Politics in C Minor: The CDU/CSU between Germany and Europe since the Secular Sixties

Abstract

AbstractIn 1962, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) faced an uncertain future. The governing party within the Federal Republic of Germany since the state's founding in 1949 (along with its Bavarian partner, the Christian Social Union, known collectively as the CDU/CSU or Union), the CDU had endured a bruising election campaign through the summer of 1961. The combination of a dynamic young Social Democratic challenger, Willy Brandt, and the building of the Berlin Wall had exposed frustration with the leadership style of octogenarian Chancellor and CDU Chair Konrad Adenauer, and cost the Union its absolute majority in the Bundestag. Electoral disappointment was followed by protracted coalition negotiations with the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), which nearly doubled its vote totals by promising voters a coalition “with the Union but without Adenauer.” The coalition negotiations dragged on well into late autumn and exposed internal divisions. Adenauer, the only chancellor the Federal Republic had ever known, had been forced to agree to retire before 1965 to allow his successor to prepare for the next campaign.