Richard von Weizsäcker position held Governing Mayor of Berlin
Governing Mayor of West Berlin (1981–84)
Weizsäcker served as the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) of West Berlin from 1981 to 1984. During his years in office, he tried to keep alive the idea of Germany as a cultural nation, divided into two states. In his speeches and writings, he repeatedly urged his compatriots in the Federal Republic to look upon themselves as a nation firmly anchored in the Western alliance, but with special obligations and interests in the East. Weizsäcker irritated the United States, France and Britain, the half-city's occupying powers, by breaking with protocol and visiting Erich Honecker, the East German Communist Party chief, in East Berlin.From 1981 to 1983, Weizsäcker headed a minority government in West Berlin, after the CDU had only won 48 percent of seats in the state assembly. His government was tolerated by the Free Democratic Party, who were in a coalition with the Social Democrats at the federal level at the time. After Helmut Kohl had won the federal election in 1983 and had formed a government with the Free Democrats, Weizsäcker did the same in West Berlin.
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