Peter Heinrich Carstens

Peter Heinrich Carstens (born December 18, 1937 in Hamburg ) is a retired general . D. the Bundeswehr .

Life

Carstens joined the Federal Border Police (BGS) in 1956 . It was later taken over by the Bundeswehr . This was followed by uses in the 6th and 11th Panzer Grenadier Divisions . In 1964 Carstens became head of an armored infantry company. From 1968 to 1970 he completed the general staff course at the command academy of the Bundeswehr in Hamburg . From 1970 to 1972 he served in the corps headquarters of the Allied Land Forces Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland (LANDJUT) in Rendsburg . Between 1972 and 1976 Carstens was an adjutant to Federal Defense Minister Georg Leber . After his promotion to colonel, he was deputy commander of Panzergrenadierbrigade 17 in Hamburg from 1976 to 1979 .

In 1979 he took a course at the Royal College of Defense Studies (RCDS) in London . From 1980 to 1982 he was in command of the 14/34 tank brigade in Koblenz . From February 1982 he became Deputy Head of the Planning Staff in the Federal Ministry of Defense . Afterwards he was first from January 1989 commander of the Allied Command Europe Mobile Force (AMF-Land) in Heidelberg . After being promoted to Lieutenant General in September 1991, Carstens became commander of the III. Corps in Koblenz and was therefore also responsible for the German Somalia Support Association .

From July 1, 1993 to April 1998 he was Chief of Staff (COS) of SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) at the NATO headquarters in Mons (Belgium). On March 30, 1998, Carstens was bid farewell by Federal Defense Minister Volker Rühe with a big tattoo at the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress near Koblenz .

After his retirement he worked as deputy chairman of the “Common Security and Future of the Federal Armed Forces” commission (so-called Weizsäcker commission ). Carstens is an advocate of the conscript army: A volunteer army would be "mostly free of high school graduates". A conscript army "is recruited from the middle of society, a volunteer army rather from the fringes". In the federal election campaign in 2002 he made headlines as a co-founder of the “Soldiers for Schröder” initiative.

literature

• Handbook of the Bundeswehr and Defense Industry 1999, Bernard & Graefe publishing house, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3763759913
• The army 1950 to 1970: conception, organization and installation, R. Oldenbourg Verlag , Munich 2006, ISBN 3486579746
• Can wars be prevented or ended through international intervention ?, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn 1995, ISBN 3860773593

Web links

• Article by Peter Heinrich Carstens at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation

Individual evidence

1. ↑ BMVg: Germans at NATO
2. ^ Spiegel Online, September 5, 2002
3. ↑ Focus Online of September 9, 2002
4. ↑ Staats- und Wirtschaftspolitische Gesellschaft dated September 5, 2002  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.