Manfred Lahnstein

Manfred Lahnstein 1983 at a press conference

Manfred Lahnstein (born December 20, 1937 in Erkrath ) is a German politician ( SPD ), manager and management consultant . He was Federal Minister of Finance and Federal Minister of Economics in 1982 and worked for Bertelsmann AG from 1983 to 2004 .

Life

As the son of a country doctor in Erkrath, Manfred Lahnstein grew up with three siblings. His father died when he was eight years old. After attending elementary school in Erkrath and completed high school in 1957 at the Modern Languages High School in Dusseldorf-Gerresheim Lahnstein began studying economics and social sciences at the University of Cologne , as which he 1961 Diploma - Economist ended.

Lahnstein has been a member of the SPD since 1959. His career began in 1961. Until 1964, he worked as a youth education officer for work and learning at the DGB -Landesiertel Nordrhein-Westfalen . In 1964 he became deputy mayor of Erkrath. At the same time, he was secretary at the European Trade Union Confederation from 1961 , first in Düsseldorf and from 1965 in Brussels as the German representative of the DGB in the area of ​​economics.

In the early 1960s he was the trombonist for the Düsseldorf Feetwarmers , whose saxophonist Klaus Doldinger later achieved international fame.

In 1967 Lahnstein became a member of the staff of EC Vice President Wilhelm Haferkamp at the EC Commission, which he assisted as head of cabinet from 1971 to 1973.

He moved to Bonn in 1973 as Head of the Economy Department and Ministerial Director in the Federal Chancellery under Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt . From 1974 to 1977 Lahnstein took over the management of the department of fundamental questions in the Federal Ministry of Finance under Hans Apel .

Lahnstein was appointed State Secretary for Money, Credit, International Finance and Europe in the Federal Ministry of Finance in May 1977 and, after the Bundestag election in 1980 , was appointed Head of the Federal Chancellery under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt on December 1, 1980 . At the same time he was the agent for the federal intelligence services .

On April 28, 1982, as part of a cabinet reshuffle, he was appointed Federal Minister of Finance in the federal government led by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (and thus successor to Hans Matthöfer ). After the break of the social-liberal coalition , he also headed the Federal Ministry of Economics from September 17, 1982 . After Helmut Kohl was elected Chancellor ( vote of no confidence ), Lahnstein left the federal government on October 4, 1982.

Lahnstein was a member of the German Bundestag for a short time from the beginning of the 10th electoral term until his resignation on August 31, 1983 . He entered the Bundestag via the state list of North Rhine-Westphalia .

In 1983 Lahnstein was poached from the Bundestag by Bertelsmann AG in Gütersloh . At Bertelsmann, he was initially responsible for the electronic media division ( RTL Group ) on the executive board and in 1994 became a member of the supervisory board. From 1998 to 2004 he worked for the Bertelsmann Group as a special representative of the Executive Board.

Since 1986 he has been a professor of economics at the Institute for Culture and Media Management at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater .

Since 1994 he has headed the management consultancy Lahnstein & Partner, International Consultants from Hamburg . Between 2009 and 2014 he was appointed to the board of directors of the London-based investment company RiverRock European Capital Partners LLP .

Lahnstein is an advisor to the Saudi conglomerate Olayan Group and the investment bank Rothschild .

Social activities

Since 1967 member of the German-Israeli Society . There he took over the office of treasurer in the early 1990s. From 1994 to 2006 he was its president.

From 1993 to 2005 Lahnstein was a member of the Trilateral Commission .

Since 1996 he has been chairman of the board of trustees of the Zeit Foundation . He is committed to the Hamburg State Opera , the Thalia Theater , the Hamburg University of Music and Theater , the Bucerius Law School and in particular the Autorentheatertage, a theater festival in northern Germany.

Since 2001 he has been the first German and non-Jew to be the chairman of the Supervisory Board of Haifa University ("Chairman of the Board of Governors"), of which he has been the "Governor" since 1996.

He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Forum Tiberius and one of the supporters of the Charter of Fundamental Digital Rights of the European Union , which was published at the end of November 2016.

Political positions

In 2011 Lahnstein declared that he saw himself as a “liberal social democrat” and criticized the SPD's Hamburg program as an expression of a narrowed understanding of freedom, as populist and as a “dangerous emanation of a […] dull need for harmony”. For the future, he sees the main opponent of the SPD in the Green Party .

family

Manfred Lahnstein is married to Sonja Lahnstein-Kandel . They live in Hamburg and have a daughter and a son from Lahnstein's first marriage, the finance manager Florian Lahnstein . His niece is the actress Miriam Lahnstein .

honors and awards

• Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class (2001)
• Moses Mendelssohn Medal 2006 from the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies
• Honorary doctorate from the University of Haifa (2007)
• "Manfred Lahnstein Scholarship" at the University of Haifa (2007)
• Great Federal Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2007)
• Honorary doctorate from the University of Hamburg (2008)

Fonts

• Economic Management - An Illusion? , Gabler Verlag 1980
• The fire brigade as arsonist , Droemer Knaur 2002
• Courage to take risks , Gabler Verlag 2002
• Massel and Chuzpe , Hoffmann & Campe 2004
• The Chancellor Chancellor , Lübbe, 2006
• The open wound , Lübbe Bastei, 2007
• The Asian challenge . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-455-50269-5 .

Web links

Commons : Manfred Lahnstein  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Manfred Lahnstein in the catalog of the German National Library
• On the award of an honorary doctorate from the University of Hamburg (PDF file; 878 kB)
• Dossier on Manfred Lahnstein at Spiegel Online

swell

1. ^ Manfred Lahnstein: Challenges of social liberal politics. Lecture in Hamburg on June 23, 2011 ( liberale-sozialdemokrats.de ).
2. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Moses Mendelssohn Medal goes to Manfred Lahnstein ), October 31, 2006.
3. ↑ Zeit-Stiftung: ( page no longer available , search in web archives: honor where honor is due. ) (PDF), May 31, 2007.
4. ↑ Bundespräsidialamt : ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: medals on the Day of German Unity. ) October 4, 2007.