If the party of Adenauer and Erhart, with 45 per cent of the vote, approaches the party of Willy Brandt, which won 36 per cent, the result would be a stiffening of the old resolve.

Before the speech, US delegations met with Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and French President Charles de Gaulle to brief them on the US intelligence and their proposed response.

Beginning with the replacement of the Reichsmark with the Deutsche Mark as legal tender, a lasting period of low inflation and rapid industrial growth was overseen by the government led by German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his minister of economics, Ludwig Erhard, raising West Germany from total wartime devastation to one of the most developed nations in modern Europe.

Adenauer in 1952 ; he forged close ties with France and the U. S. and opposed the Soviet Union and its satellite of East Germany

An expressionist painting with mayor Adenauer ( in grey ) together with artists and a boxer.

Adenauer headed Cologne during the First World War, working closely with the army to maximize the city's role as a rear base of supply and transportation for the Western Front.

In the face of the collapse of the old regime and the threat of revolution and widespread disorder in late 1918, Adenauer maintained control in Cologne using his good working relationship with the Social Democrats.

By early February Adenauer finally realized that all talk and all attempts at compromise with the Nazis were futile.

Adenauer worked diligently at building up contacts and support in the CDU over the next years, and he sought with varying success to impose his particular ideology on the party.

His was an ideology at odds with many in the CDU, who wished to unite socialism and Christianity ; Adenauer preferred to stress the dignity of the individual, and he considered both communism and Nazism materialist world views that violated human dignity.

Theodor Heuss was elected the first President of the Republic, and Adenauer was elected Chancellor ( head of government ) on 16 September 1949 with the support of his own CDU, the Christian Social Union and the liberal Free Democratic Party.

During the early years of his chancellorship and with a broad consensus within the West German establishment in favor of amnesty and integration, Adenauer pressed for the ending of denazification efforts.

Konrad Adenauer with minister of economics Ludwig Erhard, 1956.

Konrad Adenauer with Israeli President Zalman Shazar, 1966.

Adenauer firmly integrated the country with the emerging Euro-Atlantic community ( NATO and the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation ).

The Adenauer era witnessed a dramatic rise in the standard of living of average Germans, with real wages doubling between 1950 and 1963.

Concluding that the United States would eventually pull out of Western Europe, Adenauer pursued nuclear cooperation with other countries.

Adenauer was not on good terms with his economics minister Ludwig Erhard and tried to block him from the chancellorship.

The obverse side shows a portrait with the names Robert Schuman, Paul-Henri Spaak and Konrad Adenauer.

* On April 6, 2010, with a lifespan of 33 342 days he surpassed Konrad Adenauer in terms of longevity and is now the oldest former chancellor in German history.

Ludwig Erhard with Konrad Adenauer in 1956

After the resignation of Adenauer in 1963, Erhard was elected Chancellor with 279 against 180 votes in the Bundestag on 16 October.

In 1955, Hartmann's mother wrote to the new West German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, to whom she appealed to secure his freedom.

That this and the closing of the East Berlin-West Berlin border have not been accepted by the Western governments appears in notes which Britain, France, and the United States sent to Moscow after the latter's gratuitous protest over a visit of Chancellor Adenauer and other West German officials to West Berlin.

Behind the long table set up on the steps of the Rathaus Schöneberg were US and German dignitaries, including Dean Rusk ( Kennedy's Secretary of State ), Lucius D. Clay ( the US administrator of Germany ), Konrad Adenauer ( the German chancellor ), Willy Brandt, and Otto Bach ( President of the German House of Representatives ).

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967 ) was a German statesman.

Riding a wave of popularity from the return of the last POWs from Soviet labor camps, as well as an extensive pension reform, Adenauer led the CDU / CSU to the first — and as of 2011, only — outright majority in a free German election.

and Adenauer linked this rearmament concept to West German sovereignty and entry into NATO.

The German student movement of the late 1960s was essentially a left-wing protest against the conservatism that Adenauer — by then out of office — had personified.

Adenauer ensured a truly free and democratic society, which had been almost unknown to the German people before — notwithstanding the attempt between 1919 and 1933 ( the Weimar Republic ) — and which is today not just normal but also deeply integrated into modern German society.

When, in 1967, after his death at the age of 91, Germans were asked what they admired most about Adenauer, the majority responded that he had brought home the last German prisoners of war from the USSR, which had become known as the " Return of the 10, 000 ".

Konrad Adenauer: A German Politician and Statesman in a Period of War, Revolution and Reconstruction.

vol 2: Konrad Adenauer a German politician and statesman in a period of war, revolution and reconstruction ( 1995 ) 759 pp. excerpt and text search vol 2 ; also full text online

Even while the Marshall Plan was being implemented, the dismantling of German industry continued, and in 1949 Konrad Adenauer wrote to the Allies requesting that it end, citing the inherent contradiction between encouraging industrial growth and removing factories and also the unpopularity of the policy.

Especially in Germany, these celebrations had a distinctly political note to them and often stressed Boniface as a kind of founder of Europe, such as when Konrad Adenauer, the ( Catholic ) German chancellor, addressed a crowd of 60, 000 in Fulda, celebrating the feast day of the saint in a European context: " Das, was wir in Europa gemeinsam haben, gemeinsamen Ursprungs " (" What we have in common in Europe comes from the same source ").

** Konrad Adenauer is re-elected as German chancellor.

He is notable for his leading role in German postwar economic reform and economic recovery (" Wirtschaftswunder ", German for " economic miracle "), particularly in his role as Minister of Economics under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1949 to his own ascension to the Chancellorship in 1963.

In 1961, while vice president, Johnson had hosted Konrad Adenauer some two years before the German statesman vacated the chancellorship of the German Federal Republic.

They used it as a centre for reconciliation across Europe, and the group brought together thousands of Europeans, including German Chancellor Adenauer and French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman.

Adenauer died on 19 April 1967 in his family home at Rhöndorf.

Adenauer speaking in the Bundestag, 1955.

* 8 June 1955 – Heinrich von Brentano ( CDU ) succeeds Adenauer as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

In 1955 Konrad Adenauer visited Moscow, where agreement was reached that the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet Union would establish diplomatic relations.

Adenauer talked of the policy in a press conference on 16 September 1955 and again in a government statement to the Parliament on 22 September 1955, warning other states that establishing diplomatic relations with the German Democratic Republic would be regarded as an unfriendly act.

At the time the Hallstein Doctrine was born ( or at least named ), Heinrich von Brentano was the foreign minister, a post that had been recently created, after West Germany largely regained its sovereignty in 1955 — before this, political responsibility for foreign policy had been retained by the chancellor, Konrad Adenauer.

Konrad Adenauer in Moscow, 1955.

Molotov ( far left ) with Khrushchev ( second from right ) and Premier Nikolai Bulganin ( to the left of Khrushchev ) in 1955 at a gala reception in Moscow for the visit of West German Chancellor Conrad Adenauer ( centre ).

In 1955 he joined the Christian Democratic Union ( CDU ) under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

He became a member of the first Bundestag ( Federal Parliament ) in 1949 and, in 1953, Federal Minister for Special Affairs in the second cabinet of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, in 1955 Federal Minister of Nuclear Energy, and in 1956 defence minister, charged with the build-up of the new Bundeswehrthe youngest man to hold this office at the time.

During 1955, after the official visit of Chancellor of Germany Adenauer to the Soviet Union and the signing of a number of Soviet-German agreements, this status was abolished ( the process of resettlement of Germans to Germany was started at this time as well ).

Federal Chancellor Adenauer had some solid advantages over his Social Democratic opponent, Erich Ollenhauer: West Germany had become fully sovereign in 1955, it had joined the European Economic Community in March 1957, its economy grew steadily with a very low unemployment, and most West Germans felt clearly more prosperous and more secure than in 1949 or 1953.

In 1951 the Foreign Office was reestablished in West Germany, but Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was required to hold the office of Foreign Minister until the Western powers restored sovereignty to West Germany in 1955.

In the Paris Agreements of 23 October 1954, France offered to establish an independent " Saarland ", under the auspices of the Western European Union ( WEU ), but a referendum held on 23 October 1955 rejected this plan by 67. 7 % to 32. 3 % ( out of a 96. 5 % turnout: 423, 434 against, 201, 975 for ) despite the public support of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer for the plan.

Chancellor Konrad Adenauer took the office of the first Foreign Minister in Bonn until the inauguration of Heinrich von Brentano in 1955.

On 20 December 1955 The Society for Christian Democratic Education Work, which would be renamed after Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1964, was opened in Bonn.

From 1955 to 1961 he served as the chairman of the CDU faction in the Bundestag, and was a trusted colleague of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.