Richard von Weizsäcker

Early life

Childhood, school and family

Richard von Weizsäcker was born on 15 April 1920 in the New Palace in Stuttgart, the son of diplomat Ernst von Weizsäcker, a member of the Weizsäcker family, and his wife Marianne von Graevenitz, a daughter of Friedrich von Graevenitz (1861–1922), a General of the Infantry of the Kingdom of Württemberg. Ernst von Weizsäcker was a career diplomat who served as State Secretary at the Foreign Office for Nazi Germany and as Nazi Germany’s ambassador to the Holy See. The youngest of four children, Weizsäcker had two brothers, the physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Heinrich von Weizsäcker, who fell as a soldier in Poland at the beginning of World War II. The sister Adelheid (1916–2004) married Botho-Ernst Graf zu Eulenburg-Wicken (1903–1944), a landowner in East Prussia. Richard's grandfather Karl von Weizsäcker had been Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Württemberg, and was ennobled in 1897 and raised to the hereditary title of Baron (Freiherr) in 1916. His term in office ended in 1918, shortly before the monarchy was abolished in the German Revolution of 1918–1919. However, during the following years, he still occupied an apartment in the former royal palace where his grandson was born in an attic room.

Because his father was a career diplomat, Weizsäcker spent much of his childhood in Switzerland and Scandinavia. The family lived in Basel 1920–1924, in Copenhagen 1924–1926, and in Bern 1933–1936, where Richard attended the Swiss Gymnasium Kirchenfeld. The family lived in Berlin, in an apartment in the Fasanenstraße in Wilmersdorf, between 1929 and 1933 and again from 1936 until the end of World War II. Weizsäcker was able to miss the third class of his elementary school, and entered a secondary school at the young age of nine, the Bismarck-Gymnasium (now the Goethe-Gymnasium) in Wilmersdorf. When he was 17 years old, Weizsäcker travelled to England to study philosophy and history at Balliol College, Oxford. In London, he witnessed the coronation of King George VI. He spent the winter semester of 1937–1938 at the University of Grenoble in France to improve his French. He was mustered for the army there in 1938 and moved back to Germany the same year to start his Reichsarbeitsdienst.

World War II

After the outbreak of World War II, Weizsäcker joined the Wehrmacht, ultimately rising to the rank of captain in the reserves. He joined his brother Heinrich's regiment, the Infantry Regiment 9 Potsdam. He crossed over the border to Poland with his regiment on the very first day of the war. His brother Heinrich was killed about a hundred meters away from him on the second day. Weizsäcker watched over his brother's body through the night until he was able to bury him the next morning. His regiment, consisting in a large part of noble and conservative Prussians, played a significant part in the 20 July plot, with no fewer than nineteen of its officers involved in the conspiracy against Hitler. Weizsäcker himself helped his friend Axel von dem Bussche in an attempt to kill Hitler at a uniform inspection in December 1943, providing Bussche with travel papers to Berlin. The attempt had to be called off when the uniforms were destroyed by an air raid. Upon meeting Bussche in June 1944, Weizsäcker was also informed of the imminent plans for 20 July and assured him of his support, but the plan ultimately failed. Weizsäcker later described the last nine months of the war as "agony". He was wounded in East Prussia in 1945 and was transported home to Stuttgart, to see out the end of the war on a family farm at Lake Constance.

Education, marriage and early work life

At the end of the war, Weizsäcker continued his study of history in Göttingen and went on to study law, but he also attended lectures in physics and theology. In 1947, when his father, Ernst von Weizsäcker, was a defendant in the Ministries Trial for his role in the deportation of Jews from occupied France, Richard von Weizsäcker served as his assistant defence counsel. He took his first legal Staatsexamen in 1950, his second in 1953, and finally earned his doctorate (doctor juris) in 1955. In 1953 he married Marianne von Kretschmann. They had met when she was an 18-year-old schoolgirl and he was thirty. In 2010, Weizsäcker described the marriage as "the best and smartest decision of my life". They had four children: Robert Klaus von Weizsäcker, a professor of economics at the Technical University of Munich, Andreas von Weizsäcker, an art professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, Beatrice von Weizsäcker, a lawyer and journalist, and Fritz Eckhart von Weizsäcker, chief physician at the Schlosspark-Klinik in Berlin. In the late 1970s, his son Andreas was a student at the Odenwaldschule. When reports about sexual abuse there surfaced in 2010, it was speculated in the media that Andreas might have been one of the victims, but this was denied by the family. Andreas died of cancer in June 2008, aged 51. Weizsäcker's son Fritz was murdered by a man armed with a knife on 19 November 2019, while holding a lecture at the Schlosspark-Klinik in Berlin, where he worked.

Weizsäcker worked for Mannesmann between 1950 and 1958, as a scientific assistant until 1953, as a legal counsel from 1953, and as head of the department for economic policy from 1957. From 1958 to 1962, he was head of the Waldthausen Bank, a bank owned by relatives of his wife. From 1962 to 1966, he served on the board of directors of Boehringer Ingelheim, a pharmaceutical company. It was involved in production of the Agent Orange. This fact is speculated to be the motive behind the murder of his son in 2019, though the suspect has been sent to a secure hospital unit due to a "delusional general aversion" against the victim's family.

German Evangelical Church Assembly

Between 1964 and 1970, Weizsäcker served as president of the German Evangelical Church Assembly. He was also a member of the Synod and the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany from 1967 to 1984. During his early tenure as president, he wrote a newspaper article supporting a memorandum written by German evangelical intellectuals including Werner Heisenberg and his brother Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker who had spoken out in favour of accepting the Oder–Neisse line as the western border of Poland as an indispensable precondition for lasting peace in Europe. While this was met by negative reactions from politicians, especially in Weizsäcker's own party, he nevertheless led the Evangelical Church on a way to promoting reconciliation with Poland, leading to a memorandum by the Church in both West and East Germany. The paper was widely discussed and met with a significantly more positive response.

Political career

Weizsäcker joined the CDU in 1954. Some years later, Helmut Kohl offered him a safe seat for the 1965 elections, even going so far as to have Chancellor Konrad Adenauer write two letters urging him to run, but Weizsäcker declined, due to his work in the German Evangelical Church Assembly, wanting to avoid a conflict of interest. However, he became a member of the Bundestag (Federal Diet) in the 1969 federal elections, serving until 1981.

In 1974, Weizsäcker was the Presidential candidate of his party for the first time, but he lost to Walter Scheel of the FDP, who was supported by the ruling center-left coalition. Ahead of the 1976 elections, CDU chairman Helmut Kohl included him in his shadow cabinet for the party's campaign to unseat incumbent Helmut Schmidt as chancellor. Between 1979 and 1981, Weizsäcker served as Vice President of the Bundestag.

Governing Mayor of West Berlin (1981–1984)

Weizsäcker served as the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) of West Berlin from 1981 to 1984. During his years in office, he tried to keep alive the idea of Germany as a cultural nation, divided into two states. In his speeches and writings, he repeatedly urged his compatriots in the Federal Republic to look upon themselves as a nation firmly anchored in the Western alliance, but with special obligations and interests in the East. Weizsäcker irritated the United States, France and Britain, the half-city's occupying powers, by breaking with protocol and visiting Erich Honecker, the East German Communist Party chief, in East Berlin.

From 1981 to 1983, Weizsäcker headed a minority government in West Berlin, after the CDU had only won 48% of seats in the state assembly. His government was tolerated by the Free Democratic Party, who were in a coalition with the Social Democrats at the federal level at the time. After Helmut Kohl had won the federal election in 1983 and had formed a government with the Free Democrats, Weizsäcker did the same in West Berlin.

President of the Federal Republic of Germany (1984–1994)

In 1984, Weizsäcker was elected as President of West Germany by the German Federal Convention, succeeding Karl Carstens and drawing unusual support from both the governing center-right coalition and the opposition Social Democratic Party; he defeated the Green party candidate, Luise Rinser.

Richard von Weizsäcker took office as president on 1 July 1984. In his inaugural address, he appealed to his nation's special consciousness, saying: "Our situation, which differs from that of most other nations, is no reason to deny ourselves a national consciousness. To do so would be unhealthy for ourselves and eerie to our neighbours." He dedicated his first years in office mainly to foreign policy, travelling widely with Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and choosing former Foreign Office employees as his personal advisors.

Weizsäcker, who was known as a great speaker, delivered his most famous speech (Zum 40. Jahrestag der Beendigung des Krieges in Europa und der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft) in 1985, marking the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe on 8 May 1945. This came at a difficult time in West German politics. The country was caught up in a debate about whether Holocaust denial should be criminalised. At the same time, chancellor Helmut Kohl had accepted an invitation to visit a congress of the Silesian association of expellees which was to take place under the slogan "Silesia is ours!" ("Schlesien ist unser!"). This seemed to contradict the official position of the federal diet and government so that Kohl needed to lobby for the intended slogan to be changed.

It was originally planned that President of the United States Ronald Reagan should take part in the World War II memorial event in the Bundestag, shifting the emphasis from remembering the past to highlighting West Germany in its partnership with the Western Bloc. On Weizsäcker's strong urging, the occasion was marked without Reagan, who visited West Germany several days earlier instead, surrounding the G7–summit in Bonn. Reagan's visit nevertheless sparked controversy, especially in the United States of America. In an attempt to reproduce the gesture made by Kohl and President of France François Mitterrand a year earlier at Verdun, where they held hands in a symbolic moment, the chancellor and Reagan were set to visit the military cemetery in Bitburg. This raised objections, since the cemetery included the last resting place for several members of the Waffen-SS.

Post-presidency

As an elder statesman, Weizsäcker long remained involved in politics and charitable affairs in Germany after his retirement as president. He chaired a commission established by the Social Democratic-Green government of the day for reforming the Bundeswehr. Along with Henry Kissinger, in 1994 he supported Richard Holbrooke in creating the American Academy in Berlin. He was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Robert Bosch Stiftung.

Weizsäcker served as a member of the Advisory Council of Transparency International. In a letter addressed to Nigeria's military ruler Sani Abacha in 1996, he called for the immediate release of General Olusegun Obasanjo, the former head of state of Nigeria, who had become the first military ruler in Africa to keep his promise to hand over power to an elected civilian government but was later sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.

Weizsäcker also served on many international committees. He was chairman of the Independent Working Group on the future of the United Nations and was one of three "Wise Men" appointed by European Commission President Romano Prodi to consider the future of the European Union. From 2003 until his death, he was a member of the Advisory Commission on the return of cultural property seized as a result of Nazi persecution, especially Jewish property, led by the former head of the Federal Constitutional Court, Jutta Limbach. In November 2014, Weizsäcker retired as chairman of the Bergedorf Round Table, a discussion forum on foreign policy issues.

Death and funeral

Weizsäcker died in Berlin on 31 January 2015, aged 94. He was survived by his wife, Marianne, and three of their four children. Upon his death, there was general praise for his life and political career. In its obituary, The New York Times called Weizsäcker "a guardian of his nation's moral conscience", while The Guardian commented that Germany was "uniquely fortunate" in having had him as a leader.

He was honoured with a state funeral on 11 February 2015 at Berlin Cathedral. Eulogies were given by incumbent president Joachim Gauck, foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD), finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) and former vice president of the Bundestag Antje Vollmer (Green Party). Steinmeier praised Weizsäcker's role in foreign relations, where he had worked towards reconciliation with France and Poland and supported a dialogue with the communist regimes in the East, often against his own party. The funeral was attended by many serving high-ranking politicians in Germany, including Chancellor Angela Merkel. Also in attendance were former presidents Roman Herzog, Horst Köhler, and Christian Wulff, as well as former chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Gerhard Schröder. Princess Beatrix, former Queen of the Netherlands, was also present, as was former Polish president Lech Wałęsa. After the ceremony, soldiers stood to attention as Weizsäcker's coffin was brought to its resting place at Waldfriedhof Dahlem. In the subsequent days, many Berliners visited Weizsäcker's grave to pay tribute and lay down flowers. On 15 April 2020, von Weizsäcker's 100th birthday, incumbent Governing Mayor of Berlin Michael Müller and Ralf Wieland, president of the Abgeordnetenhaus, Berlin's state parliament, laid down a wreath at his grave in honour of his services to the city of Berlin.

Relationship with his party and Helmut Kohl

Weizsäcker, who had joined the CDU in 1954, was known for often publicly voicing political views different from his own party line, both in and out of the presidential office. While he was himself sceptical of Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, he urged his party not to block it entirely in the lower house, the Bundestag, since rejection would be met with dismay abroad. When the CDU gained a sweeping victory in the state elections in Baden-Württemberg in April 1972, his party decided to take the opportunity to dispose of Chancellor Brandt with a vote of no confidence, replacing him with Rainer Barzel, and Weizsäcker was one of only three elected CDU politicians to speak out against the proposal. He maintained an easy-going and open demeanour towards members of all other parties. In 1987, at a time when the CDU actively tried to label the Green Party as unconstitutional, the President had regular contact with high-ranking Green politicians such as Antje Vollmer, who was also active in the Protestant Church in Germany, and Joschka Fischer, who said that with his understanding of state "he [Weizsäcker] is closer to the Green Party than to Kohl, not NATO, but Auschwitz as reason of state (Staatsräson)."

Helmut Kohl, who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998, was an early patron of Weizsäcker's, effectively helping him into parliament. However, their relationship took a first strain in 1971, when Weizsäcker supported Rainer Barzel over Kohl for the CDU-chairmanship. Subsequently, Kohl unsuccessfully tried to deny Weizsäcker the chance to become president in 1983. After he had taken office, Weizsäcker criticised Kohl's government on numerous occasions, taking liberties not previously heard of from someone in a ceremonial role such as his. For instance, he urged the chancellor to recognise the Oder–Neisse line and spoke out for a more patient approach to the journey towards German reunification. Other examples include the aforementioned speech in 1985 and his critique of party politics in 1992. Following a critical interview Weizsäcker gave to Der Spiegel magazine in September 1997, Kohl reacted during a meeting of his parliamentary group by saying that Weizsäcker (whom he called "that gentleman") was no longer "one of us". This was followed by CDU spokesman Rolf Kiefer stating that the CDU had removed Weizsäcker from its membership database, since the former president had not paid his membership fees in a long time. Weizsäcker then took the matter to the party's arbitrating body and won. The tribunal ruled that he was allowed to let his membership rest indefinitely. After his death, Spiegel editor Gerhard Spörl called Weizsäcker the "intellectual alternative medicine to Kohl".

Publications

Weizsäcker's publications include Die deutsche Geschichte geht weiter (German History Continues), first published in 1983; Von Deutschland aus (From Germany Abroad), a collection of speeches first published in 1985; Von Deutschland nach Europa (From Germany to Europe, 1991) and his memoirs Vier Zeiten (Four Times), published in German in 1997 and in English as From Weimar to the Wall: My Life in German Politics in 1999. In a review in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Friedrich Karl Fromme wrote that the memoirs tell nothing new about the times he lived in, but "something about the person". In 2009, he published a book on his recollections of German reunification, titled Der Weg zur Einheit (The Path to Unity). German newspaper Die Welt dismissed the book as "boring", accusing the account of being too balanced.

Other activities and recognition

Weizsäcker received many honors in his career, including honorary membership in the Order of Saint John; an honorary doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1993; creation of the Richard von Weizsäcker Professorship at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University and the Robert Bosch Foundation of Stuttgart in 2003; and more than eleven other honorary doctorates, ranging from the Weizmann Institute in Israel to Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard universities, the Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Law (1995) at Uppsala University and the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, the Leo Baeck Prize from the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and the Buber-Rosenzweig Medallion from the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation. After his death, deputy director of Poland's international broadcaster, Rafal Kiepuszewski, called Weizsäcker "the greatest German friend Poland has ever had".

Both Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck praised Weizsäcker, with the latter declaring upon the news of his death: "We are losing a great man and an outstanding head of state." French president François Hollande highlighted Weizsäcker's "moral stature."