Ernst Wirmer

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Ernst Wirmer in 1953 as an employee of the Blank office

Ernst Wirmer (born January 7, 1910 in Warburg / Westphalia , † August 19, 1981 in Bonn ) was a German lawyer, politician and ministerial official. He was a member of the Parliamentary Council of 1948/49 for the CDU. He later became head of department in the Federal Ministry of Defense and, when establishing the Bundeswehr, ensured a clear organizational separation between the troops and their civil administration as an essential element of a democratic military constitution.

Life

Youth, military service and early professional years

Wirmer was born into Catholic parents in 1910. He attended the Marianum high school in Warburg , where his father was director for many years. As a student he became an active member of the Catholic student associations Semnonia Berlin and Flamberg in Freiburg in the KV . After completing his studies, he passed the state examination in law in 1936, but was not admitted as an assessor in the judicial service, since he was considered politically unreliable by those in power , but worked first in the law firm of his nine-year-old brother Josef Wirmer and then for the Reich Resettlement Society.

From 1939 to 1940 he did military service, then worked as a civilian for the Reich Society for Land Procurement and in 1942 was called up again as a lieutenant in the reserve for the driving force. After his brother Josef , who had been designated as Reich Justice Minister by the resistance fighters of July 20, was sentenced to death by the People's Court under Roland Freisler on September 8, 1944, Ernst Wirmer was also arrested and from November 1944 in the Wehrmacht detention center, which had been relocated to Lake Constance Küstrin imprisoned, in which Lieutenant General Hans Speidel was interned at the same time.

Career in politics and ministerial bureaucracy

In December 1945, Wirmer was appointed to the state ministry of the state of Oldenburg, first as a municipal deputy and later as head of the internal administration department. After the rise of Oldenburg in the state of Lower Saxony , he worked in the same position in the administrative board of Oldenburg. The Lower Saxony state parliament elected Wirmer as the third youngest member of the Parliamentary Council in 1948 , where he unsuccessfully campaigned for the flag designed by his brother Josef for the assassins of July 20, 1944, as the federal flag. Shortly afterwards, Konrad Adenauer brought him to the future Chancellery Palais Schaumburg as his personal advisor .

Office blank

At the beginning of the 1950s, Wirmer moved from the Chancellery to the newly created Office Blank in the Ermekeil barracks in Bonn as the Federal Chancellor's representative for questions related to the increase in the number of Allied troops . Hans Speidel commented on this change: "That Wirmer has now joined Blank will not do the job any good, because he is a sharp opponent of our stripes." In the Blank office, Wirmer ensured a strict separation of the military from the administrative . As ministerial director from December 1951, Wirmer headed the central department, responsible for non-military organization, troop administration, budget and personnel as well as the military planning group and the group for technical security issues. Even after handing over the military planning to General Adolf Heusinger in July 1952, Wirmer continued to steer through responsibility for administrative and budgetary matters. This activity fell into the phase of the reorientation of the armed forces towards the critical citizen by Wolf Graf von Baudissin , which was internally denounced as effeminating .

Federal Ministry of Defense

After the conversion of the Blank office into the Federal Ministry of Defense , Wirmer distinguished himself by successfully advancing two reforms, each of which represented a deep break with the traditions of the German military and thus paved the way for the creation of the Bundeswehr as a modern and democratic army. One project was to create a civil military administration, the other to allow soldiers to freedom of association. Both projects flanked the model of the parliamentary army of citizens in uniform and created the administrative law basis for the permanent involvement of the Bundeswehr in civil society.

Civil Defense Administration

On the Hardthöhe , Wirmer advocated the idea of ​​an administrative officer without a uniform from the start, while the former general manager Gerhard Loosch favored the traditional management system with military officials . Wirmer prevailed, and non-military experts were even used for higher posts. In addition to reasons of mismanagement, corruption and actions outside the front as well as technical and professional reasons, there were also federalist reasons for the civilian development of the Bundeswehr administration. The federal states wanted to prevent the federal government from getting hold of an administrative organization that for the first time extended to the local authority. The then Ministerialrat and later CDU chairman Rainer Barzel pointed out on October 28, 1955 the decision of the Federal Council of June 19 that “soldiers are only used in the troops ... and the administration is entrusted to civil authorities:“ I have the duty to point out that in the opinion of the government of North Rhine-Westphalia this is a fundamental principle and that it could therefore be considered to anchor this principle in the Basic Law itself "."

In Article 87b of the Basic Law , Wirmer's civilian orientation for the administration of the Bundeswehr was given the legal basis. The formulation "You (the Bundeswehr administration) serves the tasks of human resources and the direct coverage of the material needs of the armed forces" was accepted by the Bundestag on March 6, 1956 with 390 votes to 20, the Bundesrat unanimously approved on March 16.

In 1976, the retiree Wirmer rated the argument of “keeping the troops free from excessive administrative work” as merely pseudo-rational. In reality he was guided by the following thought: "On the one hand, the independence of the Bundeswehr administration - on the other, an aspect of modern management: the competitive situation."

Wirmer protested against the accusation that in 1955 the care taken in applying the means of separation of powers had been exaggerated. Article 87 b established the “independence and the right to have a say in the civil part of the defense department”: “Anyone who remembers the discussion in the Federal Council in particular knows very well that behind all the arguments, even if my definition was not used , the concern of the separation of powers stood. This system is also called the system of checks and balances , about the existence of which General Heinz Trettner had to be informed in the Defense Committee. "Democracy has the" constant duty of mistrust of its own servants in its power apparatus. "Wirmer spoke of the division of labor, which has proven very successful, so that one should consider the consequences if one wants to abolish the power-dividing function. Civil control does not only mean political direction, guidance and control . If that had only been the point, there would have been the possibility of speaking of political control : “But it is called civil control , and that means that this direction and control also means: control out of the civil spirit. That just has to be recognized by the military that we want to shape our modern democracies out of a civil spirit. "

At the beginning of the 1960s, Wirmer was unable to assert himself as head of Main Department III Administrative Affairs regarding the filling of the position of head of the personnel department. Against the resistance of Federal Chancellor Ludwig Erhard and the previous Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss , the new Defense Minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel, on the advice of Head of Department I, Military Affairs Trettner, pushed through a military instead of an official to head the personnel department. After his resignation, Trettner complained to the Defense Committee that "the newly introduced separation of the administration from the command line ... supposedly to make things easier, but in reality to control the soldiers". Defense Minister von Hassel assessed in a letter to Federal Chancellor Erhard that the military side feels it is downright trauma that the administration is outside the military command line: “I may for the moment refrain from commenting on this, as this regulation is laid down in Article 87b of the Basic Law. However, I have the impression that the military and civilian defense cooperation is excellent in the force. There is essentially only rivalry at the ministerial level. "

Freedom of association for soldiers

When the soldiers' group of the Public Services, Transport and Traffic Union (ÖTV) was founded, Wirmer, who was in contact with the ÖTV board, gave the troops the decree from 1966 without the knowledge of his competitor Trettner . In his farewell speech in January 1975, Wirmer came back to the ÖTV decree: “The legal necessity is undeniable. Article 9 paragraph 3 of the Basic Law gives freedom of association for associations that take on professional interests. Both the Bundeswehrverband and the ÖTV are associations within the meaning of this article of the Basic Law. In this respect, they are legally indistinguishable from one another. That means that one cannot, as has happened so far, allow the Bundeswehrverband alone and push back the union. "

Honors

literature

Web links

Commons : Ernst Wirmer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Wirmer, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German civil servant, ministerial director in the Federal Ministry of Defense
DATE OF BIRTH January 7, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Warburg , Westphalia
DATE OF DEATH 19th August 1981
Place of death Bonn