ABSTRACT
As a Catholic and a Rhinelander, therefore geo-politically much closer to France and Western Europe than to Prussia, and as a man of robust democratic opinions, Konrad Adenauer had an instinctive dislike and fear of Prussia. In the meantime, Adenauer was pressing the Military Commanders to allow the establishment of German constitutional institutions, and notably a Court of Justice and a ‘Basic Law’, if a constitution could not yet be envisaged. Nevertheless, the question whether Adenauer would have proceeded to the unification of the FRG with the DDR as hastily as Chancellor Kohl, his fellow Rhinelander and Christian Democrat, remains a moot point. The rude awakening for Adenauer came with the election of 1961, in which his party’s share of the vote fell from 50.2 per cent in 1957 to 45.3 per cent, while the Social Democratic Party’s had climbed from 31.8 per cent to 36.2 per cent and the Liberals from 7.7 per cent to 12.8 per cent.
