📍Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
1876 – 1967“I was born Konrad Hermann Josef Adenauer on the 5th of January 1876 in Cologne, the third child of a court official, and Cologne was my city for most of my life — I was its Lord Mayor from 1917 to 1933, when the Nazis removed me. I spent the Nazi years in internal exile and survived. I became the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 at the age of seventy-three, and served until 1963. I built the West German state on the foundations of Christian Democracy, Atlantic alliance, and reconciliation with France. Cologne — its cathedral, its Rhine riverfront, its Rhenish Catholicism — was the city that formed my values and to which I returned when the chancellorship was over.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today
Sources: Schwarz, H-P. Adenauer: A German Politician and Statesman (1995), Berghahn Books; Adenauer, K. Memoirs (1965, translated Beate Ruhm von Oppen), Regnery