Rudolf Werner Schuster (20 January 1939 – 9 May 2001) was aTanganyika-bornGermanphysician, specialist inhealth informatics, andSPDpolitician.
Raised in a colonialEast African household, Schuster studied medicine at theUniversity of Tübingen in the 1960s and during his professional career worked mostly in health informatics and medicalcomputer science. He was a city councillor atIdstein for seventeen years before serving as a member of theBundestag from 1990 until his death. On the national stage he concerned himself with health andAfrica and the fight againstAIDS.
Schuster was born in 1939 atMoshi in theKilimanjaro Region of theTanganyika Territory, now part ofTanzania, into a family of Germansettlers. He spent much of his childhood there before migrating to Germany with his parents, and all his life was able to speakSwahili.[1]
In 1958 he gained hisAbitur at theGymnasium inRosenheim,Upper Bavaria, and from 1959 to 1960 did hiscompulsory military service in the Mountain Infantry of theBundeswehr. He then proceeded toTübingen to studymedicine. In 1966 he took theStaatsexamen, and the same year received his doctorate from the Physiological Institute in Tübingen.[2]
In 1970 Schuster gained hisApprobation, or license to practice, at St Joseph's Hospital inBremerhaven on the coast of theNorth Sea. From 1970 to 1983 he was head of the health department in the Hesse Centre for Data Processing atWiesbaden. In 1971 he joined the Medical Emergency Service agency in Wiesbaden. In 1983 he received themedicalcomputer science certificate of theGesellschaft für medizinische Informatik und Statistik (Society for Medical Informatics and Statistics). From 1984, he worked in the municipal data processing centre atGiessen.[2]
In 1964, Schuster had joined the SPD. From 1972 to 1989 he was a city councillor atIdstein in theTaunus mountains and from 1975 to 1985 was leader of his political group. From 1985 to 1995 he was chairman of the SPD'sRheingau-Taunus-Kreis branch.[2]
In 1985 he founded theBürgerpartnerschaft Dritte Welt Idstein e.V.[3] (Third World Civic Partnership Association Idstein) andlater established a civic partnership between Idstein and his nativeMoshi.[4][5] This association, later renamedBürgerpartnerschaft Eine Welt e.V., Idstein / People Help People - One World, had the aim of achieving concretedevelopment projects in Tanzania, focussing on the area of Moshi, at the foot ofMount Kilimanjaro.[4] In Moshi itself, Schuster initiated the founding of anon-governmental organization called "Friends in Development Association". This sought to link its efforts into those of regional and national German NGOs.[4]
In 1989 Schuster was elected to his localKreistag, and at thefederal election of 1990 he was sent to theBundestag, representingRheingau-Taunus/Limburg-Weilburg. As a member of parliament Schuster was chiefly concerned with development and withhealth policy and took a particular interest inAfrica and the fight againstAIDS. He called for ten per cent of the gross national product of rich countries to be spent on combatting poverty in theThird World.[1][2]
In a debate in theBundestag on 21 June 1991 on the situation in theSudan, Schuster said that the bombing ofUnited Nations andRed Cross supply depots by government forces in the south of the country was "completely perverse", and his position was supported on all sides of the chamber.[6] After a trip toRwanda in 1993, Schuster unsuccessfully called upon the German federal government led byHelmut Kohl to offer financial support for an enlarged United Nationspeace-keeping force there. The next year, some eight hundred thousand people died in theRwandan genocide.[1] In matters of development policy Schuster was respected across party boundaries. He was closely associated withHeidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, who in 1998 becamefederal minister for economic cooperation and development underGerhard Schröder, the new SPD Chancellor.[7]
In December 1995, following theNATO bombing campaign in Bosnia, Schuster was one of only fifty-five SPD members of parliament who voted against sending four thousand German soldiers to join theIFOR international peacekeeping force inBosnia, with theBundestag approving the deployment by 543 votes to 107, with six abstentions and sixteen members absent.[8]
He was married with three children.[2] He died in Idstein on 9 May 2001, suffering fromcancer of theliver.[1]
In May 2003, on the initiative of theBonn City Council, and in the presence of Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul and members of the Schuster family, a building at 201, Kaiserstrasse, was renamed theDr. Werner Schuster Haus. It contains the offices of several NGOs with development objectives.[7] Reinhard Hermle, chairman ofVENRO (the Association of German Development NGOs) stated
On the eve of the second anniversary of the death of Werner Schuster, an outstanding figure in German development policy, we wish to honour him by the inauguration of the Dr Werner Schuster House. Anyone who had anything to do with him can tell of his constant and powerful commitment to greater justice in the world. His openness and his clarity were highly esteemed, and sometimes feared. His constituency did not end in the Taunus and the Rheingau. He wanted to bring the concerns and the needs of the poor, above all in Africa, into German politics. In that, he was a role model.[7]
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