Conrad Ahlers

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Conrad Ahlers (1974)

Conrad Ahlers (born November 8, 1922 in Hamburg , † December 18, 1980 in Bonn ) was a German journalist and politician ( SPD ).

Life

Conrad Ahlers, son of the export merchant Adolf Ahlers and a pastor's daughter, joined the Wehrmacht in 1941 after graduating from Heinrich-Hertz-Gymnasium .

In the Second World War he was with the 1st Paratrooper Division , most recently as Ordonnanzoffizier (lieutenant) of the III. Division of the Parachute Artillery Regiment 1. Ahlers was deployed on the Eastern Front and in Italy from 1943 to 1945 , and took part in the Battle of Monte Cassino , among other things .

After the end of the war he studied economics at the University of Hamburg . From 1947 he worked as a journalist, from 1948 to 1949 in London for the German service of the BBC .

Conrad Ahlers co-founded the Junge Union in 1947 . In 1949 he became editor of the German General Sunday Gazette . In 1951, Ahlers moved to the Federal Government's press and information office as head of service . In 1952 he was press officer in the office of Theodor Blank , the Office Blank .

In 1954 he went to the daily newspaper Die Welt as foreign affairs editor , in 1957 he became Bonn correspondent for the news magazine Der Spiegel , in 1959 domestic affairs editor of the Frankfurter Rundschau and 1962 deputy editor-in-chief of Spiegel . On October 8, 1962, Ahlers published an article in Spiegel on the state of the Bundeswehr with the title Conditionally ready for defense , in which the then Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss was heavily criticized. That was the trigger for the Spiegel affair . At Strauss's instigation, Ahlers and his wife were arrested by the police in Spain while they were on vacation under false pretenses. Strauss, who had denied his lying involvement in the affair, was forced to resign from the government following the resignation of the five FDP ministers in the federal government. In December 1962 Ahlers was released from prison. On May 13, 1965, the case against him of treason was discontinued by the Federal Court of Justice as unfounded.

In 1968 Ahlers joined the SPD. In the first cabinet of Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt he was government spokesman and head of the press and information office of the federal government from 1969 to 1972 as a permanent state secretary , of which he had previously been deputy head of the grand coalition from 1966 to 1969.

On September 6, 1972 at midnight he spoke as spokesman for the federal government in several TV interviews, regarding the attempt to free the Israeli team from being held hostage by the Palestinian terrorist organization Schwarzer September during the Summer Olympics in Munich, from a "happy and successful operation".

Grave of Conrad Ahlers ,
Ohlsdorf cemetery

From December 13, 1972 to March 7, 1980, Ahlers was a member of the SPD in the German Bundestag for Rhineland-Palatinate in the constituency of Bad Kreuznach / Birkenfeld for two electoral terms ; Ahlers, himself a major in the reserve , was a member of the defense committee . When he was elected director of Deutsche Welle in December 1979, he resigned from the Bundestag. While he was a member of parliament, he worked as a journalist for various newspapers and, from 1973, for the public relations work of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation .

Ahlers died unexpectedly on December 18, 1980 of circulatory failure. He was a Protestant and married to the columnist and book author Heilwig von der Mehden . His two children Detlev (* 1953) and Sibylle (* 1961) also work as journalists.

In the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg, at grid square Z 11 (southwest of the north pond ), Conrad Ahlers is remembered on the family grave stone.

literature

  • Rudolf Vierhaus , Ludolf Herbst (eds.), Bruno Jahn (collaborators): Biographical manual of the members of the German Bundestag. 1949-2002. Vol. 1: A-M. KG Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-23782-0 , p. 7.
  • Handbook of the Bundeswehr and the Defense Industry 1979. Wehr-und-Wissen-Verlagsgesellschaft, Koblenz 1979, ISBN 3-8033-0293-5 , p. 13.

Web links

Commons : Conrad Ahlers  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Archive of Social Democracy: Conrad Ahlers". Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung , accessed on April 23, 2010 .
  2. ^ Irmgard Zündorf: Conrad Ahlers. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
  3. ↑ welt.de: Munich 1972 - the protocol of a catastrophe
  4. ↑ Professional . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1973, p. 132 ( online ).
  5. ^ Irmgard Zündorf: Conrad Ahlers. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
  6. ↑ Celebrity Graves
personal data
SURNAME Ahlers, Conrad
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), Member of the Bundestag, journalist
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH December 18, 1980
Place of death Bonn