Adenauer voted Germany's greatest

By Alix Kroeger
BBC correspondent in Berlin

Adenauer served as chancellor for 14 years

German television viewers have voted post-war Chancellor Konrad Adenauer as the greatest German of all time.

More than three million votes were registered by phone, text message and over the internet in a contest run on ZDF television.

Reformation Monk Martin Luther came second, with communist philosopher Karl Marx third.

Adolf Hitler and other Nazis were excluded from the poll.

The final of the Greatest German series was fought between 10 figures, including physicist Albert Einstein and the inventor of the printing press, Johannes Gutenberg.

Economic miracle

Composer Johann Sebastian Bach and writer Johannes Wolfgang von Goethe were also in the running.

Famous names from Germany and abroad were shown making the case for their favourite.

Other Greatest German finalists Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor who united Germany Willy Brandt, former West German chancellor 1969-1974 Hans and Sophie Scholl, siblings beheaded by the Nazis in 1943

Bill Gates championed Gutenberg, while the leader of Germany's Communist Party after the fall of the Berlin Wall argued in favour of Karl Marx, to applause from a small but raucous section of the studio audience.

Winner Konrad Adenauer served from 1949 to 1963 and helped re-establish German democracy after the Nazi era.

He also oversaw the first years of the German economic miracle - a cause for some nostalgia today as the country's economy lags in the doldrums.

None of the great figures from sport or entertainment made it through to the end.

Boris Becker, Franz Beckenbauer and Marlene Dietrich were knocked out earlier on.