Richard von Weizsäcker

Richard's grandfather Karl von Weizsäcker had been Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Württemberg, and was ennobled in 1897 and raised to the hereditary title of Baron (Freiherr) in 1916.

The sister Adelheid (1916–2004) married Botho-Ernst Graf zu Eulenburg-Wicken (1903–1944), a landowner in East Prussia.

His term in office ended in 1918, shortly before the monarchy was abolished in the German Revolution of 1918–1919.

However, during the following years, he still occupied an apartment in the former royal palace where his grandson was born in an attic room.

Because his father was a career diplomat, Weizsäcker spent much of his childhood in Switzerland and Scandinavia.

Richard Karl Freiherr von Weizsäcker (15 April 1920 – 31 January 2015) was a German politician (CDU), who served as President of Germany from 1984 to 1994.

Born into the aristocratic Weizsäcker family, who were part of the German nobility, he took his first public offices in the Protestant Church in Germany.

Richard von Weizsäcker was born on 15 April 1920 in the New Palace in Stuttgart, the son of diplomat Ernst von Weizsäcker, a member of the Weizsäcker family, and his wife Marianne von Graevenitz, a daughter of Friedrich von Graevenitz (1861–1922), a General of the Infantry of the Kingdom of Württemberg.

The family lived in Basel 1920–24, in Copenhagen 1924–26, and in Bern 1933–36, where Richard attended the Swiss Gymnasium Kirchenfeld.

The family lived in Berlin, in an apartment in the Fasanenstraße in Wilmersdorf, between 1929 and 1933 and again from 1936 until the end of the Second World War.

Weizsäcker was able to miss the third class of his elementary school, and entered a secondary school at the young age of nine, the Bismarck-Gymnasium (now the Goethe-Gymnasium) in Wilmersdorf.

When he was 17 years old, Weizsäcker travelled to England to study philosophy and history at Balliol College, Oxford.

In London, he witnessed the coronation of King George VI.

Ernst von Weizsäcker was a career diplomat and a high-ranking official in the Foreign Ministry in the 1930s.

The youngest of four children, Weizsäcker had two brothers, the physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Heinrich von Weizsäcker who fell as a soldier in Poland at the beginning of World War II.

He spent the winter semester of 1937/38 at the University of Grenoble in France to improve his French.

He was mustered for the army there in 1938 and moved back to Germany the same year to start his Reichsarbeitsdienst.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Weizsäcker joined the Wehrmacht, ultimately rising to the rank of captain in the reserves.

He joined his brother Heinrich's regiment, the Infantry Regiment 9 Potsdam.

He crossed over the border to Poland with his regiment on the very first day of the war.

His brother Heinrich was killed about a hundred meters away from him on the second day.

Weizsäcker watched over his brother's body through the night, until he was able to bury him the next morning.

His regiment, consisting in a large part of noble and conservative Prussians, played a significant part in the 20 July plot, with no fewer than nineteen of its officers involved in the conspiracy against Hitler.

Weizsäcker himself helped his friend Axel von dem Bussche in an attempt to kill Hitler at a uniform inspection in December 1943, providing Bussche with travel papers to Berlin.

The attempt had to be called off when the uniforms were destroyed by an air raid.

Upon meeting Bussche in June 1944, Weizsäcker was also informed of the imminent plans for 20 July and assured him of his support, but the plan ultimately failed.

Weizsäcker later described the last nine months of the war as "agony".

He was wounded in East Prussia in 1945 and was transported home to Stuttgart, to see out the end of the war on a family farm at Lake Constance.

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.

A member of the CDU since 1954, Weizsäcker was elected as a member of parliament at the 1969 elections.

He continued to hold a mandate as a member of the Bundestag until he became Governing Mayor of West Berlin, following the 1981 state elections.

In 1984, Weizsäcker was elected as President of the Federal Republic of Germany and was re-elected in 1989 for a second term.

As yet, he and Theodor Heuss are the only two Presidents of the Federal Republic of Germany who have served two complete five-year-terms.

He was famous for his speeches, especially one he delivered at the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe on 8 May 1985.

Upon his death, his life and political work were widely praised, with The New York Times calling him "a guardian of his nation's moral conscience".

On 3 October 1990, during his second term as president, the reorganized five states of the German Democratic Republic and East Berlin joined the Federal Republic of Germany, which made Weizsäcker President of a reunified Germany.

Weizsäcker is considered the most popular of Germany's presidents, held in high regard particularly for his impartiality.

His demeanor often saw him at odds with his party colleagues, particularly longtime Chancellor Helmut Kohl.