Markus E. Wegner

Markus Ernst Wegner (born March 11, 1953 in Hamburg ) is a German politician , publisher and publicist .

Life

Wegner is the son of the Hamburg publisher Christian Wegner (1893–1965) and his third wife Margot Kippenberg, b. Becker (1923-1980). From 1966 to 1974 he attended the North Sea High School in Sankt Peter-Ording . After completing his military service, he began studying art history and law at the University of Hamburg (1976–1983). He has been self-employed since 1983. Wegner is married and has a son and a daughter. The author and publisher Matthias Wegner is a half-brother .

Wegner is a guest author for the Axis of the Good .

Political activity

In 1993, Markus Wegner initiated the first successful entry of an electoral association into a federal German state parliament ( Hamburg citizenship ). The Association Democratic Openness eV (1991) and More Democracy in Hamburg (1996) were co-founded by Wegner.

CDU

Wegner had already joined the CDU , the Junge Union and the RCDS in 1977 (among other things, he was state chairman of the RCDS and a member of the council and the academic senate of the University of Hamburg from 1978–1982).

In 1989 Wegner joined a critical group within the CDU, which included political scientist Winfried Steffani , law professor Karl Albrecht Schachtschneider , former member of the Bundestag Gerhard Orgaß and architect Leonhard Hoffmann. This discussion group for Christian-democratic politics in Hamburg , which sometimes comprised 100 people, became known in Hamburg's public as CDU rebels . The subject of their criticism was the lack of a culture of debate and democracy under the then long-time CDU chairman Jürgen Echternach and his later successor Dirk Fischer . The leadership of the CDU Hamburg was accused of undemocratically "dissolving" candidate lists for citizenship elections and denying members access to or inspection of the party's membership lists. These allegations had long been in the room: In 1971, “18 dissidents” resigned with a public statement in SPIEGEL complaining about the power method of the “flying districts” organized by Fischer and Echternach - there was talk of a “paracriminal milieu “, Which one no longer wanted to belong.

Together with Steffani and others, Wegner led several party court proceedings in the CDU in order to ensure that normal members, like a board of directors, can find out who they belong to in the respective party division in order to achieve equal opportunities between board members and "ordinary" members. The Federal Party Court of the CDU rejected this - until today - from (Ref .: CDU-BPG 5/91 R). However, it would have taken years to go the promising route again via the ordinary courts to the Federal Constitutional Court. A few days after the federal party court decision, Steffani returned his plaque of honor to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and resigned from the CDU after more than 30 years of membership. Wegner later left the CDU at the time of the hearing at the Hamburg Constitutional Court in 1993.

Hamburg re-election verdict

Together with other parties, Wegner had initiated an election review complaint against the result of the mayor elections of 1991 before the Hamburg Constitutional Court as well as an election review complaint against CDU constituency nominations for the 1990 Bundestag election in order to clarify the rights of members and candidates in the case of internal party nominations. With the help of the Federal Constitutional Court , Wegner achieved clarification of the core elements of democratic electoral and procedural principles (BVerfGE 89, 243 ff.). On May 4, 1993, the Hamburg Constitutional Court certified severe democratic deficits in the Hamburg CDU's candidate nomination process, declared the citizenship elections of 1991 to be invalid and ordered new elections for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany.

INSTEAD of party

However, since the Constitutional Court no election arranged for the remainder of the term, but the citizenry a dissolution law with elections permits had founded Wegner a voter community to now to advertise itself from the citizens out for a new "political culture of justice". Wegner's main concern was to offer a policy that was solely responsible for the citizens and that assumed governmental responsibility in a constructive, critical and controlling manner. “You can take Hamburg's politics into your hands from June 30, 1993 at 6 p.m.” was the invitation to Hamburg to attend the public inaugural meeting of the constituency of voters STATT THE INDEPENDENT party. With Wegner as chairman and unanimously nominated top candidate, she managed to get into the Hamburg state parliament with 5.6% of the votes just 80 days later in the mayor elections with around 700 supporters. Wegner proposed instead of himself the non-party Senators Erhard Rittershaus (economy) and Klaus Hardraht (justice).

With the Instead of Party , Wegner intended to achieve more openness in politics, to put civic responsibility in place of party power and to pursue a more factual policy instead of party ideology. One of the goals should also be the upcoming reform of the Hamburg constitution, which later only partially succeeded with the SPD . Since the GAL in Hamburg rejected the Elbe deepening, the Altenwerder container port and the construction of the fourth Elbe tunnel tube, the SPD cooperated with the STATT party instead of an SPD / GAL government. The decisive factor for this was the initially good cooperation between Wegner and Mayor Henning Voscherau , which had the future viability of Hamburg as its goal.

From 1993 to 1997 Wegner was a member of the Hamburg parliament , chairman of the STATT party and for two years (1993–1995) chairman of the parliamentary committee for the constitution, election review and rules of procedure. In December 1994 Wegner had to give up the chairmanship of the parliamentary group, probably because the SPD wanted a partner who did not disturb the government too much. Wegner had insisted on fundamental changes in the constitutional reform (including the electoral law, the introduction of constituencies, the abolition of what he considered to be an unconstitutional dormant mandate for senators and the creation of the public in parliamentary committees), no longer wanted to support the “sell-out of the city” and was for a lower debt policy of the Hanseatic city occurred. As early as mid-1994, the Statt party, which now operates nationwide, had experienced severe turbulence over which Wegner could no longer exert any influence due to the lack of a party office.

In 1995 Wegner and his colleague Klaus Scheelhaase resigned from the STATT party because of further differences with the parliamentary group, knowing the composition of the remaining members. They remained non-attached MPs until the end of the 1997 electoral term.

Wegner continued to see the urgent need to hold open discussions across political rifts, to question one's own positions and to allow minorities in parties to have a stronger say. Wegner continues to consider more democratic participation rights of citizens in plebiscitary votes and the right of every party member to know who is a member of the party organization with them.

AfD

Wegner had been a member of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) since May 2013 . In the spring of 2014, he publicly criticized the party leadership of the AfD when they wanted to enforce a statute at the Erfurt federal party congress that would disregard Wegner's view of “democratic principles” of party law.

Before the Hamburg AfD party convention in early October 2014, Wegner criticized what he believed to be the excessive influence of former members of small parties.

Wegner left the AfD in early 2015. Party press spokesman Christian Lüth welcomed the resignation, since Wegner had "attracted attention in the AfD through anti-party behavior rather than constructive cooperation".

Publications

• with Helmut Stubbe da Luz : Democracy, openness and transparency of the parties: eleven guiding principles for the amendment of the party law. In: Journal for Parliamentary Issues (ZParl). 24, No. 2, 1993, pp. 189-200
• For an open democracy. A man fights against the "political mafia" and for the renewal of the community. List, Munich / Leipzig 1994, ISBN 3-471-79152-3
• A reminder of James Franck: ... there must also be people of my kind. In: Festschrift for the 125th anniversary of Wilhelm Gymnasium Hamburg. 2006
• The AfD in political nirvana In the blog: Geolitico, June 4, 2014, accessed October 10, 2014

Literature on political activity

• Detlev Preuße: group formation and intra-party democracy. Using the example of the Hamburg CDU . Hain, Königstein 1981, ISBN 3-445-12158-3 .
• Dierk-Eckhard Becker & Elmar Wiesendahl : Without a program to Bonn or the Union as a Chancellor Association . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1972, ISBN 3-499-11606-5 .
• Frank Decker : The Hamburg STATT party. Origins and development of a bourgeois electoral movement . In: Yearbook for Politics . 4, 2nd half volume, 1994, p. 249-294 .
• ders .: INSTEAD of reform: Protest PARTY. Rise and fall of the Hamburg STATT party . In: Journal for Parliamentary Issues (ZParl) . tape 27 , no. 2 , 1996, p. 229-242 .
• Jürgen Hoffmann : STATT party, the failure of a bourgeois protest party . In: Winand Gellner & Hans-Joachim Veen (eds.): Upheaval and change in Western European party systems . Lang, Frankfurt [a. a.] 1995, ISBN 3-631-49180-8 .
• Winfried Steffani : Separation of powers and changing parties . Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1997, ISBN 3-531-12972-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Short profile and contributions by Markus E. Wegner on the axis of the good .
2. ↑ Hermann Rudolf: A penalty loop for the party state in Der Tagesspiegel May 5, 1993
3. ^ Against the leadership democracy - CDU Fliegende Bezirke In: Der Spiegel 43/1988 of October 24, 1988, accessed October 10, 2014
4. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Stoldt: A very stupid trick In: Die Zeit July 29, 1989, accessed October 10, 2014
5. ↑ CDU - Fliegender Bezirk In: Der Spiegel 33/1971 of August 9, 1971, accessed October 10, 2014
6. ↑ Winfried Steffani : Separation of powers and parties in change , Opladen (1997), p. 260 ff .; with the decision of the CDU Federal Party Court of September 7, 1992 in the appendix
7. ↑ Winfried Steffani: We are not rebels in Hamburger Abendblatt May 5, 1993, accessed October 10, 2014
8. ↑ Portrait: Alone Against the Guardians of Power Der Tagesspiegel May 5, 1993
9. ↑ Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff and Dirk Kurbjuweit: Die Blockpartei In: Die Zeit May 14, 1993, accessed October 10, 2014
10. ↑ Peter Ulrich Meyer: A judgment that triggered shock waves In Die Welt May 4, 2013, accessed October 10, 2014
11. ↑ elections in Hamburg - skeletons in the closet In: Der Spiegel 19/1993 of 10 May 1993, accessed 10 October 2014
12. ^ New elections in Hamburg ( Memento from October 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In Hamburger Abendblatt May 5, 1993, accessed October 10, 2014
13. ^ Cracking open German Politiks Newsweek October 25, 1993
14. ^ Veit Ruppersberg: Hamburg elects protest In Hamburger Abendblatt September 20, 1993, accessed October 10, 2014
15. ↑ Hamburger STATT party: 90 days after founding Article in Panorama Das Erste October 7, 1993, accessed October 10, 2014
16. ^ The surprise winner ( Memento of October 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In Hamburger Abendblatt September 20, 1993, accessed October 10, 2014
17. ^ The Statt Party slipped away from its founder - mud from the fax In Der Spiegel 19/1994 of May 9, 1994, accessed October 10, 2014
18. ^ The declaration of resignation ( Memento of October 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In Hamburger Abendblatt August 30, 1995, accessed October 10, 2014
19. ↑ Ulrike Scheffler: Instead of the party, Markus Wegner no longer belongs to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung March 30, 1996
20. ^ Günther Lachmann: AfD-members-fight-back-against-Luckes-omnipotence In: Die Welt March 19, 2014, accessed October 10, 2014
21. ↑ Kathrin Haimerl and Sebastian Gierke: Lucke wants to make himself sole ruler In: Süddeutsche Zeitung March 17, 2014, accessed April 28, 2015
22. ↑ Jens Meyer-Wellmann and Christian Unger: AfD is looking for a wrong course In: Die Welt Kompakt , September 17, 2014, accessed October 10, 2014
23. ↑ dpa-infocom GmbH: Wegner is leaving AfD with immediate effect. In: welt.de . February 3, 2015, accessed October 7, 2018 .