An Encounter with Conrad's Finger

• published: 27 Sep 2008
• views: 919

As a devout Roman Catholic, he joined the Centre Party in 1906 and was elected to Colognes city council in the same year. In 1909, he became Vice-Mayor of Cologne. From 1917 to 1933, he served as Mayor of Cologne. He had the unpleasant task of heading Cologne in the era of British occupation following the First World War and lasting until 1926. He managed to establish faithful relations with the British military authorities and flirted with Rhenish separatism (a Rhenish state as part of Germany, but outside Prussia). During the Weimar Republic, he was president of the Prussian State Council (Preußischer Staatsrat) from 1922 to 1933, which was the representative of the Prussian cities and provinces. Part of the Politics series on Christian Democracy Parties[hide] List of Christian Democratic parties Centrist Democrat International Christian Democratic Organization of America European People's Party European Christian Political Movement European Democratic Party Ideas[hide] Social conservatism Social market economy Communitarianism · Human dignity Stewardship · Sphere sovereignty Distributism Catholic social teaching Neo-Calvinism · Neo-Thomism Documents[hide] Stone Lectures Rerum Novarum Graves de Communi Re Quadragesimo Anno Laborem Exercens Sollicitudi Rei Socialis Centesimus Annus People[hide] Thomas Aquinas · John Calvin Pope Leo XIII · Abraham Kuyper Jacques Maritain · Konrad Adenauer Alcide De Gasperi · Pope Pius XI Robert Schuman · Pope John Paul II Helmut Kohl Politics portal v • d • e When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Centre Party lost the elections in Cologne and Adenauer fled to the abbey of Maria Laach, threatened by the new government after he refused to shake hands with a local Nazi leader. His stay at this abbey, which lasted for a year, was cited by its abbot after the war, when accused by Heinrich Böll and others of collaboration with the Nazis. He was imprisoned briefly after the Night of the Long Knives in mid-1934. During the next two years, he changed residences often for fear of reprisals against him by the Nazis. In 1937, he was successful in claiming at least some compensation for his once confiscated house and managed to live in seclusion for some years. According to Albert Speer in his book Spandau: The Secret Diaries, Hitler expressed admiration for Adenauer, noting his building of a road circling the city as a bypass, and of a green belt of parks. However, both Hitler and Speer felt that Adenauers political views and principles made it impossible for him to play any role within the Nazi movement or be helpful to the Nazi party. After the failed assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944, he was imprisoned for a second time as an opponent of the regime. The Gestapo could not prove he played an active role in the plot and he was released some weeks later. Shortly after the war ended the Americans installed him again as Mayor of Cologne, but the British administration dismissed him for what they said was his alleged incompetence.