Heinrich Lübke

German politician who served as president of the German Federal Republic (1959–69).

After serving in World War I he was able to unify many small German farmers’ organizations into the German Farmers Federation, serving as the federation’s director from 1926 to 1933. Politically inactive throughout the National Socialist era (1933–45), Lübke helped to organize the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Westphalia after World War II and was a member of the North Rhine–Westphalia Landtag (provincial diet) from 1946 to 1952. Between 1947 and 1952 he also served as the North Rhine–Westphalia minister of food, agriculture, and forestry.

In 1949–50 and later from 1953 to 1959, he sat in the federal Bundestag (lower house of parliament), and in 1953 he entered the cabinet of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer as federal minister of food, agriculture, and forestry. As a federal minister he played an important role in modernizing West German agriculture. In 1959 he was chosen as the CDU’s candidate for the federal presidency after Adenauer had declined to run. He was elected president in July 1959 and was reelected in 1964. He resigned from office in early 1969.

He died 6 April 1972, Bonn.