Dr. Adenauer in London again

By Dr. Fritz Caspari
Counsellor 1958-1963

In May 1957, Harold Macmillan had paid his first official visit to Bonn as Prime Minister. Chancellor Adenauer returned this visit in the spring of 1958 (16-19 April). In view of his well-known reservations towards Britain, a speech he made at a private luncheon given for him by the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House, was notable though it was never published. Putting aside his text, Adenauer spoke very personally and frankly of his relationship with and feelings towards Britain. He noted that London, too, was situated by a river that long ago had been a tributary to the Rhine on the banks of which lay Cologne, the city whose Mayor he had been. He recalled a visit of a delegation of British Mayors he had received a few weeks before the out-break of World War One, and the cordial atmosphere; none of the participants had any idea that they would soon be facing each other as enemies.

After World War One Adenauer had worked closely for years with the British occupation authorities. The Cologne representative of the Inter-Allied Control Commission was Julian Piggott who became his friend and who was present at the luncheon. Together they had managed, the Chancellor said, to keep the French out of Cologne at the time of their occupation of the neighbouring Ruhr-region. In 1933, the Nazis had removed him from his office and eventually imprisoned him. After 1945, the Americans reinstated him as Lord Mayor, but when the British took over he was removed a second time from that post. General Barraclough sacked him on behalf of Prime Minister Attlee on account of "complete incompetence". Turning to Hugh Gaitskell, the Leader of the Opposition who was among the British guests at that luncheon, he said that this decision was a crucial mistake on the part of "your predecessor". It had given him, Adenauer, the leisure and opportunity to devote himself to the task of organising the Christian Democratic Union. The result was that his party was able to defeat the friends of Mr. Gaitskell's party, the German Social Democrats, in the first elections to the Federal Parliament and had kept them out of Government ever since.

It was a surprising speech. The Chancellor appeared to unburden himself almost light-heartedly of traumatic experiences. His attitude towards Britain seemed to become more positive. The personal relationship between him and Macmillan was strengthened; they frequently exchanged personal letters on various matters. Later on, however, some of Adenauer's old misgivings surfaced again, though the distrust which emerged in connection with the critical developments in the East-West relationship in the late fifties was cleared up in a later Chequers-meeting between Adenauer and the Prime Minister. Dr. Adenauer's London visit at any rate prepared the ground for the State Visit later that year by the Federal President, Theodor Heuss.