Kurt Georg Kiesinger - Chancellorship and Last Years

Chancellorship and Last Years

In 1966 following the collapse of the existing CDU/CSU-FDP coalition Kiesinger was elected to replace Ludwig Erhard as Chancellor, heading a new CDU/CSU-SPD alliance. The government formed by Kiesinger remained in power for nearly three years with the SPD leader Willy Brandt as Deputy Federal Chancellor and Foreign Minister. Kiesinger reduced tensions with the Soviet bloc nations establishing diplomatic relations with Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia but he opposed any major conciliatory moves.

One of his low points as Chancellor was in 1968 when Nazi-hunter Beate Klarsfeld, who campaigned with her husband Serge Klarsfeld against Nazi criminals, publicly slapped him in the face during the 1968 Christian Democrat convention, while calling him a Nazi. She did so in French and - whilst being dragged out of the room by two ushers - repeated her words in German saying "Kiesinger! Nazi! Abtreten!" ("Kiesinger! Nazi! Step down!") Kiesinger, holding his left cheek, did not respond. Up to his death he refused to comment on the incident and in other opportunities he denied explicitly that he had been opportunistic by joining the NSDAP in 1933 (albeit he conceded joining the Nazi Foreign Ministry to dodge his 1940 draft by the Wehrmacht). During his period as Chancellor, he made Carl Schmitt his regular intellectual companion (also a 1933 NSDAP late joiner, Francisco Franco apologist, and hyperactive anti-Jewish Nazi intellectual until falling out of Nazi grace in 1936). Other prominent critics included the writers Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass (in 1966, Grass had written an open letter urging Kiesinger not to accept the chancellorship). Philosopher Karl Jaspers, who had taken up residency in Switzerland, surrendered his German passport in protest.

After the election of 1969, the SPD preferred to form a coalition with the FDP, ending the uninterrupted post-war reign of the CDU chancellors. Kiesinger was succeeded as Chancellor by Willy Brandt. Kiesinger continued to head the CDU/CSU in opposition until July 1971 and remained a member of the Bundestag until 1980. Of his memoirs only part one (Dark and Bright Years) was completed, covering the years up to 1958. He died in Tübingen. After a requiem mass in Stuttgart's St. Eberhard church, his funeral procession was followed by protesters (mainly students) who wanted his entire legacy remembered - even after his death - especially his former membership in the Nazi Party.