Jost Pfeiffer

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Jost Pfeiffer (born December 29, 1920 in Aachen ; † January 14, 2010 there ) was a German local politician and honorary citizen of the city of Aachen.

Live and act

The son of the Aachen businessman Kurt Pfeiffer (1893–1987) and Johanna Bode (1894–1973) began studying medicine in Vienna and Munich after graduating from high school in 1938 . Due to several interruptions due to war missions in the Second World War , he was only able to complete his studies in 1944 with the exam. In the same year he obtained his doctorate with the dissertation "On the recurrence of tumors after bone transplants".

In the following years, however, the turmoil after the war forced him to change his life plan. After his return to the completely destroyed Aachen in August 1945, Pfeiffer felt obliged to rebuild the clothing store in Aachen , which had been run by his father and built up by his grandfather, together with his father. Later he also took over the management of the soon flourishing business and kept this until it was closed at the end of the 1990s.

Also from 1945 onwards, in cooperation with his father and others, he began to build up the party structures of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Aachen, which was in the founding phase , and on August 20, 1946 was one of the founding members of the Junge Union . A year later he was elected to the city council, to which he belonged almost continuously until 1975. In the meantime, he headed the CDU parliamentary group for three legislative periods and was also elected district chairman from 1971 to 1973 and from 1977 to 1981. In 1981 Pfeiffer was appointed honorary chairman of the CDU, an office which he placed in younger hands in 2005 for reasons of age. He was succeeded by Kurt Malangré , whom he had proposed.

During his many years as a council member, Pfeiffer played a key role in continuing the reconstruction of Aachen, whereby the cultural infrastructure was also a particular concern of his. Just like his father, who saw the structure and importance of Aachen only in consensus with its neighboring countries, Jost Pfeiffer tried to consolidate the cooperation with the most important cities in the triangle such as Liège and Maastricht and to promote the European idea. He also joined the “Society for the Awarding of the International Charlemagne Prize of the City of Aachen” founded by his father in 1949 and was later an active board member of this society until old age.

Jost Pfeiffer died on January 14, 2010 and found his final resting place in Westfriedhof I in Aachen. He left three daughters who continued his Christian social and cultural work. His daughter Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen , married to a descendant of the Düsseldorf industrialist family Poensgen , was councilor for culture and social affairs of the city of Aachen and general secretary of the cultural foundation of the federal states . She has been Minister for Culture and Science for the State of North Rhine-Westphalia since 2017 . The second daughter, Simone Pfeiffer-Bohnenkamp, ​​was, among other things, managing director of the "Sozialwerk Aachener Christen eV".

Honors

Jost Pfeiffer received the Golden Ring of Honor of the City of Aachen in 1975 for his many services . In addition, the city of Aachen made him an honorary citizen on January 20, 2001 "for his decades of commitment to the reconstruction of the city and its development" .

In 2002, Pfeiffer's achievements were finally recognized with the award of the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Claudia Conrads: The Christian Democratic Union in Aachen; Dissertation, Bonn 2006; Foundation of the Junge Union p. 320 ff (PDF; 1.6 MB)
personal data
SURNAME Pfeiffer, Jost
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German local politician and honorary citizen of the city of Aachen
DATE OF BIRTH December 29, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Aachen
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 2010
Place of death Aachen