Richard von Weizsäcker

Richard von Weizsäcker

Richard von Weizsäcker is one of the formative political figures of the Federal Republic of Germany. After a career in the CDU that took him to the office of Governing Mayor of Berlin, he was elected the sixth Federal President in 1984 and held the office until 1994. He became internationally known above all for his speech on the 40th anniversary of the end of the war on 8 May 1985, in which he described the war's end not as a defeat but as a day of liberation. This reframing broke with a widely held view of the time and set a standard for how Germany publicly confronts its National Socialist past. Weizsäcker was regarded as a moral authority far beyond party lines.

As Federal President, Weizsäcker accompanied a period of profound change: the crisis of the German party landscape, the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc, and finally reunification in 1990, which he helped carry out as head of state. He understood his office as that of an admonisher and mediator, deliberately keeping it apart from day-to-day political business and interpreting it instead as the conscience of society. After his death in 2015, political Germany, across party lines, honored him as a statesman of great stature. The German 2-euro commemorative coin from the "Unity and Justice and Freedom" series honors him in 2028 as one of the most significant figures in the history of the Federal Republic.