Karl-Hermann Flach

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Karl-Hermann Flach (around 1972)

Karl-Hermann Flach (born October 17, 1929 in Königsberg ; † August 25, 1973 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German journalist, author and liberal politician, initially in the LDPD , after his escape from the GDR in the FDP .

Life

Flach attended elementary and secondary school in Königsberg from 1936 to 1944 and served in the Volkssturm in 1944/45 . From 1945 to 1947 he attended high school in Rostock . In 1946 he joined the LDP (later LDPD). In 1948/49 he worked as a volunteer and later as a political editor at the LDP newspaper Norddeutsche Zeitung in Schwerin. In 1949 he was elected to the LDP state board of Mecklenburg . In October 1949 he fled the GDR to West Berlin , where he joined the FDP. From 1949 to 1953 Flach studied political science at the German University of Politics , later the Otto Suhr Institute , at the Free University of Berlin with a diploma. From 1954 to 1956 he worked as an economic and social policy editor in Frankfurt am Main and in Bonn .

In 1956, Flach became an employee of the FDP federal office in Bonn and, in the 1957 federal election campaign, he became the closest employee of election campaign manager Wolfgang Döring , about whom he later said: "I made friends with Döring with liberal principles, he trimmed me pragmatically." From 1959 to May 15, 1962, Flach was the successor to Werner Stephan, the federal executive director of the FDP and campaign manager in the 1961 federal election campaign under party chairman Erich Mende . After content-related differences with Mende, Flach withdrew from politics in 1962 and joined the editorial team of the Frankfurter Rundschau (FR) , initially as head of the domestic affairs department. Most recently he was a managing member of the editorial board and authorized signatory of the printing and publishing house. His successor as Federal Managing Director was Hans-Dietrich Genscher in September 1962 .

At the FDP federal party conference in 1971 in Freiburg im Breisgau , Flach returned to politics as the first general secretary of the FDP under party chairman Walter Scheel . In 1972 he was elected to the German Bundestag and then deputy chairman of the FDP parliamentary group . His secretary at this time, Johanna Olbrich (alias Sonja Lüneburg), who had initially worked for the Berlin FDP state chairman and member of the Bundestag William Borm and was later to work for the Bundestag member and Federal Minister of Economics, Martin Bangemann , was a spy for the GDR State security .

In 1971 Flach published his book Another Chance for the Liberals . This work tried on almost 100 pages to defend liberal positions against his political opponents and sets a well-known theory of a modern liberalism in demarcation u. a. to socialist social theories. Among other things, Flach comes to the conclusion that “if there is a serious threat to their position of property, (...) the ruling circles in capitalist states may prefer rescue by a fascist order to their descent. In socialism, an established leadership group is more likely to resort to Stalinist practices than to expose itself to real popular control, a free public and its being voted out. "

The basic program of the Freiburg Theses of 1971 corresponded to Flax's political ideas. Since the 1950s he campaigned against the so-called “citizen-bloc mentality” of his party and for an opening of the FDP to employees. He became one of the pioneers of the social-liberal coalition in 1969.

From 1959 to 1962 Flach was a member of the Advisory Board of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation . He was a member of the Foundation's Board of Trustees from 1962 to 1971. In 1959 he was significantly involved in the establishment of the magazine liberal , initiated by the Liberal Students 'Union of Germany and its senior citizens' association , the Association of Liberal Academics , of which he was one of the editors until his death.

Flach died on August 25, 1973 as a result of a stroke he had suffered that same month . He was buried in Bötzingen am Kaiserstuhl .

Documents about his work for the FDP are in the Archives of Liberalism of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Gummersbach .

Quote

“For us, freedom does not mean indiscipline, but duty. To be liberal does not mean to rule, but to serve freedom. "

Honors

Flach has received several awards for his journalistic work at Frankfurter Rundschau , including the Theodor Wolff Prize in 1964 and the German Journalist Prize in 1969 . In 1972 he received the Wolfgang Döring Medal and in 1973 the Wilhelm Leuschner Medal of the State of Hesse. The Karl Hermann Flach Foundation in Hesse and the Karl Hermann Flach Prize were named after him.

Publications

  • Do you actually know the FDP? Berto-Verlag, Bonn 1963.
  • Erhard's hard way. Seewald, Stuttgart-Degerloch 1963; 2nd expanded edition ibid. 1964.
  • Power and misery of the press. v. Hare u. Koehler, Mainz 1967.
  • Among us Pharisees. Parables. v. Hare u. Koehler, Mainz 1967.
  • 1x1 of politics. Twelve chapters for the citizen. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1970, ISBN 3-499-60014-5 .
  • Another chance for the Liberals or The Future of Freedom. A polemic. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1971. New edition ibid. 2015, ISBN 978-3-596-30242-0 .
    • Excerpts from Tristan Abromeit's website, February 2010 (PDF; 4.4 MB).
  • with Werner Maihofer u. Walter Scheel: The Freiburg theses of the liberals. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1972, ISBN 3-499-11545-X .
  • Liberal out of passion. Edited by Joachim Bretschneider & Harald Hoffmann. With a foreword by Walter Scheel . Bertelsmann, Munich / Gütersloh / Vienna 1974, ISBN 3-570-02965-4 .
  • More freedom for more people. Contributions to liberal politics. Compilation and editing: Peter Juling. Nomos-Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1979, ISBN 3-7890-0525-8 .

literature

  • Hans-Georg Fleck : Departure - to opposite shores. An exchange of letters from the young Karl-Hermann Flach. In: Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 22, 2010, pp. 215-250.
  • Jutta Roitsch: Between FDP and FR. Work and impact of the politician and publicist Karl-Hermann Flach. In: operations . 175, H. 3, 2006, pp. 140-147.
  • Klaus Weber: Left liberalism in the Federal Republic of around 1969. Economy and profiles. (= Jena Contributions to History , Vol. 11), Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-631-63940-5 .

Web links

Commons : Karl-Hermann Flach  - Collection of Images

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Quoted from Karl-Hermann Flach: Liberal out of passion , p. 24.
  2. ^ Wolfgang Hartmann:  Olbrich, Johanna . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  3. ↑ Karl-Hermann Flach: Another chance for the liberals or: The future of freedom . 1st edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 978-3-10-021001-2 , p. 75 .
  4. ↑ Karl-Hermann Flach - life and work .
  5. ^ Theodor Wolff Prize: Prize winners from 1962 to 1997 ( Memento from December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) .
personal data
SURNAME Flach, Karl-Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist, essayist and politician (FDP), Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Königsberg (Prussia)
DATE OF DEATH August 25, 1973
Place of death Frankfurt am Main