Friedrich Zimmermann

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Friedrich Zimmermann (1990)

Friedrich Walter Zimmermann (including Fritz Zimmermann * 18th July 1925 in Munich , † 16th September 2012 in Filzmoos , Austria ) was a German politician of the CSU . Under Chancellor Helmut Kohl he was Federal Minister of the Interior from 1982 to 1989 and Federal Minister of Transport from 1989 to 1991 .

Life

education and profession

From 1943 to 1945 Zimmermann took part in the Second World War. At the end of the war he was a lieutenant in the reserve . After graduation in 1946 he earned a degree in law and economics in Munich and in 1950 with a dissertation on Parental authority of women with particular reference to Art. 3, para. II of the Basic Law for Dr. jur. PhD . After the second state examination in law in 1951, he worked in the Bavarian civil service until 1954, initially as an assessor and later as a councilor. In 1963 he was admitted to the bar.

Party career

Friedrich Zimmermann (1987)

Zimmermann was listed as a member of the NSDAP from 1943 under the membership number 9.532.916 . He was a long-time companion of Franz Josef Strauss , who was his friend and role model. In 1948 - encouraged by Strauss - he became a member of the CSU . In 1955 he became its chief executive, from 1956 to 1963 he was general secretary.

As part of the tough fight of the CSU against the Bavarian party for political supremacy in Bavaria, Zimmermann was convicted in 1960 for perjury in connection with the Bavarian casino affair , but finally acquitted in 1961 in the second instance after a medical report that was awarded to him for the At the time of the oath attested a decreased mental performance due to a hypoglycaemia . In its overall assessment, however, the court expressly stated: “There can be no question of the defendant's innocence being proven.” According to Spiegel , Zimmermann himself commented on the expert : “It was named by my defense, this is my first time seen in the courtroom. ”The affair earned him the nickname“ Old Oath Hand ”, which haunted him all his life. Because of the affair, he was  also called "The Perjurer" - in reference to the folk play of the same name by Ludwig Anzengruber - which Zimmermann had the court forbidden.

From 1963 to 1967 Zimmermann was CSU state treasurer and from 1979 to 1989 deputy chairman of the CSU. From 1961 to 1982 he was a member of the board of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group . From 1965 to 1972 he was chairman of the defense committee of the German Bundestag . After the federal election on October 3, 1976 , which Helmut Schmidt (SPD) had won , in November 1976 he was elected chairman of the CSU regional group and first deputy chairman of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group. He held this office until October 1982, when he was appointed to the first cabinet by Chancellor Helmut Kohl .

Member of Parliament

From 1957 to 1990 Zimmermann was a member of the German Bundestag . However, he laid after in the election for the sixth Bundestag on 28 September 1969 parliamentary constituency Landshut had been re-elected, with effect from 15 October 1969 from his position in fifth Bundestag down to thereby its active status as a Government to stop temporarily . This made it possible for him to be promoted to the Upper Government Council until the 6th Bundestag was constituted on October 20, 1969 and to re-enter the waiting status , thereby improving his civil service “waiting allowance” and pension entitlements.

Friedrich Zimmermann was always directly elected to the German Bundestag. Most recently, he achieved 57.4% of the first votes cast in the 1987 federal election in the Landshut constituency .

Public offices

Carpenter with Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo , President of Guatemala, at Gymnich Castle (1986)

On October 4, 1982, he was appointed Federal Minister of the Interior in the federal government led by Helmut Kohl ( Kohl I cabinet ) and then also belonged to the Kohl II cabinet (from March 30, 1983) and the Kohl III cabinet (March 12, 1987 to January 18, 1991). In the course of a cabinet reshuffle, his office as Minister of the Interior went to Wolfgang Schäuble on April 21, 1989 ; Zimmermann took over the management of the Federal Ministry of Transport (successor to Jürgen Warnke ).

After the federal election on December 2, 1990 , he resigned from the federal government in January 1991. His successor as Transport Minister in the Kohl IV cabinet was Günther Krause .

Private

Friedrich Zimmermann was Catholic , was third married and had two children.

He died on September 16, 2012 after a long illness in his holiday home near Filzmoos in Austria, where he had lived in seclusion.

Positions

Zimmermann was considered a law-and-order man .

Aliens Policy

Zimmermann took a line which led to the accusation from associations and churches that the intention was to displace foreigners and no longer to integrate them. The main concern was and is still today about the justification for a planned amendment to the Aliens Act , which in 1988 came unofficially to the public from the responsible Federal Ministry of the Interior. It says:

“The decision as to whether and to what extent foreigners should be allowed to stay permanently in the federal territory does not only depend on the factual possibilities of permanent integration of foreigners. In essence, it is not about an economic problem, but about a socio-political problem and the question of how the Federal Republic of Germany sees itself as a German state. A continuous immigration of foreigners, dependent only on the respective economic, financial and labor market situation, would change the Federal Republic of Germany profoundly. It meant renouncing the homogeneity of society, which is essentially determined by belonging to the German nation. The common German history, tradition, language and culture have lost their unifying and formative power. The Federal Republic of Germany would gradually develop into a multinational and multicultural community that would in the long run be burdened with the corresponding minority problems. In the interests of preserving internal peace, but primarily in the national interest, such a development must be countered from the outset. "

Leniency Notice

Under Zimmermann, the leniency program was introduced in 1989 , for which he was particularly committed.

Demonstration criminal law

In 1983 Zimmermann caused a sensation with his formulation "Nonviolent Resistance is Violence". However, this was in line with the practice of the Federal Court of Justice, which had already ruled in 1969 in the criminal case against Klaus Laepple that the "non-violent" blocking of trams by demonstrators who sit on the rails should be considered coercion with force (as opposed to coercion by threat) punishable under § 240 StGB. Only with its decision of January 10, 1995 did the Federal Constitutional Court come to a different conclusion. In 1985/86 Zimmermann pushed for a tightening of the criminal law against demonstrations ( ban on masking , reintroduction of the fact of breach of the peace ).

privacy

In 1988 Zimmermann made a push to restrict data protection . Among other things, his initiative envisaged expanding the exchange of data between the police and intelligence services and limiting the powers of the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection .

Environmental policy

Zimmermann was also responsible for environmental policy until the creation of an independent Ministry of the Environment in 1986. He was able to achieve a number of negotiating successes at the European level (including the introduction of unleaded petrol , catalytic converters ). His future transport policy concepts met with general recognition; however, his crisis management of the Chernobyl reactor accident (1986) was sharply criticized. Among other things, he stated that the catastrophe could “absolutely rule out” any danger to the German population.

On November 7, 1983, Zimmermann tapped the first unleaded gasoline in Germany at a Munich gas station.

Film funding

Herbert Achternbusch's work Das Gespenst from 1982 brought about a turning point for German auteur films . This film was produced on the basis of a premium of 300,000 DM promised by the Federal Ministry of the Interior . After protests in May 1983, Zimmermann, then the new Federal Minister of the Interior, canceled the outstanding installment of 75,000 marks on charges of blasphemy . The ghost thus turned into a scandalous film .

Zimmermann then implemented significant changes for the award of the federal film prizes . Among other things, the prize money for the next project should only make up 30 percent of the total production costs. In the Bundestag session on October 24, 1983, Zimmermann declared that he would not finance any films that no one except the producer wanted to see. This measure had serious consequences for German auteur films, as in future hardly any filmmaker would be able to pre-finance or even bring in the remaining 70 percent of a production.

Honors

publication

  • Cabinet pieces. Politics with ostrich and cabbage. Ullstein, Frankfurt a. M. and Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-548-33175-0 .

Movie

Zimmermann worked as a contemporary witness and interview partner in the documentary drama Death Game by Heinrich Breloer (1997) and in the documentary Starfighter - Mit Hightech in den Tod about the Starfighter affair by Kai Christiansen (2010).

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Zimmermann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Friedrich Zimmermann  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Ex-Interior Minister Zimmermann has died . ( Memento from September 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: tagesschau.de, September 16, 2012, accessed on September 16, 2012.
  2. ↑ Achim Schwarze: Thin board drill in Bonn - From the dissertations of our elite. Eichborn-Verlag Frankfurt / Main, 1984, p. 63.
  3. ↑ In his book Kabinettstücke , p. 259, Zimmermann described in 1991 how he helped the later animal rights activist and lawyer Andreas Grasmüller in the written examination: "Anderl, be quiet, I'll throw my solution over to you."
  4. ^ The chairmen of the CSU regional group in the German Bundestag. Hanns Seidel Foundation , accessed on March 26, 2018 .
  5. ↑ BT-Drs. 17/8134 of December 14, 2011: The Federal Government's response to the major question from the Die Linke ea .: Dealing with the Nazi past
  6. ↑ a b The man who loved hot irons . Southgerman newspaper. September 16, 2012. Retrieved June 18, 2017.
  7. ↑ Fools eaten . In: Der Spiegel . No. 39 , 1970 ( online ).
  8. ↑ Walter Ulbricht's heirs . Focus Online. June 15, 2011. Retrieved June 18, 2017.
  9. ↑ Style and stiletto . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50 , 1976 ( online ). “Despite the acquittal at the time, the politician was allowed to be called 'Old Oath Hand' with impunity, because this only means, so the Starnberg District Court ruled, 'that the person named in this way has often sworn or gladly raised his hand in an oath', whereby the underlying Statements may be questionable in some respects. Even the attribute 'perjury farmer' was found a little later by the District Court Judge Hruschka-Jaeger (a daughter of the CSU Bundestag Vice-President Richard Jaeger ) that could be afforded relatively inexpensively in Bavaria with a fine of 100 marks. ", Accessed on November 2, 2018
  10. ↑ Citizens trend . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 1969 ( online ).
  11. ^ Rolf Zundel: A parliament of government councilors? In: Die Zeit , No. 48/1969
  12. ↑ a b Ex-Interior Minister Friedrich Zimmermann died . WorldN24. September 16, 2012. Retrieved June 18, 2017.
  13. ↑ Quite good at shooting . In: Die Zeit , No. 50/1988
  14. ^ Draft for a law on the new regulation of the law on foreigners dated January 1st, 1988, Bonn, p. 23. Quoted from Günther Schultze: Xenophobia - where it comes from and what can be done about it . In: trade union monthly issues 7/1989, p. 404, 408, library.fes.de/gmh (PDF)
  15. ^ Wikiquote: Friedrich Zimmermann
  16. ↑ "Sit Blockades II"
  17. ↑ Not to be regulated by laws . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1986 ( online ).
  18. ↑ Wrong direction . In: Der Spiegel . No. 4 , 1988 ( online ).
  19. ↑ cf. z. B. 60 × Germany - 1986
  20. ↑ New types of gasoline are causing a stir . Springer Fachmedien, Munich. October 6, 2013. Retrieved June 18, 2017.
  21. ↑ 30 years ago there was the first "lead-free" . T-Online. November 6, 2013. Retrieved June 18, 2017.
  22. ↑ Disgusting, sourish . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1983, p. 191 ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Zimmermann, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zimmermann, Friedrich Walter (full name); Zimmermann, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (CSU), Member of the Bundestag and Federal Minister
DATE OF BIRTH July 18, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH September 16, 2012
Place of death Filzmoos , Austria