Dietrich Bahner senior

Christian Ernst Dietrich Bahner (born September 18, 1913 in Oberlungwitz , Saxony , † March 11, 1987 in Augsburg ) was a German entrepreneur and politician . In the 1930s, the entrepreneur's son got into the shoe business, which he expanded after the Second World War into an important company network, Leiser Handelsgesellschaft mbH . From 1967 to 1970 he was state chairman of the FDP Bavaria , which he left in 1970. From 1970 to 1977 he was involved in the short-lived parties National Liberal Action , German Union and Action Community Fourth Party .

Life

Dietrich Bahner was the son of the entrepreneur Ernst Louis Bahner , who owned the Elbeo stocking works in Oberlungwitz near Zwickau , the largest German stocking factory before the war. His uncle was the entrepreneur Wilhelm Bahner , who was a conservative member of the Saxon state parliament from 1905 to 1909.

When the Jewish shoe retailer Julius Klausner from Berlin in 1935 offered Bahner's father his 23 Leiser shoe stores in Berlin as part of the “ Aryanization ”, with which he had a market share of 25%, in order to avoid a forced “Aryanization”, the 22nd year old Dietrich Bahner, who had worked for Leiser since 1933, took up his plans to emigrate to America and from 1935 initially took over 50% and later 75% of Leiser. A few months later, Klausner fled to Buenos Aires.

After the war, when he was last an anti-aircraft gunner , the Leiser shoe stores were in ruins with the exception of three branches. The company still had a quarter of a million shoes in a warehouse in Saxony, which Bahner sold for one million Reichsmarks. With the motorcycle and the money in a backpack, he drove to Augsburg, where in 1945 he took a 50% stake in the August Wessels GmbH shoe factory with the money and a contribution in kind of women's stockings, natural silk and shoe leather. There were contacts here even before the war. Half of the Leiser shoe stores were returned to Julius Klausner. Bahner soon founded the favorite shoe wholesale company and the Leiser-Werke Augsburg, and in 1952 took over the Dorndorf shoe factory in Zweibrücken-Niederauerbach . In 1960 he acquired HAKO Schuh AG and in 1970 the remaining shares in Leiser from the Klausner descendants. In the same year Bahner, whose engagements now also included textiles, dry cleaning and a bank in addition to his shoe empire, was certified as having "sales of several 100 million marks".

Political career

Through his family, who were friends with Theodor Heuss and Friedrich Naumann , Dietrich Bahner joined the FDP in 1946. In 1956 he became district chairman in Swabia and a member of the state board of the FDP Bavaria . In 1967 he succeeded Klaus Dehler as state chairman. He immediately tried for the deputy federal chairmanship of the Liberals, but unsuccessfully. At the federal party congress from June 22nd to 24th, 1970 in the then federal capital Bonn, which was not particularly gratifying for the party rights surrounding former chairman Erich Mende , Bahner ran twice for re-election to the party executive committee.

After the orientation of the FDP to the left under Walter Scheel , Bahner refused at the state party congress on June 27 and 28, 1970 in Würzburg to set the state association on a coalition with the SPD based on the Bonn model in view of the state elections in November . He then put the vote of confidence and received only 124 of 277 delegate votes. In the FDP, the successor was initially open and the left-liberal Hildegard Hamm-Brücher took over the party business together with the right-wing liberal Josef Ertl . Under this constellation, the FDP gained almost half a percent in the state elections and moved back into the Maximilianeum . Ertl took over the state chairmanship in March 1971.

In mid-July, the National Liberal Action working group, founded on June 17th by right-wing FDP mandate holders from North Rhine-Westphalia, presented itself as a registered association at the federal level on the Hohensyburg near Dortmund, including politicians from Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. non-partisan community of national and liberal people ”. It was not intended as the basis of a new political party, but a later development in this direction "on another level" is possible, said the Bundestag member Siegfried Zoglmann . The event had 30 founding members. In addition to Zoglmann, they elected Dietrich Bahner to the 15-member collegial board. In June Bahner had said: "I don't want to be in the same boat with these gentlemen."

Bahner left the FDP in September and became the Bavarian state chairman of the National Liberal Action, now with Zoglmann as national chairman, as an independent party. In the elections to the Bavarian state parliament, however, this party remained insignificant. In the summer of 1971 he founded another national liberal party, the short-lived German Union , again with Zoglmann, who again became federal chairman . He himself again became Bavarian state chairman and also deputy federal chairman. After this party also failed, he took part in the founding of the equally short-lived Action Group Fourth Party in 1975 and was its first federal chairman until 1977.

Private life

Dietrich Bahner was married and had three sons. His son Dietrich was a member of the Bundestag for the Berlin CDU . His son Christian, temporarily on the board of the National Liberal Action Hesse , died in 1992 as a result of an accident.

Honors

• 1980: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany

literature

• Dietrich Bahner , In: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 15/1987 of March 30, 1987, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)
• Existence in the backpack: Quiet partner . In: Der Spiegel . No. 30 1949, ( Online - July 21, 1949 ).
• Parties / FDP: completely non-binding . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1970 ( online - 6 July 1970 ).
• FDP: Right formation. In: The time . No. 29/1970 of July 17, 1970 ( zeit.de ).

Web links

• Bahner, Dietrich . In: Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdB - The People's Representation 1946–1972. - [Baack to Bychel] (=  KGParl online publications ). Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties e. V., Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-020703-7 , pp. 46–47 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-2014070812574 ( kgparl.de [PDF; 568 kB ; accessed on June 19, 2017]).