Kurt Gscheidle

Kurt Gscheidle (center) during a visit to Kiel on the occasion of the change at the top of the local post office (1975)

Kurt Gscheidle (born December 16, 1924 in Stuttgart , † February 22, 2003 in Saarbrücken ) was a German politician ( SPD ). From 1974 to 1982 he was Federal Minister for Post and Telecommunications , from 1974 to 1980 at the same time Federal Minister for Transport .

education and profession

From 1939 to 1942 Gscheidle completed an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic at the Deutsche Reichspost . From 1942 he took part in the Second World War as a soldier . In 1948 he was released from captivity and had been working in the postal service as a telecommunications technician since the end of 1948. From 1950 to 1951 he studied at the Dortmund Social Academy . There then followed a training for REFA - engineering .

In 1953 he switched to the Deutsche Postgewerkschaft (DPG) in Frankfurt am Main as a full-time official , where he was head of the secretariat for technology and economics until 1957, and then deputy federal chairman until 1969. In 1969 he was unanimously nominated as a candidate by the chairmen of the individual trade unions for the new election of the chairman of the German trade union federation . His choice was considered certain. However, after he made demands to reform the DGB, he had to give way before Heinz Oskar Vetter was elected .

Political party

Gscheidle had been a member of the SPD since 1956. He was assigned to the Godesberg wing , which later developed into the Seeheimer Kreis .

MP

Gscheidle was a city councilor in Oberursel . From 1961 to 1969 and from 1976 to 1980 he was a member of the German Bundestag . From 1961 he was directly elected member of the constituency 135 Obertaunuskreis in the 4th German Bundestag. In 1965 he lost the direct mandate to Walther Leisler Kiep and entered the 5th German Bundestag via the Hessian state list. In 1969, he was also elected to the 6th German Bundestag from third place on the state list, but already resigned his mandate on November 7, 1969 because of his appointment as permanent state secretary. From 1962 to 1969 he was also a member of the executive committee of the SPD parliamentary group. He ran as Federal Minister in 1976 in constituency 78 (Rheydt - Grevenbroich II), but was only elected to the 8th German Bundestag via the state list of North Rhine-Westphalia. In 1980, the SPD district of Niederrhein refused him a place on the state list after Gscheidle had rejected another direct candidacy for health reasons.

Public offices

From 1969 to 1974 Gscheidle was permanent state secretary in the Federal Ministry for the Post and Telecommunications. As head of the so-called Deutsche Bundespost Commission , he played a leading role in the development of principles for the economic management of the Bundespost , which had previously acted as a public administration . The draft of a law on the corporate constitution of the Deutsche Bundespost , submitted by the commission, failed, but essential measures could nevertheless be implemented.

On May 16, 1974, Gscheidle was appointed Federal Minister for Transport and for Post and Telecommunications in the federal government led by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt . In a short time he achieved that the Bundespost was working economically. He was unable to push through similar plans for the high-deficit Bundesbahn in public. He privatized smaller parts of the railway and post office and in 1978 planned a complete privatization of the railway with the exception of the rail network.

In 1980, Gscheidle introduced a charging time cycle for telephone calls within the local networks. Gscheidle had meanwhile acquired the reputation of being the first professionally qualified transport minister in the Federal Republic, but with his reforms and reform projects he increasingly created opponents within the party. He also represented the consistent implementation of the radical decree at Post and Bahn.

After the federal election in 1980 , the management of the post and transport ministries were separated and Gscheidle gave up the transport ministry. During the postal strike in November 1980, he ordered the use of civil servants in workplaces that were on strike, which, after extensive legal disputes, was finally declared inadmissible by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1993. On the occasion of a cabinet reshuffle, Gscheidle left the German government on April 28, 1982.

Others

The so-called Gscheidle stamp became known among philatelists . The former Post Minister Gscheidle had three sheets of the unissued special stamp for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow in his private possession. Due to the so-called Gscheidle error of his wife, who used these officially unissued stamps for franking, a few copies came into circulation in 1982 and 1983.

Awards

• 1974: Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class
• 1976: Great Cross of Merit
• 1978: Large Cross of Merit with star and shoulder ribbon
• 1978: Large gold medal on ribbon for services to the Republic of Austria

Web links

• Literature by and about Kurt Gscheidle in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)