Eckhard Stratmann-Mertens

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Eckhard Stratmann-Mertens , born as Eckhard Stratmann (born April 3, 1948 in Oberhausen ) is a German teacher i. R., former politician and member of the Bundestag for the Green Party (1983-85, 1987-90)

biography

education and profession

Stratmann grew up in Mülheim an der Ruhr and Gelsenkirchen , where he graduated from the Schalke Gymnasium in 1966 (old language branch). After his compulsory military service, he studied Protestant theology (initially five semesters full theology), social sciences and history at the University of Tübingen , the University of Munich and the University of Frankfurt am Main from 1968 to January 1976 . After his legal clerkship in Frankfurt, he taught social sciences, history and Protestant religion from 1977 until his retirement in 2013, most recently also practical philosophy at the Albert Einstein Gymnasium Bochum and, after its merger with the Gymnasium am Ostring, at the New Gymnasium Bochum.

In 1991 Stratmann-Mertens founded the ÖKOREGIO Institute for Ecological Economic and Regional Development, Bochum, together with scientists and supporters; since 1994 continuation as ÖKOREGIO office for ecological economic and regional development, Bochum. From 2008 to 2015 Stratmann-Mertens volunteered in outpatient hospice work in Bochum. August 2013: retired as a teacher; since then he has been studying philosophy as a guest student at the Ruhr University in Bochum. He lives in Bochum-Querenburg.

In 1990 Stratmann married Mechthild Mertens († 2016) and took the name Stratmann-Mertens; the connection resulted in a daughter.

politics

Socialist office / Offenbach

From 1977 to 1984 Stratmann was a member of the Socialist Office / Offenbach. There he was involved in the mobilization for the 3rd Russell Tribunal on the situation of human rights in the Federal Republic of Germany in the spring of 1978 in Frankfurt am Main. He initiated a working group on Alternative Ruhr Area Policy, whose approaches he later continued with the Greens.

Party: The Greens

In 1979/80 Stratmann was one of the founding members of the Greens and was a member of the first state board of the Greens in North Rhine-Westphalia. He was elected to the Bundestag via the state list in the 1983 Bundestag election - at that time still under the name Eckhard Stratmann. He was the first Green MP to address the Bundestag. In a personal statement on the Bundestag vote on the stationing of US medium-range missiles in the Federal Republic of Germany on November 22, 1983, Stratmann announced: "I say emphatically: I will refuse military service this week for political reasons." The recognition as a conscientious objector did not take place until January 1992 in the third instance by the administrative court of Gelsenkirchen.

Stratmann was a member of the Bundestag from 1983 to 1985, when he resigned his mandate as part of the rotation of MPs. Then he was again a member of the Bundestag from 1987 to 1990. Stratmann-Mertens, as he was called after his marriage in April 1990, was the economic and energy policy spokesman for the parliamentary group in both legislative periods and a member of the Bundestag's economic committee. In 1990 he was also a deputy member of the German Unity Committee. He was one of the few Greens who welcomed the reunification of the two German states after the fall of the Wall in November 1989, albeit in criticism of the method of the subsequent takeover of the GDR into the FRG.

The main focus of his political activities as a member of parliament were initiatives to green and democratize the economy. Stratmann was strongly committed to the solidarity of the Greens with the resistance of the steel workforce in the Ruhr area against the closure of Krupp-Rheinhausen and Thyssen-Henrichshütte Hattingen in the 1980s. To this end, he organized "steel forums" in Bonn (1983 and 1987) with works councils and IG Metall shop stewards for the German steel locations. The opening of the Greens to the trade unions and vice versa was a matter close to his heart. He played a leading role in the development of the extensive program of the Greens "Conversion of the industrial society" (decided in September 1986) as well as in the "Conversion program for an Ecoregion in the Ruhr Area" (decided in August 1989). He co-responsible for the "concept of the parliamentary group for a green foreign trade policy". As energy policy spokesman for the parliamentary group, he was responsible for the development of the technically and energy-economically secure "Immediate Program for the Exit from Atomic Energy" as well as the publication of "The Green Energy Transition Scenario 2010. Sun, Wind and Water". The most fundamental contribution was probably the initiation of a draft law by the Green parliamentary group as an alternative to the Stability and Growth Act of 1967. This draft of a "law for an ecological-social economy" (July 1990) says goodbye to the goal of steady economic growth and proposes a new one Catalog of objectives for economic policy ("ecological-social pentagon"), u. a. ecological balance instead of steady growth.

After Stratmann-Mertens and other opponents of the war were unable to assert themselves at the special party congress in Bielefeld in 1999 with the demand for an immediate stop of the NATO bombing in the Kosovo war, he and other members announced that he was leaving the party at the congress. Since then he has been independent.

Citizens' Initiative and Attac

From 1995 to 2011 Stratmann-Mertens was the spokesman for the Bochum citizens' initiative against the A 44 / DüBoDo (Düsseldorf-Bochum-Dortmund) motorway. The citizens' initiative was able to prevent construction for fifteen years with high-profile activities until its complaint before the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig was rejected in June 2010.

Since 2001 he has been involved as a member of Attac , u. a. with the aim of linking the critique of growth with the critique of globalization. From 2002 to 2004 he was the coordinator of the nationwide AG Alternative Weltwirtschaftsordnung (Alternative World Economic Order) and together with the AG he ensured an intensive nationwide discussion process at Attac. He was involved in the preparation of the congress "Beyond Growth?!", Which Attac held with several cooperation partners and with a good 2,500 participants at the TU Berlin in May 2011, as well as with his own contributions (including the forum: Must capitalism grow?) the Congress.

From 2015 he has devoted himself more to work on migration and refugee policy with criticism of the prevailing politics. He is the author of several articles on this topic for the online magazine Globkult (Ed. Peter Brandt). In April 2016 he left Attac because of irreconcilable differences over a critical essay he wrote on migration and refugee policy. In it he contradicted the position of open borders (no borders) widespread in the left and at Attac and warned against unlimited immigration and the foreseeable failure of the integration of the majority of immigrants.

Publications (selection)

Editorships

  • Frank Beckenbach / Jo Müller / Reinhard Pfriem / Eckhard Stratmann (eds.): Green economic policy. Feasible utopias . Cologne 1985, Kiepenheuer & Witsch
  • Eckhard Stratmann-Mertens / Rudolf Hickel / Jan Priewe (eds.): Growth - Farewell to a dogma. Controversy about an ecological-social economic policy , Frankfurt 1991, S. Fischer
  • with Norbert Roske (Ed.): Rebuilding without a model. Alternatives for the economic structure and cornerstones for the ecological reconstruction in the new federal states - A study by the ÖKOREGIO Institute, Essen, December 1992, Klartext Verlag
  • Adelheid Biesecker / Martin Büscher / Thomas Sauer / Eckhard Stratmann-Mertens (eds.): Alternative world economic order. Perspectives after Cancun , Hamburg 2004, VSA-Verlag

Technical articles and essays

  • Made in Germany - From the world market to the domestic market, in : Frank Beckenbach / Jo Müller / Reinhard Pfriem / Eckhard Stratmann (eds.): Green economic policy. Feasible utopias. Cologne 1985, pp. 327-349, Kiepenheuer & Witsch
  • For a democratic economy. Ota Sik's Third Way - a guide for the GREENS , in: Kommune, No. 1–2 / 1986, p. 65ff .; - in abbreviated form in: taz v. February 10, 1986, p. 11
  • Greening and democratizing the corporate constitution - a plea for a legislative initiative , in: MEMO-FORUM. Circular of the Working Group on Alternative Economic Policy No. 17, Bremen, May 1991, pp. 2–23
  • Framework planning in an ecological-social economy , in: Eckhard Stratmann-Mertens / Rudolf Hickel / Jan Priewe (eds.), Growth - Farewell to a dogma. Controversy over an ecological-social economic policy, Frankfurt 1991, pp. 177–200, S. Fischer
  • with Wolfgang Bayer: From the magical square to the ecological-social pentagon. Alternatives to the Stability and Growth Act, in: Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 8/91 (Aug. 1991), pp. 971–978
  • Solidarity in one world and sustainable development , in: Hengsbach, F. / Möhring-Hesse, M. (Ed.): Your poverty pisses us off! Solidarity in the Crisis, Frankfurt / Main 1995, pp. 190–205, Fischer paperback
  • Deglobalization - farewell to growth. Critique of neo-Keynesian globalization , in: Adelheid Biesecker / Martin Büscher / Thomas Sauer / Eckhard Stratmann-Mertens (eds.): Alternative world economic order. Perspektiven nach Cancún, Hamburg 2004, pp. 37–52, VSA-Verlag
  • Shrinkage instead of growth. Transition to an equilibrium economy , in: Werner Rätz, Tanja von Egan-Krieger u. a. (Ed.): Fully grown! Ecological justice. Social rights. Good life. A project by Attac, Hamburg 2011, pp. 130–140, VSA-Verlag
  • Against the doctrine of Germany as a country of immigration. A reply to Daniel Cohn-Bendit / Claus Leggewie and Albrecht von Lucke in the October edition of "Blätter", reprinted in abbreviated form with the title Refugee Debate: The Unease Grows, in: Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, 11/2015, p. 25-29
  • Skilled labor immigration law: In the fetish triangle prosperity - growth - immigration, in: https://globkult.de/politik/deutschland/1775-fachkraefteeinwanderungsgesetz-im-fetischdreieck-wohlstand-–-wachsen-einwanderung; published 6.7.2019

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Horst Bieber: The first green speaker in the Bonn parliament. “I wasn't excited at all”. In: DIE ZEIT, issue 15, April 8, 1983 ( online )
  2. ↑ Brochure "Securing jobs. Rebuilding the steel industry. Socializing corporations". Steel Forum of the Greens in the Bundestag, April 25, 1987 in Bonn, contributions and materials, Ed .: DIE GRÜNEN in the Bundestag, Bonn, May 1987
  3. ↑ Reconstruction of the industrial society. Steps to overcome unemployment, poverty and environmental degradation
  4. ↑ On the way to a world economy based on ecological solidarity; Ed .: DIE GRÜNEN in the Bundestag, AG World Economy and Development, 11/1990
  5. ^ Brochure of the GREEN in the Bundestag "The immediate exit is possible", Nov. 1986
  6. ↑ Ed .: Eckhard Stratmann, Luise Teubner, Manfred Busch, Winfried Damm - DIE GRÜNEN in the Bundestag / AG Energie, Cologne 1989, 2nd corrected and expanded edition 1991, Kölner Volksblatt Verlag
  7. ↑ The complete draft law including a controversial technical discussion in: Eckhard Stratmann-Mertens / Rudolf Hickel / Jan Priewe (eds.): Growth - Farewell to a dogma. Controversy about an ecological-social economic policy, Frankfurt 1991, S. Fischer
  8. ↑ See website of the citizens' initiative: http://www.stopp-duebodo.de
  9. ^ Discussions in Attac Germany on an Alternative World Economic Order (AWWO) ; Adopted by the Attac advice in Hamburg, October 2004, published by Attac Germany, February 2005 (66 pages), on http://www.praxisphilosophie.de/attacwwo.pdf
  10. ^ Author Stratmann-Mertens Eckhard. Retrieved January 12, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Protect refugees - limit immigration. Against the widespread one-eyedness in refugee and migration policy, Feb. 2016; together with the description of the sharp controversy that this essay sparked in Attac Germany in: https://globkult.de/gesellschaft/modelle/1092-flüchtlinge-schützen-einwanderung-begrenzen.de  ; published April 19, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Stratmann-Mertens, Eckhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stratmann, Eckhard (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German teachers and politicians (Bündnis 90 / DieGrünen), Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Oberhausen