Curt Ernst Carl Schumacher, better known as Kurt Schumacher, was a German politician who became chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 1946 and the first Leader of the Opposition in the West German Bundestag in 1949; he served in both positions until his death. An opponent of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's government, but an even stronger opponent of the East German Socialist Unity Party and communism in general, he was one of the founding fathers of postwar German democracy. He was also a noted opponent of the far right and the far left, the Nazi Party and the Communist Party of Germany, during the Weimar Republic, and he is famous for his description of the communists as "red-painted Nazis".