Kurt Georg Kiesinger

German lawyer, politician and third Chancellor of West Germany from 1966-1969. Educated as a lawyer, he served in the German foreign ministry during World War II, and was later cleared of Nazi associations. As leader of the Christian Democrats, he formed a coalition government that helped them maintain power after 1969. A silver-haired, elegant, dazzling orator, his incumbency as chancellor served to bridge the founding era of Konrad Adenauer with the era of Willy Brandt.

Kurt Georg Kiesinger was the son of a clerk. He studied at both Tubingen and Berlin universities and earned his law degree. Joining the Nazi party in 1933, he worked in the Nazi Foreign Ministry’s radio propaganda division, but became disillusioned and documentation showed that he had been denounced to the Nazi secret police. He was first elected to Parliament in 1949 and became a loyal member of Chancellor Adenauer’s inner circle. He held various important political posts, including chairmanship of the legislature’s foreign relations committee.

In 1955, Kiesinger accompanied Adenauer to Russia on a trip that helped establish diplomatic relations between Moscow and Bonn. In 1958, he became Premier of Baden-Wurttemberg and soon became a leader of the West German federalists, who wanted to increase powers of the state government. After he left the chancellorship, he continued to serve as a party chairman and parliamentary leader until 1971. He kept his seat in Parliament until 1980, when he retired to work on his memoirs, read poetry and take long hikes in the woods.

Kiesinger married Marie-Luise Schneider in 1932, and they had a son and a daughter. He died on 9 March 1988 of heart failure in Tubingen.