Eckart Werthebach

Eckart Werthebach (born February 17, 1940 in Essen ) is a German administrative officer and politician ( CDU ). From 1991 to 1995 he was President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution , from 1995 to 1998 he was State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior and from 1998 to 2001 Berlin Senator for the Interior.

life and career

After studying law (state exams in 1966 and 1971) and completing his doctorate at the University of Würzburg (1969), Werthebach held various positions at the Federal Ministry of the Interior from 1971 to 1991 . From 1976 he worked as a personal advisor to State Secretary Siegfried Fröhlich , then in the specialist supervision of the Federal Criminal Police Office , from 1981 onwards for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution . In the " German Autumn " 1977 Werthebach was a member of the crisis management team after the assassination of the Federal Public Prosecutor Buback, the Dresdner Bank boss Ponto and the employer president Schleyer.

On March 1, 1991 Werthebach was appointed President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. In this position, Werthebach passed on information from his service about the data protection officer Thilo Weichert to the Brandenburg FDP state parliament member Rosemarie Fuchs , who wanted to prevent Weichert's candidacy for the office of state data protection officer. According to the Bundestag parliamentary group Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen , this thwarted Weichert's election as data protection officer. The documents put him in the left-wing extremist corner. Thereupon Werthebach was investigated on suspicion of betrayal. The preliminary investigation was closed in October 1994, resumed the following year (when Werthebach was already designated Secretary of State for the Interior) after new evidence had been presented, but was then finally closed.

In 1995 Werthebach was appointed State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior and served until 1998. At that time, the Federal Minister of the Interior was Manfred Kanther (CDU). From 1998 to 2001 he was Senator for the Interior in Berlin under the Governing Mayor Eberhard Diepgen (CDU) and from 2000 to 2001 at the same time Mayor of Berlin. In the context of the coalition break in June 2001, Eberhard Diepgen was, at the request of the SPD and Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen, with the votes of the PDS in the House of Representatives, expressed suspicion, then the House of Representatives withdrew the four CDU Senators Stölzl , Branoner , Kurth and also Werthebach trust, the CDU left the government and Werthebach from politics.

2000 Werthebach received the data protection negative BigBrotherAward in the category politics

“Awarded for the planned expansion and renewal of the telephone monitoring system in the federal capital. This means that telecommunications in Berlin should increasingly be bugged without any success control. "

In the Berliner Morgenpost of December 31, 2000, the politician demanded “The German language needs legal protection” and thus triggered a heated debate about such a law, which soon fizzled out.

In 2010 he was chairman of the Werthebach Commission set up by Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière to evaluate the security authorities.

Publications

• The impact of constitutional law on employment law , Würzburg 1969 (= dissertation)

literature

• Eckart Werthebach , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 04/2002 from January 14, 2002, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eckart Werthebach in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
2. ↑ BigBrotherAwards laudation . URL: http://www.bigbrotherawards.de/2000/.pol/
3. ↑ Commentary in the 'Berliner Morgenpost' (December 31, 2000)