Franz Schuster (politician)

Franz Schuster (born July 15, 1943 in Durlangen ) is a German politician ( CDU ); he was Minister in the Vogel cabinet in Thuringia .

Life

Franz Schuster was born on July 15, 1943 in Durlangen / Schwäbisch Gmünd district, the son of a farmer. He spent his childhood and youth there together with his parents and four siblings. After attending elementary school from 1949 to 1957, he attended the commercial college from 1957 to 1960 and then the business school in Schwäbisch Gmünd . After graduating from high school in 1963 to 1968, he studied economics at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen and was involved in the ASTA and the RCDS . He has been married to the political scientist Antoinette Pudenz since 1972, has three children and lives in Sankt Augustin . In 1995 he became a member of the KDB Sigfridia zu Bonn in the RKDB and was particularly involved in the organization and implementation of the Wartburg Talks .

Employment

After completing his studies with a degree in economics (1968), he first worked as a research assistant at the university there and then at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung . His main areas of work and advice included a. the financial reform, the reform of the state and municipal administration and the reform of the land law. In 1971 he took over the management of the newly founded Institute for Local Science of the KAS, which he built up and expanded into a recognized consulting institute with a cooperative working style. Representatives of politics, administration and science have jointly developed political programs of action and presented them in numerous conferences, expert discussions and publications. The main topics included a. the reform of the local constitution, the decentralization of political action, the introduction of new media, the integration of foreign workers, housing and urban development, housing subsidies and the development of rural areas. The provisional municipal constitutions of the GDR and the Republic of Poland were also developed in this context . After reunification , Franz Schuster was appointed acting department head of the State Ministry for Economics and Labor of the Free State of Saxony and was entrusted with the privatization and restructuring of the economy.

Economic advisor

After leaving the government and the state parliament of the Free State of Thuringia , Franz Schuster founded a consulting company and worked as a business consultant in the transition countries Ukraine and Croatia and for German companies.

Government offices

Minister in the State Chancellery

In February 1992 the then Prime Minister Bernhard Vogel , who had already been his boss as chairman of the KAS, appointed him minister in the State Chancellery of the Free State of Thuringia and assigned him central coordination tasks in the development of the Free State: the privatization and restructuring of companies and cooperation the Treuhandanstalt .

Thuringian Minister of the Interior

In September 1992 he became Thuringian Minister of the Interior and was entrusted with the development of the state administration and the municipal constitutional and territorial reform, the reform of the surrounding area, the regional companies, housing and urban development, the Thuringian police , fire and disaster control and the cadastral system . He succeeded Willibald Böck , who had previously resigned , and in 1994 he handed over the office to Richard Dewes .

Extensive legislative work had to take place in all of these areas, funding programs had to be developed and implemented, current problems had to be solved and demonstrations and protests had to be passed. The state administration office was restructured within a year, the state development company was newly founded and commissioned to convert 42,000 hectares of military property into industrial, commercial and service locations as part of conversion programs. The development of the Thuringian police, the fire brigade and the cadastral system were also part of Schuster's area of responsibility.

criticism

The investigative committee in the Thuringian state parliament dealt with the mishaps during the investigation into the series of murders of the "National Socialist Underground" (NSU) . The committee interviewed former ministers and senior officials. The MDR Thuringia reported that former Minister of the Interior Franz Schuster (CDU) rejected any criticism of the parliamentarians and assured that during his term of office from 1992 to 1994 "by no means right-wing structures were underestimated and thereby favored".

Minister for Economy, Labor and Infrastructure

In December 1994 Schuster finally took over the Ministry of Economics , which was later supplemented by labor market policy. All three core tasks of Aufbau Ost were thus part of the Ministry's catalog of tasks:

The privatization, reorganization, start-up and settlement of companies,
The creation and maintenance of jobs,
The development of a future-oriented infrastructure: German unity transport projects, development of industrial and commercial locations, the training and further education structure

In 2003, Jürgen Reinholz succeeded him as Minister for Economics, Labor and Infrastructure.

Member of the state parliament

Franz Schuster was a member of the state parliament for the Gotha I constituency from 1994 to 2004 and took care of the interests of cities and municipalities, companies and the citizens. This mandate sparked an intense discussion about Schuster's main residence and his eligibility, which was then confirmed by the state constitutional court.

Lecturer at the University of Erfurt

In 2008, Schuster held a lectureship on the globalization of the goods and services sector at the University of Erfurt .

Publications (selection)

Thuringia's path to the social market economy: privatization, renovation, expansion - a balance sheet after 25 years , with a foreword by Bernhard Vogel , Cologne; Weimar; Vienna: Böhlau 2015, ISBN 978-3-412-22499-8 .

literature

Franz Schuster , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 01/2004 of December 22, 2003, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)