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Article:
Der Mythos vom „Wundermann“ Ludwig Erhard. Macht und Ohnmacht politischer Öffentlichkeitsarbeit

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Abstract

Ludwig Erhard–the first Minister of Economics of the Federal Republic of Germany–is still firmly anchored in the collective memory of the Federal Republic of Germany as the “Father of the Economic Miracle”–strikingly cigar-smoking and prosperity-fed. Supported by an enormous trust in his person and cheered by large parts of the West German population, he replaced Konrad Adenauer in the Chancellery in 1963. After three years in office, however, the “Wundermann” image had already faded, and the high approval rates for his person, his power base, had rapidly declined. The dissertation project is dedicated to Erhard’s political biography and explores the question: How powerful/how powerless was political public relations in terms of acquiring, maintaining and losing trust in the politician Erhard? The project is based on documents from the Federal Archives, the archives of the Ludwig Erhard Foundation and on interviews with contemporary witnesses. It focuses on the contents, the methods and the structures of political public relations work in the years 1949-1966. The dissertation project is embedded in the project “The Media Biographies of the Chancellors” headed by Benjamin Krämer (LMU Munich) and Thomas Birkner (WWU Münster).

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Schmidt, Katharina: Der Mythos vom „Wundermann“ Ludwig Erhard. Macht und Ohnmacht politischer Öffentlichkeitsarbeit. In: Rundfunk und Geschichte, Jg. 46 (2020), Nr. 3-4, S. 108-111.http://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/19037
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