 In the federal elections of 1949, he obtained a seat in the West German Bundestag parliament by directly winning the mandate of the Bergstraße constituency.In 1952 he and other CDU MPs advocated the implementation of a plurality voting system instead of the personalized proportional representation concept, though to no avail.In the federal parliament, he served as head of the CDU/CSU faction from 1949 to 1955 and again from 1961 until his death.