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Herta Däubler-Gmelin | |
|---|---|
 Däubler-Gmelin (2008) | |
| Federal Minister of Justice | |
| In office 27 October 1998 – 22 October 2002 | |
| Chancellor | Gerhard Schröder |
| Preceded by | Edzard Schmidt-Jortzig |
| Succeeded by | Brigitte Zypries |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1943-08-12)12 August 1943 (age 82) |
| Nationality | German |
| Political party | Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) |
| Alma mater | University of Tübingen |
| Website | daeubler-gmelin.de |
Herta Däubler-Gmelin (German:[ˈhɛʁtaˈdɔʏblɐˈɡmeːliːn]; born 12 August 1943) is a German lawyer, academic and politician of theSocial Democratic Party. She served asFederal Minister of Justice from 1998 to 2002, and as a Member of theBundestag from 1972 to 2009. She currently teaches as an honorary professor of political science at theFree University of Berlin, particularly oninternational relations andhuman rights, and was the Hemmerle Professor atRWTH Aachen University in 2011. She is married to the legal scholarWolfgang Däubler.
She was born inBratislava, in the war-timeSlovak Republic, as the daughter of Hans Gmelin (d. 1991), who wasmayor ofTübingen from 1954 to 1974. She studied history, economy, law and political science in Tübingen andBerlin. Since 1974, she has been admitted as a lawyer, first inStuttgart, then in Berlin. Since 1992, she has lectured law at theFreie Universität Berlin, which made her an honorary professor in 1995.
Däubler-Gmelin joined the GermanSocial Democratic Party (SPD) in 1965 and became a member of theBundestag in 1972, subsequently representingTübingen from 1998 to 2002. She held several party offices in the 1980s and 1990s, serving as deputy party chairman from 1988-1997. From 1994–98, she was chairwoman of theworking group on legal affairs and legal adviser to the SPD parliamentary group.
In 1993, the SPD nominated Däubler-Gmelin to fill the vacancy of vice-president of theFederal Constitutional Court, but after conservative parliamentary groups blocked the nomination for nine months as being "too political" she abandoned this career step in favor ofJutta Limbach. Ahead of the1994 elections, SPD chairmanRudolf Scharping included her in hisshadow cabinet for the party’s campaign to unseat incumbentHelmut Kohl as Chancellor.[1] During the campaign, Däubler-Gmelin served as shadow minister of justice.
From 1998 to 2002, Däubler-Gmelin served as Justice Minister inGerhard Schröder's first cabinet, where she oversaw a number of controversial reform projects such as the reform of German citizenship legislation, the introduction ofsame-sex civil unions, and the overhaul of theGerman Civil Code, the most invasive since its inception in 1900.[citation needed]
In 1999, both Däubler-Gmelin and Foreign MinisterJoschka Fischer appealed for clemency for theLaGrand brothers, two German citizens sentenced to death inArizona. According to the German government, the LaGrands had been denied their rights as German citizens because prosecutors did not inform the German consulate of the brothers' arrest in 1982 until a decade later. However, both were put to death in a cloud ofcyanide gas.[2]
Amid theEnron scandal in 2002, Däubler-Gmelin launched a voluntary 12-pagecorporate governance code that calls on companyaudit committees to be aware of other business links between the company and its auditors, including consulting work.[3]
On 18 September 2002, four days beforeSchröder's re-election, she attended a meeting at a restaurant inDerendingen (near Tübingen) with about 30 trade unionists from two local factories (the topic was "Globalization and Labor").[4] Däubler-Gmelin, who has long been known for her outspokenness,[5] later said she had been unaware that a reporter from local newspaperSchwäbisches Tagblatt was present, insisting that she regarded the event as an internal meeting.[4] After discussion had turned to theIraq crisis, she remarked that U.S. president Bush was preparing a war to detract from domestic problems such as the economic crisis at the time, and that this was a popular political strategy which had already been used byAdolf Hitler.[4] When some participants showed disagreement, she added immediately that this was not meant to liken Bush to Hitler as a person, but rather to compare their methods, and that British prime ministerMargaret Thatcher had also used the 1982Falklands War to improve election prospects.[4] She also described the U.S.legal system as "lousy".[4]
This was the version published bySchwäbisches Tagblatt (a paper widely regarded as liberal to leftist and respected for its journalistic quality), which later stated that Däubler-Gmelin herself had confirmed the wording of the report,[5][6] as well as several present at the meeting.[5][6] Another account of the meeting states that the Hitler comparison originated from a participant and that Däubler-Gmelin had merely agreed that Hitler had used such tactics, too.[7]
Immediately after the article had been published, Däubler-Gmelin strongly denied it, claiming to have been misquoted.[8] She also announced that she would sue the Schwäbische Tagblatt, but later chose not to do so. She encountered criticism for allegedly expressinganti-americanism in both Germany and abroad, including members of the U.S. government such asAri Fleischer andCondoleezza Rice.[9] On September 20, Däubler-Gmelin called U.S. AmbassadorDan Coats to state that the reports had no basis and Schröder wrote an apology letter to Bush, stating "there is no place at my cabinet table for anyone who makes a connection between theAmerican president and such a criminal."[9] He did not force her to resign immediately, claiming to trust her denial of the quotation, but she was dropped from his new cabinet when it was formed a few weeks after his narrow re-election.[citation needed]
From 2002 to 2005 Däubler-Gmelin served as chairwoman of the Bundestag's Committee on Consumer Protection and Agriculture, and from 2005 she chaired the Committee for Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid.[citation needed]
Since 2004, Däubler-Gmelin has been practicing asOf counsel with the Berlin office of law firm Schwegler.[10][11]
In 2009, Germany’s national railway companyDeutsche Bahn commissioned Däubler-Gmelin and former Interior MinisterGerhart Baum with investigating allegations according to which the company had, in violation of privacy laws and corporate guidelines repeatedly and on a large scale compared personal data of its employees with those of suppliers, in a bid to uncover possible corruption.[12]
Between 2012 and 2013, Däubler-Gmelin served as member of theEuropean Commission’s High Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism, an advisory panel set up byEuropean CommissionerNeelie Kroes and chaired byVaira Vīķe-Freiberga.[13]
She has voiced her support for theCampaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which campaigns for democratic reform in the United Nations, and the creation of a more accountable international political system.[14]
From 2012 to 2014, Däubler-Gmelin represented political group “Mehr Demokratie e.V.” (More Democracy) in its unsuccessful constitutional complaint before theFederal Constitutional Court against Germany’s participation in theEuropean Stability Mechanism (ESM) and theEuropean Fiscal Compact.[15]
In 2019, Däubler-Gmelin was appointed to a task force investigating allegations of fraud and embezzlement at Workers' Welfare Association (AWO), a charity and one of Germany’s largest employers.[16]
Däubler-Gmelin is a member of several charitable andnon-profit organizations, including the following:
Däubler-Gmelin is married toWolfgang Däubler, one of the most prominent experts on Germanlabor law. They were married in 1969 and have two children.
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