Bernd Posselt

Bernd Posselt (born June 4, 1956 in Pforzheim ) is a German politician ( CSU ) and expellee functionary . From 1994 to 2014 he was a member of the European Parliament and from 2000 to 2008 Federal Chairman of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft . He has held this office again since 2014. Since 2008 he has been the spokesman for the Sudeten German ethnic group.

Bernd Posselt (2013)

Life

Posselt is a Catholic . His father comes from Gablonz in Northern Bohemia and his mother from Graz .

Posselt was press spokesman and closest confidante of Otto von Habsburg for years . In this context, Posselt was co-organizer of the Pan-European Picnic in the summer of 1989 , during which numerous GDR residents were able to cross the briefly, temporarily open Hungarian-Austrian border.

In 1975 Posselt founded the Paneuropa-Jugend Deutschland, whose federal chairman he was until 1990. He is one of the initiators of the Brüsewitz Center founded in 1976 . During this time he was also an employee of the International Society for Human Rights . From 1978 to 1994 he was a close political assistant and press spokesman for Otto von Habsburg, who was then President of the international Paneuropean Union . Since 1986 he has been a member of the board of the Paneuropean Union Germany, first as Vice President, then from 1989 to 1998 as Managing Vice President, and finally since 1998 as President. As a member of the executive board of the international Paneuropean Union, he has coordinated the underground groups of the Paneuropean Union in the socialist states since the early 1980s. Since 1993 he has been the head of a pan-European working group that deals with the Balkan states of the former Yugoslavia and Albania.

Posselt was a member of the European Parliament from 1994 to 2014 , since 1997 state chairman of the Union of Expellees (UdV) in the CSU, since 1998 president of the Paneuropean Union Germany and since 2008 spokesman for the Sudeten German ethnic group. From 2000 to 2008 he was federal chairman of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft , a position he has held again since 2014. Since 1993 he has been on the board of the CSU district association in Munich, and since 2000 on the (regional) board of the CSU. He is one of the main organizers of the Sudeten German Days .

Posselt is often in the Czech Republic . In November 2011 he was a member of an official delegation of the Bavarian State Government under the leadership of Prime Minister Horst Seehofer . This delegation held talks with the Czech Prime Minister Petr Nečas in Prague . Posselt works to improve relations between the Sudeten Germans and the Czechs . He was a founding member of the Weikersheim Study Center and is a board member of the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg. He is also a member of the Forum of German Catholics .

Posselt ran in the 2014 European elections in sixth place on the CSU state list, but narrowly missed re-entry. Since then he has been receiving a pension or transitional allowance and has participated in the political operations of the European Parliament at his own expense with financial support from the Paneuropean Union, but without a mandate and voting rights.

In the 2019 European elections , Posselt ran for seventh place on the list, but did not move into the European Parliament again.

He is one of the 89 people from the European Union against whom Russia - as it became known at the end of May 2015 - has imposed an entry ban.

Fonts

Storm sign. Political texts 1978–1994. Amalthea, Vienna, Munich 1994. ISBN 3-85002-352-4 ( review ).
Is Religion Dangerous? Truth and terrorism. Sankt Ulrich, Augsburg 2007. ISBN 978-3-936484-95-3 .
Bernd Posselt tells about Europe. History and people - blueprint and visions. Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2018. ISBN 978-3-7917-3042-4 .