User:Hobbitschuster/German chancellors

Since 1949 the federal Republic of Germany ("BRD") has been governed by eight individuals, seven male, one female as duly elected chancellors. Those individuals have been products of their time and studying their biographies not only teaches valuable lessons about their time in office but also the times that made them who they were. Unlike the U.S. where every President has gotten a presidential library after leaving office as a matter of course for several decades now, Germany is only slowly embracing its chancellors as historical figures, perhaps because of the negative associations of a cult of personality as the Nazis instituted around Hitler or Imperial Germany instituted around Bismarck and Wilhelm II.

Understand
While the formal head of state or "first citizen" is the President ("Bundespräsident") real executive power resides with the chancellor, who usually commands a majority in the Bundestag during their time in office. A chancellor can come into office after an election of the Bundestag with the new majority voting for a chancellor or through what is called a "constructive vote of no confidence". Unlike a vote of no confidence under the 1919 Weimar Constitution, a constructive vote of no confidence removes a chancellor from office while installing a new one at the same time. If the latter fails, the previous chancellor stays in office.

Konrad Adenauer (1949-1963)
Already an old man upon taking office, the former mayor of Cologne and Catholic-conservative opponent of the Nazis steered West-Germany on a pro US anti-communist course, forming all major groups on the political right (bar the liberal FDP) into a single political force, the CDU/CSU or "Union". His diplomatic successes include the repatriation of the last Germans in Soviet POW camps in 1955, the annexation of the Saarland after a plebiscite and the de facto sovereignty of West Germany under the 1955 Statute of Occupation

Ludwig Erhard (1963-1966)
While immensely popular as minister of the economy, he often clashed with Adenauer, as the two mutually mistrusted each other. After long being seen as the "heir apparent", he had to leave office after a largely unsuccessful three year term. Many Germans don't even know he had been chancellor but revere him as the "father" of the 1950s economic uptick.

Kurt Georg Kiesinger (1966-1969)
Leading the first "Grand Coalition" of center left SPD and center right CDU/CSU, Kiesinger had to almost constantly mediate disputes between the two parties during his time in office. The three years of the first Grand Coalition led to major reforms, including a controversial addition of emergency contingencies to the Basic Law that while never used to date led to huge protests at the time, drawing parallels to Hitler's rise through emergency powers. Kiesinger had been a member of the NSDAP and got publicly slapped by a political opponent because of that.

Willy Brandt (1969-1974)
Born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm to unmarried parents in 1912 Lübeck, he changed his name in 1933 when fleeing from the Nazis. Having spent most of the Nazi era in the Nordic countries, Brandt returned to Germany and politics after the war, rising to mayor of West-Berlin, an office he held during the 1961 construction of the Wall. Brandt, a polyglot apt at grand gestures, served as foreign minister during the Grand Coalition before gaining the chancellorship with a slim majority after the 1969 elections. A failed constructive vote of no confidence in 1972 led to snap elections which Brandt triumphantly won. His major legacies in foreign policy are apologies for Germany's war crimes symbolized by his kneeling at the monument of the Warsaw Ghetto, accession of Germany to the UNO, rapprochement with the eastern bloc (for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) and an acceptance of the post-war order at the Conference of Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Helmut Schmidt (1974-1982)
Schmidt followed Brandt after his resignation and took a much more pragmatic approach. A sluggish economy and the increased disillusionment of the FDP with the coalition with the SPD led to his fall to a constructive motion of no confidence in 1982.

Helmut Kohl (1982-1998)
Entering office due to the FDP changing from a coalition with the SPD to supporting his CDU, Kohl promised a "Wende" (turn) in the moral framework of the country but was plagued by internal party rivalries and ongoing debates about nuclear missiles being stationed in Germany. Widely seen as governing on borrowed time by the late eighties, the breakdown of the eastern bloc allowed him to take the initiative towards rapid reunification which was popular at the time but led to long term economic malaise in the former east. Running unsuccessfully for reelection in 1998 he is to date Germany's longest serving non-noble leader.

Gerhard Schröder (1998-2005)
Ousting Kohl in the 1998 elections, the first time Germany replaced both parties in the ruling coalition at once, Schröder led the first "red green" social democrat and ecologist coalition. Starting with high hopes for socially liberal reforms, the 1999 Kosovo war and a sluggish economy cast a shadow upon his first term, leaving reelection in doubt. A bungled campaign by his opponent and a late surge in the polls in part due to his swift response to flooding in the summer of 2002 ensured his reelection, but he ultimately lost the snap election he'd called after having lost several state elections in 2005. While Schröder's reforms of welfare were controversial at the time, they are now almost universally reviled by members of his own party, tarring his legacy. Schröder's government started a program to shut down all nuclear power plants and expand renewable energies, but only one plant was shut down while Schröder was in office.

Angela Merkel (2005-)
Grown up in East Germany the daughter of a West German protestant minister she studied physics and only became politically active in 1989 when East Germany was collapsing. She served as a minister in Kohl's third and fourth cabinet and bargained that position into CDU leadership in 2000 when most other candidates were disgraced by a donations scandal. Running a comparatively ideological campaign in 2005 she moved to the center during her first term, often absorbing policies from her coalition partner and being hailed for their successes even if she had formerly opposed them. Her decision not to close Germany's borders in the face of the arrival of over a million refugees in 2015 has proven controversial and may have led to her 2019 announcement that her current term would be her last and her resigning the CDU leadership after 19 years.