Karl Wilhelm Berkhan

Karl-Wilhelm Berkhan (1971)

Karl Wilhelm "Willi" Berkhan (born April 8, 1915 in Hamburg ; † March 9, 1994 there ) was a German teacher and politician ( SPD ). He was a member of the Hamburg Parliament , the German Bundestag and the European Parliament . From 1969 to 1975 Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Defense and from 1975 to 1985 Armed Forces Commissioner of the German Bundestag .

Life and work

Berkhan was born in 1915 as the son of an office manager in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel . From 1925 to 1931 he attended the Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Hamburg. After secondary school he completed a mechanical engineering apprenticeship for several years and attended the Higher Technical State College in Hamburg from 1935 to 1937.

Family gabstein Berkhan , Ohlsdorf cemetery

Then he was drafted into the Reich Labor Service . In 1939 he joined the air training regiment in Oschatz in the Wehrmacht . He then worked as an aircraft engine fitter in the war economy. In 1941 he was awarded the War Merit Cross, Second Class with Swords. Most recently he held the rank of first lieutenant . In 1942 he was accepted into the civil service career of the Wehrmacht. In 1944 he was promoted to senior pilot engineer.

After the war he worked for a short time as a detective in Hamburg and from 1945 to 1947 attended the Hamburg Vocational Education Institute. From 1947 he was a senior commercial teacher in Hamburg. From 1947 to 1953 he studied education at the University of Hamburg . About the second chance he became a professional teacher ( teacher ).

In the Bundeswehr, he held the rank of captain of the Air Force Reserve .

Berkhan was married. He had been friends with Helmut Schmidt since he was a student . Berkhan and Schmidt were neighbors at Brahmsee , Schmidt's holiday home.

Karl Wilhelm Berkhan was buried in the Ohlsdorfer Friedhof in Hamburg, grid square L 14 (south of Cordesallee , west of Ringstrasse ).

politics

Political party

Berkhan was already a member of the socialist youth workers during the Weimar Republic . After 1945 he participated in the reconstruction of the SPD in Hamburg. In 1946 he was a co-founder of the Socialist German Student Union (SDS). Berkhan belonged to the district (local association) Fuhlsbüttel. From 1949 to 1954 he was district chairman of the SPD Hamburg-Nord . During this time the SPD group had over 10,000 members.

MP

From 1953 to 1957 Berkhan was a member of the Hamburg parliament .

From 1957 until his resignation on March 19, 1975 he was a member of the German Bundestag ( constituency 13 (Altona)). From 1967 to 1969 he was chairman of the “Security Issues” working group of the SPD parliamentary group and deputy chairman of the defense committee . Berkhan has always entered the Bundestag as a directly elected member of the Hamburg-Altona constituency .

From November 11, 1959 to November 29, 1961, he was also a member of the European Parliament .

Public offices

On October 22, 1969, Berkhan was appointed Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Defense in the Federal Government led by Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt . After his election to the Armed Forces Commissioner, he left office on March 19, 1975.

From March 19, 1975 to March 19, 1985 Berkhan was the Defense Commissioner of the German Bundestag. Originally, he was not the SPD's first choice for this office. But when the actual SPD candidate Werner Buchstaller could not prevail against the CDU candidate Leo Ernesti (both did not get the required majority of the members of the Bundestag), the SPD parliamentary group nominated Berkhan. He then received 418 of 464 votes cast, since the CDU had now renounced its own candidate and largely voted for Berkhan. As defense commissioner, Berkhan warned that the discussion about the internal leadership of the Bundeswehr should not become an end in itself. The troop practice must be brought closer to the ideal. With the amendment of the Armed Forces Commissioner Act in 1982, the office of the Armed Forces Commissioner was integrated into the Bundestag administration as an organizational unit.

Awards

• 1985: Honorary doctorate from the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg

Fonts (selection)

• The Defense Commissioner of the German Bundestag . In: Udo Kempf , Herbert Uppendahl (Ed.): A German Ombudsman. The Ombudsman of Rhineland-Palatinate, taking into account petition bodies in Europe and North America . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 1986, ISBN 978-3-663-09851-5 , 76-89.

See also

• Cabinet Brandt I - Cabinet Brandt II - Cabinet Schmidt I

literature

• Rudolf J. Schlaffer : The Armed Forces Commissioner 1951 to 1985. Out of concern for the soldiers (= Security Policy and Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Germany , Volume 5). Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-486-58025-9 , pp. 349-351.
• Winfried Vogel : Karl Wilhelm Berkhan. A pioneer of German security policy after 1945. Contributions to a political biography (= series of publications by the Scientific Forum for International Security eV (WIFIS) . Vol. 21). With a foreword by Helmut Schmidt , Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-394-9 .
• Karl Wilhelm Berkhan , in Internationales Biographisches Archiv 23/1994 from May 30, 1994 (st) Supplemented by news from MA journal up to week 44/2006, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Literature by and about Karl Wilhelm Berkhan in the catalog of the German National Library
• Karl-Wilhelm Berkhan at the German Bundestag

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Celebrity Graves
2. ^ Jörn Westendorf: SPD district Hamburg-Nord / annual report 1976/77 . Edited by the SPD district of Hamburg-Nord