Somorra – Stadt der Lüge: Adventskalender Tag 17 Blogspiele Gnislew

Auch heute geht unsere Adventsreise nach Somorra weiter! Hört rein, wie das Abenteuer für Michael weitergeht. Natürlich wie immer vorgelesen von Jörg!

The post Somorra – Stadt der Lüge: Adventskalender Tag 17 first appeared on Blogspiele.

Somorra – Stadt der Lüge: Adventskalender Tag 16 Blogspiele Gnislew

Auch heute geht unsere Adventsreise nach Somorra weiter! Hört rein, wie das Abenteuer für Michael weitergeht. Natürlich wie immer vorgelesen von Jörg!

The post Somorra – Stadt der Lüge: Adventskalender Tag 16 first appeared on Blogspiele.

Somorra – Stadt der Lüge: Adventskalender Tag 15 Blogspiele Gnislew

Auch heute geht unsere Adventsreise nach Somorra weiter! Hört rein, wie das Abenteuer für Michael weitergeht. Natürlich wie immer vorgelesen von Jörg!

The post Somorra – Stadt der Lüge: Adventskalender Tag 15 first appeared on Blogspiele.

In dieser Kategorie gibt es Aktuelles der drei Kategorien Mäh! (News), Herde (Neuzugänge) und Grasen (Ersteindrücke). Diesen Monat mit der SPIEL'25, aktuellen Auszeichnungen, The Druids of Edora, Thebai, Pulitzer, Waldland und Star Wars - Battle of Hoth .

Tags: #alea | #Board & Dice | #DSP'25 | #Fairplay à la carte | #Pulitzer | #Spiel | #SPIEL'25 | #The Druids of Edora | #Thebai

[para la versión en español del juego ver abajo]

Zum Tag der Toten habe ich in ein kleines Postkartenspiel für zwei Personen gebastelt, das ich hier kostenlos zum Download anbiete.

In Mexiko gibt es in den Wochen vor dem Día de Muertos Totenköpfe aus Zuckerguss, Schokolade, in allen Formen und Farben als Deko für Zuhause und natürlich auch als Ausmalbilder.

Daraus ist die Spielidee entstanden: Es geht darum in zwei verschiedenen Farben, die Blütenblätter auf dem Schädel auszumalen. Das Spielprinzip ist so einfach, dass es auch schon Kinder spielen können.

Unten ist die Datei zum Download: 1x auf Deutsch, 1x mit spanischer Anleitung.

Viel Spass beim Spielen!

P.S. Wer sich für Print&Play-Spiele zum Download interessiert, kann auch hier mal beim Axolotl-Spiel schauen.

Jedes Jahr am 2. November feiert ganz Mexiko den Día de Muertos (Tag der Toten). Um genau zu sein, beginnen die Vorbereitungen und Veranstaltungen schon in den Wochen vorher. Bereits jetzt Mitte Oktober ist überall entsprechend geschmückt. Seit Wochen kann man in den Geschäften die Deko kaufen, wobei sich der Verkauf mit Artikeln für Halloween (31.10.) mischt. Auch das wird gefeiert. Der Einfluss der USA in Mexiko ist sehr gross.

In meinem ersten Jahr in Mexiko war eins der eindrücklichsten Erlebnisse der Besuch auf einem Friedhof am 2. November. Wir sind einfach zum nächstgelegenen gefahren: Der Friedhof war voller Menschen, die Gräber bunt geschmückt, Kinder spielen fangen und verstecken, die Familienangehörigen und Freunde sitzen mit einem Bier an der Hand und einem CD-Player um die Gräber ihrer Liebsten, einige singen mit, an einigen Gräber spielen kleine Kappellen…

Hier ein paar Impressionen aus dem letzten Jahr:

Der Día de los Muertos oder auch Día de Muertos hat einige feste Elemente, wie die orangefarbene Cempasúchil (deutscher Name: aufrechte Studentenblume), die den Toten den Weg zu Lebenden weist, das süsse „Pan de Muertos“ (Totenbrot), die zahlreichen Ofrendas oder Altar de Muertos (selbst gebaute Altäre mit Bildern der Verstorbenen), Totenschädel aus Zuckerguss, buntes Papel Picado – Seidenpapier mit Motiven von Skeletten und anderen typischen Motiven, die als kleinen Fahnen im Wind wehen usw. Wer sich dafür interessiert, dem sei der Disney-Film „Coco“ empfohlen, der tatsächlich viele Traditionen des mexikanischen Totentags zeigt und in einer unterhaltsamen Geschichte auch teilweise erklärt und ihre Bedeutung verständlich macht.

Vermutlich aufgrund der Symbolik und Farbreichtum scheint der Día de Muertos nach der präkolumbianischen Geschichte (Maya, Azteken etc.) das beliebteste Thema mit Mexikobezug im Brettspielbereich zu sein – interessanterweise gerade auch außerhalb Mexikos. Ich kann nur vermuten, warum das so ist, aber es liegt vermutlich daran, dass der Día de Muertos viele unterschiedliche Elemente für die Gestaltung und auf den ersten Blick auch viel bunte Exotik bietet.

Anbei ein kleine Auswahl von Spielen, die sich des Themas bedienen – in der Regel als Zuckerguss oder Schokoladenüberzug für sonst recht „trockene“, im Sinne von abstrakten, Spielen. Also: weil es schön aussieht und sich damit hoffentlich gut verkauft.

Trio wurde 2021 veröffentlicht. Das Spiel stammt von einem japanischen Autor und einem französischen Verlag. In Frankreich hat es den Spielepreis „As d’or“ gewonnen. In Deutschland war es auf der Empfehlungsliste zum „Spiel des Jahres“. Ein abstraktes Set Collection-Spiel mit Memory-Mechanismus, das in den Illustrationen auf dem „Día de Muertos“ verweist. Sowohl das Cover wie auch die Karten sind im Stil des Papel Picado gestaltet und zeigen in schwarzen Umrissen sowohl typische Elemente des Totentags wie Skelett und Calavera, aber auch andere Gegenstände, die wohl auf insgesamt irgendwie auf Mexiko verweisen sollen wie Gitarre, sombrero, piñata oder Avocado.

Calavera ist ein kleines Würfelspiel von Klaus-Jürgen Wrede, das 2019 im Moses-Verlag erschienen ist. Eigentlich ein weitgehend abstraktes Spiel helfen die Illustrationen, die auf den Tag der Toten Bezug nehmen, die Punkte- von der Todeszone (mit Minuspunkte) abzugrenzen. Es finden sich typische Elemente wie die Cempasúchil-Blumen, Calavera und Skelette. Am Ende der Anleitung steht ein kurzer Infotext zum Día de Muertos in Mexiko.

UNO – Día de los muertos ist vermutlich – zumindest aus meiner Sicht – das schönste UNO-Spiel. Das Original-UNO ist offenkundig sehr populär. Schön ist es nicht. Neben den vielen Lizenzausgaben gibt es in einigen Ländern auch spezielle Ausgaben, die berühmte Sehenswürdigkeiten oder typische Gegenstände, Speisen oder Tiere eines Landes zeigen, so z.B. in Ecuador und Kolumbien – beide leider auch nicht schön. Eine nationale Ausgabe gab es – überraschenderweise – in Mexiko bislang nicht.

Nun hat Mattel dieses Jahr ein eigene UNO-Ausgabe zum Día de Muertos vorgelegt. Die Regeln sind dieselben wie immer und daher belanglos, aber die Gestaltung ist tatsächlich sehr schön. Auf den Karten finden sich viele Elemente der mexikanischen Tradition. Ganz besonders ist jedoch eine beigelegte Karte, die so groß ist wie der Karton: Auf der vorderen Seite zeigt sie eine Ofrenda, in der quasi als „Easter Egg“ auch ein UNO-Spiel liegt. Das Bild der Ofrenda gibt es zugleich als Mini-Poster auf der ausklappbaren Anleitung. Auf der Rückseite wird der mexikanische Illustrator, Totoi, vorgestellt.

Das sollte es öfters geben!

Adiós Calavera (Mücke-Spiele, 2017) ist von Martin Schlegel entwickelt und von Christian Opperer illustriert. Von den hier vorgestellten Spielen ist es das Spiel, dass trotz seines abstrakten Charakters das Thema am meisten nutzt. Auf einem quadratischen Spielplan werden an zwei angrenzenden Seiten die eigenen Steine aufgebaut – die eine Gruppe repräsentiert die Lebenden, die andere die Seelen der Toten, die sich an diesem Tag begegnen. Es gewinnt, wer als erster alle seine Steine auf die gegenüberliegende Seite des Spielbretts gezogen hat. In den Illustrationen finden sich die Cempasúchil-Blumen, die Totenköpfe und in den vier Ecken des Spielplans kleine Totenaltäre mit Blumen, Zuckergusschädeln, Totenbrot und Bilder der Verstorbenen. Auch hier enthält die Anleitung einen kleinen Info-Text zum Día de Muertos in Mexiko.

Pátzcuaro ist eins der wenigen mexikanischen Spiele, das sich mit dem Día de Muertos beschäftigt. Das Spiel steht daher im Fokus des nächsten Beitrags.

You know the drill: We’re assessing a (democratic) leader, illustrated with a single board game! Today’s subject is another German chancellor – Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. And which game could be more appropriate for him than Wir sind das Volk! (Richard Sivél/Peer Sylvester, Histogame) plus the 2+2 expansion?

After an introduction to the rating system, we’ll survey Adenauer’s life – from his early years over his tenure as mayor of Cologne to his election as chancellor, and, of course, what he did in office – the foreign policy successes, the domestic agenda, and the decline of his later years – before coming to the rating. Let’s go!

The Rating System

Some caveats ahead: The chancellors will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as chancellor, but includes their life after holding the office (in which they will still be regarded in the public eye as (ex-)chancellors).

Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A chancellor can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the chancellor is assessed as follows:

Foreign policy: Did the chancellor increase German influence in the world and the security of Germans at home? Did the chancellor wield German power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected (the latter counting for a greater deal in times of German power being great)?

Domestic policy: Did the chancellor increase the liberty of Germans to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the chancellor promote domestic security and shape the framework for fair justice dealing with offenses?

Economic policy: Did the chancellor facilitate the prosperity and economic security of Germans (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the chancellor’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?

Vision: Did the chancellor have an idea of what Germany and Europe (the latter counting for more in times of German influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the chancellor’s policies steer Germany (and, if applicable, Europe) in this direction?

Pragmatism: Did the chancellor succeed in seeing their policy through from inception to completion? How well did the chancellor manage the support from parliament, society, the administration, the media (the latter counting for more in more recent years)?

Integrity: Did the chancellor understand the office as a means to benefit themselves, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the chancellor respect the boundaries of the office?

Note: If you have read my UK prime minister or US president ratings, you will remember that I rated them on the global impacts of their vision as well. As the rating system is only really applicable to democratic leaders and no democratic German leader ever had the chance to conduct a truly global policy, I only assess their vision on national and European grounds.

Adenauer’s Life

Early Years

Konrad Adenauer was born on January 5, 1876, in a Rhenish bourgeois family. He and his brothers were the first in the family to attend a university. After a few years working in public service and at a law firm, Adenauer turned to local politics. As he had a foot in both confessional/political camps (his own family was devoutly Catholic, his wife came from one of the old liberal Protestant families), Adenauer secured a broad majority for his election as Deputy Mayor of Cologne in 1906.

Adenauer rose quickly in municipal administration, both by his diligent, energetic service and his family connections – his wife’s uncle Ludwig Wallraf had been elected Lord Mayor in 1907.  When Wallraf was called to serve in the Reich administration in 1917, Adenauer was elected Lord Mayor of Cologne.

Lord Mayor of Cologne

His years at the helm of the city were turbulent. Just a year after his election, the double quake of Germany’s defeat in World War I and the German Revolution of 1918/19 sent shockwaves through the country. Adenauer himself put out tentative feelers to France, if the west of Germany could become an independent country (giving the French a buffer state to Germany). The Allies, however, forged a different agreement in their negotiations at Versailles. During the crisis year of 1923, Adenauer made another attempt at Rhenish separatism, which faltered as the crises were resolved by Gustav Stresemann’s government.

Adenauer was an energetic Lord Mayor whose legacy can still be seen and felt in Cologne – the “green belt” of parks around the city center (formerly a ring of fortifications), the university, and one of the bridges over the Rhine are his creations. He used a pragmatic government style, adding to his own power base of the Catholic Zentrum (Center) party whichever other factions would give him a majority for his projects – Liberals, Social Democrats, and in the case of the bridge even the Communists.

Adenauer’s many expensive projects put Cologne in a financial squeeze when the Great Depression reduced revenue and cut off access to international credit. He applied himself to bettering the city’s financial situation with mixed success.

When the Nazis took power in 1933, they removed him from his post. Adenauer, now aged 57, entered private life. For the next twelve years, he would distance himself both from the Nazis and the anti-Nazi resistance.

The Path to the Chancellorship

In 1945, the Allies had need of men like Adenauer – experienced in government, not a Nazi, and a reliable proponent of democracy and market economy. He was reinstated as Lord Mayor of Cologne. His tenure, however, was cut short, when the British authorities (in whose occupation zone Cologne lay) found out about his contacts with the French on the matter of – once more – establishing a separate Rhenish state.

Letting go of the mayorship was not too hard for Adenauer. It freed him up for the work of establishing a new party which was to shed the confessional limitations of the old Zentrum in favor of an all-Christian approach – the CDU (Christlich-Demokratische Union, Christian Democratic Union). Adenauer also was tapped to head the Parliamentary Council working on the Basic Law, a quasi-constitution for the new German state to be founded. Adenauer, never much of a conceptual thinker, was barely involved in the drafting, yet his political acumen was instrumental in forging the compromises behind the Basic Law.

When the Soviet Union lifted the Berlin Blockade in May 1949, the path for a German state made out of the three western occupation zones was free. The first free elections in the new Federal Republic of Germany gave no one a clear majority, but Adenauer’s CDU (plus its Bavarian allies, the CSU [Christlich-Soziale Union, Christian Social Union] came in first. In a tactically masterful campaign, Adenauer convinced his party (and then its partners) not to form a “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats, and instead govern with several smaller bourgeois parties (the liberal FDP [Freie Demokratische Partei, Free Democratic Party] as well as the nationalist DP [Deutsche Partei, German Party]). Adenauer himself was elected Chancellor on September 15, 1949.

Foreign Policy Successes

Adenauer’s first task as Chancellor was the re-integration of (West) Germany into the international community. As a first step, he negotiated the Petersberg Agreement (1949) with the Allied High Commissioners which granted the new West German state limited sovereignty. His further negotiations with the Allies were crowned by the General Treaty (1955) which made West Germany a sovereign country for most intents and purposes – special rights for the four Allied powers (Soviet Union, United States, United Kingdom, France) notwithstanding. Consequently, West Germany would have an army again, and become a member of NATO.

Adenauer’s approach of integration through giving up control did not only work for regaining sovereignty, but also in European affairs: France’s anxiety about the German heavy industry (and the French desire to gain access to more coal and steel) resulted in the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community which placed the heavy industry of the two countries (plus Italy and the Benelux countries) under supranational control – the first international agreement of that kind, and the first step toward the European Union.

While Adenauer used the opportunities presented to him, he also recognized the traps: Thus, when Stalin offered German reunification as a neutral country (with only the vaguest allusions to the nature of such a unified Germany) in 1952, Adenauer refused to take the bait and dismissed the note in concert with the Western Allies.

All this time, Adenauer had to contend with the opposition of the nationalist Germans and the SPD who felt that the Chancellor had become an instrument of the Western Allies, both of them grossly misjudging Germany’s negotiation position. Adenauer’s shrewd realism prevailed.

Adenauer was skilled at fusing values and interests in negotiations. While he was personally committed to German reparations to the newly-founded state of Israel for Nazi Germany’s persecution and murder of the European Jews, he did not just announce them. Instead, he had the negotiations on them run in parallel to those on Germany’s foreign debt (mostly from Marshall Plan loans, but also still from the reparations after World War I). The moral impetus of the negotiations with Israel carried over to the debt negotiations, as only an economically strong Germany could give meaningful support to the Jewish state, and so a large part of the debt repayments were postponed or cancelled altogether.

Stepping out of the shadow of the war was not only a question of reparations. Millions of Germans had been taken prisoner by the Allies. Most of them were released in the years immediately after the war, but the Soviet Union kept several thousand in camps  until Adenauer negotiated their release in 1955. While he did not encounter much resistance from Soviet leader Khrushchev, the “Return of the Ten Thousand”, as the contemporary writers called it (borrowing from Xenophon) was often cited as Adenauer’s prime achievement by the Germans who lived through his administration – a symbolic end to the war.

The Domestic Agenda

Millions of Germans had lost their homes and livelihoods in the war – be that by destruction or when they were expelled from the German East. If and how these losses should be compensated was the subject of intense public debate. Adenauer opted for a tax of fifty percent of the value of property of owners who had not suffered any losses, payable in instalments over thirty years (Lastenausgleich [Burden Equalization]). The funds raised were paid out in various programs to those who had suffered material losses. While there was intense resentment on the part of property owners from the relatively untouched German West, the scheme helped integrate the millions of refugees while preserving the pre-war social order.

In the meantime, the West German economy had taken off – fuelled by the European integration as well as the increased demand for German consumer goods as the outbreak of the Korean War oriented the American economy towards war materiel, but also because the economic course of Adenauer’s administration proved successful: A generally liberal market economy was tempered by sporadic government intervention (soziale Marktwirtschaft [social market economy]).

Adenauer’s second large social project concerned retirement pensions. Retirees, already not particularly well off on the whole, had not partaken in the dynamic wage growth of the 1950s. They remained poor in an ever-wealthier society. Adenauer (against the position of the cabinet majority) pushed for pensions to be paid out of the premiums of the currently-employed (instead of those the retirees had paid themselves). When the reform was implemented in 1957, pensions were significantly increased and old-age poverty all but eliminated.

The chancellor’s willingness to atone for the crimes of his country’s past in foreign policy contrasted with his selection of staff and ministers at home: Hans Globke, whose work at the Ministry of the Interior’s Office of Jewish Affairs during Nazi times had seen him actively involved in the legal discrimination and persecution of Jews, continued his career as Chief of Staff at Adenauer’s chancellery. Adenauer’s Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees, and War Victims, Theodor Oberländer, had even participated in Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 and had later advocated for the ethnic cleansing of Poland. Both selections were controversial, but Adenauer kept faith with them – Oberländer had to resign under public pressure in 1960, Globke stayed on until Adenauer’s own resignation.

Adenauer masterfully parlayed his domestic and foreign policy successes into ever-larger electoral victories in 1953 (when CDU and CSU had the majority together with the DP, but joined with the FDP in addition as well) and 1957 (when CDU and CSU won a one-party majority for the first and only time in the history of German democracy). Both times, Adenauer’s skill and ruthlessness as a campaigner were instrumental in the victories.

The Decline

After 1957, Adenauer seemed to lose his touch. His negotiations ensuring German re-armament had been masterful, but there was a gaping hole between the ambitious plans for the German army and the haphazard way in which a much more modest force was established. At the same time, Adenauer kept calling for Germany’s nuclear armament, a demand which was sure to be rejected by the Western Allies and exploited by the Soviets as a sign of the return of aggressive German militarism. Adenauer’s casual, sometimes careless treatment of the subject (he referred to tactical nuclear weapons as nothing more than an “advancement in artillery”) also increased the fear of a new, even more devastating, war within the German population.

At the same time, Adenauer’s erstwhile foreign policy acumen – and willingness to confront the Soviets – seemed to have withered. When Khrushchev threatened West Berlin again from 1958, Adenauer was half disinterested, half willing to give in. Only French, and later American firmness on the matter prevented West Berlin being turned into a neutral “free city.” Adenauer’s detached behavior – most evident after the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 – contrasted starkly with the principled stand of Willy Brandt, Mayor of West Berlin, and Adenauer’s Social Democratic challenger in the 1961 elections.

It was somewhat surprising that Adenauer even stood for reelection in 1961 – after all, he was alreadyy 85 at the time. Two years before, he had toyed with abandoning the chancellorship and succeeding Theodor Heuss as Federal President – an office which had been designed to be largely ceremonial in the constitution, but which Adenauer wanted to turn into the political center of gravity (following de Gaulle’s example) of Germany. After Adenauer’s ambitions had damaged the office of the president, the plan was dashed by his own party, which was increasingly less willing to put up with everything Adenauer decreed.

Once more, Adenauer’s CDU/CSU won the elections, but the significant losses at the ballot box meant Adenauer had to form a coalition with the FDP again – and to promise that he would step down during the term. Before that came to happen, Adenauer and the ebullient civil society of the German democracy had their starkest clash: When news magazine Der Spiegel (The Mirror) reported on the botched rearmament, Adenauer authorized his minister of defense Franz-Josef Strauß (CSU) to push for charges of treason against the editor and journalists of the magazine. The newsroom was searched for evidence and several journalists arrested – a gross violation of the freedom of the press. Unsurprisingly, the charges had to be dropped.

Adenauer’s last initiative was an improvement of the relationship with Germany’s western neighbor France. Since the founding of the German nation-state less than a century before, the two countries had fought three devastating wars (plus countless wars between France and the German principalities before Germany’s national unification). If there was someone to bridge this “inherited enmity”, it was Adenauer – after all, he had sounded out the French about founding a French-aligned separate Rhenish state no less than three times before he took over national office, and he had cultivated a good relationship with French president Charles de Gaulle since 1958 (based on both men’s instinctive feeling that they did not receive everything that was due to them from their Anglo-American allies). Adenauer and de Gaulle concluded the Élysée Treaty in January 1963, proclaiming the friendship between the two countries (which has since taken root in a plethora of local initiatives and city twinnings). De Gaulle’s and Adenauer’s goal to challenge Anglo-American leadership of the West with the Franco-German alliance, however, failed, as Adenauer’s party only accepted the treaty once it was couched in a preamble stressing the importance of the transatlantic relationship and support for the United Kingdom joining the budding integrated Europe.

At this point, Adenauer had lost his party. While he tried to maneuver for a succession to his liking, the party’s parliamentary group was not willing anymore to accept his authority. Of the four men considered chancellor material, they selected the one least to Adenauer’s liking – Minister of the Economy Ludwig Erhard. Adenauer resigned on October 15, 1963.

While retired from the chancellorship, he remained party chairman of the CDU. He spent his last years writing his memoirs and – behind the curtain as well as publicly – undermining his unloved successor, whose resignation in 1966 he still lived to see. Konrad Adenauer died on April 19, 1967, aged 91.

The Rating

Foreign policy

Foreign policy was always Adenauer’s focus – he even acted as his own Foreign Secretary from 1951 to 1955. The immense successes of the early years – Germany’s shedding of its pariah status, its firm integration into the West, and the foundations for European integration – are arguably the most impressive feat in the history of German foreign policy. Yet Adenauer’s later foreign policy seemed fickle and his resolve weakened. The chaotic nature of the rearmament process also wasted potential for increased security. Even his last success – the Élysée Treaty – was a mirage, as the personal (instead of institutional) framework of the agreement was quickly dashed by his successor.

Domestic policy

Konrad Adenauer was the first chancellor of the newly democratic Germany. Yet his own position to democratic values was distanced, at times tactical. The reappearance of former Nazi officials in high government positions and his unwillingness to confront the Nazi crimes domestically meant that wrongs continued to go unchecked – for example in the law courts, which, supported by Adenauer’s government, quickly re-established their old personnel. Adenauer saw personal liberties as subject to the state’s (or the government’s interests) – most clearly evidenced in the Spiegel scandal. The societal climate of Adenauer’s Germany fell behind the more liberal Weimar Republic decades before.

Economic policy

The best economic course was subject to intense debate in the mid-20^th century: Adenauer’s own party adopted a platform of nationalizing banks and heavy industry in 1946; most of the cabinet members (including the pro-business FDP and Minister for the Economy Ludwig Erhard) favored a pure private-business market economy. Adenauer steered a middle course against tough opposition, establishing a dynamic market economy tempered by comprehensive social reforms. This admirably successful model has since shown weaknesses of its own (especially due to the demographic development), but none that could have been apparent at the time of its creation.

Vision

Adenauer was a tactician rather than a strategist, seizing opportunities as they arose. Yet in 1949 he was the right man for the time whose unorthodox thinking was just right for the situation. Thus, he was able to establish many of the fundamental tenets of the new state which persist until today – from integration into the West and a particularly close relationship with France to the commitment to Israel. He also shaped the way in which politics are conducted in Germany – then as now focused on the chancellor.

Pragmatism

When Adenauer’s name was mentioned as a potential first chancellor and his fellow CDU members wondered if he was not too old at 73, Adenauer told them that his doctor had assured him he would still be fit for office for “another two or three years”. In the end, he ruled Germany for 14. During that time, he dominated the political process in the country in an almost-continuous loop of parlaying political success into electoral victories and electoral victories into domination over issues and allies alike. Only in his very last years did his grip over party and electorate wane – as evidenced by his weaker electoral performance in 1961 and his party choosing the successor he liked the least.

Integrity

Adenauer’s electoral success was not only due to his eager adoption of the new methods of polling and his deft use of electoral promises – he was not beneath regularly smearing his opponents, from personal attacks (like mentioning Willy Brandt’s birth out of wedlock) over absurd exaggerations (“All Paths of Marxism Lead to Moscow,” a dig at the (strictly anti-communist!) Social Democrats) to outright inventions (Adenauer was fond of alleging that SPD candidates had accepted bribes from East Germany). At the same time, he used the German intelligence service to spy on the SPD leadership. At one point, he even funneled government money into a campaign (at the referendum for the future of the Saar). Still, in the politically fluid years of the early Federal Republic of Germany he never attempted to outright undermine democracy.

Summary

Adenauer combines stunning successes with great political and personal flaws. If Adenauer had stepped down from the chancellorship in 1957, he would go down as one of the greatest democratic leaders in history. His lackluster last years in office tarnished the greatness exhibited before, and so he places slightly behind the very top.

1. Abraham Lincoln 28/30
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt 25/30
3. Friedrich Ebert 25/30
4. Winston Churchill 25/30
5. Robert Walpole 24/30
6. Willy Brandt 23/30
7. Konrad Adenauer 22/30
8. Harry S. Truman 21/30
9. John F. Kennedy 17/30
10. Hermann Müller 17/30
11. Wilhelm Marx 17/30
12. Ludwig Erhard 12/30
13. Paul von Hindenburg 10/30

How would you rate Adenauer? Let me know in the comments!

Further Reading

For short overview essays on all German chancellors from Bismarck on, see Sternburg, Wilhelm von: Die deutschen Kanzler. Von Bismarck bis Merkel [The German Chancellors. From Bismarck to Merkel], Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2006 (in German).

For a classic, albeit somewhat hagiographic biography, see Schwarz, Hans-Peter: Adenauer (two volumes), DVA, Stuttgart 1986/1991 (in German).

The combative counter-point to Schwarz, depicting Adenauer as a shrewd tactician rather than a visionary saint, is Köhler, Henning: Adenauer. Eine politische Biographie [Adenauer. A Political Biography], Propyläen, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin 1994 (in German).

For the context of Germany’s tumultuous history, see Herbert, Ulrich: A History of Twentieth-Century Germany, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2019.