Weizsaecker, ex-president of Germany, dies
Print Edition
FORMER German President Richard von Weizsaecker, who declared Germany’s World War II surrender a “day of liberation” for his country as he urged it to confront the Nazi past, and promoted reconciliation during a 10-year tenure that spanned the reunification of west and east, has died. He was 94.
President Joachim Gauck’s office announced Weizsaecker’s death yesterday. Weizsaecker, who was president from 1984 to 1994, raised the profile of the largely ceremonial post and established himself as a moral conscience for the nation.
His May 1985 speech marking the 40th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s defeat in WWII cemented his reputation. It won widespread praise as an effort to bring fellow Germans to terms with the Holocaust.
“All of us, whether guilty or not, whether young or old, must accept the past. We are all affected by its consequences and liable for it,” said Weizsaecker, who served as a regular soldier in Adolf Hitler’s army.
“The 8th of May was a day of liberation. It freed us all from the system of National Socialist tyranny,” he told the West German parliament.
“Richard von Weizsaecker stood for a Germany that had found its way to center of the democratic family of peoples,” Gauck said in a condolences message to Weizsaecker’s widow.
Weizsaecker had managerial stints in banking and pharmaceuticals and also headed Germany’s Protestant church congress for several years.
He joined the center-right Christian Democratic Union in 1954, and served in the federal parliament from 1969 until his election in 1981 as mayor of West Berlin, a job that helped propel him into the presidency in 1984.
Weizsaecker is survived by his wife, Marianne, and three children.
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