Konrad Adenauer - Stunden der Entscheidung (2012)

Konrad Adenauer – Hours of Decision recounts important episodes from his political and private life between 1933 and 1967. The film opens with Konrad Adenauer receiving the news on the morning of August 13, 1961, that a wall is being built in Berlin. The hours leading up to his decision not to travel to Berlin that same day, but instead to attend an election campaign event in Regensburg, provide the framework for telling the story of Adenauer’s development from 1933 to 1961 through key scenes. After returning to the events of August 13, the film shows subsequent developments through 1963/1967. More than half of the film consists of dramatized scenes that writer Werner Biermann reconstructed from interviews with Konrad Adenauer’s children and grandchildren, other eyewitnesses, and written sources. Eyewitness interviews with Georg Adenauer, Libet Werhahn-Adenauer, Adenauer’s secretary Hannelore Siegel, and interpreter Hermann Kusterer, as well as historians Henning Köhler, Frank Bösch, and Peter Merseburger, complement the dramatized scenes and archival footage.