Norbert Blüm

Federal party conference in Mainz, 1986

Norbert Sebastian Blüm (born July 21, 1935 in Rüsselsheim am Main ; † April 23, 2020 in Bonn ) was a German politician ( CDU ). He was a member of the German Bundestag from 1972 to 1981 and from 1983 to 2002. From 1982 to 1998 Blüm was Federal Minister for Labor and Social Affairs .

Life

education and profession

In his youth, Blüm was an altar boy and Saint George scout . After graduating from elementary school in 1949, he completed an apprenticeship as a toolmaker at Adam Opel AG in Rüsselsheim by 1952 and worked in this profession until 1957. During these years he was also active as a youth representative at the plant . From 1950 Norbert Blüm was a member of the IG Metall trade union .

From 1957 on, he attended the evening grammar school of the Ketteler-Kolleg Mainz via a second educational path and passed his Abitur in 1961 . During this time he was the first tribal chairman of the German Scouting Association Saint Georg in Rüsselsheim.

From 1961 to 1967 he studied philosophy , German studies , history and theology at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn , the latter under Joseph Ratzinger among others . In doing so, he was supported by both the Codetermination Foundation (forerunner of the Hans Böckler Foundation ) and the Volkswagen Foundation. In 1967 he was promoted to Dr. phil. with a thesis on the theory of will and social theory by Ferdinand Tönnies . A contribution to understanding v. ' Community and Society ' doctorate .

From 1966 to 1968 he was an editor at the monthly magazine of the Christian Democratic Workers' Union (CDA) Social Order .

Membership and offices in the CDU

Blüm at the lectern in front of microphones during the election campaign for the state election of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1990

Blüm had been a member of the CDU since 1950. Here he was mainly involved in the social committees of the CDA, of which he was chief executive from 1968 to 1975 and whose federal chairman he was from 1977 to 1987. From 1969 to 2000 he sat on the CDU federal executive committee.

From 1987 to 1999, Blüm was state chairman of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia . As such, he challenged the North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Johannes Rau as the CDU top candidate in 1990 , but was unable to prevail against him.

From 1981 to 1990 and again from 1992 to 2000, Blüm was also deputy federal chairman of the party.

MP

from left to right: Stefan Höpfinger , Horst Seehofer and Norbert Blüm at an award ceremony in 1989

From 1972 to 1981 and from 1983 to 2002 Blüm was a member of the German Bundestag . From 1980 to 1981 he was deputy chairman of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group . From 1981 to 1982 he was a member of the Berlin House of Representatives .

Blüm was last drawn into the Bundestag (14th electoral term in 1998) via the state list of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Public offices

From 1981 to 1982 he was senator for federal affairs and authorized representative of the state of Berlin at the federal level in the senate of the governing mayor Richard von Weizsäcker .

On October 4, 1982 he was appointed by the newly elected Chancellor Helmut Kohl as Federal Minister for Labor and Social Affairs in the Federal Government ( Kohl I cabinet ). He held this office until the end of the Kohl V cabinet on October 26, 1998 after the 1998 federal election . This makes him the only federal minister who was a member of the cabinet during Helmut Kohl's entire chancellorship . In his work, Blüm referred primarily to Christian social teaching . This, according to Blüm in a later version, “defends private property, but with social ties. Christian social teaching thus combines individual with social rights and duties. "

Forum with Norbert Blüm in February 1990 in Teltow

During his career as minister he operated a. a. the introduction of long-term care insurance . Widely used in conjunction with the Blum now than is household word spell known and frequently modified "The pension is safe," remembered. It was an advertising campaign by the federal government from 1986, in which Blüm posed with a brush and glue in front of election posters on an advertising pillar . The actual advertising slogan, however, was: "Because one thing is certain: the pension".

In the summer of 1987, Blüm traveled to Chile to visit the Colonia Dignidad and verify allegations of serious human rights violations , but was not admitted. He campaigned for persecuted opponents of the regime in Chile and criticized him and his military dictatorship clearly, including at a personal meeting with General Pinochet . He received an offer from Pinochet to save 14 death row inmates by granting them asylum in Germany . According to press reports, Bluem's commitment to human rights in Chile brought the governing coalition and sister parties CDU / CSU to the brink of split. The CSU chairman Franz Josef Strauss defended the Pinochet regime at the time and Federal Interior Minister Friedrich Zimmermann refused to accept the 14 members of the revolutionary left movement MIR in the Federal Republic.

Cabinet affiliations

Weizsäcker Senate Cabinet Kohl III

Cabinet Kohl I. Cabinet Kohl IV

Cabinet Kohl II Cabinet Kohl V

After the political career

After 1998, Blüm found his views represented in the CDU only to a limited extent; even before that he was sometimes ridiculed as a “ Herz-Jesu-Marxist ”. Among other things, he criticized plans to introduce a flat rate per capita in the statutory health insurance and took the view that the CDU was changing course in which the social was missing. At the Leipzig party congress of the CDU in 2003, he was whistled by some party members for his criticism of the course and the changed line in health policy towards the head lump sum was confirmed by a clear majority. However, he later received support from the ranks of the Christian Democratic workforce , among others . The previously good relationship with Helmut Kohl broke when Blüm distanced himself from Kohl in the CDU donation affair, which Kohl did not forgive him. He criticized Agenda 2010 (“Hartz is botch”) and saw social peace in danger.

Private

Norbert Blüm and his wife Marita at the German Television Prize 2012

The grave of Norbert Blüm in the old cemetery in Bonn.

Blüm lived in Bonn and had been married to Marita Blüm since 1964, whom he had met while studying. The couple has three children: Christian (* 1965), member of the Kölschrock band Brings , and two daughters. In March 2020, Blüm reported in a guest post in Die Zeit that he had fallen into a coma the year before after suffering from sepsis and has since been paralyzed from the shoulder down . Blüm died at the age of 84 on April 23, 2020 in Bonn, and on May 5 he was buried in the old cemetery there.

As his life motto , Norbert Blüm always said: " Do right and don't be afraid of anyone ."

Act

Other engagement

Blüm and Heiner Geißler visited the Nuba Mountains in 1999 as part of a peace initiative for Sudan . Blüm visited Iraq several times after the Second Gulf War . Since 2002 he has been campaigning for the Palestinians in the Middle East conflict and for this reason made several trips to the Palestinian autonomous territories together with Cap Anamur founder Rupert Neudeck . On the occasion of his criticism of Israel's policy in the Palestinian conflict as well as the procedure in the Gaza war in 2009 , Blüm was accused of anti-Semitism and perpetrator-victim reversal, against which he strictly protested.

Blüm was a member of the board of trustees of the Junge Presse North Rhine-Westphalia and the aid organization Grünhelme eV as well as the board of trustees of the ÖDP- related Foundation for Ecology and Democracy . Blüm was the chairman of the Xertifix association , which is committed to combating child labor in the natural stone industry and awards the label of the same name to natural stones from India, which can be proven to have been produced without child or slave labor . Blüm was also involved as a volunteer ambassador for the Children's Hospice Central Germany Nordhausen Foundation . V. in Tambach-Dietharz. Blüm was a long-time supporter of Kindernothilfe . There he acted as ambassador and chairman of the foundation council of the Kindernothilfe Foundation. Blüm traditionally gave his grandchildren a sponsorship from the aid organization for a child of the same age in a poor country when they started school. He was the 2nd chairman of the association Face Show ! For a cosmopolitan Germany e. V. and since 2017 anniversary ambassador of the von Bodelschwingh Foundation Bethel .

In the summer semester of 2010, he took over the Hemmerle professorship at the chair for systematic theology at RWTH Aachen University and held two lectures and one seminar. In his lecture on July 21, 2010 - his 75th birthday - he lectured on a “great idea in deep sleep: Christian social teaching ”. In March 2012, Blüm published a pamphlet on the expropriation of childhood and the nationalization of the family , in which he complained that “the comprehensive state care offer that is demanded from all sides [...] is behind the scenes as a weapon against the right to upbringing, which the Basic Law primarily gives to parents secures “, it turns out.

In January 2014 , Blüm attacked in an article the equality of homosexual partnered couples as well as the established case law of the Federal Constitutional Court, which has prevailed since 2001, in an article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS) . He criticized the fact that the Federal Constitutional Court attached too little weight to Article 6 and wanted to bring about an equality that he described as a rhetorical trick , and indirectly doubted the strong weighting of Article 3 since the introduction of the Civil Partnership Act, which he compared with road traffic regarded as more accident prone . He also criticized the decision to split the spouses as a breach in the longstanding case law of the court.

When in spring 2016 around 40,000 people were stuck under adverse conditions because of the border closings in northern Greece during the refugee crisis at the time , he sharply condemned the miserable conditions in the refugee camps and described them as an “attack on humanity” and a “cultural disgrace”. In the particularly affected Idomeni, he spent one night in solidarity in a tent in the refugee camp there , which at the time was occupied by 12,000 refugees.

In June 2016 , Blüm spoke out in a newspaper article on the occasion of the federal referendum in Switzerland on the basic income initiative against an unconditional basic income . In the article he called the idea an "attempt to escape from social welfare responsibility into the general money business", unjust, and a "dead bullet".

He got involved several times for his alma mater , the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn , also as part of the celebrations for the 200th anniversary. In 2003, together with the Bonn philosopher and science coordinator Dr. Martin Booms organized the “Philosophy and Politics” colloquium, which was open to both students and the public. In 2013 he gave the keynote speech at the university festival entitled “It depends on trust”. In a production by WDR in 2018 he spoke about his roots with the University of Bonn, where he met his wife in a lecture by Joseph Ratzinger, and called the university a “place of love”. He also spoke the text of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf at the children's concert series of the Bonn University Orchestra - Camerata musicale .

In 2018 he was a founding member of the citizens' movement Finanzwende .

Trivia

Blüm was targeted several times in the satirical television program Rudis Tagesshow . Rudi Carrell always stood in a backdrop, at whose "front door" he rang the bell to then have amusing conversations with the wife or daughter of Blüm. In the last edition of the show, Blüm had the opportunity to take revenge. He was there in person and poured a bucket of water over Carrell from behind - apparently unnoticed.

Blüm occasionally appeared in commercials and programs of popular entertainment (e.g. Die Krone der Volksmusik ) on television. From 2000 to 2005 he was on the advice team for What am I? on cable one . He also wrote children's books (e.g. Die Glücksmargerite ). Together with the actor Peter Sodann , Blüm went on tour through smaller halls in autumn 2007. A separate cabaret program was played with the title Ost-West-Vis-à-Vis .

A portrait mask of Blüms, who was Federal Minister of Labor at the time of the reconstruction of the building (1987 to 1989), is located on a knagge on the facade of the bone carving office in Hildesheim .

Publications (selection)

• The blunt from Norbert Blüm. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1985, ISBN 3-404-10580-X
• Then I want to try it. Stories of crying and laughing. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1993, ISBN 3-404-12013-2 .
• The lucky marguerite. Stories to read aloud. Bertelsmann, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-570-12239-5 .
• Peter Frieß , Andreas Fickers (eds.): Norbert Blüm and Konrad Seitz talk about Germany as an industrial location and about individual working hours in the future (= TechnikDialog , issue 5), Deutsches Museum , Bonn 1995, OCLC 312759899 ( ISBN 3-924183- 94-5 was used twice).
• The summer slump. Politics left and right. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-462-02988-6
• Undaunted & blunt. Human and all-too-human. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2002, ISBN 3-451-27996-7
• Ernst Frangel , short story in the anthology Friendships by Marie-Luise Marjan (ed.), Hoffmann and Campe , Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-455-05141-3 .
• Out of the blue. How life goes Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2006, ISBN 3-451-29276-9
• Justice. A criticism of Homo oeconomicus. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2006, ISBN 3-451-05789-1
• Honest work. An attack on financial capitalism and its greed. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2011, ISBN 978-3-579-06746-9
• with Peter Henkel : argument about God. A conversation between opponents . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2012, ISBN 978-3-451-30590-0
• Objection! Against the arbitrariness of German courts . Westend, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-86489-066-6 ( review by Thomas Fischer )
• It's getting serious, CDU! Article (FASZ November 19, 2017) on the subject of 'family reunification' of refugees
• Change the world, but don't destroy it. Insights from a left conservative. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2017, ISBN 978-3-451-37920-8
• Will theory and social theory with Ferdinand Tönnies. A contribution to the understanding of “community and society” , ed. and with an afterword by Arno Bammé , Munich, Vienna 2018 (first 1967).
• What does my misfortune mean? Guest contribution (DIE ZEIT No. 12/2020, March 12, 2020) about his life in a wheelchair.

honors and awards

Federal Chancellor Kohl presents the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany to Blüm (1990)

• 1983: Federal Cross of Merit of Catholic Men
• 1984: Golden badge of honor from the Federal Metal Association
• 1984: Pipe Smoker of the Year
• 1985: Order against seriousness
• 1986: Karl Valentin Order
• 1987: Thomas More Medal
• 1988: Pro-Log Prize from the Association of German Magazine Publishers
• 1989: Heinrich Brauns Prize , Aachen Newspaper Duck
• 1990: Great Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1995: “Foolish Hobby Horse” of the Prinzengarde Krefeld
• 1996: Large Cross of Merit with Star and Shoulder Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 2000: Münchhausen Prize
• 2001: Leipzig Human Rights Prize
• 2001: glasses wearer of the year
• 2003: Georg Scheu badge from the city of Alzey
• 2004: Laughing official gray of the district association Bonn / Rhein-Sieg in the DBB Beamtenbund and tariff union
• 2005: Winfried Prize of the city of Fulda, beer ambassador from the German Brewers' Association
• 2005: Grand Leopold Kunschak Prize
• 2011: Oswald von Nell Breuning Prize of the City of Trier
• 2012: Award of the St. Georgs plaque by the Verband Deutscher Altpfadfindergilden eV

literature

• Werner Breunig, Andreas Herbst (ed.): Biographical handbook of the Berlin parliamentarians 1963–1995 and city councilors 1990/1991 (= series of publications of the Berlin State Archives. Volume 19). Landesarchiv Berlin, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-9803303-5-0 , p. 94.

Web links

Commons : Norbert Blüm  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Norbert Blüm  - Quotes

• Stefan Siller with Norbert Blüm - ex-labor minister, served Helmut Kohl for 16 years and goes down in history with "The pension is safe" in SWR - " People " on October 9, 2014
• Ex-Minister Norbert Blüm: “Mostly the mothers” are disadvantaged! , kath.net interview from December 2014
• Modern man is spared from love SZ from May 2013
• Biography at the German Bundestag
• Biography at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation
• Deutschlandfunk - Interview with contemporary witnesses on January 29, 2009

• Literature by and about Norbert Blüm in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Achim Schwarze: Thin board drill in Bonn - From the dissertations of our elite. P. 89; Eichborn-Verlag Frankfurt / Main, 1984
2. ^ Obituary by Norbert Blüm , University of Bonn, May 2, 2020
3. ↑ Norbert Blüm, Ehrliche Arbeit, p. 266
4. ↑ Overview from the BMAS: Former Federal Ministers for Labor and Social Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany since 1949 ( Memento of January 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ Not an inch is marched back. In: Der Spiegel No. 32/1987
6. ^ Local ban for Franz Josef Strauss. In: Die Zeit , August 7, 1987
7. ↑ ^{a b c} "Tell me where the social is - where has it gone?" SZ, Norbert Blüm on his birthday, July 20, 2005 ( Memento from September 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
8. ^ "Criticism from within our own ranks" SZ, September 27, 2005
9. ↑ ^{a b} The time: Is Leipzig history? , December 4, 2007
10. ^ DRadio: Ex-Labor Minister Blüm repeats: "The pension is safe" , July 21, 2010
11. ↑ "Hartz ist Pfusch", interview in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of August 13, 2009.
12. ↑ Berliner Morgenpost: Norbert Blüm on his marriage secret ; Retrieved October 4, 2009
13. ↑ Norbert Blüm paralyzed from shoulders down after blood poisoning. In: Spiegel Online. Retrieved March 11, 2020 . 
14. ↑ ZEIT No. 12/2020, March 12, 2020: Paralysis: What does my unhappiness mean? ; accessed on April 24, 2020
15. ↑ Norbert Blüm died. In: spiegel.de. Retrieved April 24, 2020 . 
16. ↑ Norbert Blüm died. In: tagesschau.de. Retrieved April 24, 2020 . 
17. ↑ Thomas Leurs: Prominent mourners: Norbert Blüm buried in the old cemetery in Bonn. In: General-Anzeiger . May 5, 2020, accessed May 8, 2020 . 
18. ↑ https://www.welt.de/print-welt/article652837/Nehmt-Abschied-Brueder-doch-noch-nicht-so-bald.html
19. ↑ Union politicians criticize the work of Unicef Berliner Zeitung of December 29, 1999
20. ↑ Reinhard Mohr: Gaza War near Plasberg - Mess with German Guilt , Der Spiegel (January 22, 2009), accessed on April 29, 2020.
21. ↑ Sandra Rokahr: “Blunted anti-Semitism. Israel criticism as a ticket mentality. ”In: Samuel Salzborn (Ed.): Anti-Semitism since 9/11. Events, debates, controversies. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2019, pp. 91, 96
22. ↑ INTERVIEW: "The accusation of anti-Semitism is also used as a stick" ( Memento from August 6, 2002 in the Internet Archive ), Stern.de
23. ↑ Board of Trustees. Foundation for Ecology and Democracy 
24. ↑ Kindernothilfe Ambassador Norbert Blüm
25. ↑ Blüms sponsored child in India ( Memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
26. ↑ Norbert Blüm. v. Bodelschwingh Foundation Bethel 
27. ↑ https://www.aachener-zeitung.de/nrw-region/norbert-bluem-uebernehmen-die-hemmerle-stiftungsprofessur_aid-27055841
28. ↑ Blüms Soziallehre ( Memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
29. ↑ On the expropriation of childhood and the nationalization of the family . In: ZEIT N ° 12, March 15, 2012, p. 75 and 76
30. ↑ faz.net:Blüm attacks the constitutional court
31. ↑ Die Zeit in: For Norbert Blüm, gay couples are not a family
32. ↑ Norbert Blüm camps in Idomeni. In: FAZ . March 12, 2016, accessed December 25, 2018 . 
33. ↑ Leaflet campaign in Idomeni What was going on, Mr. Blüm? In: Spiegel Online . March 15, 2016, accessed December 25, 2018 . 
34. ↑ Florian Diekmann: Why we think the basic income is a good idea - or not. In: Spiegel Online , June 4, 2016. Accessed November 5, 2016.
35. ^ Philosophy with Norbert Blüm - University of Bonn. Retrieved April 17, 2019 . 
36. ↑ uni-bonn.tv: It's all about trust - keynote address by Dr. Norbert Blüm. January 30, 2014, accessed April 17, 2019 . 
37. ^ Prominent students at the University of Bonn. July 6, 2018, accessed April 17, 2019 . 
38. ↑ Children and Family Concert - University of Bonn. Retrieved April 17, 2019 . 
39. ^ Founding members. Citizens' Movement Finanzwende, archived from the original on July 6, 2020 ; accessed on July 6, 2020 . 
40. ↑ RUDI CARRELL - showmaster, actor, television producer and singer
41. ↑ Architecture on the Hildesheim market square (legend 5/14). In: Ratgeber Reise , NDR Kultur , as of July 28, 2014.
42. ↑ ^{a b} In the service of Christian social teaching. In: City of Trier. November 29, 2010, accessed June 14, 2013 . 
43. ↑ Samtgemeindeverwaltung Bodenwerder (ed.): Previous winners of the Münchhausen Prize (as part of the “Münchausenland Bodenwerder” website). Retrieved February 8, 2008 . 
44. ↑ 2001
45. ↑ Norbert Blüm receives the Nell Breuning Prize . In: Saarbrücker Zeitung v. April 6, 2011, p. B3