Konrad Adenauer was born to Catholic parents in Cologne in 1876. His upbringing was very strict and traditional. At 21, he completed university in Bonn, and after a four-year apprenticeship, became a lawyer. In 1906, he married Emma Weyer. Three years later, his first child was born and he entered politics, becoming the Deputy Mayor of Cologne. Tragedy struck the young family when Emma was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1912. Nonetheless, Adenauer performed well throughout the war, during which Cologne was a major supply depot and support area for the Army, and was rewarded with election to the mayoralty in 1917.
The end of the war brought chaos, revolution and an occupation by the British. Adenauer played his hand well and rose to national prominence in the new Weimar Republic. At issue throughout the 1920's was France's desire to occupy the Rhineland and create a buffer between herself and the Prussians. When reparation payments faltered, France occupied the Ruhr valley. The Germans and the Allies debated endlessly about security and disarmament throughout the decade. The Germans wanted autonomy and the French assurances. Finally, in 1926, the British left Cologne; the French stayed in the Ruhr for four more years. Adenauer had worked closely with the British, but made a churlish speech upon their departure, forever earning their enmity. As the Depression took its toll, the Nazis rose to power and Adenauer was at least modestly complicit in accepting them as an antidote to the communists. That said, he offended Hitler and by March 1933, the fifty-seven-year-old was unemployed and without a penny to his name.
Afraid for his life, he took refuge in a Benedictine Abbey. His second wife, Gussi, remained in Cologne with their children. There then ensued three years of avoiding the Gestapo's attention and attempting to obtain some restitution from Cologne for his dismissal. In 1937, he received a payment from the city and a pension and was able to buy a home in Rhondorf, south of Cologne, where he and his family would live for the next thirty years. The Adenauer's settled into a comfortable retirement and no longer merited Nazi attention. After the failure of the Stauffenberg Plot in 1944, all the usual suspects, including Adenauer, were rounded up. With sons in the military, he was reprieved, survived the war and was asked by the Americans to resume as mayor, which he did in May 1945.
Cologne was in the British Zone and Adenauer was soon sacked. Free of responsibility, he had the time to participate in the founding of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Germany's center-right political party. He also began to reach out to the French to discuss his thoughts on their security needs, the centerpiece of which was the establishment of a Germany with a political focus on its non-Prussian heritage as well as the economic integration of the two countries. The Federal Republic of Germany was created in May, 1949. He was elected Chancellor of West Germany, an occupied nation with limited sovereignty. A few years later, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman of France proposed a Franco-German coal and steel integration that led to the European Coal and Steel Community Treaty in 1951. Soon the Allied occupation ended, a financial settlement with Israel was reached, and full independence and participation in NATO were accomplished. Approaching eighty, he had brought W. Germany back into the concert of nations. His last years in office were dominated by Berlin and Khrushchev's desire to stir the pot; he ultimately fell in October, 1963 for deciding to side with de Gaulle's opposition to Britain's joining the EEC. In retirement, he tried but failed to influence the policies of his successor, published his memoirs, and visited Israel and Spain. He died in April, 1967 and is buried at his home.
How the biography of a man voted in 2003 as the greatest German of all time, a man whose career started when TR was in the White House and whose funeral was attended by LBJ could be so boring is hard to fathom. Clearly, he was a bit stiff and colorless, but he lived through some of the most momentous times in German history and was almost always on the right side of history. His anti-communist instincts rivaled Churchill's. I think Wikipedia prevails in a head-to-head competition here.
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