
Germany, 1920 - 2015
former German President
Richard von Weizsäcker
Richard von Weizsäcker was elected President of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1984, a position he was to hold until 1994. He studied law and history in Oxford, Grenoble and Göttingen. Between 1950 and 1966, he worked as a lawyer and held high positions in the corporate world. In 1969, he went into politics and joined the CDU. He became a member of German Parliament and was mayor of West Berlin between 1979 and 1984. He wrote various books on Germany’s political history and German identity, such as Die Weg zur Einheit (2009), and published a memoir, From Weimar to the Wall: My Life in German Politics (1999).