Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Adenauer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Konrad Adenauer (January 5, 1876 – April 19, 1967) was a conservative German statesman. Although his political career spanned 60 years, beginning as early as 1906, he is most noted for his role as West Germany's first chancellor from 1949-1963 and chairman of the Christian Democratic Union from 1950 to 1966.
His was an ideology at odds with many in the CDU who wished to unite socialism and Christianity; Adenauer instead favored stressing more the dignity of the individual, and he lumped together both socialism and Nazism as "materialist" world views that violated the dignity of the individual.
However, in the final analysis, positive assessments of his chancellorship prevail - not only with the German public, which voted him the "greatest German of all time" in a 2003 television poll, but also with today's left-wing intellectuals, who praise his unconditional commitment to western-style democracy and European integration, and his reluctance about national reunification.
When in 1967, after his death at the age of 91, people were asked for what they admired most about Adenauer, the majority responded that Adenauer brought home the last German prisoners of war from the USSR.