Saturday 1 September 2018

parlamentarische rat

In a session convened on this day in 1948, the West German constitutional assembly meeting in a zoological museum in Bonn elected future chancellor and chief architect of the rebuilding and restoration of the country and its foreign relations, Konrad Adenauer, as the chairman of the convention to draft das Grundgesetz (the Basic Law).
Having successfully launched a new political party—the Christian Democratic Union—as a counter-balance to Marxism, after his dismissal by the British occupying forces as mayor of Kรถln—the move seen to confirm Adenauer’s political independence and stave off implications of being a puppet of the Allies and made Adenauer the clear choice to lead the efforts to return to autonomy. Bonn remained the provisional capital because the British occupying forces agreed to detach themselves from the city and allow full West German sovereignty there, something the Americans were not willing to do for Frankfurt, and calls were resisted to move the capital to the mostly untouched and better equipped town of Heidelberg because of strong Nazi sympathies demonstrated there before the War and fears that the world would not accept Germany’s attempts of contrition and reconciliation if they made that place their new capital.