Klaus Kinkel | |
|---|---|
 Kinkel in 1982 | |
| Vice Chancellor of Germany | |
| In office 21 January 1993 – 26 October 1998 | |
| Chancellor | Helmut Kohl |
| Preceded by | Jürgen Möllemann |
| Succeeded by | Joschka Fischer |
| Leader of the Free Democratic Party | |
| In office 11 June 1993 – 10 June 1995 | |
| Preceded by | Otto Graf Lambsdorff |
| Succeeded by | Wolfgang Gerhardt |
| Minister of Foreign Affairs | |
| In office 18 May 1992 – 26 October 1998 | |
| Chancellor | Helmut Kohl |
| Preceded by | Hans-Dietrich Genscher |
| Succeeded by | Joschka Fischer |
| Minister of Justice | |
| In office 18 January 1991 – 18 May 1992 | |
| Chancellor | Helmut Kohl |
| Preceded by | Hans A. Engelhard |
| Succeeded by | Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger |
| President of the Federal Intelligence Service | |
| In office 1 January 1979 – 26 December 1982 | |
| Chancellor | Helmut Schmidt Helmut Kohl |
| Preceded by | Gerhard Wessel |
| Succeeded by | Eberhard Blum |
| Member of theBundestag forNorth Rhine-Westphalia | |
| In office 10 November 1994 – 17 October 2002 | |
| Preceded by | multi-member district |
| Succeeded by | multi-member district |
| Constituency | FDP List |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1936-12-17)17 December 1936 |
| Died | 4 March 2019(2019-03-04) (aged 82) Sankt Augustin, Germany |
| Political party | Free Democratic Party(1991–2019) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4 |
| Residence | Sankt Augustin |
| Alma mater | University of Tübingen (no degree) University of Bonn University of Cologne (Dr. iur.) |
| Occupation |
|
Klaus Kinkel (17 December 1936 – 4 March 2019)[1] was a Germanstatesman,civil servant,diplomat and lawyer who served as theminister of Foreign affairs (1992–1998) and thevice chancellor of Germany (1993–1998) in the government ofHelmut Kohl.
Kinkel was a career civil servant and a longtime aide toHans-Dietrich Genscher, and served as his personal secretary in theFederal Ministry of the Interior from 1970 and in senior roles in theForeign Office from 1974. He was President ofFederal Intelligence Service from 1979 to 1982 and a state secretary in theFederal Ministry of Justice from 1982 to 1991. In 1991 he was appointed as theFederal Minister of Justice and joined the liberalFree Democratic Party (FDP) shortly after. In 1992 he becameForeign Minister, and in 1993 he also became theVice Chancellor of Germany and the leader of the Free Democratic Party. He left the government in 1998 following itselectoral defeat. Kinkel was a member of theBundestag from 1994 to 2002, and was later active as a lawyer and philanthropist.
During his brief tenure as Minister of Justice he pressed for the extradition and criminal prosecution of deposed East German dictatorErich Honecker and sought to end the left-wingterrorism of theRed Army Faction. As Foreign Minister he is regarded as one of the most influential European politicians of the 1990s. He personified an "assertive foreign policy", increased Germany'speacekeeping engagements overseas, was at the forefront among Western leaders of building a relationship withBoris Yeltsin's newly democraticRussian Federation and pressed for Germany to be given a permanent seat on theUN Security Council. He also championed theMaastricht Treaty, the merging of theWestern European Union with the EU to give the EU an independent military capability and the expansion of the EU.[2] Kinkel played a central role in the efforts to resolve theYugoslav Wars of the 1990s, and proposed the creation of theInternational Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.[3]
Kinkel was born inMetzingen, Baden-Württemberg, into a Catholic family, and grew up mostly inHechingen, where his father Ludwig Leonhard Kinkel practised as a medical doctor andinternist. His father was President of the localtennis club, and Klaus Kinkel was an able tennis player in his youth. He took hisAbitur at the Staatliches Gymnasium Hechingen in 1956 and first studied medicine, then law at the universities ofTübingen andBonn.[4] He joined A.V. Guestfalia Tübingen, a Catholic student fraternity that is a member of theCartellverband. Kinkel took his first juristic state exam at Tübingen, the second in Stuttgart and earned a doctorate of law in 1964 in Cologne.[4]
In 1965, Kinkel began work at theFederal Ministry of the Interior, concentrating on the security of the civilian population (ziviler Bevölkerungsschutz).[4] He was sent to theLandratsamt inBalingen,Baden-Württemberg until 1966. He returned to the national ministry in 1968.[4] He was personal secretary and speechwriter for the Federal Minister,Hans-Dietrich Genscher, from 1970 to 1974,[1] and eventually the head of the minister's office. After Genscher was appointed Foreign Minister in 1974, Kinkel held senior positions in theFederal Foreign Office, as head of theLeitungsstab and the policy planning staff (Planungsstab).[1]
From 1979 to 1982 he was president of theFederal Intelligence Service (BND).[1] He is credited with "quietly and competently" restoring confidence in the BND after a series of scandal in the preceding years. He also expanded the BND's intelligence-gathering outside of Europe.[2]
From 1982 to 1991, Kinkel was a state secretary (Staatssekretär) in theFederal Ministry of Justice.[5]
Kinkel was Federal Minister of Justice from 18 January 1991 to 18 May 1992.[1] Among other achievements, he took the lead in pressing for the return ofErich Honecker, the former East German leader, to face trial. He also engaged in public negotiations with the terroristRed Army Faction, successfully urging them to renounce violence.[6][7]
In a surprise decision on 29 April 1992, the members of the FDP parliamentary group rejected the nomination of Germany's designated new Foreign Minister,Irmgard Schwaetzer, and voted instead to name Kinkel to head theFederal Foreign Office.[7]
Kinkel played a key role in the creation of theInternational Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and helped to draft its statutes.[8][9] He also unsuccessfully introduced a resolution at a meeting of European Community foreign ministers that would have committed each of the member countries to accept more refugees from the Balkans.[10] Later that year, he announced Germany's wish for a permanent seat on theUnited Nations Security Council, arguing that Britain and France would never agree to an alternative plan under which they would merge their national seats into a single permanent seat representing theEuropean Union.[11] Kinkel was a signatory of theDayton Agreement that ended theBosnian War in 1995.
Under the leadership of ChancellorHelmut Kohl and Kinkel, the GermanBundestag in 1993 agreed on a three-point amendment to the 1949 Constitution that for the first time let German troops take part in internationalpeacekeeping operations sanctioned by theUnited Nations and other bodies, subject to advance approval by parliament.[12] Shortly after, the German Parliament approved a controversial troop deployment under the umbrella of theUnited Nations Operation in Somalia II, clearing the final hurdle for what was then Germany's biggest deployment of ground forces abroad sinceWorld War II.[13] Also under Kinkel’s leadership, Germany began destroying stockpiles of tanks and other heavy weapons in the early 1990s, becoming the first country to implement theTreaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.[14]
In 1995, China dismissed a personal appeal from Kinkel to release Chinese dissidentWei Jingsheng and expelled journalist Henrik Bork, a reporter for the newspaperFrankfurter Rundschau.[15] One year later, China abruptly canceled a planned visit to Beijing by Kinkel, citing a German parliamentary resolution that condemned China's human rights record inTibet.[16]
A strong supporter ofEuropean integration, Kinkel successfully advocated for Germany to ratify theMaastricht Treaty on European political and economic union in December 1992, making it the 10th of the 12 European Community nations to sign on.[17] In 1994, he had to abandon his candidate forPresident of the European Commission, Prime MinisterJean-Luc Dehaene of Belgium, following protest by British Prime MinisterJohn Major.[18] In 1997, he argued that Turkey did not qualify because of its record on "human rights, the Kurdish question, relations with Greece and of course very clear economic questions."[19] On Kinkel’s initiative, Germany became the first government to declare a suspension of contacts with Bosnia's envoys abroad after a recommendation made by the High Representative of the International Community in Bosnia-Herzegovina,Carlos Westendorp.[20]
From 21 January 1993, Kinkel was alsoVice Chancellor of Germany. From 1993 to 1995 he also served as chairman of the FDP.[1] After the Free Democrats won barely enough votes to get into the Bundestag in 1994[21] and later lost badly in 12 out of 14 state and European Parliament elections, Kinkel announced that he would not seek re-election as party chairman. He resigned as Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor after the government's defeat in the1998 federal election.[1]
Kinkel was a member of theBundestag, the Parliament of Germany, from 1994 to 2002.[22]
.jpg)
After leaving government in 1998, Kinkel worked as a lawyer and was engaged in a number of philanthropic and business activities, including the following:
At the request ofChancellorAngela Merkel, Kinkel represented the German government at the 2011 funeral ofSultan bin Abdulaziz, theCrown Prince of Saudi Arabia.[29]
In November 2016, Kinkel was elected as president of a newly created ethics commission of theGerman Football Association (DFB); the commission is part of the DFB's declared drive for more transparency and integrity following revelations of a financial scandal around the2006 FIFA World Cup it hosted.[30]
Media related toKlaus Kinkel at Wikimedia Commons| Civic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | President of the Federal Intelligence Service 1979–1982 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Federal Minister of Justice 1991–1992 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Foreign Minister of Germany 1992–1998 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Vice-Chancellor of Germany 1993–1998 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Chairman of theFree Democratic Party 1993–1995 | Succeeded by |
