GERMANY - The country of Luther, Goethe and Beethoven has always contributed enormously to the European continent. After World War II, it was not Winston Churchill but Konrad Adenauer  who first called in public for a United States of Europe. The practising Catholic, who went on to become one of the founding fathers of Europe, saw it as a way to ensure peace, to reconcile Europe spiritually and politically, and to bring Germany back into the family of free nations. In 1951, as the first chancellor of the Federal Republic, he supported the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community and in 1957 he described the creation of the European Economic Community as the most important event after World War II. In 1958, his visit to General de Gaulle at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises marked a turning point. The two erstwhile enemies laid the cornerstone of reconciliation, which was sealed by the signature of the Elysée Treaty in 1963.