Walther Leisler Kiep

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Walther Leisler Kiep (approx. 1976)

Walther Gottlieb Louis Leisler Kiep (born January 5, 1926 in Hamburg ; † May 9, 2016 in Kronberg im Taunus ) was a German insurance manager and politician ( CDU ). He was a member of the Bundestag from 1965 to 1976 and again from 1980 to 1982 ; in between Finance Minister of Lower Saxony . As a long-time federal treasurer of the CDU (1971-1992) he was involved in his party's donation affair. From 1984 to 2000 Kiep was chairman of the Atlantik-Brücke association , and from 2004 honorary chairman.

Family background and life

Walther Leisler Kiep was born as the son of Korvettenkapitän a. D. and board member of the Hamburg-Amerika-Linie Louis Leisler Kiep (1884–1962) and Eugenie Maria Anna Kiep geb. vom Rath (* 1889 in Frankfurt am Main). His family name is Kiep. The intermediate name Leisler, which male members of the family traditionally carry, is legally a first name. It commemorates the ancestor Jakob Leisler , who led an uprising in the then colony of New York in the 17th century and was executed in 1691. Kiep's maternal grandfather was the entrepreneur and national liberal politician Walther vom Rath , chairman of the Hoechst supervisory board . The diplomat and resistance fighter against National Socialism Otto Kiep was his uncle, the DDP and FDP politician Emilie Kiep-Altenloh his aunt. Kiep belonged to the Evangelical Church.

Kiep lived in Istanbul from 1935 to 1939. His father was entrusted with the reconstruction of the Turkish merchant fleet by the Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk . The boy learned Turkish during this time and was introduced to President Ataturk by his father. Kiep lost a brother in the submarine war .

Since 1949 he was with Charlotte Kiep, geb. ter Meer (* 1920), daughter of the former IG Farben board member Fritz ter Meer , married. The couple had five children. Their son Michael Jürgen Leisler Kiep died in 1975 at the age of 24. In his memory, his parents set up a foundation to support young journalists.

Walther Leisler Kiep died at the age of 90. His grave is in the cemetery on Frankfurter Strasse in Kronberg im Taunus .

education and profession

Kiep in 1973

Kiep passed his Abitur in Frankfurt am Main in 1943 . In the same year he suffered a serious accident in the Reich Labor Service , from which he only recovered after the end of the war, so that he did not have to do military service. In 1945 he began studying history and economics, which he gave up in favor of a commercial apprenticeship at Metall AG. He then worked at Ford and from 1949 at the Insurance Company of North America. In 1954 he switched to the Gradmann & Holler insurance company, where he became a personally liable partner and “wealthy insurance salesman” in 1968. The company merged with Marsh & McLennan Companies in 1990 , and Kiep was promoted to their supervisory board.

Kiep was also a member of the Volkswagen AG Supervisory Board for over 20 years . In 1984 he was largely responsible for founding the VW Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation , from which VW's Chinese joint venture developed. He was also a member of the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank, was chairman of the supervisory board of Industrieanlagen-Betriebs-GmbH (IABG) in Ottobrunn, and was a member of the International Advisory Board of Columbia University , New York. Die Welt writes that Kiep is "one of the richest German politicians" and estimates his fortune at "almost three-digit million sums".

Political career

Kiep (right) with Helmut Kohl and Alfred Nau (1975)

At the age of 18, Kiep became a member of the NSDAP in 1944 . In his autobiography, however, he referred to the FDP as his original political home. In 1961 he became a member of the CDU and on September 19, 1965 a member of the German Bundestag , of which he was a member until February 24, 1976 (5th to 7th electoral term). There he initially chaired the development policy committee, and in 1973 he was elected foreign policy spokesman for the CDU. In 1971 Kiep was elected federal treasurer of the CDU - an office that he held until 1992. For a long time, Kiep had clung to Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, who could no longer be held, which earned him the nickname “loyal Walther Kiep”. On the other hand, he is said to have "gained shape and reputation" because he was closer to Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik than his [Kieps] party wanted to consider allowed at the time. " In 1972, Kiep voted in the Bundestag for the Brandt government's Eastern Treaty.

On November 30, 1974, Kiep narrowly escaped an assassination attempt when pistol shots were fired at him on his private property in Kronberg im Taunus . Kiep was able to avoid the three shots fired at the door of his sauna and alerted the police, who immediately started a large manhunt. This and other investigations in the direction of the Red Army faction as well as in the private and political environment of Kiep remained inconclusive.

In 1976, Kiep moved to Lower Saxony in state politics, where he was Lower Saxony's finance minister from February 25, 1976 to October 28, 1980 under Prime Minister Ernst Albrecht . Until January 19, 1977 he was also responsible for the business of the Lower Saxony Minister of Economics . From June 21, 1978 to November 4, 1980, Kiep was a member of the Lower Saxony state parliament.

Kiep at the CDU federal party conference in 1983

In 1978 Helmut Schmidt appointed Kiep as special representative for Turkey with the task of supporting the country in terms of economic and security policy. After the federal election in 1980 , Kiep was again a member of the Bundestag until April 26, 1982. There he was elected deputy chairman of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group and its economic policy spokesman.

In the Hamburg state elections in June 1982 he ran as the top candidate. The CDU was indeed the strongest force with its best result to date in the Hanseatic city of 43.2%, but did not find a coalition partner because the FDP narrowly missed entry into the citizenship with 4.9%, so that Mayor Klaus von Dohnanyi (SPD ) remained in office. In the new elections on December 19, 1982 , the SPD won an absolute majority with 51.3%. Kiep and the CDU did not assume government responsibility.

Kiep was chairman of the Atlantik-Brücke association from 1984 to 2000 and has been honorary chairman of the organization since 2004. From 1994 to 2000 he was President of the European Business School (EBS) in Oestrich-Winkel , a private, state-recognized university. In 1999, the then SPD Chancellor appointed Gerhard Schröder Kiep "personal representative for international special missions". He was also a member of the advisory board of the Atlantic Initiative . He was co-founder and honorary chairman of Global Bridges e. V.

As a reserve officer with the rank of lieutenant captain , Walther Leisler Kiep was a member of the Bundeswehr .

Donation affairs

Walther Leisler Kiep (1989)

Kiep played a central role in several of the most important party donation scandals in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1972 he was elected federal treasurer of the CDU. Shortly afterwards, the economist Uwe Lüthje became the chief representative for the Federal CDU and the Frankfurt auditor Horst Weyrauch became financial advisor to the Christian Democrats. Donations from large companies were passed on to the CDU through the allegedly non-profit citizens' association . In contrast to direct donations to political parties , the companies were able to deduct the full amount from tax. As early as 1972, it was about illegal party donations of around 30 million DM.

On January 4, 1982 the press (including Stern and Neue Ruhr Zeitung ) reported on a CDU party donation affair in which treasurer Kiep allegedly instigated industrial entrepreneurs willing to donate to tax evasion . In May 1990 Kiep was finally indicted and convicted in Düsseldorf for aiding and abetting tax evasion in several cases. In 1992, however, the judgment against him was overturned by the Federal Court of Justice due to legal and procedural defects.

On November 4, 1999, Kiep was charged again. The Augsburg public prosecutor suspected him of having received one million marks from Karlheinz Schreiber in 1991 in connection with the delivery of German tanks to Saudi Arabia. The process led to the CDU donation affair around former Chancellor Helmut Kohl . Schreiber's money went to the CDU, but never appeared in the party's official statement of accounts . The investigation led to the discovery of the account system of CDU financial advisor Horst Weyrauch in connection with various covert party donations to the CDU in considerable amounts.

In 2001 the Augsburg Regional Court sentenced Kiep to a fine for a private tax offense. In 2004 he was convicted of false statements in the CDU donation affair.

Honors

literature

  • Barbara Simon : Member of Parliament in Lower Saxony 1946–1994. Biographical manual. Edited by the President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament. Lower Saxony State Parliament, Hanover 1996, pp. 195–196.
  • Walther Leisler Kiep: Good-bye America - what then? 1972.
  • Walther Leisler Kiep: A new challenge for Western Europe. 1974.
  • Walther Leisler Kiep: What remains is great confidence. Independent experience. A political diary. 1999.
  • Walther Leisler Kiep: Bridges of my life - The memories. Herbig-Verlag, Munich 2006.
  • Walther Leisler Kiep: Bridge Builder: An Insider's Account of Over 60 Years in Post-War Reconstruction, International Diplomacy, and German - American Relations. Purdue University Press 2012.

Web links

Commons : Walther Leisler Kiep  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Jaeger:  Kiep, Louis Leisler. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 592 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ Walther Leisler Kiep: Bridges of my life: the memories. Herbig, 2006, p. 12.
  3. ^ Günter letter: Walther Leisler Kiep. In: History of the CDU , Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.
  4. ^ A b Walther Leisler Kiep - The private curriculum vitae. n-tv.de, August 31, 2001.
  5. ↑ Welcome to the Kiep Foundation. kiep-stiftung.de, accessed on December 14, 2014 .
  6. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Walther Leisler Kiep
  7. ↑ Kiep on Gradmann and Holler ... In: Die Zeit. online January 29, 1982.
  8. ↑ a b About the person: Walther Leisler Kiep. in: Panoramic view. 2006/001.
  9. ↑ Jochen Kummer: The private money machine of Walther Leisler Kiep. In: Welt , May 6, 2001.
  10. ↑ Answer of the state government to the minor question from MPs Zimmermann, Lower Saxony State Parliament, printed matter 16/4667 ( landtag-niedersachsen.de PDF).
  11. ↑ a b Walter Leisler Kiep - rise and fall. manager-magazin.de, January 3, 2006, accessed April 5, 2019 .
  12. ^ "Walter Leisler Kiep escapes an assassination attempt, November 30, 1974". Contemporary history in Hessen. (As of November 9, 2012). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  13. ↑ Atlantic Initiative - Members & Advisory Board ( Memento from December 5, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  14. ^ Homepage of Global Bridges ( Memento from January 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ↑ Kiep, Walther Leisler . In: Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdB - The People's Representation 1946–1972. - [Kaaserer to Kynast] (=  KGParl online publications ). Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties e. V., Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-020703-7 , pp. 608 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-2014070812574 ( kgparl.de [PDF; 508 kB ; accessed on June 19, 2017]).
  16. ↑ False statement about CDU donations: Walther Leisler Kiep accepts penal order. In: Der Spiegel . January 9, 2004, accessed April 25, 2010 .
  17. ↑ Award of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on September 5, 1994 . In: The Hessian Prime Minister (Ed.): State Gazette for the State of Hesse. 1994 No. 36 , p. 2442 , 850 ( online at the information system of the Hessian state parliament [PDF; 8.6 MB ]).
personal data
SURNAME Kiep, Walther Leisler
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leisler Kiep, Walther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (CDU), MdL, MdHB, MdB
DATE OF BIRTH January 5, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH May 9, 2016
Place of death Kronberg im Taunus