page_title: Richard von Weizsäcker
section_title: Education, marriage and early work life
hierarchical_section_title: Richard von Weizsäcker / Early life / Education, marriage and early work life
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Moskau, 6. Juli 1987 Vom 6. bis 11. Juli 1987 statteten Bundespräsident Dr. Richard von Weizsäcker und seine Frau Marianne der Sowjeunion einen Staatsbesuch ab. Sie wurden von dem Bundesminister des Auswärtigen, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, begleitet. Neben seinen Begegnungen mit Staatsoberhaupt Gromyko und Generalsekretär Gorbatschow traf Bundespräsident von Weizsäcker in Moskau mit sowjetischen Künstlern, Vertretern der Presse und des Geisteslebens zusammen. Der offizielle Teil des Besuchs ging mit einem Aufenthalt in Leningrad zu Ende. Am 10. Juli flogen der Bundespräsident und seine Delegation zu einem zweitägigen privaten Besuch nach Nowosibirsk weiter. Im Bild: Auf dem Roten Platz v.l.n.r.: Marianne Beatrice von Weizsäcker, die Tochter des Bundespräsidenten, Frau Marianne von Weizsäcker und Bundespräsident Dr. Richard von Weizsäcker
context_page_description: Richard Karl Freiherr von Weizsäcker was a German politician, who served as President of Germany from 1984 to 1994. Born into the Weizsäcker family, who were part of the German nobility, he took his first public offices in the Evangelical Church in Germany.
  A member of the CDU since 1954, he was elected as member of parliament in 1969. He continued to hold a mandate as member of the Bundestag until he became Governing Mayor of West Berlin, following the 1981 state elections. In 1984, Richard von Weizsäcker was elected as President of the Federal Republic of Germany and in 1989 he was re-elected for a second term. As yet, he is, together with Theodor Heuss, one of only two Presidents of the Federal Republic of Germany, who have served two complete five-year-terms. During his second term as president on 3 October 1990, the reorganized five states of the former German Democratic Republic and East Berlin joined the Federal Republic of Germany, which made von Weizsäcker the first democratically legitimized head of state of Germany as a whole since Reich President Paul von Hindenburg had died in office on 2 August 1934.
context_section_description: At the end of the war Weizsäcker continued his study of history in Göttingen and went on to study law, but he also attended lectures in physics and theology. In 1947, when his father Ernst von Weizsäcker was a defendant in the Ministries Trial for his role in the deportation of Jews from occupied France, Richard von Weizsäcker served as his assistant defence counsel. He took his first legal Staatsexamen in 1950, his second in 1953, and finally earned his doctorate (doctor juris) in 1955. In 1953 he married Marianne von Kretschmann. They had met when she was an 18-year-old schoolgirl and he was thirty. in 2010, Weizsäcker described the marriage as "the best and smartest decision of my life". They had four children: Robert Klaus von Weizsäcker, a professor of economics at the Technical University of Munich, Andreas von Weizsäcker, an art professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, Beatrice von Weizsäcker, a lawyer and journalist, and Fritz Eckhart von Weizsäcker, chief physician at the Schlosspark-Klinik in Berlin. In the late 1970s, his son Andreas was a student at the Odenwaldschule. When reports about sexual abuse there surfaced in 2010, it was speculated in the media that Andreas might have been one of the victims, but this was denied by the family. Andreas died of cancer in June 2008, aged 51. Weizsäcker's son Fritz was murdered by a man armed with a knife on 19 November 2019, while holding a lecture at the Schlosspark-Klinik in Berlin, where he worked.
  Weizsäcker worked for Mannesmann between 1950 and 1958, as a scientific assistant until 1953, as a legal counsel from 1953, and as head of the department for economic policy from 1957. From 1958 to 1962, he was head of the Waldthausen Bank, a bank owned by relatives of his wife. From 1962 to 1966, he served on the board of directors of Boehringer Ingelheim, a pharmaceutical company. It was involved in production of the Agent Orange. This fact is speculated to be the motive behind the murder of his son in 2019, though the suspect has been sent to a secure hospital unit due to a "delusional general aversion" against the victim's family.
caption: Weizsäcker, his wife Marianne and daughter Beatrice in Moscow, 1987
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