Konrad Adenauer was born on 5 January 1876 in Cologne. His father, Konrad, was a civil servant in the middle grade of the civil service. His mother, Helene Scharfenberg, also hailed from a civil ...

Adenauer’s outlook was shaped by Christian and humanist values with a Catholic foundation; he never lost the liberal spirit of the Rhineland with its openness to western Europe and he remained ...