Saturday 20 September 2008


Cologne: A Tale of Two Mayors

From the desk of Thomas Landen on Sat, 2008-09-20 10:21

Once, Cologne had a mayor to be proud of. Konrad Adenauer, mayor of Cologne from 1917 to 1933, was a devout Catholic. An outspoken opponent of the Nazi regime (1933-1945), he played no political role in Germany until the end of the Second World War when the Americans reinstalled him as mayor of Cologne but the British dismissed him after a couple of weeks for “alleged incompetence.” Following this dismissal for “incompetence” he founded the German Christian-Democrat Party CDU and became the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (1949-1963) and the “father” of the modern, democratic Germany.
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