Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer was a German statesman who served as the first postwar Chancellor of Germany from 1949 to 1963. He led his country from the ruins of World War II to a productive and prosperous nation that forged close relations with France, Great Britain and the United States. During his years in power West Germany achieved democracy, stability, international respect and economic prosperity . He was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union , a Christian Democratic party that under his leadership became, and has since usually been, the most influential party in the country.

Konrad Adenauer was born as the third of five children of Johann Konrad Adenauer and his wife Helene in Cologne, Rhenish Prussia, onJanuary 1876. His siblings were August , Johannes , Lilli and Elisabeth, who died shortly after birth in c. 1880. One of the formative influences of Adenauers youth was the Kulturkampf, an experience that as related to him by his parents left him with a lifelong dislike for Prussianism, and led him like many other Catholic Rhinelanders of the 19th century to deeply resent the Rhinelands inclusion in Prussia.

Source: Wikipedia