Heiner Geißler | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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.jpg) Geißler in 1986 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Federal Minister for Youth, Family and Health | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 4 October 1982 – 26 September 1985 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chancellor | Helmut Kohl | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Anke Fuchs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Rita Süssmuth | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Minister for Social Affairs, Health and Sports ofRhineland-Palatinate | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 18 May 1967 – 23 June 1977 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chancellor |
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| Preceded by | Office established | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Georg Gölter | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| General Secretary of theChristian Democratic Union | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 7 March 1977 – 11 September 1989 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Kurt Biedenkopf | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Volker Rühe | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Personal details | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | Heinrichjosef Geißler[1] (1930-03-03)3 March 1930 Oberndorf am Neckar, Germany | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Died | 12 September 2017(2017-09-12) (aged 87) Gleisweiler, Germany | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Party | Christian Democratic Union | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Children | 3, includingDominik | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alma mater | Heidelberg University | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Heinrich "Heiner" Geißler (3 March 1930 – 12 September 2017)[2] was a German politician and judge who served as theFederal Minister for Youth, Family and Health from 1982 to 1985. A member of theChristian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), he served as the party'sgeneral secretary from 1977 to 1989.
Geißler served as a government minister in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate under the minister presidentsPeter Altmeier,Helmut Kohl andBernhard Vogel before becoming general secretary of the CDU. During his tenure, he served as federal minister and attempted to overthrow Kohl, then theparty chairman, at the 1989 CDU party congress inBremen, but failed and thereafter lost his position within the party.
Both during his tenure and after, he took on increasinglyleft-leaning positions in economic questions and questions of women's emancipation, and eventually joined the activist organisationATTAC, which is critical ofglobalisation. Later in life, he served as amediator in employer-employee disputes, as well as a mediator in the conflict surrounding theStuttgart 21 railway.
Geißler was born on 3 March 1930 inOberndorf am Neckar as the fourth of five children of civil servant Heinrich Geißler and his wife Maria, née Buck. His father was a member of theCentre Party and did not adoptNazi ideology, as a result of which he was subjected to several disciplinary measures and moved toTuttlingen (between 1938 and 1940) and eventually toSpaichingen, where the Geißler family experienced the war's end.[3] Toward the end ofWorld War II, Heiner Geißler was drafted to theWehrmacht, from which he fled together with a school friend. Afterwards, he attended schools inRavensburg, Tuttlingen,Hannover, and Spaichingen, after which he entered into the private,Jesuit-runKolleg St. Blasien, since there was no school in Spaichingen that led to theAbitur.[4] After attaining the Abitur in 1949, he entered the Jesuit order as anovice, leaving four years later, just before he had to take the monastic vows, which stipulated poverty,chastity andobedience. He later commented: "At 23 I noticed, that I cannot uphold two – so at least one – of these vows. It was not poverty."[5]
After leaving the order, Geißler went on to study philosophy at the Jesuit-runMunich School of Philosophy, and afterwards law at theLudwig Maximilian University of Munich and theUniversity of Tübingen. While a student in Tübingen, he became a member of the KStV Alamannia Tübingen, a fraternity belonging to theKartellverband. He finished his legal studies in 1957 with the firstStaatsexamen, followed by attaining a PhD in legal studies in July 1960 and the second Staatsexamen in 1962. In 1962, he briefly worked as a judge at theAmtsgericht in Stuttgart, followed by employment as a civil servant in the office of the Minister for Labour and Social Affairs inBaden-Württemberg,Josef Schüttler, from 1962 to 1965.
Geißler was a life-long member of theChristian Democratic Union of Germany. Together withFranz Sauter,Erwin Teufel, andJosef Rebhan, Geißler founded theRottweil district group of theYoung Union (JU), the CDU's youth wing. He was JU chairman of Baden-Württemberg from 1961 to 1965. In 1977, he succeededKurt Biedenkopf as general secretary of the federal CDU. As such, he managed the party in three federal elections (1980,1983, and1987). To this day, he is the longest-serving general secretary of the CDU and the only one to concurrently serve as a government minister. During this period, he was responsible for the new basic program of the party and was decisively involved in formulating the CDU's new positions in foreign policy, which were developed on the youth party congress inHamburg and were considered a precondition for the coalition with theFree Democratic Party (FDP) that later became a reality. Geißler was also responsible for the modernisation of the party's position on women's rights, put forth at the 1985 CDU party congress inEssen.
When, during theFlick affair, party chairmanHelmut Kohl was questioned as to whether he had accepted bribes for the CDU,[6][7] Geißler defended him in a 1986 television show by proposing that Kohl may have had a "blackout". After that point, relations between both soured.[8] After reports appeared that Geißler was to be replaced after the CDU lost elections inWest Berlin andFrankfurt am Main in 1989, and achieved only 37.6% of the vote in theEuropean election of that year, a drop of 8.2% from the1984 European election,[9] Geißler was not re-nominated for the position of general secretary by chairman Kohl. Previously, differences on policy had created a rift between chairman and general secretary. Together with Lothar Späth and Rita Süssmuth, Geißler attempted to overthrow Kohl on the 1989 CDU party congress held in Bremen, but was unsuccessful,[10] leading to his resignation as general secretary. Until 1998, he belonged to the party presidium and, until 2002, to thefederal board.
Geißler remained critical of Kohl following his loss of power. In 1995, he called the party, referring to Kohl's role, as a "party with acult of personality" ("führerkultische Partei").[11] At the 1990 CDU party congress, he apologised for using the wordFührerkult, stating: "The term was wrong, the issue remains."[12] During theCDU donations scandal, he admitted toslush funds being upkept during Kohl's tenure as chairman.
He attracted considerable controversy in 1977 after publishing a brochure which accused several leftist and liberal artists and politicians inWest Germany of being "sympathisers of terror", referring to the attacks of theRed Army Faction (RAF). Mentioned in the pamphlet were, among others,Helmut Gollwitzer,Heinrich Albertz,Günter Wallraff,Herbert Marcuse, and Federal Minister for the InteriorWerner Maihofer. In 1983, Geißler called theSocial Democratic Party (SPD) a "fifth column of the other side", referring to theEastern Bloc, during the debate concerning the stationing of AmericanMGM-31 Pershing missiles in Europe.[13] During the electoral campaign for the1983 federal election, Geißler also attracted controversy by calling thepension policy of the SPD the "pension lie", elaborating: "He who does not know the truth is merely an idiot, but he who knows it andd calls it a lie, is a criminal!", originating inBertolt Brecht's playLife of Galileo.[14] In 1985, after several mayors of cities bombed by theLuftwaffe were invited by the SPD toNuremberg under the slogan "Never again war from German soil!", Geißler rhetorically asked why the Social Democrats had also invited the mayors ofDresden andLeipzig (both then part ofcommunistEast Germany) and cited the slogan ofKurt Schumacher "Never another dictatorship on German soil!", contrasting it with the SPD slogan. Due to Geißler's persistent attacks against the SPD, then-chairmanWilly Brandt accused him of being "the worst demagogue in this country sinceGoebbels".[15]
Geißler first entered theBundestag following the1965 federal election as a directly elected candidate for the electoral district ofReutlingen. From 1971 to 1979, he belonged to theLandtag of Rhineland-Palatinate. From 1980 to 2002, he again served as deputy, this time as a directly elected deputy for the electoral district ofSüdpfalz. Following thefirst German election afterreunification in 1990, he served as deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, from January 1991 to October 1998.
During a debate in the Bundestag concerning theNATO Double-Track Decision and the stationing of Pershing II missiles by the United States of America in European countries, Geißler responded to aDer Spiegel interview[16] given by the deputiesOtto Schily andJoschka Fischer (bothGreens), in which they had compared the potentialnuclear war following the stationing of the missiles with theHolocaust, stating:
[...] putting the mass extermination atAuschwitz mentally in connection with the defence of our free and democratic state by means of nuclear deterrent belongs to the chapter of confusion of terms and mentalities which we now have to suffer through. Mr. Fischer, I will answer to this, which you have stated there [in the article], by drawing your attention to the following: Thepacifism of the 1930s, which in its philosophical foundations did not differ much from today's pacifism, what we acknowledge to be the foundations of pacifism today, this pacifism of the 1930s made Auschwitz possible.[17][18]
While this statement was defended by advocates of the missile's stationing, several deputies accused Geißler of spreading revisionist narratives. The left-liberal FDP deputyHildegard Hamm-Brücher asked in this context: "What did pacifism have to do withantisemitism in Germany?" He himself later stated in an interview with theNDR that he was referring to pacifist movements in France and the United Kingdom, whose policy ofAppeasement had encouragedHitler to "attack other countries and to carry out his racist policies until they became mass murder".[18]
On 18 May 1967, Geißler entered the cabinet ofPeter Altmeier, then minister-president of the state ofRhineland-Palatinate, as Minister for Social Affairs, which he kept after Helmut Kohl replaced Altmeier in 1969. He retained the position, renamed to Minister for Social Affairs, Health and Sports, under Kohl's successorBernhard Vogel until 23 June 1977. During his tenure, he introduced the first kindergarten law in the history of West Germany. He also was the first to introduce a general reform of hospitals and the first law to financially support physical exercise programs. He was also the intiator and founder of the first state-run nursing services and thus considered one of the founders of the German nursing infrastructure.[19]
On the federal level, he served from 4 October 1982 to 26 September 1985 asFederal Minister for Youth, Family and Health in theKohl I andKohl II governments. He renewed the legislation onconscientious objection, increased parental financial assistance and parental leave, reformed the education of new physicians, and founded theBundesstiftung Mutter und Kind.[20] During his tenure, he decided against introducing a compulsory registration for anyone who had contracted the newly discoveredacquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).[21]
On several occasions, Geißler served as a mediator in wage disputes, mediating four times between 1997 and 2002 in the construction industry, during a wage dispute within the German Telekom in 2006, and (together with Kurt Biedenkopf) during the wage dispute between theGewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer (GDL) and theDeutsche Bahn (DB).[22]
Later, Geißler took on increasingly left-wing positions in economic questions. He called opposing positions "ultra-conservative", "turbo-capitalist", "neoliberal", "backward", and "from yesterday". Based on this criticism, in May 2007, he announced his entry into theanti-globalisation organisationATTAC, supporting the organisation's goal of humanising globalisation.[23]
That same month, Geißler called an economic system, "in whichhedge funds can work without oversight, in which so-calledvulture funds can make huge profits at the expense of heavily indebted African countries, and in which themarket capitalisation of a corporation increases relative to how many employees can berationalised away", as "sick, immoral and economically wrong".Capitalism, he argued, was just as wrong ascommunism, since "beyondsupply and demand, it knows no values". As a model for a new midway he suggested the "old Germansocial market economy", but, since markets had already been globalised, he believed that nation states could not offer a solution to this issue. Instead, he argued, politics had to be internationalised. He argued that impulses for such had to come from regional actors, not from a national centralism, stating: "Only there, the feeling ofHeimat can be emitted, only there people can feel at home". The European Union as a supranational actor had, according to Geißler, already lost faith by the population due to its exponential economic orientation.[24]
Regarding the33rd G8 summit inHeiligendamm in 2007, Geißler answered the question as to whether he would travel there and protest:
I do not want to surrender myself to anarchists and people who have gone insane, be it on one side or the other; and because I know myself: If someone touches me, I strike back, and be it a policeman, I strike back. When I demonstrate, I am exercising a fundamental right, and I will not let myself be touched -- by anyone. And I do not want to put myself in that situation.[25]
Geißler was a member of the board of trustees of theStiftung für Ökologie und Demokratie, which is closely linked to theEcological Democratic Party (ÖDP).
In 2010, minister-presidentStefan Mappus of Baden-Württemberg called upon Geißler to mediate in the conflict surrounding the railway projectStuttgart 21 to bring advocates for and against the projects as well as experts to the negotiating table.[26] Initially, theGreens had suggested him as mediator.[27] In October and November, he moderated the public mediation meetings consisting of seven advocates and seven opponents of the project.[28] With his decision on 30 November 2010 he advocated for the continuation of the project and demanded rectifications.[29]
On 29 July 2011, he moderated the second and final round of mediation, during which thestress analysis presented for Stuttgart 21 in November 2010 was discussed. After both sides could initially not agree whether the new station could carry 30% more capacity as the already existingStuttgart Hauptbahnhof, Geißler presented a compromise, which he had worked out together with a set of Swiss experts. Geißler's suggestion was welcomed by opponents of Stuttgart 21 and immediately rejected by the Deutsche Bahn, while the Ministry for Transportation of Baden-Württemberg promised to examine the compromise. The examination occurred in 2020.[30]
After it was announced that the project's cost would rise to €1.1 billion, Geißler publicly voiced doubts about the project in December 2012.[31][32][33]
In a public discussion titled "Five years later – The mediation of Stuttgart 21", Stuttgart 21 critic Klaus Arnoldi suggested to Geißler, that his demands were unrealistic and not a single one was implemented.[34][35]
In 1988, Geißler was in favour of removing the aim of achieving German reunification from the CDU party program, and of acknowledging the post-warGerman-Polish border as permanent.[36]
In 1975, Geißler coined the term of the "new social question" in regards to increased unemployment. Later, in 2004, he criticised theHartz reforms as "in some respects, poorly designed".[37] After theFederal Constitutional Court ruled on 9 February 2010 that social welfare benefits had to have a difference to wages of employees working full-time ("Lohnabstandsgebot"), he stated that "Hartz IV is destroying human dignity", and that the Lohnabstandsgebot is "a problem of an economy, which is obviously not capable or not willing to pay working people living wages".[38] During the 1991 parliamentary vote to move the seat of federal government fromBonn toBerlin, the country's historic capital, Geißler proposed a two-city capital as a compromise.[39]
During theNSA affair, Geißler advocated in favour of grantingEdward Snowden asylum, stating: "Snowden has done a great service to the Western world. It is now up to us to help him."[40]
Geißler supported the initiative "artikeldrei" by theLSVD+, which advocated for an extension of Article 3 of theBasic Law of Germany to extend to homosexuals. He was critical of theRoman Catholic church and stated, regarding his Christian faith: "I am firstly a democrat. I try to be a Christian." As to the importance of his faith for his political activities, he stated:
When I say that I try to be a Christian, I primarily mean this in a political sense. Independently of the question as to whether God exists, the message of thegospel is so outstanding that I have attempted to orientate my entire political after it.[41]
In the German public, Geißler became increasingly popular in older age. He was a welcome guest in talkshows. In 2005, he moderated a monthly show alongsidePeter Glotz calledGlotz & Geißler onn-tv. Especially during his tenure as mediator during the dispute surrounding Stuttgart 21, he was compared to the figure ofMaster Yoda from theStar Wars universe. Besides apparent physical similarities, he was said to have the same "aura of asage".[42][43][44]
Geißler was married and had three children, among themDominik Geißler, who has served has mayor ofLandau since 2023. Since 1980 he lived inGleisweiler. He died on 11 September 2017, aged 87.[45]
Media related toHeiner Geißler at Wikimedia Commons
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| Preceded by | Federal Ministers for Youth, Family and Health 1982–1985 | Succeeded by |
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