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| Adenauer, Konrad (1876-1967) |
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Born on 5 January 1876 into a Catholic family in Cologne,
where he became Deputy Mayor in 1909 and served as Lord Mayor between 1917 and 1933,
Adenauer was a member of the republican-democratic wing of the Centre Party during the
Weimar period. A resolute opponent of Hitler and National Socialism, Adenauer was dismissed from his position in 1933 and arrested a year later by the Gestapo for continued resistance to the regime. A further arrest followed in 1944 when he was sent to Brauweiler prison. After the fall of the Third Reich, Adenauer co-founded the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) and was elected in 1949 as Chancellor of the German Federal Republic, a position he maintained until his retirement, because of advanced age, in 1963. This was the longest tenure in office of any German statesman since Bismarck, coinciding with a long period of prosperity (the 'economic miracle') and political stability which transformed West Germany into an accepted member of the community of nations. At home and abroad, Adenauer's patriarchal style of leadership, his pro-western orientation and impeccable moral credentials strengthened confidence in the new Germany. His policy favoured close ties with France, European economic co-operation and reconciliation with Israel - in a declaration before the Bundestag on 27 September 1951 Adenauer had acknowledged German crimes against the Jews and the obligation to make 'moral and material amends'. Nevertheless many judges, civil servants, businessmen and police officers with a compromised past continued to serve under his administration.
Adenauer's greatest achievement during fourteen years of rule was to provide West Germans
with the sense of stability and continuity that could reconcile them to democracy in the
post-war period. He died at the age of ninety-one in his villa at Rondorf in April 1967.
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