Manfred Rommel

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Manfred Rommel (2004)

Manfred Rommel , CBE (born December 24, 1928 in Stuttgart ; † November 7, 2013 there ) was a German politician ( CDU ). From 1974 to 1996 he was Lord Mayor of Stuttgart . His father Erwin Rommel was Field Marshal General in World War II .

Live and act

Childhood, youth and education

Manfred Rommel was born in Stuttgart in 1928 as the son of the professional soldier and later General Field Marshal of the Wehrmacht Erwin Rommel and his wife Lucie. At the age of 14, like many boys his age, he was deployed as an air force helper. He was present in his parents' house when his father, who was accused of participating in the July 20, 1944 conspiracy , was taken away and forced to commit suicide, which the Nazi leadership publicly portrayed as death as a result of a war injury. In February 1945 he was dismissed from the air force helper and in March called up for the Reich Labor Service . At the end of April he deserted in Riedlingen just before the French First Army marched in . As a prisoner of war , he revealed the truth about his father's death and was interrogated by General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny , among others .

He graduated from high school in Biberach an der Riß in 1947 and then studied law and political science in Tübingen . In 1956 he got his first job in the state administration, where he became a member of the government in 1959 and then personal advisor to the then Interior Minister Hans Filbinger . In 1971 he moved to the Ministry of Finance as Ministerial Director and later became State Secretary .

Lord Mayor of Stuttgart

On December 1, 1974, Rommel was elected Lord Mayor of Stuttgart to succeed the late Arnulf Klett . He received 58.9% of the vote in the second ballot and thus defeated the SPD competitor Peter Conradi . In 1978 he tried to become Prime Minister in the course of the Filbinger affair , but was defeated by Lothar Späth .

His decision to have the terrorists Gudrun Ensslin , Andreas Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe , who had committed suicide in the Stammheim JVA in 1977 , buried together at the Dornhaldenfriedhof in Stuttgart led to controversy. He disregarded resistance even within the CDU on the grounds that: “Every enmity must end somewhere; and for me it ends in death in this case ”.

He secured his re-election to Stuttgart mayor on November 7, 1982 with 69.8% and on November 4, 1990 with 71.7% in the first round of voting. In 1996 his former personal advisor Wolfgang Schuster (CDU) was elected as his successor in the second ballot. From April 1975 until the end of his term in office in 1996 he was a member of the Presidium of the German Association of Cities and Chairman of the Association of Cities in Baden-Württemberg from 1983 to 1989. He was President of the Association of German Cities from May 1977 to May 1979 and from November 1980 to May 1983 and from May 1989 to June 1991 and as president of the first all-German city council until May 1993, he was vice-president from May 1979 to November 1980, from June 1983 to May 1985, from June 1987 to June 1989 and from May 1993 to May 1995. In addition, from June 1979 to 1996 he was President of the Association of Municipal Enterprises . He was president of the "Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gesellschaft" from 1984 to 1990.

Manfred Rommel's policies are described as tolerant and liberal. This attitude was also the basis of his policy on foreigners. In 1978 Rommel first laid down guidelines for future policy on foreigners. “In the interest of maintaining the economic and vital strength of the city of Stuttgart and for socio-political reasons, foreign residents are to be regarded as permanent members of the Stuttgart population. It is in line with the municipal self-image and the city’s legal mandate to involve foreigners and their family members in the same way as Germans in their concern for the economic, social and cultural well-being of their residents. The state capital sees its foreign residents as a fully integrated part of its resident population. ”Stuttgart's integration policy in the years and decades that followed followed this progressive guideline.

“ You can't do politics against Adam Riese , that is, against the logic of arithmetic, without having to reckon with considerable failures,” was his maxim. At the beginning of his term of office, from 1975 to 1978, the local council passed several resolutions to curb expenditure. In 1993, Rommel initiated a radical budget consolidation and thus created the basis for Stuttgart to steadily reduce debts ever since.

During his term of office numerous public buildings, the reduction of through traffic, the renewal of the infrastructure and the redesign of the local public transport fell. This concerns u. a. the foundation of the Stuttgart transport and tariff association in 1978 with the commissioning of the first S-Bahn lines and the decision of the local council to replace the old tram with a light rail network .

Rommel is considered to be one of the inventors of Stuttgart 21 , together with the former railway boss Heinz Dürr . In 2010 he wrote an open letter to everyone in Stuttgart to encourage approval of the rail project.

Manfred Rommel put another focus on the relationship between the city of Stuttgart and the surrounding communities. Stuttgart, which, in contrast to all other major cities in Baden-Württemberg, did not receive any growth through incorporation during the administrative reform in the mid-1970s, relied on regional cooperation. This ultimately led to the foundation of the Stuttgart Region Association with the regional parliament elected for the first time in 1994, to which Manfred Rommel belonged during the first legislative period until 1999.

retirement

The CDU politician had been an honorary citizen of Stuttgart since his departure as Lord Mayor in 1996 . From 1970 to 2009 Manfred Rommel was an uninterrupted member of the state board of the CDU Baden-Württemberg. From 1995 to 1999 Manfred Rommel was the coordinator for German-French cooperation on behalf of the German government.

Rommel made a name for himself as the author of numerous books. Even in retirement he was still a sought-after speaker and author. Every fortnight he wrote a column for the Stuttgarter Zeitung . He was also known for his mostly humorous aphorisms and poems, which were first published in 1988.

Manfred Rommel was a founding member and long-time chairman of the board of trustees of the German-Turkish Forum Stuttgart , and since 2008 he has been honorary chairman of the association. In recognition of his services to a liberal policy on foreigners, the citizen's prize awarded by the association, the Manfred Rommel Prize , bears his name.

Private

Manfred Rommel had been married to Liselotte Rommel since 1954; the couple has an adopted daughter. Rommel had a half-sister (1913-2000) from a premarital relationship of his father. In 1996 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease . Rommel died on November 7, 2013 at the age of 84. He was buried in a grave of honor in the Ostfilder cemetery in Stuttgart-Sillenbuch .

Cinematic representation

In the following films about his father and the Second World War, Manfred Rommel was portrayed by the following actors:

Awards

Honorary doctorates

On October 22nd, 2014, the Stuttgart State Airport was officially renamed " Manfred Rommel Airport ". The IATA code will still be STR . In addition, a square in Stuttgart is to be named after him.

Manfred Rommel wrote a poem about his honors: “The number of titles does not want to end. On the tombstone it says: please turn! "

Fonts

  • Farewell to the land of milk and honey. Thoughts on politics and culture . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart / Munich 1987, ISBN 3-421-06081-9 .
  • Manfred Rommel's collected sayings . Found and edited by Ulrich Frank-Planitz . Engelhorn Verlag, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-87203-050-7
  • We confused Germans . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-548-34614-6 .
  • Manfred Rommel's collected poems . Engelhorn-Verlag, Stuttgart 1993
  • The limits of what is possible. Views and Insights . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-421-05001-5 .
  • Cheerful in spite of everything. Memories . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-421-05151-8 .
  • New sayings and poems . Collected and edited by Ulrich Frank-Planitz, Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 978-3-89850-002-9
  • Manfred Rommel's collected sayings , dva, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 978-3-421-05573-6 .
  • The wrong path to reality . Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-89850-026-8 .
  • Debit and credit . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-421-05579-3 .
  • The country and the world . Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-89850-099-3 .
  • Completely new sayings & poems and other ideas . Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-89850-123-X
  • From the land of plenty to the Jammertal? Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-89850-137-X .
  • Poems and parodies . Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-89850-151-5 .
  • Manfred Rommel's Swabian variety. A colorful collection of smart sayings, funny poems and mostly amusing stories . Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-89850-170-5 .
  • Looking for the future. Sign of the times under the motto: Without no, no yes . Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-89850-173-6 .
  • 1944 - the year of the decision. Erwin Rommel in France , Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-89850-196-5 .
  • The most amusing texts . Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-89850-203-0 .

literature

  • Sibylle Krause-Burger: About Manfred Rommel . Verlag Bonn Aktuell, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-87959-172-5
  • Widmar Puhl: Manfred Rommel. The Lord Mayor . Orell Füssli, Zurich, 1990, ISBN 3-280-01997-4 .
  • Horst Rudel, Thomas Borgmann: Manfred Rommel. Images of an Era . DRW, Leinfelden-Echterdingen 2000, ISBN 3-87181-456-3 .
  • Josef Schunder: Manfred Rommel. The biography . Theiss, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-8062-2588-4 .
  • Manfred Rommel , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 36/2013 from September 3, 2013, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Manfred Rommel  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ On the death of Manfred Rommel: The cosmopolitan-liberal Swabian . FAZ ; Retrieved November 7, 2013
  2. ↑ Death of the Desert Fox: Rommel's son's account of his father's last moments after Hitler ordered him to take a cyanide pill or be arrested . Daily Mail , December 30, 2012 (English)
  3. ↑ Manfred Rommel: In spite of everything, cheerful . Stuttgart 1998, 3rd edition, pp. 77-85
  4. ↑ Days of anger, days of mourning . In: Die Zeit , No. 43/1987
  5. ↑ Manfred Rommel: Friendly, honest, democratic DER TAGESSPIEGEL, from December 23, 2008
  6. ↑ Manfred Rommel is dead - Modest humanist with a backbone Article from November 7, 2013
  7. ↑ Memorial service for Manfred Rommel: Stuttgart thanks a courageous mayor , Schwarzwälder Bote, November 14, 2013
  8. ↑ Not only black and black Stuttgarter-Zeitung.de, June 1, 2012, accessed on November 9, 2013.
  9. ↑ The grandchildren of the desert fox Erwin Rommel live in Kempten , all-in.de, March 23, 2012
  10. ↑ Gertrud Pan , findagrave.com
  11. ↑ Parkinson's Telegram, March, 2003
  12. ^ STZ: Ex-Mayor of Stuttgart Manfred Rommel is dead , accessed on November 7, 2013
  13. ↑ focus.de: Memorial service for Manfred Rommel Article from November 14, 2013
  14. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Manfred Rommel
  15. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 25, No. 103, June 5, 1973.
  16. ↑ Manfred-Rommel-Flughafen - notice board in Stuttgart reveals Stuttgarter Zeitung online; accessed on October 22, 2014
  17. ↑ What is actually doing ...: Manfred Rommel . ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. stern.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stern.de
personal data
SURNAME Rommel, Manfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (CDU), Lord Mayor of Stuttgart (1974–1996)
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 2013
Place of death Stuttgart