Alexander Rahr

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Alexander Rahr

Alexander Rahr (born March 2, 1959 in Taipei , Republic of China (Taiwan) ) is a German Eastern European historian, management consultant, political scientist and publicist.

Career

Alexander Rahr studied from 1980 to 1988 History at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich . His supervisor was David Lane, a Cambridge University professor . From 1977 to 1985 he worked on the “Soviet Elite” research project of the Federal Institute for Eastern and International Studies (BIOst). He worked as an analyst for Radio Liberty and the Rand Corporation think tank from 1982 to 1994 . For eighteen years he worked for the German Society for Foreign Policy (DGAP) and was program manager of the Berthold-Beitz-Center of the German Society for Foreign Policy with a focus on Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Central Asia until he switched to business in May 2012 .

Rahr sat on the Steering Committee of the Petersburg Dialogue from 2004 to 2015 . There he was also co-coordinator of the future workshop working group. Since 2012 he has been the project manager of the German-Russian Forum . There it oversees the Potsdam encounters and the working group “Common Space Lisbon-Vladivostok” (with Ulf Schneider). 2012–2015 he was Senior Advisor at Wintershall Holding GmbH and advisor to the President of the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce ( AHK). He is a member of the Russian club Waldai and the Ukrainian network Yalta European Strategy (YES). Since 2014 he has been Deputy Chairman and then a member of the Advisory Board of the Association of Russian Business in Germany. Since 2015 he has been an advisor for EU affairs to Gazprom in Brussels.

As a publicist

He is the author of numerous books on Russia in several languages, including a biography on Mikhail Sergejewitsch Gorbachev (1985) and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (2000).

Rahr is regularly present in the daily media, for example in the Frankfurter Rundschau , the Link Young World , the Süddeutsche Zeitung or the Tagesspiegel .

Interview in Komsomolskaya Pravda

In May 2012, a widely discussed interview with Alexander Rahr appeared in the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda . Several of the quotes he made on this occasion sparked controversial reactions in Germany.

  • "The Americans amputated the Germans' brains."
  • "Germans have succumbed to Israel's moral strength because the Holocaust is constantly being rubbed under their noses."
  • "The West behaves like the Soviet Union."

The Federal Foreign Office then distanced itself from Rahr on the grounds that they “do not share statements made by him on western values ​​policy”. When asked about his interview by Spiegel Online , Rahr defended Putin's authoritarian rule again. It is "more authentic" than the democratic chaos under Boris Yeltsin . However, he feels he has been tricked by Komsomolskaya Pravda . Only a background discussion had been arranged with the journalist, but no verbal interview. Die ZEIT wrote that a video on the newspaper's website showing four minutes of conversation speaks against the allegation of manipulation. The published text does not differ significantly from the recorded conversation.

Criticism of Rahr during the Crimean crisis

During the Crimean crisis in April 2014, some media criticized Rahr. On April 20, 2014, an article appeared in the daily newspaper Die Welt in which the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament Elmar Brok and the European politician of the "Bündnis 90 - Die Grünen" party Werner Schulz commented critically on Rahr's activities . According to Brok, Rahr is not an independent scientist, but a lobbyist for the Kremlin. In the same article, Schulz accused Rahr of propagating Putin's strategy of turning Russia into a strategic raw material power.

Five days later, a report on the television program Report Mainz, Südwestrundfunk said:

“He is regarded as the Russia expert, so far also in the Foreign Office. He is in great demand. What almost nobody knows, just like Schröder he is a paid lobbyist - namely a consultant for a gas company that cooperates with Gazprom in Russia . "

- Heiner Hoffmann, Ulrich Neumann, Report Mainz, Südwestrundfunk , March 25, 2014

The NZZ also focused on Gazprom's advisory activities and said that he was advertising "on German channels with cautious and understanding for Putin's policy, while on Russian television he likes to accuse the Federal Republic of being an agent of American encirclement of Russia".

Khodorkovsky's liberation

From 2011, Rahr assisted Hans-Dietrich Genscher's efforts to get the former oligarch and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky released . Khodorkovsky was released in December 2013.

Awards

In 2003 Rahr was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. He is an honorary professor at the Moscow Diplomatic School and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

In 2019 Rahr received the Order of Friendship of the Russian Federation for his commitment to German-Russian relations .

Private life

Rahr was born as the son of the Russian journalist and church historian of German-Baltic-Scandinavian origin Gleb Rahr and Sofia. Orechowa was born. The family fled the Red Army to the west. Gleb Rahr built up the Russian Orthodox Church in Frankfurt am Main, worked for Radio Liberty in Munich for many years, wrote a book about "Church in Captivity" in Soviet times and had close contacts with the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn . According to Die Welt, Rahr's father was given back Russian citizenship with direct support from Vladimir Putin.

He is married to Anna Rahr geb. Galperina and has a son and a daughter.

Publications

literature

Web links

Commons : Alexander Rahr  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexander Rahr on Twitter: Enjoy article from my ex- "Doktorvater" , twitter.com March 8, 2019. The tweet links to: David Lane: Why the West Blames Russia , valdaiclub.com, March 8, 2019.
  2. ↑ Ewald Böhlke new program manager of the Berthold-Beitz-Center press release DGAP.org
  3. ^ Portrait of the Petersburg Dialog
  4. ↑ Thorsten Denkler: Russia expert Rahr: "Behind Putin's ice-cold mask there is a volcano". SZ, May 17, 2010.
  5. ↑ "We don't want a third world war", in: Junge Welt, May 9, 2020, pp. 1–2 of the supplement.
  6. ↑ a b Jörg Lau: “Settlement Area” in the East - How a pioneer of German Russia policy in Russia pokes at Germany , Die ZEIT issue 12/2013, March 14, 2013.
  7. ↑ Jörg Lau: Energy for breakfast - the rule of law and democracy should not just be empty phrases: The Foreign Office distances itself from Russia expert Alexander Rahr. The ZEIT issue 14/2013, March 27, 2013.
  8. ^ Benjamin Bidder: Russia expert Rahr: "Germany's Ostpolitik has lost its balance" , Spiegel Online , March 18, 2013.
  9. ↑ a b German Putin supporter gives the Russia experts , Die Welt from April 20, 2014
  10. ↑ Heiner Hoffmann, Ulrich Neumann: The dubious activities of the former chancellor in the sense of Putin. Report Mainz , Südwestrundfunk , March 25, 2014, accessed on March 27, 2014 .
  11. ^ German understanding of the annexation of Crimea - Putin's networker , NZZ, May 6, 2014
  12. ↑ "We drank vodka in the 'Adlon'" , interview with Alexander Rahr, Die Welt , December 21, 2013.
  13. ^ Profile of Alexander Rahr on doc-research.org, (undated).
  14. ↑ Executive Order on awarding Russian Federation state decorations. Accessed December 1, 2019 .
  15. ^ New Germany, March 1, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Rahr, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian of Eastern Europe, management consultant, political scientist and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH Taipei , Republic of China (Taiwan)