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Alfons Goppel | |
|---|---|
 Alfons Goppel in 1963 | |
| Minister-President of Bavaria | |
| In office 11 December 1962 – 6 November 1978 | |
| President | Heinrich Lübke Gustav Heinemann Walter Scheel |
| Chancellor | Konrad Adenauer Ludwig Erhard Kurt Georg Kiesinger Willy Brandt Helmut Schmidt |
| Preceded by | Hans Ehard |
| Succeeded by | Franz Josef Strauss |
| Minister of the Interior of Bavaria | |
| In office 9 December 1958 – 11 December 1962 | |
| Preceded by | Otto Bezold |
| Succeeded by | Heinrich Junker |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1905-10-01)1 October 1905 Reinhausen,Kingdom of Bavaria,German Empire |
| Died | 24 December 1991(1991-12-24) (aged 86) Johannesberg,Lower Franconia,Bavaria,Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Political party | NSDAP CSU |
| Spouse | Gertrud Wittenbrink |
| Children | 6 |
| Occupation | Lawyer |
Alfons Goppel (1 October 1905 – 24 December 1991) was a German politician of theCSU party and Prime Minister of Bavaria (1962–1978).
Alfons Goppel was born in Reinhausen (nowRegensburg), one of the nine children of thebaker Ludwig Goppel and his wife Barbara.
He married Gertrud Wittenbrink in 1935 and they had six sons.
Goppel studied law inMunich from 1925 to 1929 and, after graduating, moved back to Regensburg, where he became a lawyer. He joined the stateprosecutors office in 1934 and was posted toMainburg,Kaiserslautern and finallyAschaffenburg. He joined the conservativeBavarian People's Party in 1930 and was a member until the party's self-dissolution in November 1933. He joined theSA (1933) and theNSDAP (1937) in the following years.
He took part in the campaigns in France and Russia in the GermanWehrmacht during theSecond World War and later became an instructor at theInfanterieschule Döberitz, near Berlin, a training camp of the German army.
Returning from the war, he became an official at the city of Aschaffenburg, responsible for housing and refugees. He was elected to the BavarianLandtag in October 1947 but barred from taking up his seat due to his political past. He, unsuccessfully, campaigned for theLandtag in 1950 again, became second mayor of Aschaffenburg in 1952 and finally, in 1954, was elected to theLandtag and permitted to take up his seat. He remained in the Bavarian parliament until 1978, when he gave it up to become a member of the European Parliament.
He unsuccessfully ran for mayor ofWürzburg in 1956 and became an under secretary in the BavarianMinistry of Justice the year after. He was Bavarian Minister of the Interior (1958–1962) andprime minister ofBavaria from 11 December 1962 to 7 November 1978, serving asPresident of theBundesrat in 1972/73. In 1974 he gained the highest election victory for the CSU in Bavarian history with 62.1% of the votes.
From 1979 to 1984 he was a member of theEuropean Parliament, as such being part of the first freely elected group of MPs in 1979.[1] He died, aged 86, inJohannesberg, nearAschaffenburg.
One of his sons,Thomas Goppel, later served amongst others as Minister of Science, Research and the Arts (2003–2008).
TheAlfons-Goppel-Stiftung (Alfons Goppel Foundation), formed in 1980 and named after him, supports needy children inthird-world countries.
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Prime Minister of Bavaria 1962 – 1978 | Succeeded by |
Minister-presidents of the Free State ofBavaria | ||
|---|---|---|
| Revolutionary period (1918–19) |  | |
| Weimar period (1919–33) | ||
| Nazi period (1933–45) | ||
| Modern Bavaria (since 1945) | ||
* Acting | ||
