Erwin Vetter

Erwin Vetter (center) at the master craftsman ceremony of the Chamber of Crafts in Offenburg, 1995

Erwin Vetter (born January 23, 1937 in Mannheim ) is a CDU politician from Baden-Württemberg .

education and profession

Erwin Vetter graduated from high school in 1956. He then studied law . He passed the first state examination in 1960 and the assessor examination in 1964. The doctorate to Dr. iur. took place in 1962. In 1964 he became a civil servant in the Baden-Württemberg interior administration. There he worked in the Tübingen district office, in the Karlsruhe regional council and in the Stuttgart State Ministry until 1972.

Political activity

In 1972 Erwin Vetter was elected mayor, 1974 with 99% mayor of the city of Ettlingen and in 1982 re-elected with the same result. He held this office until he was appointed Minister of the Environment in 1987. His most important tasks as Lord Mayor were extensive urban redevelopment, cultural initiatives (such as the palace festival ), a state garden show and improvement of the traffic situation (construction of the Wattkopf tunnel ). He gave the suggestion to found the technology region Karlsruhe .

In the course of the political reappraisal of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster , an environment ministry was set up in Baden-Württemberg. Prime Minister Lothar Späth appointed Erwin Vetter as the country's first environment minister . Vetter held this office until the grand coalition was founded in 1992, when the SPD took over the Ministry of the Environment. Vetter took on the role of Minister in the State Ministry with responsibilities in the areas of federal politics, media politics and European politics. From 1992 Vetter was a member of the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg for three legislative periods up to 2006 .

After the end of the grand coalition, Vetter was appointed Minister of Social Affairs in 1996. For reasons of age, Prime Minister Erwin Teufel dismissed him from the ministerial office in November 1998. From 1998 to 2008 he was President of the Baden-Württemberg Leadership Academy .

Other offices, honors and awards

Erwin Vetter was made an honorary citizen of the city of Ettlingen in 1987. In 2002 he was awarded the Medal of Merit of the State of Baden-Württemberg , and in 2006 the Federal Cross of Merit , 1st class . In March 2019, Winfried Kretschmann awarded him the Great Staufer Medal in Gold.

As of 2011, Vetter was volunteering in over 80 organizations for sport, culture, social affairs and science. Among other things, he is an honorary member of the Volksschauspiele Ötigheim and the Josef-Saier -Stiftung Baden-Baden, member of the board of trustees of the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences - Technology and Economics , Senator e. H. of the Karlsruhe Cooperative State University , member of the Board of Trustees of the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe , co-founder of the Ettlingen Palace Festival and honorary member of the Baden Choir Association . He is chairman of the “Friends of Emil Wachter ” and of the board of trustees of the Academy of the Older Generation in Karlsruhe. He was chairman of the radio council of Deutschlandradio , chairman of the supervisory board of Karlshochschule and until 2017 patron of " Pulmonale Hypertonie eV".

Family and private

Erwin Vetter is a Roman Catholic . He is married and has two grown children. Since his student days, Vetter has been an active member of the Catholic student associations K.St.V. Normannia Würzburg and Eckart Mannheim in the KV .

Web links

• Literature by and about Erwin Vetter in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Erwin Vetter  in the German Digital Library
• Press release from the city of Ettlingen on the occasion of its 75th birthday