page_title: 1949 West German federal election
section_title: Campaign
hierarchical_section_title: 1949 West German federal election / Campaign
caption_attribution_description: mit Adenauer für den Frieden, die Freiheit und die Einheit Deutschlands darum CDUAbbildung:PorträtfotoPlakatart:Kandidaten-/Personenplakat ohne PorträtKünstler_Grafiker:SI Klischees EntwürfeObjekt-Signatur:10-001: 104Bestand:Plakate zu Bundestagswahlen (10-001)GliederungBestand10-18:Plakate zu Bundestagswahlen (10-001)&#160;» Die 1. Bundestagswahl am 14. August 1949&#160;» CDU&#160;» Mit PorträtfotoLizenz:KAS/ACDP 10-001: 104 CC-BY-SA 3.0 DE
context_page_description: Federal elections were held in West Germany on 14 August 1949 to elect the first Bundestag, with a further eight seats elected in West Berlin between 1949 and January 1952 and another eleven between February 1952 and 1953. They were the first free elections in West Germany since 1933 and the first after the division of the country.
context_section_description: After World War II, the German Instrument of Surrender and the country's division into four Allied occupation zones, the elections were held in the Federal Republic of Germany, established under occupation statute in the three Western zones with the proclamation of its Basic Law by the Parlamentarischer Rat assembly of the West German states on 23 May 1949. Most West German parties at the time of the 1949 Bundestag election were committed to democracy, but they disagreed on what kind of democracy West Germany should become.  
  The Christian Democratic (CDU) leader, 73-year-old Konrad Adenauer, former mayor of Cologne and party chairman in the British Zone since March 1946, believed in moderate, non-denominational and Christian democracy, social market economy and integration with the West. In 1948 he had become president of the Parlamentarischer Rat, an office that added to his popularity as protagonist of a "state-to-be".
  The Social Democratic (SPD) leader, Kurt Schumacher, wanted a united, democratic and socialist Germany. Schumacher had heavily agitated against the forced merger of the Communist Party (KPD) and SPD (both in the Soviet occupation zone) into the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and he had also turned the party's course away from the working class advocacy group of the Weimar Republic towards a left-wing big tent party with distinct patriotic features. He constantly accused Adenauer of betraying national interests (see, for example, Bjöl, Grimberg's History of the Nations), culminating in his heckle at the Bundestag session of 25 September 1949: "The Chancellor of the Allies!".
caption: CDU election poster: With Ardenauer for peace, freedom and unity in Germany.
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