Ludger Volmer

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Ludger Volmer (born February 17, 1952 in Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf ) is a German politician ( Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen ). From 1998 to 2002 he was Minister of State in the Foreign Office .

education and profession

After high school in 1971 at the humanistic Schalke school Gelsenkirchen graduated Volmer study the social sciences , of Pedagogy and Philosophy in Bochum and casting , which he at the 1978 Ruhr-University Bochum as a diploma - social scientists completed. He interrupted his studies for his community service in the hospital. After graduating he worked professionally as a research assistant at the university, in the residential environment planning at the Ruhr local government association , in adult education at the community college worked Gelsenkirchen and in empirical social research. In 1998 he worked with Wilhelm Bleek at the Ruhr University in Bochum with the thesis The Greens and Foreign Policy - a difficult relationship with Dr. rer. soc. PhD. In 1978 he published (with Karl-Heinz Lehnardt) the book "Politics between head and stomach", in which he analyzed the self-image of the 68er , student movement and APO from the perspective of a 78er .

Volmer later worked as a freelance management consultant in the field of international marketing and strategic corporate development. In this context, he is a partner in several consulting firms, including a. of Synthesis GmbH based in Bad Honnef . From 2006 he was also a lecturer at the Free University of Berlin . He taught foreign and security policy at the Otto Suhr Institute .

Today Volmer is a freelance journalist, lecturer and political advisor.

family

Volmer's father Günter Volmer was a member of the German Bundestag ( CDU ) from 1969 to 1983 . His mother Maria-Theresia and his grandfathers Peter Volmer and Bernhard Saager were founding members of the Catholic Workers' Movement and the CDU. Ludger Volmer has a son.

Political party

Since 1969, Volmer has been active in mostly self-founded (citizen) initiatives, for example in voluntary social work in homeless settlements. Since 1974 he has been one of the initiators of the “undogmatic left” basic groups at the university, which he represented in almost all university committees. As a result, in 1979 he was one of the co-founders of the other political association SPV Die Grünen , then the party Die Grünen . During the time when the party split into Fundis and Realos , he was a leading representative of the moderate left for a long time, founded the “Left Forum” and campaigned for the integration of the divided party. On this basis he was party chairman from 1991 to 1994 ("Speaker of the Federal Executive"). He organized the re-entry into the Bundestag in 1994, from which the West German Greens (unlike the East German counterpart) had left in 1990. For this purpose he managed the merger with Bündnis 90 - civil rights activists of the former GDR - and the East German Greens and became the first chairman of the merged party Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen. In addition to a profound reform of the party structures, he promoted the founding of an independent association of green youth , initiated the reorganization of the foundation system close to green ( Heinrich Böll Foundation ) and launched the green party newspaper “Schrä / Strich” . In addition, he opened official relations with the federal board of the German Federation of Trade Unions and various individual trade unions , thus preparing the ground for the later Red-Green coalition in the federal government. At the coalition talks in 1998 he negotiated foreign policy as a member of the Green Negotiating Commission. He was significantly involved in numerous program publications that are still valid today.

MP

On April 10, 1985, Volmer moved to the Bundestag because of the rotation principle in force at the time with the Greens , to which he initially belonged until 1990. His group sent him to the Committee on Economic Cooperation, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Finance Committee. In addition, he was u. a. Member of the German parliamentary delegation at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank . On February 1, 1986, Volmer was elected as the youngest member to date to one of the parliamentary group chairmen ("spokesman"). On July 18, he resigned because he was only given one uncertain place in the list for the next federal election.

Content Volmer took from his predecessor Gabriele Gottwald , the Latin America policy. He was particularly committed to the liberation, emancipation and peace processes in Nicaragua , El Salvador and Chile .

His most important concern, however, was the redefinition of development policy . Against the aid-oriented project policy, he took an approach that was critical of the global economy and focused on the unjust trade relations between North and South and the international debt crisis. In 1985 he was one of the initiators of the first “ counter-summit ” including a large- scale demonstration against the G7 meeting in Bonn. Then he organized a campaign critical of the global economy with an ever-expanding alliance of NGOs , which in 1988 on the occasion of the annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank in West Berlin resulted in an internationally acclaimed alternative congress, a large demonstration and numerous decentralized actions. As a result, he participated in the founding of the WEED (World economy ecology and development) coordination office and the publication of the “Info Letter World Economy & Development”. In the parliamentary group, as spokesman for world economic issues, he was responsible for developing the program “On the way to an ecological, solidaristic world economy”. With the campaign, Volmer and his colleagues also tried to integrate the third world movement , the environmental movement and the peace movement , which until then had acted side by side, into a single movement. Numerous ideas and positions propagated by Volmer were later carried on by movements critical of globalization such as attac .

In 1994, Volmer moved back to the German Bundestag and concentrated on the Foreign Affairs Committee. He became a member of the German delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. There he founded the green alternative group, which he chaired. He also became deputy chairman of the German-US-American and German-Russian parliamentary groups. At the end of 2002 he became the foreign policy spokesman for his group.

In this function, Volmer turned away from his earlier pacifist positions and advocated German participation in the war in Kosovo and Afghanistan within the framework of the NATO military alliance , which he and his party had advocated for the abolition of this until 1994. Like the federal government, he rejected German participation in the American War in Iraq.

Volmer analyzed the history of ideas, programs and events in green foreign and peace policy in 1998 in his doctoral thesis.

On March 3, 2000, the Volmer Decree named after him came into force.

On February 11, 2005, Ludger Volmer resigned his seat in the Foreign Affairs Committee and as foreign policy spokesman in the course of the so-called visa affair at a state board meeting of the Greens in North Rhine-Westphalia. He also announced that for the duration of his Bundestag mandate his work in the Synthesis company would be suspended and that the company's shares would be administered by a trustee. With this step he wanted to ensure that the media coverage of his economic activity would not have any negative effects on his party in the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein. In the first public hearing of a committee of inquiry, Volmer was questioned about visa policy for almost ten hours later. The committee's report does not attribute any fault to Volmer. The opposition's dissenting minority vote does not repeat any personal reproach. In addition, Volmer has since won a number of legal disputes over false allegations in some media outlets.

In the 2005 Bundestag election, he did not run for the German Bundestag again because of the lack of solidarity from his regional association, which he felt.

Public offices

After the Bundestag election in 1998 , he was appointed Minister of State in the Foreign Office on October 27, 1998 in the cabinet headed by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder . After the federal election in 2002 , he left the government on October 22, 2002.

Social offices

Others

In 2002, Volmer was accused by some media business acquired Bonus Miles of Lufthansa to have used for private flights from wife and son (see bonus miles affair ). However, he was able to prove that his wife had flown with the consent and on behalf of the Foreign Office and that private miles were available for his son.

In August 2018 it was announced that the Volmer Rally standing by Sahra Wagenknecht supported. He was disappointed by the Greens and said: "The Greens today are no longer concerned with fighting structural poverty, but rather with beautifying bourgeois life."

Publications

  • with Karl-Heinz Lehnardt: Politics between head and stomach. On the relevance of personality development in the political concepts of the student movement in the FRG. Druckladen-Verlag, Bochum 1979, ISBN 978-3-88663-100-1
  • The Greens and foreign policy - a difficult relationship. A history of ideas, programs and events in green foreign policy. Westphalian steam boat, Münster 1998, ISBN 978-3-89691-438-5
  • The green. From the protest movement to the established party - a balance sheet. Bertelsmann, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-570-10040-0
  • War cries and the pitfalls of German foreign policy. Europa-Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-944305-24-0

Awards (excerpt)

Web links

 Wikinews: Ludger Volmer  - in the news

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Vita ( Memento from April 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ SEF: Shaping Globalization Politically: Board of Trustees. Retrieved November 7, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Because of Chemnitz: Green leader Baerbock rejects Wagenknecht's “stand up”. September 3, 2018, accessed November 7, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Volmer Dott. Ludger. Cavaliere di Gran Croce Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana. Presidenza della Republica, April 12, 2002, accessed August 19, 2019 (Italian).
personal data
SURNAME Volmer, Ludger
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen), Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH 17th February 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf