Hans-Christian Ströbele

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Hans-Christian Ströbele (2017)

Hans-Christian Ströbele (born June 7, 1939 in Halle an der Saale ) is a German lawyer and politician of the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen party . From 2002 to 2009 he was deputy chairman of the Bundestag faction Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen and was the longest-serving member of the Parliamentary Control Committee (PKGr) of the German Bundestag for the control of the federal intelligence services . He won the direct mandate for the Bundestag constituency of Berlin-Friedrichshain - Kreuzberg - Prenzlauer Berg Ost in the Bundestag elections in 2002, 2005, 2009 and 2013 as the only member of his party's Bundestag . He did not run for the 2017 federal election .

biography

Family, youth and studies

Ströbele, grandson of Franz Ströbele , is a son of the chemist Rudolf Ströbele from Leonberg in Württemberg , who was employed by the Buna-Werke in Schkopau . Rudolf Ströbele received his doctorate in 1937 from Richard Kuhn , who later won the Nobel Prize . Hans-Christian Ströbele's mother had studied law, but was unable to pursue her wish to become a judge at the time because, as a woman in the Nazi era, she was expected to bear children and was therefore refused to do a legal clerkship .

After graduating from the Albert-Schweitzer-Gymnasium in Marl in 1959 , Hans-Christian Ströbele did his military service as a gunner with the Air Force in Aurich , but refused the usual promotion to private . After completing his military service, Ströbele studied political science and law at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and the Free University of Berlin from 1960 , which he completed with the first state examination in law. In 1969 he passed the second state examination in law and was admitted to the bar . He has been married to Juliana Ströbele-Gregor since 1967. He lives in the Berlin district of Mitte in the Hansaviertel district .

Hans-Christian Ströbele is a nephew of the soccer reporter Herbert Zimmermann . Hans-Christian Ströbele and his three siblings hold the rights to the original broadcast of the 1954 World Cup final . Unless the broadcast is repeated on ARD , each publication must be negotiated. Ströbele takes on the legal representation for his siblings. Ströbele donates the four-digit amount achieved. As a child, Herbert Zimmermann sometimes took him to interviews, for example with Sepp Herberger and Fritz Walter , and also to football games.

Lawyer and supporter of RAF members and the Socialist Lawyers' Collective (1970–1979)

Since June 3, 1967, he served as a trainee lawyer in Horst Mahler 's law office . On May 1, 1969, together with Mahler and the later constitutional judge Klaus Eschen from Berlin, he founded the so-called Socialist Lawyers' Collective in Berlin . The aim was to offer legal support to demonstrators and other activists from the then student and 68 movement , who were exposed to numerous criminal proceedings.

From 1970 Ströbele took over the defense of members of the RAF , u. a. Andreas Baader . In 1975, Ströbele was excluded from the defense for abuse of attorney's privileges before the Stammheim trial began . In 1980, Ströbele was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence of 18 months by the 2nd Large Criminal Chamber at the Berlin Regional Court for supporting a criminal organization (Section 129 (1) of the Criminal Code), because he had helped to build up the RAF after the first wave of arrests in 1972 and was involved in the illegal information system of the RAF was involved. This judgment was reduced to ten months in 1982 by the 10th Large Criminal Chamber of the Berlin Regional Court. For the chamber, Ströbeles involvement in the RAF was a "particularly difficult case" of support, since the association he supported was geared towards "committing murder and explosives crimes". Ströbele denies the allegations and stated that the information system was only used as a defense lawyer for the captured members of the RAF in the years 1970 to 1975.

The Ströbele biographer Stefan Reinecke noted that Ströbele saw members of the RAF as “members of the 68 collective”; no “crazy desperados, they were political people, they were our comrades”.

Lawyer in the 1976/77 student strike in Berlin

Ströbele reported on January 11, 1977 at an event in the Audimax of the Technical University of Berlin on the trial against Christoph Dreher and Peter Wietheger.

During the student strike in 1976/77 ("Berufsverbotestreik"), Hans-Christian Ströbele defended two students who had been arrested in a probably provoked incident with leaflets distributed by a sect. The imprisonment of Christoph Dreher and Peter Wietheger led to an occupation of the church in protest and aroused public attention. It was thanks to Ströbeles defense that both students were released with fines.

In 1979 the socialist collective of lawyers disbanded. Ströbele was also active as a lawyer afterwards. In 1988 he was a defense attorney in the trial of Hansjoachim Rosenthal , the first murderer convicted in Germany through DNA analysis ( genetic fingerprint ).

Political allegations against Ströbele

In February 2001, a Stasi protocol became known that gave the impression that Ströbele had approved attacks by the PLO or aircraft hijackings in the 1970s in order to draw attention to political issues. Ströbele obtained a reply: “I have never expressed myself in this way. The considerations laid down in this MfS paper by no means corresponded to my view of things. I did not advocate acts of terrorism. "

The former Prime Minister of Bavaria, Günther Beckstein, described Ströbele's statements on the RAF in 2007 as "shameful" and as "a mockery of the victims of the brutal RAF terror, when Ströbele, who has been sentenced to imprisonment, is still trivializing the RAF ideology" . Ströbele said that he saw in the criticism of the imprisoned ex-terrorist Christian Klar of capitalism “no call for violence or terrorism”.

Co-founder of the Berliner AL and the taz (1978/79)

Hans-Christian Ströbele, 1987

From 1970 to 1975 Ströbele was a member of the SPD . The party excluded him because he had described the RAF terrorists as "dear comrades" in a letter. In 1978 he was one of the co-founders of the Alternative List for Democracy and Environmental Protection , which later became the state association of the Greens in Berlin .

Ströbele belonged to the closest circle of founders of an alternative daily newspaper for West Berlin and West Germany . Together with Götz Aly and Max Thomas Mehr , he planned a corresponding left-wing project in 1978 , also in the course of the Tunix Congress . The taz came out months later, every day since April 17, 1979.

Member of the Bundestag (1985–1987)

About the then ruling the Greens rotation method moved Ströbele as substitutes for Dirk Schneider on 31 March 1985 in the German Bundestag after. Rebekka Schmidt , who was actually intended as a successor, had decided not to take on Schneider's mandate. Ströbele was a member of the Bundestag until the end of the 10th electoral term in 1987. During this legislative period, Ströbele was a member of the legal committee and the Flick committee of inquiry for the Greens .

Constructor of the red-green coalition in Berlin (1989/90)

Ströbele belonged to the left wing of the party from the start, but supported the Realos in the question of whether the Green coalitions should enter into coalitions with the SPD . He was considered the designer of the red-green coalition in Berlin . After a speech by Christian Ströbele at the Federal Assembly in Duisburg in March 1989, who saw a “chance of the century” in a red-green coalition in Berlin, the delegates supported the Berlin coalition course with a large majority.

Federal Party Spokesman (1990/91)

Ströbele (far left) during a press conference on October 15, 1990

At the Federal Assembly in Dortmund in June 1990, Ströbele was elected spokesman for the federal party, one of the three party leaders of the Greens with equal rights. The other board spokesmen were Renate Damus and Heide Rühle . The board of directors began its work under difficult starting conditions after the wing battles between Realos and Fundis had increasingly crushed the party. Ströbele in particular turned out to be a figure of integration. Ströbele tried particularly hard to cooperate with the East German citizens' movements. On December 4, 1990, the West German Greens merged with the Green Party in the GDR . He distanced himself sharply from the PDS and clearly delimited the positions of the Greens from those of the SPD. His rhetoric was equally radical, clear and precise, but rarely stubborn or uncompromising.

The biggest debacle in the history of the Greens also occurred during the time of this federal executive , when the party failed to enter the Bundestag in the 1990 federal election. In favor of the GDR's citizens' movements, Ströbele pushed through before the Federal Constitutional Court that West and East Germany should be regarded as separate electoral areas, to which the threshold clause applied. He described the state treaty on monetary, economic and social union as the "largest land grab by German industry since the colonial wars, apart from the Nazi era", and accused the black-yellow coalition under Helmut Kohl of driving a new one Nationalism. He compared the approval of the SPD with their approval of the war credits of 1914. In this situation he spoke out clearly against an alliance with the Social Democrats. The campaign slogan “ Everyone is talking about Germany. We're talking about the weather ”made clear the critical attitude of the Greens to German reunification , which dominated the general election campaign of all other parties, and at the same time the fear that environmental issues would take a back seat in the unification euphoria . With this campaign strategy, the Greens failed at the five percent hurdle . Only Bündnis 90 and the East German Greens succeeded in entering the Bundestag in the electoral area of ​​the new federal states.

In February 1991, he resigned from the spokesperson's office after his position on the Second Gulf War caused controversy within the party. For Ströbele, the fact that Israel was fired at by Saddam Hussein's Iraq with R-17 rockets was “the logical, almost inevitable consequence of Israel's policy”. He also spoke out against the delivery of Patriot anti -aircraft missiles to Israel. This opinion, which he expressed as head of an Israeli delegation of the Greens in an interview with Henryk M. Broder in Jerusalem in 1991 , after it was published in the Jerusalem Post , the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the taz, led to a political scandal, which among other things led to the premature termination of the led a green visit to Israel. Two months after Ströbele, in April 1991, Renate Damus and Heide Rühle also resigned .

Berlin local and state politics (1992–1998)

In 1992 Ströbele took over the chairmanship of the Greens parliamentary group in the district assembly of Berlin-Tiergarten . From 1995 to 1997 he was a member of the state executive committee.

Member of the Bundestag (1998-2017)

In 1998 he moved back into the Bundestag via the Berlin state list. During the red-green federal government from 1998 to 2005 (Cabinets Schröder I and Schröder II ) he developed into a permanent critic of the Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer .

Before the federal election in 2002, he was defeated in the inner-party candidacy to a promising place on the list and stood with little prospects as a direct candidate in the federal constituency of Berlin-Friedrichshain - Kreuzberg - Prenzlauer Berg Ost (constituency 84). Ströbele carried out a very personalized election campaign, refrained from using the advertising material provided and took positions which, on important points, were decidedly against the party program and the politics of his own party. He particularly distanced himself from the Greens' foreign policy course. One of his campaign slogans was "Voting Ströbele means torturing fishermen". Shortly before the election, he was hit on the back of the head with a telescopic baton by a convicted neo-Nazi . In the election, Ströbele surprisingly received the most votes (31.6%). This was the first direct mandate for his party; Ströbele moved back into the Bundestag.

Hans-Christian Ströbele, 2006

For the 2005 Bundestag election in autumn 2005, Ströbele decided not to stand on the state list. But he ran again in the Berlin constituency 83 for a direct mandate in the Bundestag. His strongest competitors were the SPD candidate , Ahmet İyidirli , and Cornelia Reinauer from the Left Party . In the election on September 18, 2005 , he again received the highest number of first votes in his constituency (43.2%) and entered the Bundestag with a direct mandate. In this election, he was also the only Green man who made it into the Bundestag through a direct mandate. Ströbele also ran for the 2009 federal election as a direct candidate in his constituency, this time against Halina Wawzyniak , Björn Böhning , Vera Lengsfeld and Markus Löning , and won it with 46.8% of the votes.

From 2002 to 2009 Ströbele was the coordinator of the working group Law, Women, Family, Seniors, Education, Youth of the Bundestag parliamentary group Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen and thus also deputy parliamentary group chairman. Since 2002 he has been a member of the Parliamentary Control Committee for the Control of Intelligence Services (PKGr) of the Bundestag, which oversees the work of the federal intelligence services . Ströbele was the representative of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen in the committee of inquiry into the party donation affair surrounding the former Chancellor Helmut Kohl . He was also a member of the so-called BND investigative committee of the Bundestag, which was supposed to examine whether and how the German foreign intelligence service was involved in illegal actions after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 ( abductions , especially so-called CIA torture flights, questioning of tortured persons , the El Masri cases , Kurnaz , Zammar ) were involved and what responsibility the federal government at the time bore. The investigations also included the spying of journalists by the BND. Ströbele has been a member of the Legal Committee of the German Bundestag since 1998 . He was also a full member from 1998 to 2005 and a deputy member from 2005 to 2009 in the Committee for Economic Cooperation and Development ; since 2009 he has been a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee .

In the 2013 Bundestag election , he was the only member of the Alliance 90 / The Greens party to win a direct mandate for the Bundestag with 39.9% of the first votes .

In December 2016, Ströbele announced that it would no longer run in the 2017 federal election.

Political positions and criticism

Hans-Christian Ströbele at an anti-fascist demonstration in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg (2008)

Ströbele appeared again and again as an influential corrective when green basic values ​​and principles appeared threatened. He is on the left of the party. His most important areas of work are legal, security and development policy.

How much Ströbele is perceived as a stimulant figure was shown by the reactions to an interview after the 2006 World Cup . Ströbele reported that he “felt a bit uncomfortable” when the German flag was to be seen “everywhere and in crowds, on cars, in gardens and on balconies” and that excessive flagging was a little “of national overemphasis, of nationalistic tendencies “Remember. But he has nothing against the normal flagging on the Reichstag building, for example. Thereupon a storm of indignation broke out among politicians from the CDU and FDP.

Civil rights

Ströbele is committed to the preservation and further development of civil rights . In this context, he opposes data retention , the great eavesdropping, and the increased criminalization of graffiti sprayers. He is in favor of greater transparency and contradicts the critics of Wikileaks . For many years he has advocated the legalization and decriminalization of cannabis . He also appeared as a speaker at the Hanfparade . In 2002 his saying “ Release the hemp! “, Which served as the basis for a successful song by Stefan Raab .

In his functions in bodies and committees of the Bundestag, Ströbele repeatedly expresses himself very critically in public about the intelligence services and their work. At demonstrations and major events in which he regularly takes part, he often acts as an intermediary between demonstrators and the police.

In the course of the surveillance and espionage affair in 2013 , Ströbele criticized violations of civil rights by the American National Security Agency (NSA). After it became known on October 24, 2013 that the NSA had apparently also bugged Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone for years, Ströbele suggested summoning whistleblower and former NSA employee Edward Snowden as a witness before a committee of inquiry that was to be set up. On October 31, 2013, he flew to Moscow with journalists Georg Mascolo and John Goetz to meet Snowden. Basically, according to Ströbele after the three-hour meeting, Snowden is ready to make a statement in Germany once all legal framework conditions have been clarified. A day later, Ströbele reported on the meeting with Snowden before the federal press conference in Berlin. In addition, Ströbele presented a letter that Snowden had given him for the federal government and in which he again declares that he is ready to help clear up the NSA affair. Ströbele was a deputy member of the NSA committee of inquiry .

The arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on April 11, 2019 after the withdrawal of his right to asylum criticized Ströbele and turned against his threatened extradition to the USA. He called the circumstances of Assange's arrest in Ecuador's embassy in London "extremely dubious".

Bundeswehr operations

Ströbele is a vehement opponent of Bundeswehr missions abroad , but does not describe himself as a pacifist and, for example, supported a collection of weapons for insurgents in El Salvador in the 1980s . He voted against the use of NATO in Kosovo , against the participation of Germany and the German armed forces in the Operation Enduring Freedom , but for the Afghanistan deployment of the Bundeswehr to peacekeeping . He voted against the participation of the Bundeswehr in the international security presence in Kosovo ( KFOR ).

migration

In November 2005, Ströbele started a discussion about the German citizenship of Pope Benedict XVI. on. According to Ströbeles, the Pope would have lost his German citizenship by receiving the Vatican citizenship , which Joseph Ratzinger had as Prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith since 1981, since according to Section 25 (1) of the Citizenship Act (StAG) everyone loses German citizenship as soon as he has one applied for and accepted foreign citizenship. However, it is common practice that citizenship of the Vatican City State does not lead to the abandonment of the previous citizenship. With his request to the federal government, Ströbele did not want to question the Pope's German citizenship, but rather to draw attention to the fact that someone loses his German citizenship as soon as he takes on another citizenship.

Ströbele made headlines several times with demands on migration policy. So he proposed to introduce a Muslim holiday and delete a Christian one instead. In May 2006 it was reported in some media that Ströbele was demanding a Turkish translation of the German national anthem. However, he only replied to a question from the tabloid BZ whether he could imagine that “given the many people from Turkey who live in Germany, the German national anthem could be translated into Turkish and sung in Turkish” . According to his own statements, he never asked for an official translation. In the BZ , Ströbele was quoted as saying that it was a “sign of integration” and a “symbol for the multilingualism of Germany”. In the March 20, 2007 issue of Menschen bei Maischberger , he showed a Turkish translation of the German Basic Law that was published by the Bundestag and on the back of the cover was also a Turkish translation of the German national anthem. This edition was Ströbeles statement after two years and thus appeared even before the discussion centered around him. Furthermore, Ströbele asked in an interview with the broadcaster n-tv that a Muslim counterpart to Das Wort zum Sonntag should be considered.

Euro policy

As the only member of the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Christian Ströbele voted on June 29, 2012 against the ESM and the Fiscal Compact , which he considers constitutionally dubious and politically irresponsible.

Political party

Within the party, he persistently advocated maintaining the principle of the separation of office and mandate . In 2002 he was largely responsible for Fritz Kuhn and Claudia Roth having to resign from their office against the will of the party leadership.

In the debate about Agenda 2010 , Ströbele submitted a motion to reintroduce the wealth tax at the special party conference in Cottbus in June 2003 . The request was accepted, but the demand could not be enforced in the red-green coalition.

“Making politics is what drives me. It should also be a drive for others to help change society - towards more humane, self-determined relationships. That is my philosophy of life. "

- Hans-Christian Ströbele : Berliner Zeitung, 2018

Awards

literature

Web links

Commons : Hans-Christian Ströbele  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Statistics of the German Bundestag on direct mandates by party ( memento of July 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on July 8, 2016
  2. a b Hans-Christian Ströbele in an interview with Markus Decker: Hans-Christian Ströbele “All-inclusive on Mallorca would be horror for me”. www.berliner-zeitung.de, April 18, 2018, accessed on May 5, 2018 .
  3. TV interview as part of the alpha forum interview series on February 23, 2016 on BR-alpha. In this interview, Ströbele denied the interviewer's statement that his mother was a lawyer, and gave the explanation described here.
  4. welt.de: Ströbele, his wife and the fish food ball affair
  5. ^ Hans-Christian Ströbele - perpetrator out of conviction . Der Tagesspiegel from October 24, 2016.
  6. a b c The bonus miracle of Berlin , zeit.de, January 10, 2004
  7. Cf. on Ströbeles activity in the Stammheim trial and on his exclusion as defense counsel: Christopher Tenfelde: The Red Army Fraction and the Criminal Justice. Anti-terror laws and their implementation using the example of the Stammheim process. Jonscher Verlag, Osnabrück 2009, ISBN 978-3-9811399-3-8 , p. 200; 204 ff.
  8. a b 80s: The court saw Ströbele as an RAF construction worker , focus.de, July 18, 2009, accessed on May 14, 2010
  9. cicero.de of January 25, 2017, HANS-CHRISTIAN STRÖBELE AND THE RAF- Deeply involved - Were the RAF lawyers more than just defenders, namely supporters of terrorism?
  10. ^ Stefan Reinecke: Ströbele: Die Biografie , berlin-Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-8270-7874-2 .
  11. ^ Der Tagesspiegel , Berlin, December 16, 1976.
  12. ^ RAF lawyer Ströbele allegedly supported by the GDR. Green politicians are said to have approved acts of terrorism. Handelsblatt , February 18, 2001, accessed December 18, 2012 .
  13. Sebastian Fischer: Beckstein accuses Ströbele of mocking the RAF victims. Quarrel over ex-terrorist Sure. Spiegel Online, March 1, 2007, accessed December 18, 2012 .
  14. ^ History of the taz. die tageszeitung , archived from the original on August 17, 2010 ; Retrieved December 18, 2012 .
  15. a b c d e Saskia Richter : Leadership without power? The speakers and chairmen of the Greens , in: The party chairmen in the Federal Republic of Germany 1949–2005 ; edited by Daniela Forkmann and Michael Schlieben, VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2005, p. 187.
  16. Green History - 1989. In: gruene.de. Retrieved September 9, 2019 .
  17. a b Joachim Raschke / Gudrun Heinrich: The Greens. How they became what they are . Bund, Cologne 1993. p. 923.
  18. a b Found eating . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1991, pp. 26 ( online ). Quote: "Because of strange Israel statements, Green spokesman Ströbele had to resign. Now everything should have been just a misunderstanding. "
  19. Die Irren von Zion, by Henryk M. Broder, Dtv (October 1999) ISBN 3-423-30738-2
  20. a b c d Saskia Richter: Leadership without power? The speakers and chairmen of the Greens , in: The party chairmen in the Federal Republic of Germany 1949–2005 ; edited by Daniela Forkmann and Michael Schlieben, VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2005, p. 210.
  21. ^ The Bundestag election 2005. Analysis of the election campaign and the election results , edited by Frank Brettschneider, Oskar Niedermayer and Bernhard Wessels, VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2007, p. 124.
  22. ^ A b Christian Neuner-Duttenhofer: Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen in the federal election campaign 2002 , LIT Verlag, Münster 2004, p. 99.
  23. Violence in the election campaign: Green politician Ströbele attacked by neo-Nazis , spiegel.de, September 20, 2002
  24. Bundestag election 2009. Berlin-Friedrichshain - Kreuzberg - Prenzlauer Berg Ost (WK 84). In: tagesschau.de. Retrieved September 9, 2019 .
  25. ^ Members of the Parliamentary Control Committee - 18th Bundestag ( Memento from July 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), Bundestag , accessed on September 19, 2014.
  26. Ströbele no longer competes. (HTTPS) In: tagesschau.de. December 13, 2016, accessed December 14, 2016 .
  27. zeit.de December 14, 2016: A real conservative
  28. a b c Storm of indignation against Ströbeles flag frustration , spiegel.de, December 5, 2008
  29. Pros and cons of data retention. Wirtschaftswoche , December 1, 2010, accessed December 18, 2012 .
  30. In case of doubt for clarification . Article in the taz from December 19, 2010.
  31. Stefan Raab / Discography # Chart placements
  32. Commentary on May 1st - ritual and babble , tagesspiegel.de
  33. Laura Smith-Spark and Frederik Pleitgen (CNN): Lawmaker: Edward Snowden wants to testify, says he's no 'enemy of America'. Retrieved November 1, 2013 .
  34. Arne Meyer: Snowden ready to testify in Germany. Archived from the original on November 2, 2013 ; Retrieved November 1, 2013 .
  35. ^ Left party and Green Party politician Ströbele criticize Assange's arrest in London (Die Zeit). April 11, 2019, accessed April 12, 2019 .
  36. ^ Georg Bauer, Annette Beutler, Nicola Brüning, Henning Krumrey, Olaf Opitz, Burkhard von Pappenheim: Rot-Grün: Sumord auf Raten , Focus Online from November 19, 2001
  37. ^ Bundestag: overwhelming majority for Afghanistan mission , Spiegel Online from December 22, 2001
  38. Declaration on voting behavior on the Kosovo mission (June 4, 2008)
  39. Muslims should invite their neighbors , Focus , October 14, 2009
  40. Deutschlandlied in Turkish. stroebele-online.de
  41. Deutschlandlied in Turkish. Retrieved December 18, 2012 .
  42. ^ Stenographic report of the 188th session of the German Bundestag , Deutscher Bundestag, p. 132.
  43. ESM and the Fiscal Compact are the wrong means against the financial and banking crisis , stroebele-online.de, June 29, 2012
  44. Christoph Butterwegge: Crisis and Future of the Social State , VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2006, p. 208.