Gebhard Müller

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Gebhard Müller, 1949
Signature of Gebhard Müller

Gebhard Müller (* 17th April 1900 in Füramoos , Oberamt Waldsee , † 7. August 1990 in Stuttgart ) was a German politician of the CDU , President of Württemberg-Hohenzollern , Prime Minister of Baden-Wuerttemberg and then as a lawyer from 1959 to 1971 President of the Federal Constitutional Court .

Youth and training

Müller's birthplace in Füramoos

Gebhard Müller was born as the fifth child of the Upper Swabian elementary school teacher Johannes Müller (1865–1945) and his wife Josefa geb. Müller (1871–1958), born and grew up at his place of birth Füramoos, and from 1906 at his father's new place of work in Ludwigsburg . He attended the Catholic elementary school in Ludwigsburg and later the humanistic high school in Rottweil . In the last year of the First World War he was drafted into the military and was stationed in the Ludwigsburg Feuerseekaserne with the 3rd replacement battery of the 29th Field Artillery Regiment without having to go into the field. From 1919 Müller first studied Catholic theology , history and philosophy at the Eberhard-Karls-University in Tübingen , but switched to law and political science . After the First State Examination in Tübingen (1926), the Second State Examination and the doctorate to Dr. iur. in Tübingen; The topic of his dissertation of December 13, 1929 was: The criminal law fight against usury in history, in the current law and in the drafts of a general German criminal code . In Tübingen he became a member of the Catholic student association KStV Alamannia , in Berlin, where he studied in 1923, at the association KStV Askania-Burgundia in KV . Later he became honorary philistine of the connections of the KV Ripuaria-Heidelberg and Laetitia-Karlsruhe.

Müller completed his legal traineeship at the Ludwigsburg District Court , the Stuttgart Regional Court and the Stuttgart Public Prosecutor's Office, the Ludwigsburg Oberamt and a law firm. After receiving his doctorate, he was first deputy magistrate in Stuttgart and Tübingen from June 1929, before moving to the administration of the Rottenburg diocese on September 1, 1930 as part of a temporary leave of absence from the civil service as a tax officer . Like his father, he was a member of the Center Party until 1933 and was its local and district chairman in Rottenburg am Neckar .

time of the nationalsocialism

In spring 1933, after the end of his leave of absence, he decided to return to the civil service and was deputy magistrate in Göppingen and at the Waiblingen district court . From 1934 he was a councilor at the district court of Göppingen . He belonged to the Association of National Socialist German Jurists (BNSDJ) and the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV) and was a supporting member of the SS . Despite his state offices during the Nazi era and his affiliation to Nazi organizations, he never became a party member and he is certified to be strictly legal . He voted no in the referendum on the annexation of Austria and put down subsequent investigations by the Gestapo . At the Reichspogromnacht 1938 he filed a complaint against a district administrator and other operations managers who refused to use the fire brigade against the fire in the Göppingen synagogue and was then transferred to the Stuttgart district court as district judge .

Shortly before the beginning of the Second World War , Gebhard Müller was drafted into the Wehrmacht and took part in the French campaign as a clerk . After his return he married Marianne Lutz, with whom he had three sons. In 1944 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht again, where he was stationed as a non-commissioned officer in Flak Replacement Department 45 in Rottweil and was deployed near Berlin in the spring of 1945. In May 1945 he became a prisoner of war near the Bavarian-Austrian border, but was released after a few days due to his acquaintance with the executed Württemberg state president and resistance fighter Eugen Bolz .

State President, Prime Minister, Federal Constitutional Court

He was appointed by the occupying powers as chief public prosecutor and finally as ministerial director of the Ministry of Justice. In 1947 he was elected in Biberach an der Riss as the state chairman of the CDU Württemberg-Hohenzollern , shortly afterwards as a representative of the constituency of Tübingen as a member of the state parliament , to which he belonged until 1952.

On August 13, 1948, he was elected President of the State of Württemberg-Hohenzollern as the successor to the late Lorenz Bock . He held this office until the founding of Baden-Württemberg in 1952. Gebhard Müller made a name for himself in the dismantling dispute with the French, which lasted from April 1948 to April 1949. During his tenure, he refused to pardon the 28-year-old murderer Richard Schuh , whose execution on February 18, 1949 in the prison in Tübingen was the last execution ordered by a West German court.

In the disputes before the founding of the new federal state of Baden-Württemberg, initially called the south-west state , Müller was a decisive champion for the new state together with the Prime Minister of Württemberg-Baden Reinhold Maier (FDP / DVP) and the Bundestag member Kurt Georg Kiesinger .

On April 25, 1952, however, it was not Gebhard Müller who was the chairman of the strongest parliamentary group, but Reinhold Maier, who forged a coalition of the SPD, FDP / DVP and the BHE refugee party against the CDU. The official reason was that the CDU did not stand up for the south-western state.

After the CDU's victory in the 1953 Bundestag election , in which Müller was elected to the Bundestag , he was elected Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg on September 30, 1953 and therefore resigned his newly won Bundestag mandate on November 11, 1953. Until 1958 he headed an oversized coalition made up of the CDU, SPD , FDP / DVP and BHE . In the 1956 election , the KPD - a few months before its party ban - was the only opposition party to leave the state parliament, so that Müller now led an all-party coalition .

Gebhard Müller's grave

During his term of office as Prime Minister Ludwig Sprauer, the only medical officer sentenced to life in prison for carrying out the euthanasia measures of the National Socialists, was suspended . In a letter to the Justice Ministry dated July 23, 1954, Müller wrote: “The part of the converted prison sentence that has not yet been served remains suspended in accordance with the order of the Freiburg public prosecutor of February 24 / April 14, 1951.” Müller also approved Sprauer a monthly maintenance payment of 450 DM. In addition to Sprauer, Müller also granted the psychiatrist Arthur Schreck , who had been sentenced to life and an additional ten years in prison but already released from prison in 1954, monthly maintenance of 450 DM.

On December 9, 1958, Gebhard Müller resigned as Prime Minister, after he was appointed judge in the First Senate by the Bundestag on November 13 and President of the Federal Constitutional Court on November 14 by the Federal Council . He took up this post on February 13, 1959, and retired in 1971. On January 1, 1959, he had resigned his state parliament mandate, which he had held for the constituency of Tübingen since 1952. His successor was Jakob Krauss .

In 1990 Gebhard Müller died at the age of 90 and was buried in the forest cemetery in Stuttgart .

Honors

Gebhard Müller was an honorary member of the Catholic student associations AV Guestfalia Tübingen and AV Cheruskia Tübingen , both in the CV .

The commercial school in Biberach an der Riß has been called the Gebhard Müller School since 1984 . In his birthplace Eberhardzell there is the Gebhard Müller School. In 2006, Gebhard-Müller-Strasse in Karlsruhe was named after him.

In Stuttgart, a non-accessible intersection is called Gebhard-Müller-Platz. It is located in the center of the city between Schillerstraße - Wagenburgtunnel on the one hand and the B 14 .

See also

literature

  • Paul Feuchte: Müller, Gebhard. In: Bernd Ottnad (Hrsg.): Baden-Württembergische Biographien. Volume 2. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-17-014117-1 , pp. 324-332 ( leo-bw.de ).
  • Frank Raberg : Gebhard Müller's life story. In: Günther Bradler, Peter Bohl, Kurt Hochstuhl: Nachlass Gebhard Müller. Inventory of the holdings Q 1/35 in the main state archive in Stuttgart (= publications of the state archive administration Baden-Württemberg. Vol. 54). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart a. a. 2000, ISBN 3-17-016382-5 .
  • Udo Rauch, Antje Zacharias (ed.): Seven years of the state capital. Tübingen and Württemberg-Hohenzollern 1945 to 1952 (= Tübingen catalogs. No. 61). Kulturamt, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-910090-49-4 .
  • Kurt Hochstuhl, Peter Bohl, Frank Raberg (arr.): Gebhard Müller 1900–1990. Christian - lawyer - politician . Catalog for the traveling exhibition of the Stuttgart Main State Archives. Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-00-005866-4 .
  • Gerhard Taddey (Ed.): Gebhard Müller. A life for law and politics. Symposium on the occasion of his 100th birthday on April 17, 2000 in Stuttgart (= publication of the Commission for historical regional studies in Baden-Württemberg. Series B: Research. Vol. 148). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-17-016897-5 .
  • Walter Rudi Wand : Dr. Gebhard Müller. Democrat, statesman, President of the Federal Constitutional Court. In: Yearbook of Public Law of the Present 34 (1985), pp. 89-104.
  • Paul-Ludwig WeinachtMüller, Gebhard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , pp. 389-391 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Gebhard Müller  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Raberg: Gebhard Müller's life story. 2000.