Konrad Adenauer

Adenauer, Konrad 

Born Jan. 5, 1876, in Cologne; died Apr. 19, 1967, near Bonn. A statesman of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG).

Adenauer received his university degree in 1901 and became a lawyer. After World War I he took part in the Rhineland separatist movement. From 1917 until 1933 he was lord high mayor of Cologne, and from 1920 until 1932 he was president of the Prussian state council. One of the leaders of the Catholic Center Party, Adenauer became a member of the board of overseers of power and coal joint-stock companies and the Deutsche Bank. From 1946 he was the president of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), at first in the English occupation zone of Germany and, from October 1950, in all of West Germany. He had intimate connections with foreign monopolies. During 1948–49 he was the president of the so-called parliamentary council. He took an active part in conducting separate West German monetary reforms and in other measures aimed at completing the split of Germany.

After the creation of the FRG, Adenauer became the federal chancellor, a post he held from September 1949 until October 1963; from 1951 until 1955 he was minister of foreign affairs as well. In September 1955 he was in the USSR to negotiate the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the FRG. The Adenauer government signed the Paris Agreement of 1954, bringing the FRG into NATO. The policies of the Adenauer government made possible the revival of militarism and revanche in West Germany. It prohibited the activity of the Communist Party of Germany in 1956 and of many other progressive organizations in the FRG. Adenauer was guided by the aggressive circles of the USA and favored conducting policies “from a position of strength” in relation to the USSR and other socialist countries. He was a major instigator of the revanchist policies of the FRG, aimed at the revision of the bases of the postwar structure of Europe.

REFERENCES

Dzelepy, E. N. Konrad Adenauer: legenda i deistvitel’nost’. Moscow, 1965. (Translated from French.)
Pritzkoleit, K. Wem gehört Deutschland? Munich, 1957.
Pritzkoleit, K. Männer, Mächte, Monopole. Düsseldorf, 1953.

IU. A. KVITSINSKII