria
	August September	New Zealand , Australia , Thailand , Oman
	October	Lithuania , Latvia
	October November	Chile , Ecuador
1994	March	Vatican City , Netherlands
	April	Czech Republic
	May	United States , France
	June	United Kingdom , Poland

Social Commitment

Richard von Weizsäcker, 2009

Richard von Weizsäcker maintained an office in Berlin to fulfill his obligations as former Federal President .

From 1964 to 1970 and from 1979 to 1981 he was President of the German Evangelical Church Congress , from 1967 to 1984 he was also a member of the Synod and the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany .

In 1988 Richard von Weizsäcker, as the incumbent Federal President, gave his consent that a school center in Bolivia could be named after him: the model school founded by Frank Weber in Cochabamba , which, as a private school, enables free schooling for socially disadvantaged families. He was the patron of the Richard von Weizsäcker vocational college in Lüdinghausen , Dülmen , Paderborn and Büren (Westphalia) .

Richard von Weizsäcker was a member of the board of trustees of the Robert Bosch Foundation from 1973 to 1997 . In 1994 he became chairman of the Bergedorf Round Table of the Körber Foundation and of the Board of Trustees of the Theodor Heuss Foundation . From 2002 he was also a member of the board of trustees of the Hannah Arendt Center (University of Oldenburg) and since then has also been the patron of the initiative Perspektive Deutschland , Aktion Deutschland Hilft e. V. He was a member of the board of trustees of the A Soul for Europe initiative . For many years Weizsäcker was a supporter of the Freya von Moltke Foundation and was committed to the New Kreisau.

From 1995 he headed as Co-President, together with the Frenchman Stéphane Hessel , Moeen Qureshi (former Prime Minister of Pakistan) a commission for the reorganization of the United Nations, which was convened by the then UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali . In 1995 the number of members of this commission had grown to nine, including the Kenyan Wangari Maathai , later (2004) winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

From 1995 to 2000 he was a member of the jury for the award of the International Nuremberg Human Rights Prize . His successor was Roman Herzog .

From May 1999 to May 2000 he was chairman of the Commission for Common Security and the Future of the Bundeswehr .

In 2008 Richard von Weizsäcker took over the name sponsorship of the Phi-Delta-Phi- Inn at the University of Tübingen.

Weizsäcker was a member of the jury of the Marion-Dönhoff Foundation, member of the Club of Rome and also next to the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and other personalities of the advisory board of the Berlin Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance .

Weizsäcker was one of the founders of the “Förderverein Dom zu Brandenburg e. V. “and was the godfather of the Schönberg Music Summer . He was the founding patron and from 1994 a member of the Senate of the German National Foundation founded by Helmut Schmidt and Kurt Biedenkopf .

Weizsäcker was the patron of Aktion Deutschland Hilft e. V., an alliance of German aid organizations that are active in the field of international disaster relief. His successor was Horst Köhler .

Weizsäcker was the only honorary member of the German-American association Atlantik-Brücke , in 1974 a founding and former board member of the German representation of the think tank Aspen Institute , a founding member of the American institution American Academy in Berlin , honorary member of the network for foreign policy DGAP and president of the European Leadership Network . The German-British Society appointed Weizsäcker its honorary president because of his commitment to German-British relations .

Honors

Play media file

Seraphine ringing and ceremony for Richard von Weizsäcker in Riddarholmskyrkan , Stockholm , on February 11, 2015, the day of his funeral

Weizsäcker's coat of arms as a knight of the Swedish Order of Seraphines

Memorial plaque on the house at Axel-Springer-Strasse 65, in Berlin-Kreuzberg

• 1941 Iron Cross 2nd class
• 1944 Iron Cross 1st class
• 1975 Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1980 Large Federal Cross of Merit with a star
• 1982 Sharpest blade in the city of Solingen
• 1983 Senator of the Max Planck Society ; Theodor Heuss Prize
• 1984 honorary member of the Association for the History of Berlin
• 1984 Special level of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (as official insignia for the assumption of the office of Federal President)
• 1985 Collane of the Finnish Order of the White Rose
• 1986 Rhetoric Prize; Grand Cross with Grand Chain of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic
• 1987 Order of the Quetzal
• 1987 Order of "Antonio José de Irisarri" from Guatemala
• Knight Grand Cross in the Order of the Dutch Lion
• 1987 Golden Camera ; Romano Guardini Prize ; Ataturk Peace Prize; German sports badge in gold
• 1988 Ring of Honor of German Craftsmen
• 1988 Knight of the Nassau House Order of the Golden Lion
• 1988 Order of the Falcon
• 1988 Knight of the Swedish Order of Seraphines
• 1989 Knight of the Danish Elephant Order
• 1989 Collane of the Order of the Infante Dom Henrique (Portugal)
• 1989 honorary citizen of Bonn
• 1990 Harnack Medal from the Max Planck Society; Geuzenpenning of the Dutch "Geuzen Resistance Foundation 40–45"; Honorary citizen of Stuttgart; Honorary citizen of Berlin
• 1991 gold medal from the Jewish lodge B'nai B'rith for special merits ; Heinrich Heine Prize of the City of Düsseldorf
• 1992 Royal Victorian Chain of Orders
• 1992 Nansen refugee award
• 1993 Heinz Galinski Prize
• 1994 Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland ; Augsburg Peace Prize ; Leo Baeck Prize , Olympic Order
• 1995 Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary
• 1995 German Citizen Award ; Buber Rosenzweig Medal ; Medal of Merit of the State of Baden-Württemberg
• 1995 Name of the school center Richard-von-Weizsäcker-Schule in Ottbergen
• 1995 Name of the Progymnasium (today Gymnasium) Richard-von-Weizsäcker-Gymnasium in Baiersbronn
• 1995 honorary citizen of the University of Stuttgart
• 1996 Art Prize for German-Czech Understanding
• 1996 Prize of the Ludwig Wishes Foundation
• 1997 honorary citizen of Gdansk
• 1997 Naming of the Richard-von-Weizsäcker vocational college in Paderborn
• 1998 Naming of the Richard von Weizsäcker vocational college in Lüdinghausen and Dülmen
• 1998 Name of the Richard-von-Weizsäcker-Gymnasium (since 2000 European Gymnasium) in Thale / Harz
• 1998 Humanism Prize from the German Association of Classical Philologists (Heidelberg)
• 2000 Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize (University of Tübingen); VdK price
• 2001 Dr. Sieghardt von Köckritz Prize ( German Foundation for Monument Protection )
• 2003 Erich Kästner Prize of the Press Club Dresden e. V.
• 2003 Johann Heinrich Voß Prize for Literature and Politics
• 2003 Martin Buber badge
• 2003 Grand Cross with a necklace of the Czech Order of the White Lion
• 2005 Mercator professorship at the University of Duisburg-Essen
• 2005 Kaiser Otto Prize of the City of Magdeburg
• 2006 Renaming of the home and agricultural school in Öhringen to Richard-von-Weizsäcker-Schule Öhringen
• 2006 Richard von Weizsäcker Journalist Prize from the Unionhilfswerk Foundation
• 2008 “ Four Freedoms Award ”, Roosevelt Foundation Netherlands, City of Middelburg
• 2008 namesake of the " Phi Delta Phi Richard von Weizsäcker Inn Tübingen e. V. "
• 2009 "Promoter of the Book", German Book Trade Association
• 2009 Corine - International Book Prize for The Path to Unity
• 2009 Martin Luther Medal for special services to German Protestantism
• 2009 Henry A. Kissinger Prize from the American Academy in Berlin
• 2010 Richard Merton badge of honor from the Donors' Association for German Science
• 2010 German National Foundation names the former sponsorship of its founding patron and honorary senator in Richard von Weizsäcker Award to
• 2011 Man of the Year from the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza
• 2012 Prize for Understanding and Tolerance from the Jewish Museum Berlin
• 2012 Prize of the German Society V . for services to German and European understanding
• 2013 International Mendelssohn Prize in Leipzig (Social Commitment category)
• 2014 Eric M. Warburg Prize of the Atlantik-Brücke
• 2015 ( posthumous ) state act in the Berlin Cathedral
• Honorary grave of the city of Berlin at the Dahlem forest cemetery
• 2020 On the occasion of his 100th birthday, on April 2nd, Deutsche Post issued a special stamp worth 80 euro cents with a portrait of Richard von Weizsäcker and the quote “Those who respect the dignity of other people express their own dignity”.
• In 2021 it was decided to rename Kaiser-Wilhelm-Platz in Berlin-Schöneberg to Richard-Weizsäcker-Platz

The Federal President officially did not wear his Iron Cross First Class during his term of office.

Honorary doctorates

• 1984 Grenoble; New York (School of Social Research)
• 1985 Weizmann Institute for Science ( Rechowot / Israel)
• 1986 Catholic University of Leuven
• 1986 Istanbul
• 1987 Sucre (Bolivia); Harvard (Cambridge / USA); Georg-August-University Goettingen
• 1988 Nigeria ; Oxford; Sofia
• 1990 Malta
• 1991 Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam ; Madras ; Pavia
• 1993 Baltimore ; Danzig
• 1994 University of Cambridge
• 1995 Uppsala University
• 1996 Charles University in Prague ( law )
• 2005 Waseda University ( Tokyo )

Fonts

• From Germany - speeches by the Federal President. Siedler, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-88680-173-X .
• From Germany to Europe. The moving power of history . Siedler, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-88680-378-3 ; as paperback: Goldmann, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-442-12843-9 .
• Richard von Weizsäcker in conversation with Gunter Hofmann and Werner A. Perger . Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-8218-1160-9 (conversation on determining the location of German politics after the political change in Eastern Europe with two ZEIT editors).
• Four times. Memories. Siedler, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-88680-556-5 .
• Zero hour three times? 1949 - 1969 - 1989. Siedler, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-88680-732-0 .
• What kind of world do we want? Richard von Weizsäcker in conversation with Jan Roß . Rowohlt, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-87134-524-5 .
• Richard von Weizsäcker: Everything depends on the political will of the members. In: Humboldt Forum Law .
• The Germans and their neighbors. (12 volumes), ed. together with Helmut Schmidt , Beck, Munich 2008/2009, ISBN 978-3-406-90275-8 .
• The way to unity. Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59287-4 .

literature

• Werner Filmer , Heribert Schwan (ed.): Richard von Weizsäcker - Profiles of a man. Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-426-03796-3 .
• Thorsten Hinz: The Weizsäcker Complex: A Political Archeology. Edition JF, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-929886-40-5 .
• Gunter Hofmann : Richard von Weizsäcker. A German life . CH Beck, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-59809-8 .
• Friedbert Pflüger : Richard von Weizsäcker - A portrait up close. Droemer Knaur, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-426-02437-3
• Martin Wein : The Weizsäcker, story of a German family. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-421-06389-3 .
• Helmut Schmidt : A moral guide. On Richard von Weizsäcker's latest book The Path to Unity . In: Die Zeit , No. 44/2009; Review.
• Cordt Schnibben :. The death from Ingelheim . In: Der Spiegel. No. 32, 1991 [1]
• Cordt Schnibben : An unfortunate story. In: Der Spiegel. No. 48, 1992.
• Klaus Wiegrefe : The quiet revolutionary . In: Der Spiegel . No. 11 , 2010, p. 64-75 ( online ).
• Ludger Kühnhardt : Richard von Weizsäcker (1920–2015). Snapshots and ways of thinking of a European statesman. Bonn 2020, ISBN 978-3-941928-91-6 .
• Ulrich , Volker: The end of the Weizsäcker legend. A conversation with Norbert Frei; In: The time; No. 44/2010; October 28, 2010

Fiction

• Fridolin Schley : The defense . Novel. Verlag Hanser Berlin, Berlin 2021, ISBN 978-3-446-26592-9

Movies

• Richard von Weizsäcker. Production on behalf of the NDR. Shown in Tagesschau 24 on April 18, 2015, 8:15 p.m. - 9:47 p.m. (Life stages: Second World War, private sector, Governing Mayor of Berlin, Federal President).
• Richard von Weizsäcker in conversation with Thomas Grimm . Contemporary witness TV. 45 min. 1997.
• Richard von Weizsäcker in the memory of the nation on YouTube

Web links

Commons : Richard von Weizsäcker  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Richard von Weizsäcker  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Richard von Weizsäcker in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Richard von Weizsäcker  in the German Digital Library
• Irmgard Zündorf: Richard von Weizsäcker. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
• Richard von Weizsäcker on bundespraesident.de
• CV at the Berlin Senate
• Speech of May 8, 1985 (online presence of the Office of the Federal President )
• Recording of Weizsäcker's speech on May 8, 1985 on archive.org (audio document as MP3 / 160 Kbits, 44:32 minutes)
• Peter Voss asks Richard von Weizsäcker: “Does the nation have a future?” Interview from January 25, 2010 (45 minutes VoD) on 3sat
• Correspondence between President Weizsaecker and the Israeli President Chaim Herzog during the First Gulf War . Blog of Israel State Archives
• Obituaries: spiegel.de , FAZ.net , sueddeutsche.de ( The Federal King , How a speech freed the Germans ), zeit.de , lefigaro.fr
• Richard von Weizsäcker in conversation with Ingo Hermann, in the series Witnesses of the Century , created in the project Memory of the Nation ( Interview - May 8, 1996  - duration 1:11:49 h).
• Website of the "Phi Delta Phi Richard von Weizsäcker Inn Tübingen eV"
• April 15, 1920 - Richard von Weizsäcker's birthday , in the series: ZeitZeichen , WDR , April 15, 2020, last accessed on April 18, 2020.
• Estate of the Federal Archives N 1574

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Klaus Wiegrefe: The quiet revolutionary . In: Der Spiegel . No. 11 , 2010, p. 64-75 ( online ).
2. ↑ ^{a b} State act for Richard von Weizsäcker ( memento of February 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). In: RBB-online . February 11, 2015.
3. ↑ The grave of Richard von Weizsäcker . In: knerger.de
4. ↑ Goethe-Institut (Ed.): 50 Years of the Goethe-Institut in Denmark 1961–2011 . Copenhagen 2011, ISBN 978-3-00-034156-4 , p. 217.
5. ↑ Peter Bollier: The NSDAP under the Alpenfirn. History of an existential challenge for Davos, Graubünden and Switzerland. Chur 2016.
6. ↑ Jürgen Klöckler: The NSDAP in Switzerland. When the Swiss felt threatened by Berlin and Richard von Weizsäcker led the Hitler Youth in Bern. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 13, 2017, p. 6.
7. ↑ Sit down, six! - School stories from Germany (1/3). Lost childhood . Documentary by Dora Heinze on behalf of SWR. German premiere on December 8, 2005
8. ^ History of the 1st Guards Regiment on Foot 1933–1945. ( Memento from January 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
9. ↑ It was horrible . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 2009 ( online - Spiegel interview with Weizsäcker).
10. ↑ On July 20, 1941, see Rudolf Schröck: Richard von Weizsäcker: a picture biography. Heyne, Munich 1992, p. 67.
11. ↑ Werner Filmer, Heribert Schwan : Richard von Weizsäcker - Profile of a man. Econ, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1984, p. 36.
12. ↑ Because of “special bravery”, see Rudolf Schröck: Richard von Weizsäcker: a picture biography. Heyne, Munich 1992, p. 79.
13. ^ Marion Countess Dönhoff : He was president just in case. In: Die Zeit , No. 27/1994, pp. 4–5.
14. ^ Richard Georg Blaschke: Avant-garde of the resistance: model cases of military rebellion in the 19th and 20th centuries. Böhlau, Vienna 2000, p. 219. And Dieter E. Kilian: Politics and the military in Germany: the Federal Presidents and Federal Chancellors and their relationship to the soldiery and the Federal Armed Forces. BoD, 2011, p. 168.
15. ↑ Werner Filmer, Heribert Schwan : Richard von Weizsäcker - Profile of a man. Econ, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1984, pp. 38-39.
16. ^ Karl Salm: desertion as a political worldview? A historical-political study on the Richard Freiherr von Weizsäcker case. 2nd edition Hohenrain Verlag , Tübingen 1990, ISBN 3-89180-022-3 .
17. ↑ Ulrich Raulff: Circle without a master. 2009, p. 383, p. 403 ff., P. 471 f
18. ^ The judgment in the Wilhelmstrasse trial. 1950, p. 93 f.
19. ↑ Christoph Gunkel: Diplomat of the devil . In: one day . March 17, 2010, accessed February 11, 2013.
20. ^ In conversation: Richard von Weizsäcker. This is not about my father; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ; October 25, 2010.
21. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann : The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Verlag Karl Blessing, Munich 2010.
22. ↑ Ulrich , Volker: The end of the Weizsäcker legend. A conversation with Norbert Frei; In: The time; No. 44/2010; October 28, 2010.
23. ↑ Memorial plaque for Dr. Richard von Weizsäcker , www.gelsenkirchener-geschichten.de
24. ↑ Greens against Weizsäcker. In: Der Spiegel . No. 31, 1984 ( online ).
25. ↑ U. Manuwald, D. Wilken, H. Zhang, X. Baur: Scientific evaluation of the Hamburg dioxin cohort. Final report. In: Research report 422 occupational safety. Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (BMAS), January 11, 2011, accessed on November 21, 2019. ISSN 0174-4992. P. 8.
26. ↑ Death from Ingelheim . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1991 ( online ).
27. ↑ An unfortunate story . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 1992 ( online ).
28. ↑ Armin Fuhrer: Brutal bloody act in Berlin: That is behind the murder of Fritz von Weizsäcker. In: Focus online. November 22, 2019, accessed December 25, 2020 . 
29. ↑ Eberhard Reuß: Worked up? Gerold Becker and the Odenwald School scandal; In: SWR 2 manuscript; Baden-Baden 2017; P. 7.
30. ↑ Jörg Schindler: Abuse and cover-up: Chronicle of the scandal. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. April 16, 2010.
31. ^ The Weizsäcker family breaks the silence; In: the mirror; March 27, 2010.
32. ^ Rüdiger Runge, Margot Käßmann : Church in Motion - 50 Years of the German Evangelical Church Congress 1949–1999. Gütersloh 1999, ISBN 3-579-02099-4 , p. 106.
33. ↑ Wilfried Rott : The island. A History of West Berlin 1948–1990 . CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59133-4 , p. 350 f.
34. ↑ Jasper von Altenbockum : The President of the Federal Republic. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . Obituary dated January 31, 2015.
35. ↑ Weizsäcker commented on his host as follows: “I couldn't guess which personal characteristics qualified him to advance to the top of a system.” Wilfried Rott : Die Insel. A History of West Berlin 1948–1990 . CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59133-4 , p. 352.
36. ↑ Wilfried Rott : The island. A History of West Berlin 1948–1990 . CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59133-4 , p. 353.
37. ^ Gunter Hofmann: The controversy: Weizsäcker's party criticism in the discussion . Eichborn, Frankfurt 1992, ISBN 3-8218-1162-5 .
38. ↑ "If you don't do anything, you don't necessarily do the right thing". February 10, 2017, accessed January 13, 2021 . 
39. ↑ Jens Peter Paul: Balance of a failed communication. Case studies on the German history of the development of the euro and its theoretical democratic quality ; Diss . University of Frankfurt a. M. 2010; P. 291.
40. ↑ Christiane Hoffmann, Markus Wehner: Ehrensold, office and employees - a question of morality and decency . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung . March 11, 2012.
41. ^ Frank Weber: Centro Educativo Richard von Weizsäcker . In: ce-rv-weizsaecker.com
42. ^ Robert Bosch Stiftung: Robert Bosch Stiftung - Robert Bosch Stiftung mourns the loss of its curator Federal President Dr. Richard Freiherr von Weizsäcker. In: bosch-stiftung.de. Retrieved January 3, 2017 . 
43. ↑ fvms.de ( Memento from October 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
44. ^ In a series with Roosevelt - Juristenvereinigung founded in Tübingen on the American model. ( Memento from January 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 319 kB) In: Schwäbisches Tagblatt . October 6, 2008.
45. ^ Patronage and board of trustees of Aktion Deutschland Hilft. Aktion Deutschland Hilft
46. ↑ http://www.eann.de/horst-koehler-neuer-schirmherr-der-aktion-deutschland-hilft/16834/ (link not available)
47. ^ Honorary member: Richard von Weizsäcker . ( Memento of October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 5.0 MB; p. 35/45) p. 66.
48. ↑ 24 years later Willy Brandt, Marion Countess Dönhoff, Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker and Shepard Stone founded the Aspen Institute Germany . (PDF; p. 9/104) p. 7.
49. ↑ Richard von Weizsäcker Distinguished Visitorship ( Memento from February 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
50. ^ Honorary members of the DGAP: Richard von Weizsäcker
51. ↑ Former President European Leadership Network: Richard von Weizsäcker ( Memento from February 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
52. ↑ Honorary President ( Memento from January 4, 2017 in the Internet Archive ). In: debrige.de ( German-British Society ); accessed on February 14, 2015.
53. ↑ diegeschichteberlins.de accessed on January 31, 2015
54. ↑ Jean Schoos : The orders and decorations of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the former Duchy of Nassau in the past and present. Verlag der Sankt-Paulus Druckerei, Luxembourg 1990, ISBN 2-87963-048-7 , p. XLI.
55. ↑ Per Nordenvall: Kungliga Serafimerorden 1748–1998 , Kungl Maj: ts Orden, Stockholm 1998, ISBN 91-630-6744-7 , pp. 548f.
56. ↑ Weizsäcker honorary citizen of the University of Stuttgart ( Memento from April 12, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ). In: seiten.faz-archiv.de . December 19, 1995. p. 004. (fee required)
57. ↑ Founding ceremony 2008. Retrieved on April 14, 2020 . 
58. ↑ Stifterverband honors Richard von Weizsäcker . In: Information Service Science . June 11, 2010. Retrieved June 14, 2010.
59. ^ Polish newspaper honors Richard von Weizsäcker. In: RP Online , May 25, 2011.
60. ↑ Super User: 2012 - Deutsche Gesellschaft eV Accessed December 11, 2017 . 
61. ↑ Awarding of the Eric M. Warburg Prize to Dr. Richard von Weizsäcker ( Memento from June 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
62. ↑ Women were not included in the renaming debate. Retrieved March 26, 2021 . 
63. ↑ Georg-August-Universität Göttingen - Public Relations: Honorary doctorates of the Theological Faculty - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Retrieved May 8, 2020 .