Hermann Höcherl

Hermann Höcherl (1961)

Hermann Höcherl (born March 31, 1912 in Brennberg near Regensburg; † May 18, 1989 in Regensburg ) was a German politician of the CSU . He was Federal Minister of the Interior from 1961 to 1965 and Federal Minister of Food, Agriculture and Forestry from 1965 to 1969 .

Life and work

Höcherl, who was of the Roman Catholic faith , grew up in Loibling (municipality of Trasching, today part of the town of Roding in the district of Cham ) with his grandfather. After graduating from secondary school in Landshut in 1931 , Höcherl studied law and political science in Berlin , Aix-en-Provence and Munich , which he completed in 1934 with the legal traineeship. After his legal clerkship , he passed the Great State Examination in 1938 . He was then a court assessor in Regensburg until 1940 and then a public prosecutor until 1945 , interrupted by military service as a lieutenant and battery chief on the Eastern Front during World War II .

After the war, Höcherl was initially a casual worker in pipeline construction. In 1948 he was admitted to the bar. In 1950 he returned to the Bavarian civil service as a public prosecutor at the Deggendorf Regional Court . From 1951 to 1953 he was a local court advisor and chairman of the court of lay judges in Regensburg . In the 1950s he was deputy chairman of the administrative board of Sparkasse Regensburg-Land.

Parties

From 1931 to 1932 and from 1935 to 1945 Höcherl was a member of the NSDAP .

He had been a member of the CSU since 1949 and soon became a member of the Upper Palatinate district committee . In 1952 he was elected to the regional executive committee of his party.

Höcherl was a member of the selection committee of the two Union parties that proposed Ludwig Erhard as the new Federal President on February 24, 1959 ; However, Erhard was not ready to take on this office.

MP

From 1952 Höcherl was a member of the district council in the Regensburg district and chairman of the CSU parliamentary group there.

From 1953 to 1976 he was a member of the German Bundestag . From 1957 to 1961 he was chairman of the CSU regional group and deputy chairman of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group . From 1969 to 1972 he was deputy chairman of the CSU state group and also chairman of the mediation committee. From January 21, 1971 to 1976 Höcherl was chairman of the budget, taxes, money and credit working group of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group.

Höcherl has always entered the Bundestag as a directly elected member of the Regensburg constituency .

Public offices

Federal Minister of Agriculture Hermann Höcherl (right)

After the general election in 1961 , on November 14, 1961, he was appointed Federal Minister of the Interior in the federal government led by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer . He initially retained this office under Federal Chancellor Ludwig Erhard . After the federal election in 1965 , he was appointed Federal Minister for Food, Agriculture and Forests on October 26, 1965. In this office he also belonged to the cabinet of the grand coalition led by Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger . After the 1969 Bundestag election , he resigned from the federal government on October 21, 1969.

He received massive criticism and even called for his resignation, as he said at the beginning of September 1963 during the wiretapping affair as Federal Minister of the Interior that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had had telephone tapping measures carried out by Allied agencies in violation of the telephone secrecy of the Basic Law : "The officials can don't walk around with the Basic Law under your arm all day. "

In 1971 the film about Hermann Höcherl by the Kassel film collective caused a scandal at the Hof Film Festival.

Höcherl was a member of the Babenbergia Munich fraternity, today Franco-Bavaria Munich fraternity .

Honors

1959: Bavarian Order of Merit

1965: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic

1967: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

1968: Grand Cross of the Order of the Falcons

1969: Order against seriousness

1970: Great Golden State Medal from the Bavarian Ministry of Agriculture

1982: Silver Citizen Medal of the City of Regensburg

1986: Bavarian Constitutional Medal in Gold

Ring of honor of the district of Regensburg

Honorary citizen of Brennberg

Publications

The world between hunger and abundance. 1969.
with Alex Möller , and Werner Mertes : experiences. Criticism of the Bundestag and what three MdB a. D. say about it. Bonn 1976.
I stayed the forest farmer boy. In: Rudolf Pörtner : My parents' house. A German family album. Vienna 1984, pp. 143-147.
Has the German Bundestag done its job justice? In: From Politics and Contemporary History . 1985, No. 6/85, pp. 11-15.
Practical test for market forces. In: Orientations to Economic and Social Policy. Bonn 1988.

literature

Wolf J. Bell : Hermann Höcherl. Berto Verlag, Bonn 1964 ( do you actually know the? 10).
Walter Henkels : 99 Bonn heads , reviewed and supplemented edition, Fischer-Bücherei, Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 124ff.
Helge Dvorak: Höcherl, Hermann. In: Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft . Volume I: Politicians . Part 2: F-H. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0809-X .
Hermann Höcherl the Younger: "If one of us dies, I'll move to town". Serious and cheerful from the life of a great little man. Attenkofer, Straubing 2005, ISBN 3-936511-10-1 .
Eckhard Jesse : Hermann Höcherl. In: Udo Kempf , Hans-Georg Merz (Ed.): Chancellor and Minister 1949–1998. Biographical lexicon of the German federal governments. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-531-13407-8 , pp. 320-325.
Reiner Vogel : Hermann Höcherl. Approaching a political person. Pustet, Regensburg 1988, ISBN 3-7917-1142-3 .