Kohl moved up into the federal board ("Vorstand") of the CDU in 1964. Two years later, shortly before his election as chairman of the party in Rhineland-Palatinate, he failed at an attempt to be voted into the executive committee ("Präsidium") of the party. After the CDU lost its involvement in the federal government for the first time since the end of World War II in the 1969 election, Kohl was elected into the committee. While former chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger remained chairman of the CDU until 1971, it was now parliamentary chairman Rainer Barzel who led the opposition against the newly formed social-liberal coalition of Willy Brandt.