Theodor Heuss was born on January 31, 1884 in Brackenheim. After studying economics and various humanities in Munich and Berlin, he initially worked as a journalist and editor for various newspapers.

From 1903, he was a member of various social-liberal groups and was a founding member of the German Democratic Party in 1918. The following year, he became a member of the Berlin-Schöneberg town hall. With interruptions, he also sat in the German Reichstag from 1924 to 1933.

During the National Socialist era, he continued to work as a journalist, but was banned from publishing in 1942. He then published mainly biographical articles under the pseudonym Thomas Brackheim.

After the war, he set up the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung with American approval. In September 1945, the military government appointed him Baden-Württemberg's first Minister of Culture. After several years in the state parliament and a temporary professorship for history in Stuttgart, he worked as a member of the Parliamentary Council for the newly founded Free Democratic Party of Germany on the creation of the Basic Law.

After the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany, he was elected as the first Federal President in September 1949 - supported by a majority of conservative and liberal parties in the Federal Assembly. Heuss made his inaugural visit to Hesse in December 1949, during which he was received by Lord Mayor Redlhammer in Wiesbaden Town Hall on December 7.

In his speech on the occasion of the entry in the Golden Book, he stated that the municipalities were more important than the federal states. As the nuclei of civic life and thus of economic life, the establishment of local self-government after the war had to have top priority. Only in this way could the conditions for the existence of a new nation be created.

Theodor Heuss died in Stuttgart on December 12, 1963.