Post-war political career
After the war, Lübke returned to his career in politics, becoming a member of the West German CDU party and was appointed Minister of Agriculture in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1947. In 1953, Konrad Adenauer appointed him to his cabinet as Federal Minister of Agriculture in Bonn.
Lübke was chosen by Adenauer as a candidate for the largely ceremonial post of president to ensure that Adenauer's political schemes were not disturbed by too strong a personality in this position, which is nominally the highest post in the German state. Lübke defeated Carlo Schmid, the SPD candidate, and Max Becker, the FDP candidate for the presidency, in the second round of voting in 1959.
On 29 June 1964, at a press conference in Berlin, Prof. Albert Norden, one of GDR's chief Communist propagandists, alleged that Lübke acted as an informer for the Gestapo (secret police) during the war and at the very least he had been aware of the use of slave labour on his projects; building plans bearing his signature and containing concentration camp barrack blocks were advanced as evidence of his complicity, but these were dismissed in the West as East German and Eastern Bloc propaganda.
On 1 July 1964, he was re-elected by the Fourth Federal Convention. The re-election was preceded by a meeting between Lübke and Herbert Wehner (SPD) during a cure in Bad Kissingen, at which both agreed on re-election and spoke out in favour of a grand coalition. Only then did Lübke inform the CDU and he was confirmed in office with the votes of both major parties. The State Secretary in the Office of the Federal President, Hans von Herwarth, who had internally opposed a second term in office because of Lübke's state of health, was subsequently replaced and sent to Rome as ambassador. Lübke campaigned for the formation of the Grand Coalition (Kiesinger cabinet).
Lubke stated in Berlin on 19 July 1964, "Our young people must learn more about the devotion and the willingness to sacrifice themselves that marked the men and women who rose against Hitler."
In September 1966, Lübke's office claimed that the document with his signature on display in Munich was a "forgery" and was Communist inspired. The document contained a directive for the construction of a wartime concentration camp.
The historian Tony Judt has observed that Lübke's presidency, like the chancellorship of Kurt Georg Kiesinger, showed the "a glaring contradiction in the Bonn Republic's self-image" in view of their previous Nazi allegiances. Lübke's status as a one-time political prisoner under the National Socialists placed him in good stead. Nevertheless, the potential scandal threatened to damage the office of the president; on 14 October 1968, Lübke announced that he would resign on 30 June 1969, his resignation taking effect three months before the scheduled end of his term of office.
The former president's health deteriorated. His intention to live in West Berlin from time to time could not be realised, nor could he, with his private library of about 5,000 books, pursue his scientific hobbies in comparative linguistics and microbiology.
Lübke's political friends ignored him, if they did not avoid him. His successor in the presidency, Gustav Heinemann, however, kept in contact with him. Trips to Tenerife, in autumn 1969 and at Christmas in 1970 and 1971, brought no improvement in his condition. Arteriosclerosis of the arteries in both his brain and his limbs was becoming increasingly noticeable, leading to serious speech disorders, declining physical mobility, and progressive memory loss. In retrospect, it was clear that this disease had started several years earlier and explained many aspects of the West German president's behaviour during his last years in office. In November 1971, the former president visited his birthplace in Enkhausen for the last time.
On 30 March 1972, an acute stomach hemorrhage required an emergency operation during which it was discovered that he was suffering from a very advanced form of stomach cancer which had already spread to his brain. After two more haemorrhages, Lübke died on 6 April 1972 at the age of 77 in the West German capital of Bonn.
