Adenauer Studien, hrsg. v. Rudolf Morsey u. Konrad Repgen, Bd. III: Untersuchungen und Dokumente zur Ostpolitik und Biographie, 2. Aufl., Mainz 1974

Adenauer Studien, hrsg. v. Rudolf Morsey u. Konrad Repgen, Bd. III: Untersuchungen und Dokumente zur Ostpolitik und Biographie.

The contributions in this collection treat the largely unexplored subject of the first federal chancellor’s Ostpolitik (policy toward Eastern Europe) and his political biography in the period before 1933. In »Adenauer’s Inter-German policy (Deutschlandpolitik) and Ostpolitik, 1954–1953,« Klaus Gotto uses new sources to demonstrate that reunification was the actual goal of Konrad Adenauer’s inter-German policy, as well as the ideas and plans – previously kept secret – he developed to that end. Jürgen Schwarz and Werner Weidenfeld analyze the defining features of French president Charles de Gaulle’s eastern policy and its influence on Adenauer’s own Ostpolitik.

In the documentary appendix, Hans Georg Lehmann provides edited commentary on a previously unknown British intervention in 1935 on behalf of Adenauer, who had been forced from his office as Lord Mayor of Cologne. Rudolf Morsey illuminates Adenauer’s relationship to Center Party chairman Ludwig Kaas on the basis of their correspondence from 1929–1931 (which has been published concurrently). Wolfgang Stump’s bibliography of Adenauer from 1945 to 1953 makes an essential contribution to reconstructing the first federal chancellor’s political itinerary.

At the heart of this volume are the reproduced observations on Germany and Eastern policies – as well as the »Globke Plan« for reunification – that were recorded journal-style from 1954–1969 by Heinrich Krone, the long-serving chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group and a federal minister. These sources open up an uncommonly instructive view into the thought patterns, goal-setting, and governing style of the statesman and party chief Adenauer. Krone’s journals represent the most important documentary edition to date from one of Adenauer’s closest associates on one of the central political issues of the most recent past.